The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation

by James Donovan

  The heavy reliance of Crockett execution theorists on the de la Peña memoir is weakened by several facts. We must keep in mind that, although popularly referred to as a “diary,” the manuscript is clearly a reconstructed memoir, written in the years after the battle and based on a reworked diary that de la Peña only began months after the battle. Following common practice at the time, de la Peña incorporated (a) various Mexican accounts he gathered from disparate sources, such as other army officers and newspaper accounts, and (b) letters and reports written by Texians such as Travis and Houston. (De la Peña’s original holograph diary is not known to exist.) As William C. Davis, author of Three Roads to the Alamo, points out in his article “How Davy Probably Didn’t Die”: “De la Peña openly admitted that he did not see all that he recounted and that he had adopted the recollections of others. The highly derivative and contradictory nature of his Crockett account suggests powerfully that it is one of those episodes ‘to which I have not witnessed.’ ”

  Though I am convinced of the authenticity of the de la Peña materials—yes, they were written (or dictated; there are at least three or four different hands) in the de la Peña manuscript written in the years after the campaign and before his death in 1840—their accuracy in several places is highly questionable, and sometimes demonstrably wrong. For instance, de la Peña claimed to have seen Travis, “a handsome blond,” shot in the Alamo courtyard, though no historian argues against the traditional location of his death as testified to by Joe, Travis’s slave, and acting alcalde of Béxar, Francisco Antonio Ruíz: on the north wall. He also wrote that “all of the enemy perished, there remaining alive only an elderly lady and a Negro slave,” though it is generally accepted that there were as many as twenty survivors. Counting against the veracity of de la Peña’s Crockett execution scene are these points: first, the brief account of Crockett’s execution is contained on a single slip of paper—the verso of folio 35—and was not only written on a different kind of paper from the rest of the manuscript (consisting of 105 folded “quartos” of four pages each) but was also written in a different hand. Folio 35 was tucked into the manuscript just as several other slips of paper were—suggesting that it was one of many accounts, rumors, and stories obtained from other sources and inserted where it belonged chronologically, rather than with accounts of episodes witnessed by de la Peña himself. In addition, de la Peña did not mention Crockett’s execution in a pamphlet he published in 1839, Una Víctima del Despotismo (A Victim of Despotism), which discusses the execution of “a few unfortunates” but does not name David Crockett as one of them, though he describes “a man who pertained to the natural sciences”—a brief description of an unnamed defender who somehow became Crockett in de la Peña’s note tucked into his manuscript. And, just as telling, he does not claim to have witnessed the executions himself in Una Víctima del Despotismo. Furthermore, neither Crockett’s name nor the executions are mentioned in de la Peña’s rewritten diary, supposedly the source of his main narrative—that manuscript doesn’t even contain entries for the dates from March 3 through March 7. Moreover, on that slip of paper (folio 35), de la Peña (or someone) claims to have witnessed the execution, and in the same sentence disingenuously suggests that General Ramírez y Sesma—an officer de la Peña despised, as he makes abundantly clear in his narrative—was one of the attacking officers, though de la Peña says he “will not bear witness to this, for though present, I turned away horrified in order not to witness such a barbarous scene.” That de la Peña the eyewitness would not have known if this was true is hard to believe on the face of it, but it’s highly unlikely that Ramírez y Sesma was there, since he was in command of the Mexican cavalry outside the fort and was quite busy overseeing the corralling and killing of some sixty Texian defenders there.

