American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett

by Buddy Levy

  Travis’s sentries, exhausted from weeks at their posts, stood or sat dozing, leaning uncomfortably against walls or their muskets. None detected Santa Anna’s stealthy death march, the sound of hundreds of horse hooves, or their whinnies and exhalations, the metronomic clank of metal and arms, the panicked voices of frightened foot soldiers reciting their last prayers, until it was too late. Long skeins of light tore across the embattled sky as night fought to become day, the weird moonlight lingering on the plain, bathing the fort in a surreal glow. Santa Anna’s men were upon the Alamo.

  March 6, 1836, Santa Anna’s army storms the Alamo. (FALL OF THE ALAMO. Theodore Gentilz. Gentilz-Fretelliere Family Papers, Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio.)

  The attackers responded to the bugles and surged forward, shouting “Viva Santa Anna” and “Viva Mexico,” and then, spurred by blood lust and their own code of honor, they also began to chant “Muerte [death] a los Americanos!!”36

  Officer John J. Baugh finally woke to the commotion and sprinted to Travis’s quarters, hollering “The Mexicans are coming!” Travis instinctively clutched saber and shotgun and dashed for the north wall, his slave Joe at his heels as he reached the gun emplacement amid the horrible and confused flashes of enemy gunfire from without and the lowing and baying of terrified horses and cattle from within.37 Inside, the Alamo awakened to the nightmare; half-dressed men streaked from their cots in the long barracks and scrambled to positions, shooting rifles randomly, igniting cannons and aiming them vaguely at the gray-black lines of men they could make out in the half-dark. The blazing, orange-yellow arcs of cannons whistled and spit skyward, then died out in the distance as the ordnances fell to the ground. Travis climbed quickly to the emplacement and looked down, seeing soldiers leaning ladders against the walls. He turned back to his men in the fort and shouted, “Come on, Boys, the Mexicans are upon us and we’ll give them Hell!”

  For a few minutes, they did. Without proper canister shot, Travis had made do, ordering the men to stuff their shotguns with “chopped up horseshoes, links of chain, nails, bits of door hinges—every piece of jagged scrap metal they could scavenge,” firing these deadly shotgun blasts on the huddled masses of men below.38 A violent hail of fiery shards sliced down on the columnar waves of charging Mexicans, cutting many to pieces in their tracks. Travis peered over the wall at the surging onslaught, shouting encouragement and ordering another volley of shotgun blasts and a first surge of round shot in the form of nine-pound iron, when his head snapped back, a leaden ball from a Mexican Brown Bess striking him in the forehead and hurling him backward into a motionless heap against one of his own cannons, his gun still clasped in his hands.39

  Crockett was somewhere in the frenzied rush to defend, amidst the cacophony of cries from comrades taking lead balls from volleys thrown by the onrushing waves of the enemy. The inside of the fort flickered, illuminated by gunfire and cannon flare. He would have fought for all he was worth, galvanizing his knowledge of warfare and defense into one last-ditch effort to survive. Crockett no doubt clambered to a post and started shooting, helping expel the initial surge which fell back, taking heavy casualties, but then resurged. Mexican sergeants and officers flogged any recruits trying to retreat, herding new formations on ahead.40 With a second formation hammering hard at the north wall, forces also pinched like talons from the south and the east, while Santa Anna’s reserves, and his band, lay in wait by the northern battery.41 Desperate columns, taking incessant grapeshot and ducking under the dreadful whir and whistle of flaming metal flying overhead, convened near the north wall. Crockett and his riflemen fired and reloaded as fast as they could work, grabbing rifle after rifle until all their pieces were empty and they were forced to stop and reload once more, their efforts forcing the oncoming column to angle out and away, toward the southwest corner.42

  A third advance came, and now the Mexicans were mounting the ladders, redoubling their efforts. Two other ragged lines at the east and northwest had breached and reformed, and now all merged into a single swarming mass at the base of the north wall. They were too close for cannon fire, but shotgun spray and rifle bullets peppered them from above. Still, they came, now scaling the rough woodwork repairs that latticed the outer walls. They placed ladders, and into the face of direct fire, up and over they went, droves upon droves of men hoisting each other from the bottom, climbing over one another, stepping on each other’s arms and hands and heads. Soon, the defenders at the top could no longer reload fast enough to repel the sheer numbers mounting the parapet, and they found themselves engaged in hand-to-hand combat, stabbing viciously with bayonets and knives. José Enrique de la Pena was there under Santa Anna’s command, and he remembered the scene vividly:

