Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  Amelia Williams, in researching her “Critical Study” dissertation, found what she called “pretty good evidence that he died by his own hand.” What she found was simply one of innumerable newspaper accounts repeating an initial report by two men who brought the first news of the battle to Houston, and neither was an eyewitness. “Wasn't it just like Travis to have done it that way,” she told Samuel Asbury in a March 15, 1932 letter (Asbury Papers, UT). She knew of Joe's eyewitness account, of course, but did not believe it because, as she explained to Asbury, “I know negroes,” a statement that says a lot more about Amelia Williams than it does about Joe or Travis's death.

  103. Andrew Briscoe, visiting the Alamo after the Mexicans left, somehow came by a statement that when Travis fell, Adjutant Baugh assumed command, and that when he went down Crockett took over. Since there was no one alive who could tell him, and since Joe was in hiding after Travis went down and Susanna Dickenson saw nothing at all of the fight, Briscoe must simply have encountered the assumption of someone in San Antonio who knew nothing about what really happened, and just assumed that in the normal course of affairs, Baugh would take over when Travis went down, and that ten “Colonel” Crockett would follow upon his death. Little Rock, Arkansas Advocate, April 4, 15, 1836.

  104. There is no credible eyewitness account of Bowie's death, though there are two or three fantastic and wholly fictitious belated claims to have witnessed it. As with Travis, the very first accounts by two tejanos who definitely did not see Bowie die, claim that he took his own life. The most authoritative sources are Mexican, especially the March 7, 1836 letter in Mexico City El Mosquito Mexicano, April 5, 1836. In it the writer states that “the perverse and boastful James Bowie died like a woman, almost hidden by covers.” The diary of José Sanchez-Navarro, José Sanchez-Navarro Papers, UT, concurs precisely, saying that “Buy [Bowie] the bully, son-in-law of Beramendi died as a coward.” This latter source is questioned by some, but in this instance it is confirmed by the first Mexican account. Clearly Bowie was one of the “celebrities” in the fort, much better known to Mexicans than Travis, and thus the nature of his death became common knowledge. Both are supported by an article in the Philadelphia Pennsylvanian, July 19, 1838, in which the writer states that Almonte told him that Bowie was “sick and helpless, and was butchered in bed.”

  Together they confirm that (1) Bowie died in bed, covered, without putting up a fight and, therefore, was quite probably either already unconscious or too weak to offer even token resistance; (2) that he was alone, and certainly not in the hospital, otherwise the Mexicans would not have mistaken his prostration for cowardice; and (3), that almost certainly he did not die in the church as Susanna Dickenson's granddaughter later claimed. For Susanna to have seen him die, he would have had to be in the sacristy, with at least three women and several children who survived, none of whom claimed to have seen him killed until many years later. Typical of their long after the fact accounts is Enrique Esparza in the San Antonio Express, May 19, 1907, in which he says Bowie was actually out fighting with the other, but after being severely wounded he was brought into a small room on the north side of the church, where he kept on fighting until killed. The Mexican accounts put the lie to this. Moreover, in this same account, Esparza also places Travis on top of the church, just as Susanna Dickenson did in her later interviews. Clearly these people are all unconsciously borrowing from one another in filling out their own failing recollections. No one put Bowie in the church for forty years after his death, and we may safely assume that is because he was never there. Francisco Ruiz, in the same 1860 interview in which he said where he found Travis, stated that “Colonel Bowie was found dead in his bed, in one of the rooms of the south side” (Matovina, Tejano Accounts, 44). Manuel Loranca, in his remarkably accurate article in the San Antonio Express, June 23, 1878, says that he and others saw Bowie's body in a “room at the right,” after they entered the compound. There was simply no way to enter the fortress and have the sacristy be on one's right, unless Loranca had miraculously walked through the back wall of the church. Sutherland, “Fall of the Alamo.” Williams Papers, UT, stated in 1860 that Joe and Susanna told him that Bowie died in the same room he had shared with Sutherland in February 1836, and while Surtherland does not say where that room was, he certainly does not mention it being the tiny sacristy in the church. At the time Bowie initially took a room in the Alamo, he was healthy, and either actually in command of the volunteers or else recognized as a man of status without portfolio. It is unlikely that in either case he would thus choose to isolate himself in a dark back room.