  The other Mexican accounts cited by Crockett execution theorists are even weaker—all hearsay, second- and thirdhand accounts purportedly derived from Mexican soldiers (supposedly six officers and one sergeant), most of them so shaky as to emphasize the fact that few of those who cite them have examined them closely and critically. On the surface, as researcher Bill Groneman has pointed out in Death of a Legend, the most thorough examination of the accounts, “Six officers and a sergeant are a pretty impressive array of witnesses when taken at face value. However, when you scratch the surfaces of these accounts they reveal themselves to be other than pristine firsthand accounts.” The Dolson account, supposedly given to a Texan army sergeant, George M. Dolson, by an anonymous officer of Santa Anna’s, contains only a few historical inaccuracies (Crockett and five others are found in “the back room of the Alamo”; “Santa Anna’s interpreter knew Crockett,” a highly unlikely situation; and the captives are “marched to the tent [or possibly the flag, depending on the translation] of Santa Anna”)—but its author’s anonymity makes it highly suspect as a reliable source. The Colonel Urriza account—reported from memory twenty-three years after the battle by a man who claimed to have heard it from Urriza in 1836—tells of Castrillón leading “a venerable-looking old man by the hand” to Santa Anna, who orders his soldiers to shoot the prisoner, of whom the narrator says, “I believe… they called him Coket.” This vaguely worded identification (“I believe”? Who are “they,” and why were they qualified to identify him as “Coket,” and why would this mean “Crockett” and not “Cochran” or anyone else?) is little support for Crockett execution theorists. Even the staunchest of them, Dan Kilgore, author of How Did Davy Die?, labeled the Urriza account as “a controversial remembrance perhaps erroneously perceived and personally biased”—though he proceeded to cite it as one of the accounts supporting Crockett’s execution. Speaking of “Cochran,” another account offered as evidence—that of José Juan Sánchez—states: “Some cruelties horrified me, among them the death of an old man they called ‘Cochran’ and of a boy approximately fourteen years.” No executions are described, and of course “Cochran” is assumed to be Crockett.

  Another account, this one attributed to General Cós, is just as unlikely, with Cós “searching the barracks” when he comes across “alive and unhurt, a fine-looking and well dressed man, locked up, alone, in one of the rooms.” When Cós asks him who he is, the defender in a lengthy answer reveals that he is Crockett, a noncombatant, who has been prevented from leaving the fort. When he is brought before Santa Anna, he draws a knife and leaps at Santa Anna, but is himself bayoneted. The historian who related the story, William P. Zuber (he of Moses Rose fame), denounced it as a gross falsehood, yet Kilgore presented it as supporting evidence for David Crockett’s execution. And the Sergeant Becerra account offers more absurdities: Becerra kills Bowie, then discovers Travis and a sleeping Crockett in another room, where Travis pulls out a large roll of money that he hands to Becerra in an attempt to buy his freedom. Then three Mexican generals and a colonel enter the room, and that’s when it really gets outrageous. That these last two accounts are cited as evidence of Crockett’s execution is especially shameful—and shameless. Todd Hansen, the highly respected author of The Alamo Reader and an impressively impartial analyst, rates the reliability of these accounts as either “rejected,” “poor,” or “marginal,” with only the Sánchez account receiving a “good” rating. (And to my knowledge, no one save Bill Groneman has pointed out that Crockett execution theorists conveniently ignore the fact that several other Mexican accounts testify to Crockett dying in combat—Madame Candelaria [Andrea Castañón Villanueva], Sergeant Felix Nuñez, Captain Rafael Soldana, and an unidentified Mexican army captain—accounts that suffer from some of the same reliability problems as those listed above.)

  What seems never to have occurred to Kilgore, who claimed that these clearly faulty accounts were “mutually corroborative,” is that several of them derive from one rumor or fabricated story—a story either (a) based on erroneous or conflated information or (b) deliberately fabricated by a captive for his own purposes—to damage someone, most likely Santa Anna himself, or simply to curry favor with his cap
tors. (William C. Davis, in “How Davy Probably Didn’t Die,” explains how and why some of these scenarios likely occurred, and how such a story could easily have spread.) As several historians have pointed out, from Walter Lord to Davis and Wallace Chariton, several of these Mexican accounts were rendered soon after San Jacinto, when imprisoned Mexican soldiers would say anything to their captors that might please them. (Another question never answered or even brought up by most Crockett execution theorists is how the Mexicans knew who Crockett was or what he looked like, though convoluted explanations of Almonte’s knowledge of him, sometimes involving paintings of Crockett that Almonte may have seen on a visit to the United States, have been made.)