  The sharp reports of the rifles, the whistling of bullets, the groans of the wounded, the cursing of the men, the sighs and anguished cries of the dying . . . the noise of the instruments of war, and the insubordinate shouts of the attackers, who climbed vigorously, bewildered all . . . The shouting of those being attacked was no less loud and from the beginning had pierced our ears with desperate, terrible cries of alarm in a language we did not understand.43

  The Alamo had been breached.

  As the north wall fell and the Texians retreated under the onslaught, the fight turned inward, with defenders shooting anything that resembled a Mexican uniform, brandishing tomahawks and long knives, hacking and stabbing wildly with bayonets. Mexicans poured over the south wall as defenders retreated to the open courtyard, while some, hemmed in on two sides now and staring down certain death, leapt from their positions on the palisade or squirted through the corner of the cattle pen.44 Those who managed to escape were summarily ridden down and slain point-blank in the ditches and chaparral surrounding the fort by Ramirez y Sesma’s men, who killed them with lances.45 Crockett ’s desire to die out in the open air may have crossed his mind, but he had his hands full fending off the newly breached south wall and the hundreds of Mexicans streaming in. Now soldiers outside used massive timber to bash and ramrod the gates, also breaking through any and all windows and doors. Crockett and his riflemen stood in defiance as long as they could, “then withdrew into the chapel.”46

  The Mexicans moved room to room, blasting doors apart with the defenders’ own cannons, entering with bayonets brandished. Reaching the hospital rooms they found the sickly, weak, and debilitated men feebly attempting to defend themselves, the once-strong and fierce knife fighter Jim Bowie among them. He lay in his cot, beneath the covers, perhaps already unconscious, and he offered no resistance as the Mexicans stabbed him repeatedly, then fired on him at point-blank range, spattering his brains across the wall.47

  By now there remained only a handful of defenders still alive inside the Alamo walls, and the Mexicans had but to round them up and slaughter them one at a time. The chapel held the last defenders. The Mexicans blew the chapel open with cannon fire and pressed in, enveloping a small knot of six men who were now surrounded. David Crockett was among the last standing.48

  Santa Anna received news that the Alamo was secured, and soon he entered, scanning the dreadful slaughter in the first pink-orange embers of daylight. Perhaps forgetting the previous chant of Degüello, no quarter and no mercy, General Manuel Fernandez Castrillion brought forward Crockett and the others, whom he had ordered his reluctant soldiers to spare. Santa Anna took no time at all to scoff at Castrillion, waving him away “with a gesture of indignation,” and order the immediate execution of David Crockett and those who stood with him that cold morning. Nothing happened for a moment, and it appeared that the men might actually disobey their commander. They had seen enough killing, and these helpless men now posed no immediate threat. But in the dim twilight, the sky and air gunmetal cold, officers hoping to ingratiate themselves with their leader leapt forward, “and with swords in hand, fell upon these unfortunate, defenseless men just as a tiger leaps upon his prey. Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining
and without humiliating themselves before their torturers.”49

  David Crockett was dead.

  BY THE TIME all the smoke had cleared and the bodies were counted, Santa Anna’s one-sided victory proved to have come at a very high cost—nearly 600 of his men had been wounded or killed. Commander in Chief Sam Houston marched toward the Alamo, realizing that the pleas from the fort had been legitimate, but by now of course it was too late. Houston took his own sweet time moving south, spending five entire days on a ride that should have taken just two, during which time he camped two nights on the Colorado.50 On March 11, Fannin received two missives from Houston, the first confirming that the Alamo had fallen, the second ordering Fannin to withdraw, repositioning for defense at Victoria, on the Guadalupe.51 He was also instructed to blow up the fortress before departing.

