CHAPTER VII.
The Justice of Peace and the Legislator.
Vagabondage .-- Measures of Protection .-- Measures of Government .-- Crockett's Confession .-- A Candidate for Military Honors .-- Curious Display of Moral Courage .-- The Squirrel Hunt .-- A Candidate for the Legislature .-- Characteristic Electioneering .-- Specimens of his Eloquence .-- Great Pecuniary Calamity .-- Expedition to the Far West .-- Wild Adventures .-- The Midnight Carouse .-- A Cabin Reared.
The wealthy and the prosperous are not disposed to leave the comforts of a high civilization for the hardships of the wilderness.

Most of the pioneers who crowded to the New Purchase were either energetic young men who had their fortunes to make, or families who by misfortune had encountered impoverishment.

But there was still another class.

There were the vile, the unprincipled, the desperate; vagabonds seeking whom they might devour; criminals escaping the penalty of the laws which they had violated.
These were the men who shot down an Indian at sight, as they would shoot a wolf; merely for the fun of it; who robbed the Indian of his gun and game, burned his wigwam, and atrociously insulted his wife and daughters.

These were the men whom no law could restrain; who brought disgrace upon the name of a white man, and who often provoked the ignorant savage to the most dreadful and indiscriminate retaliation.
So many of these infamous men flocked to this New Purchase that life there became quite undesirable.