  The final argument against the Crockett execution theory is the fact that two men—Joe, Travis’s slave, and Béxar’s acting alcalde, Francisco Antonio Ruíz—were asked to identify Crockett’s body after the battle and did so, and they described their identification and the location in a manner that makes it extremely difficult to accept his death as being the result of a post-battle execution. Clearly, Santa Anna would not need Crockett’s body identified if he had just witnessed his execution. And Susanna Dickinson, in her earliest accounts of the battle, claimed that “he [Crockett] and his companions were found surrounded by piles of assailants.” Joe also described Crockett’s body as being found with the bodies of a few of his friends, with twenty-four dead Mexican soldiers around them, and Enrique Esparza (albeit in an account rated “marginal” by Hansen) also placed Crockett in front of the church’s large double doors, surrounded by a heap of slain attackers. Ben, Almonte’s servant, was also said to have pointed out the body of Crockett, whom he knew by sight, and to have found “no less than 16 dead Mexicans around the corpse of Colonel Crockett and one across it with the huge knife of Davy buried in the Mexican’s bosom to the hilt”—hardly the scene of an execution. Finally, Joe is quoted in Niles, A History of South America and Mexico, p. 327, as giving this information: “One man alone was found alive when the Mexicans had gained full possession of the fort; he was immediately shot by order of the Mexican chief”—no mention of Crockett being executed.

  As Michael Lind points out in his article “The Death of David Crockett,” to believe the Crockett execution theory, “one must believe that Santa Anna executed the famous David Crockett, but neglected to mention the fact in his after-action report an hour or so later; that his personal secretary, describing and denouncing the execution of Texian prisoners in 1837, also failed to mention this fact; and that Enrique de la Peña himself neglected to mention it, in his account of the executions written in 1839.”

  Clearly, the documentation presented thus far by the Crockett execution theorists falls far short of the level necessary for it to be considered fact. David Crockett may have been executed after the battle, but until stronger evidence is presented, let history show that he died fighting with his comrades.

  For further information on the subject, see Chariton, Exploring the Alamo Legends (“Crockett vs. Kilgore, Santos, et al.: Davy’s Last Fight,” pp. 37–63); Chemerka, “The Death of Davy Crockett at the Alamo”; Connelly, “Did David Crockett Surrender at the Alamo?”; Crisp, “Davy in Freeze-Frame,” “Documenting Davy’s Death,” “An Incident at San Antonio,” and Sleuthing the Alamo; Davidson, “A Forensic Look at Crockett’s Death,” “How Did Davy Really Die?” and “When Propaganda Becomes History”; Davis, “How Davy Probably Didn’t Die”; Dettman, “Davy’s Death”; Durham, “Where Did Davy Die?”; Groneman, Death of a Legend, “A Witness to the Executions?” and “Some Problems with the ‘Urriza’ Account”; Hansen, The Alamo Reader, chapter 5 (“Special Commentary: Deaths of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett,” pp. 783–798); Harburn, “The Crockett Death Controversy”; Hawkins, “How Did Davy Die?”; Kilgore, How Did Davy Die?; Lind, “The Death of David Crockett”; and Lindley, “Killing Crockett,” parts 1–3.

  De la Peña’s description of Santa Anna addressing his men is from With Santa Anna in Texas, pp. 52–53.

  Joe (as heard by two independent witnesses who set down what they heard) described the single survivor who was executed as “a little man named Warner” and “a little weakly body, named Warner” (Hansen, pp. 75, 70)—an accurate description of Henry Warnell, the small former jockey. The execution of “Warner” was also mentioned in one of the earliest newspaper stories about the battle, which appeared in the March 24, 1836, Telegraph and Texas Register, details of which were provided by John W. Smith after talking to Susanna Dickinson. As far as is known, no one named Warner died at the Alamo.

  Francisco Esparza’s request for his brother’s body is given in his 1859 deposition, reprinted in Matovina, The Alamo Remembered, p. 34.