  Fannin dallied, and his indolence cost him and his men dearly. Mexican General José de Urrea closed in quickly, catching Fannin in retreat on March 18 and surrounding him a day later out on the open plain. By the end of a daylong skirmish Fannin had suffered sixty losses compared to 200 Mexicans, but by the next morning Urrea received significant reinforcements, rendering Fannin and his men defenseless. When Urrea, a humane and decent general, called a ceasefire, Fannin believed he might convince his opponent to offer reasonable terms of surrender, but he had not reckoned on the wrath of Santa Anna, who reiterated his order that rebels and traitors be executed on the spot.52 Urrea hated to do it, but after seizing all of Fannin’s weapons and ammunition, the sickened Mexican general marched Fannin and his men in four columns out onto the road under the guise of wood-gathering and a journey to Matamoros, and summarily leveled them with musket fire, finishing them off with bayonets and knives until 342 men were slain. A few dozen escaped to report the horrific event.53

  On April 21, 1836, Houston finally entered the fray, advancing on Santa Anna’s fatigued army which, with two recent decisive victories and blood still drying on their hands, understood Houston to be in full retreat mode. Instead, Houston marched two parallel but roughshod columns totaling some 900 men inflamed by the battle cries “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember Goliad!” The surprise attack stunned Santa Anna and his exhausted troops, who were unprepared to defend themselves in soldierly fashion, and lapsed into panic and confusion.54 Even Santa Anna himself—who had been sleeping—became disoriented, unable to give useful orders as the Texians advanced in battle frenzy. They continued to chant “Remember the Alamo, remember Goliad”; some were even said to cry out “Remember Crockett!” The attack was so sudden and unexpected that many of the Mexicans simply ran for their lives, but were thwarted by the bayou and the lines of Texians, who gunned them down.55

  The Battle of San Jacinto was really more of a slaughter, a revenge massacre for Santa Anna’s “no quarter” victories at the Alamo and Goliad. Men were shot attempting to swim away in the Buffalo Bayou, others ridden down and impaled with bayonets, and many were shot point-blank in the head. One Texian participant called it “the most awful slaughter”56 he ever witnessed. It was over in just eighteen minutes. Houston had two horses shot from under him and his ankle shattered by a rifle ball, yet he could take solace in the fact that he’d captured the Napoleon of the West, when Santa Anna was finally rounded up and taken prisoner. Shrewdly realizing that the great general was more useful alive than dead, Houston would hold on to his prize until he could get what he wanted, which was the rest of Santa Anna’s army back in Mexico, on the other side of the Rio Grande.57 As a result of his success at San Jacinto, Sam Houston joined his old friend from Tennessee, David Crockett, as a hero of Texian independence. Houston would live to be elected twice as the president of the new Republic of Texas and ultimately governor of the state—Crockett would live on as a legend.58

  Back home in Tennessee, it did not take long for the rumors of Crockett’s demise to arrive. In mid-April the Niles Register, quoting from the New Orleans True American, listed Crockett as having fallen with the fort: “Colonel David Crockett, his companion Jesse Benton, and Colonel Bonham of South Carolina, were among the number slain.”59 Elizabeth would certainly not have been surprised: he had nearly died afield more than once, had tricked death time and again—she well knew the Christmas gunpowder story, the barrel-staves scrape, all the close calls. The stalwart, now twice-widowed woman knew how to keep scrapping when things got tough, and she would certainly have lowered her head and pressed forward. By early summer, tender and heartfelt letters of condolence began to find their way to her, canonizing the man she knew as well as anyone had—and knew as a man, not a legend. She had known his love for the outdoors, known him to be happiest when in nature, and she would have been especially moved by the letter she received from Isaac Jones of Lost Prairie, Arkansas, the man to whom Crockett had sold his watch, who returned the timepiece out of respect. Jones offered his sympathies, adding that with Crockett’s loss, “freedom has been deprived of one of her bravest sons . . . To bemoan his fate, is to pay tribute of greatful respect to nature—he seemed to be her son.”60

  Although Crockett failed to garner the coveted “league of land” or fortune for his family, Elizabeth was eventually granted his soldier’s share, and in 1854 she and a handful of family members and children followed his tracks from Tennessee to Texas, where they would live out their lives, and Crockett ’s dream, on the vast frontier.61 Robert Patton Crockett, eldest son by Elizabeth, went earlier, heading to Texas in 1838 to volunteer his services in the army as his father had done. Elizabeth remained true to the memory of her husband, and was said to wear black until her own death, in 1860.62

  John Wesley Crockett followed his father’s trail to the United States Congress, where he served two consecutive terms beginning in 1837, winning the seat left open by the retired Adam Huntsman. John Wesley Crockett picked up where his obstinate father had left off, and, fittingly and ironically, in February of 1841, John Wesley drove through the passage of a land bill in many ways comparable to that which his father and Polk had compromised on back in 1829.63 Apparently content with that punctuation mark on his father’s congressional career, John Wesley opted to retire at the end of his term in 1843.