  The accounts taken from the initial interviews with Joe and Susanna merely state that Bowie was killed in his bed, and his body mutilated. Nothing more. In the Columbia Observer account, May 25, 1836, Gray wrote that Joe said he “saw him murdered,” which could be taken as a claim to have witnessed the actual killing, but by his own admission elsewhere, Joe did not witness this, or any of the rest of the fight after Travis fell. The “murdered” statement must be taken either saw Gray' misinterpretation of Joe's account, or else the word is used to suggest a state of being, in the meaning of having seen Bowie's body after he was murdered.

  In all her early interviews the only man Dickenson speaks of actually seeing killed was a boy named Walker. In her Testimony of Mrs. Hannig Touching the Alamo Massacre, September 23, 1876, TXSL, her most detailed interview, she explicitly said that Walker was the only man she saw killed, and as to Bowie said only that she “knew Col Bowee & saw him in the Fort, both before & after his death.” She fails to say where she saw him in death. Talking with Ira Ingram in March or early April 1836, Susanna changed her story to say that she saw two men killed in her presence, both of them “raised on the points of the enemies lances.” (Natchez Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, April 29, 1836). This would suggest that some of Ramírez y Sesma's lancers were in the compound by this time, since that soldados who made the attack did not carry lances. But she may have mistaken bayonets for lances—which would be understandable given the trauma she suffered—or not even have know the difference between the two. Sutherland, in the version of his memoir in the Ford Memoirs, vol. 1, UT, says that he talked with Joe and Susanna after the battle, and all they told him was that Bowie was killed in bed while “unable to lift his head from his pillow.” He visited Bowie's room in 1837 or 1838 and still saw “the stain of his brains yet upon the wall,” yet does not state that Bowie's room was in the church.

  The fantastic accounts of Andrea Villanueva, called Madam Candelaria, do not merit discussion. At varying times she has him firing from a window with her help, bayonetted in her arms, dying in the night before the attack began, and more, and in all of them she is wounded in trying to protect him. Walter Bowie fore some reason accepted her claim that he died in the night, and used it in his family history (Walter Bowie to Washington Bowie, September 10, 1931, Bowie Papers, Maryland Historical Society). Susanna Dickenson's granddaughter Susan Sterling appear to have been influenced by Candelaria, too, for in her October 29, 1909 statement in which she places Bowie in the baptistry along with her grandmother (who was actually in the sacristy on the opposite corner of the church), she also states the Bowie's nurse was with them and that the nurse was wounded when Bowie was killed (Evelyn Brogan, James Bowie, A Hero of the Alamo [San Antonio, 1927], 39). There are other equally far-fetched accounts, all of them far removed in years from the event, and second or thirdhand. Green, Maverick, 55-56, stated that Mrs. Alsbury told Maverick that Bowie was in the upstairs hospital, and was carried out into the parade and bayonetted. One story even had Bowie being the only survivor until he got into an argument with a Mexican officer who had his tongue cut out before throwing him on the burning funeral pyre. For many of these account, see Edward Rohrbaugh, “How Jim Bowie Died,” In the Shadow of History, 48-58.

  105. There are perhaps a score of commonly known sources indicating that a number of men went over the walls and died outside the Alamo, though
their import has been ignored in Alamo historiography. Santa Anna referred to them in his report written only hours after the fight (Expediente XI/481.3/1900, Archivo Historico Mexicano Militar, Mexico City), as does Asbury, “Almonte Journal,” 23, and de la Peña, Narrative, 54. The only detailed account has been that of Manuel Loranca, San Antonio Express, June 23, 1878, which states than 62 Texians left the east side and were killed by lancers. This does not seem to have attracted much notice from historians.