  Crockett’s dead body is described by Eulalia Yorba in her 1896 account, reprinted in Hansen, p. 527. Though Susanna Dickinson in one interview located Crockett’s body as “lying dead and mutilated between the church and the two story barrack building and [I] even remember seeing his peculiar cap lying by his side” (reprinted in Hansen, p. 46), in another interview she said of Crockett, as related by the interviewer, “He was killed, [I] believe” Hansen, p. 48), which sounds as though she didn’t know where Crockett’s body was. But the account of acting alcalde Francisco Antonio Ruíz, in which he says that he was asked by Santa Anna to identify the bodies of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett—“On the north battery of the fortress lay the lifeless body of Col. Travis on the gun-carriage, shot only in the forehead. Toward the west, and in the small fort opposite the city, we found the body of Col. Crockett” (reprinted in Hansen, p. 501)—is to me highly credible. Ruíz was most likely referring to one of the batteries or entrenchments along the west wall of the fort. His location is corroborated by the first serious historian of the battle, Reuben Potter, who talked to several Mexican soldiers, including some officers, during the research for his three extensive accounts, written in 1840, 1860, and 1878. In his final account, he wrote that “the body of Crockett was found in the west battery just referred to,” that being “the twelve-pound carronade which fired over the centre of the west wall from a high commanding position” (reprinted in Hansen, p. 702). However, in two subsequent commentaries, Potter refined the location. In the January 1884 Magazine of American History, he wrote a letter to the editor (in response to an article about Crockett) in which he said, “Crockett’s body was found, not in an angle of the fort, but in a one-gun battery which overtopped the center of the west wall, where his remains were identified by Mr. Ruiz.” Finally, in his last known comment on the subject, he wrote another letter to the editor, this one in response to an article on Sam Houston. The letter was published in the October 1886 issue of The Century, where the editors related: “Captain Reuben M. Potter… states that Crockett was killed by a bullet shot while at his post on the outworks of the fort, and was one of the first to fall”—a location that appears to match Ruíz’s “small fort opposite the city,” most likely the outer half-circle entrenchment delineated on the map and view of the Alamo drawn by José Juan Sánchez (see Nelson, The Alamo, pp. 58–59), though the artillery battery atop the center of the west wall is also a possibility.

  The account of the young woman dipping her handkerchief in her sweetheart’s blood is reprinted in Hansen, p. 469.

  Santa Anna’s March 6, 1836, report to Tornel is reprinted in Hansen, pp. 340–41.

  The number of the Mexican dead and wounded has been a point of mild controversy since the battle. The first reports making their way east to the colonies grossly exaggerated the casualties, which were often reported to be in the thousands—in one of the first newspaper stories about the battle, in the March 24, 1836, Telegraph and Texas Register, “about 1500 killed and wounded” Mexicans were reported. The most reliable Mexican accounts tally between sixty dead and 251 wounded (Andrade report, Hansen, p. 393) and about seventy dead and three hundred wounded (Santa Anna to Tornel, March 6, 1836, reprinted in Hansen, pp. 340–41); Almonte tallied sixty-five dead and 223 wounded (Hansen, p. 367). But Joseph F
ield, a physician captured at Goliad and sent to Béxar to minister to the many Mexican soldiers wounded in the Alamo battle, wrote on April 21: “There are now about one hundred here of the wounded. The surgeon tells us that there were five hundred brought into the hospital the morning they stormed the Alamo, but I should think from appearances there must have been more. I see many around the town who were crippled,—apparently two or three hundred,—and the citizens tell me that three or four hundred have died from their wounds” (Hansen, p. 612). Those figures are supported by a Mexican casualty report noted in Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, p. 739, n. 22 (Mariano Arroyo report from the military hospital at Béxar, August 1, 1836, Expediente XI/481.3/1151, Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, Archivo Historico Militar Mexicano; also in Hansen, p. 378), which documents a total of 456 men treated from March 6 to August 1 in the Mexican hospital at Béxar (though that number includes the wounded men of Cós’s command from the Battle of Béxar in December—probably approximately sixty), seventy-five of whom died from their wounds. But as Todd Hansen points out in his thorough analysis of the subject (Hansen, pp. 778–783), “Undoubtedly many other sick were treated during the period covered”; he suggests that those additional men might be half the total number listed as treated. I suggest, for no concrete reason save that Hansen’s number of additional sick men seems somewhat high, that a figure closer to one hundred might be more accurate. Thus, total casualties likely comprised about seventy-five killed during the battle and approximately three hundred wounded, some seventy-five of whom died later of their wounds—figures in line with accounts by Santa Anna, Andrade, de la Peña, and Filisola. See also Thomas Ricks Lindley’s three-part article “Mexican Casualties at Bexar.”