In 1833, the Honorable David Crockett, colonel of militia, bear-hunting backwoodsman, and member of the U.S. Congress, attended a performance of James Kirke Paulding's The Lion of the West. The popular comedian James Hackett appeared in the title role of Nimrod Wildfire, a character rumored to have been modeled on Crockett, and tradition has it that Hackett took a significant bow in the direction of the Tennessee congressman and that the flamboyant Crockett returned the tribute. In the intervening years, this mutual gesture has taken on a somewhat emblematic quality, for it stands as an appropriate image of the twofold role Davy Crockett has played in the development of American humor. Almost from the beginning, there were two Crocketts, the real and the fictive, and the crux of "Crockett studies" remains the problem of distinguishing between them.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the "real" Crockett...