  However, research for this book has uncovered the previously unknown March 11, 1836 report of General Ramírez y Sesma himself, which is quite detailed and confirms Loranca's account. The narrative given here is based on the Ramírez y Sesma report, Expediente XI 481.3/1149, Archivo Historico Mexicano Militar, Mexico City. Also the forthcoming David McDonald and Kevin R. Young, eds., “Siege of the Alamo: A Mexican Army Journal,” Journal of the Alamo Battlefield Association 3 (Fall 1998), which translates a diary by an unknown Mexican soldado, says that the lancers killed 68 Texians outside the walls. This closely matches Loranca and Ramírez y Sesma. Ramírez y Sesma's report suggests that Loranca's number may be a bit low, but any figure of 60 or more should possibly be added to the traditional count of 182 bodies that comes from Ruiz and others. The figure of 182 is those burned in the pyres in or near the compound. Logically the Mexicans might not go to the trouble of dragging the men killed outside some distance to where the bulk of the Texian dead were heaped, and thus this 60-80 may not have figured in Ruiz's count. A number of Mexican dead may have been dumped in the San Antonio River, and the same disposition could have been made of any number of Texian bodies as well. Thus adding 60 to 80 to the traditional 182 suggest a possible total of defenders of 240 to 260 or more, matching the roughly 250 stated by several Mexican eyewitnesses, and matching even more closely the 232 dead cited by the anonymous Mexican diarist in his March 6, 1836, entry in McDonald and Young, Mexican Army Journal.

  106. Ruiz in 1860 was quoted as saying that he found Crockett's body “toward the west and in the small fort opposite the city.” That would be the earthwork that jutted out from the west wall Matovina, Tejano Accounts, 44. A thoughtful, though ultimately inconclusive examination of the merits of this as a possible death site is Robert L. Durham, “Where Did Davy Die?” Alamo Journal 104 (March 1997): 3-6.

  107. Muir, Texas in 1837, 115.

  108. The publications on Crockett's death form the single largest subsegment of Alamo literature, and are too extensive to examine here to any purpose. The author has dealt with all the supposed eyewitness accounts of his death in “How Davy Probably Didn't Die,” Journal of the Alamo Battlefield Association 2 (Fall 1997): 11-37. In essence there are several account by Mexicans, most notably de la Peña, claiming that Crockett and four to six others were taken alive, either surrendered or captured, in one of the fortified rooms, and brought before Santa Anna with a request for clemency. Instead he ordered them executed immediately, and they were—depending on which account is in hand—shot, bayoneted, or sabered.

  Certainly several men did attempt to give up or found themselves without weapons and simply raised their hands. There are so many separate statements about a few being executed after capture—many by Mexican soldiers—that there is no reason to question that this took place, nor is it necessary to cite such sources here, though it is interesting to note that many years later Santa Anna tried to absolve himself of responsibility for a massacre by complaining that “not one would surrender” (Antonio López de Santa Anna to H. A. McCardle, March 19, 1874, Fontaine Collection, UT). However, the accounts claiming that Crockett was one of them are all tainted by being written at least several weeks, and in some cases more than a year, after the fact, and the later ones show what appear to be signs of being derived from the earlier. Moreover, the earliest suggestions that Crockett died in this fashion came not from Mexican sources but Texian writers, starting within less than two weeks of the fall. Thus it is quite possible that Mexican soldiers and officers, who made up a number of fantastic stories designed to make a villain of Santa Anna after he abandoned them in the aftermath of San Jacinto, may actually have borrowed the idea of Crockett surrendering and being executed from Texian rumor. Everyone wanted to know how Crockett died. After all, they knew from Joe How Travis died, and they knew from several sources how Bowie met his end. But the mystery and uncertainty about Crockett's death demanded something to fill the void. In time Mrs. Dickenson would supply that with imagined stories of his being found surrounded by the bodies of dead soldados, and Joe would supposedly say that Crockett had the biggest pile of dead enemies around him of any of the Texians. Yet we cannot be certain that either of them even saw Crockett's body after the fight. Joe was terrified, and Susanna was traumatized, having just lost her husband, seen one or two or men butchered right in front of her, and spent some time in uncertainty as to whether she might be raped or worse, and her infant daughter killed. In such a situation, none of the normal rules of memory and recall operate as usual. Moreover, neither her accounts nor Joe's come to us in their own words, but only as reported by others. Nor can we ignore the probability that she, like everyone else, soon came to realize that the Texian cause needed for these men to be not just heroes—their dying at the Alamo made them that—but heroes of outstanding stature. Given Crockett's legendary status before he came to Texas, his case required even more so a superheroic death. Imagination quickly began to fill the need. He may have died fighting at the palisade, or in the redoubt on the west wall, or out in the chaparral, or being brutally executed after he was disarmed. We simply do not know, and—unsatisfactory as it is for those impelled to have a definite answer—we probably never will.

  Chapter 22 Enshrinement: Dawn, March 6, 1838—Posterity

  1. Stories soon began to circulate that Cós mutilated Travis's body with his sword, even beheading him, but though they appear in context with a statement about Joe showing the Mexicans Travis's body, they do not assert that Joe claimed to have seen Cós do this. As a result, the stories are probably just early rumors and nothing more. Cincinnati Daily Whig and Commercial Intelligencer, April 13, 1836; Natchez Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, April 8, 1836. Joe possibly did say that he saw Cós stab the body with his saber (Frankfort, Ky., Commonwealth, May 25, 1836). The ever-inventive Zuber, writing in the Houston Daily Post, March 1, 1882, quotes a presumed soldado named Apolinario Saldiga whose story has Santa Anna himself mutilating Travis's body, and an unidentified man whose “florid face” suggests Crockett. Then Zuber goes farther into fantasyland with a description that Bowie survived, got into a quarrel with a Mexican officer, and had his tongue cut out before the Mexicans threw him still living onto the blazing pyre. It is nonsense.

  2. Many sources also state that Cós mutilated Bowie's body as well as Tavis's, thought again none can certainly be linked positively with a statement by Joe, who would have been the only Texian to witness this. Within a month of the battle, rumors also circulated that Cós, instead of multilating Bowie's body, allowed it the honor of burial, out of respect for his bravery or his having been Veramendi's son-in-law. These, too, are only rumors, though thanks to the repeated repetition and inadvertent alteration of Joe's one or two statements, some sources make it appear that Joe actually claimed to have witnessed this. He did not. New York Transcript, April 12, 1836; W. B. Dewees to Clara Cardello, May 15, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 6, 283; New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, April 11, 1836.

  3. Santa Anna to Minister of War, March 6, 1836, Antonio López de Santa Anna Papers, UT. This is not the original of the report, which is in the Archivo Historico Mexicano Militar in Mexico City, but a translation.

  4. The best account of the burning of the bodies are the tejano stories, especially those of Francisco Ruiz and Pablo Diaz. Matovina, Tejano Accounts, 44, 76.

  5. General Convention at Washington, March 1-17, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 9, 311-13; Gray Virginia to Texas, 125 Donald Day and Harry H. Ullom, eds., The Autobiography of Sam Houston (Westpo
rt, Conn., 1954), 99-100.

  6. Selma, Ala., Free Press, March 26, 1836; Forbes to Millard April 2, 1836, Little Rock, Arkansas Gazette, April 5, 1836; Gray, Virginia to Texas, 128-30; E. Thomas to his father, March 10, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 45.

  7. Brown, Smith, 316-17; Columbia Observer, April 14, 1836; Gray, Virginia to Texas, 131; Little Rock Arkansas Gazette, March 29, April 12, 1836.

  8. J. H. Kuykendall Diary, March 13, 1836, Kuykendall Family Papers, UT.

  9. Sowell, Pioneers and Rangers, 138.

  10. Harris, “Reminiscences, II,” 163.

  11. Ayers to Houston, April 8, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 369.

  12. Notes Made by Mrs. Holley in Interviews with Prominent Texians of the Early Days, Holly Papers, UT.

  13. A. Briscoe to the editor of the Alexandria, La., Red River Herald, March 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 258; C. B. Stewart to Ira Lewis, March 13, 1836, Natchez Mississippi Free Trader and Natchez Gazette, April 1, 1836; Cincinnati Journal and Western Luminary, April 28, 1836; Muir, Texas in 1837, 115; New Orleans, Louisiana Advertiser, March 28, 1836.

  14. Houston to James Collinsworth, March 7, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 17-18.

  15. Houston to Collinsworth, March 15, 1836, Jenkins, PTR, vol. 5, 82-83.

  16. Houston to the Senate of Texas, April 30, 1838, Williams and Barker, Writings, vol. 4, 52.

  17. James Morgan to Samuel Swartwout, September 5, 1836, James Morgan Papers, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Tex.