  Ruins of the Church of the Alamo, San Antonio de Bexar. (Lithograph by C. B. Graham, after a drawing by Edward Everett. In government report by George W. Hughes, 1846, published as Senate Executive Document 32, 31st Congress. Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio.)

  SANTA ANNA WOULD FINALLY SAY of the storming and subduing of the Alamo, which took just a single hour, “it was but a small affair.” He perused the carnage, hundreds of bodies strewn and smoldering, their “blackened and bloody faces disfigured by desperate death.”64 After briefly praising his troops for their courage, he ordered the dead defenders piled into three heaps, two smallish mounds outside the grounds, and one large central pyre for those slain within the Alamo walls.65 Soldiers then scoured the countryside to collect dry wood, lugging it back in carts. With sufficient wood gathered, soldiers mounded men and wood in piles, scattered smaller pieces of kindling about, doused the mass with flammable fluids, and pyre by pyre, set the Alamo defenders ablaze. The flames rose high and the fires burned all through the day and then into night, spitting and smoldering for three full days, until vultures began circling over the mission and crowds gathered around the ashes and embers.66 Fragments of bones and the curling remnants of charred flesh lay among the ashes, and “grease that had exuded from the bodies saturated the earth for several feet beyond the ashes and smoldering mesquite faggots.”67

  Somewhere high above, David Crockett’s spirit drifted freely on the Texas wind, lofted away to immortality by the smoke of his funeral pyre.

  Epilogue

  DAVID CROCKETT’S DEATH AT THE ALAMO made him a martyr. In dying there and in that way, it was almost as if Crockett had said, “Well then, if I’m not going to make a fortune in this life—I might just as well become immortal and make my fortune in the next.” And that’s exactly what he did. Facts were
shrouded in mythology almost immediately following the siege, as bogus reports began to circulate around Texas and abroad that Crockett had not fallen, but had been captured, taken prisoner, and brought to Mexico, where he was toiling away in a mine somewhere. 1

  Crockett’s own publishers, Carey & Hart, were quick to capitalize on the fascination and uncertainty regarding the controversial frontiersman. Just two months after the fall of the Alamo, Philadelphia writer Richard Penn Smith wrote, and Carey & Hart published, the wholly fictional and anonymously written Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas. The first-person narrative, ostensibly penned by Crockett, included a very convincing preface, signed by Alex J. Dumas, claiming that the contents were the “authentic diary” of David Crockett discovered among the ruins at the Alamo by a Mexican general who subsequently died at San Jacinto.2 Staring at an unsold pile of Crockett ’s legitimate (if cobbled together and poorly written) Tour to the North and Down East, Carey & Hart hurried Texas Exploits off to press, and it was considered genuine for many years, selling thousands of copies.3 It was not until 1884 that the fabrication was exposed in print, but by that time generations had swallowed the diary as authentic, accepting and incorporating the tales and exploits into lore. A gullible public appeared more than ready to devour these fictions as memoir, and the farce became a virtual keystone on which the Crockett legend would be built.

  Simultaneously, fuel arrived in the bound copies of the Crockett Almanacs, which first appeared in 1835, under Crockett’s aegis.4 Badly in need of money and reduced to hawking his own books for cash, the new author Crockett had produced the first two almanacs to coincide with his Narrative in 1834 and his Tour book in 1835, and the almanac contents were essentially reprints and reproductions drawn directly from that material. The Almanacs were therefore a fast and easy publishing venture, selling between 20,000 and 60,000 copies, and a clever foray into mass marketing.5 Unfortunately for Crockett, while the sales sounded impressive and did advance his reputation, he failed to get rich from them. The high numbers were not lost on unscrupulous opportunists, either, who continued publishing counterfeits and imitations from the year of Crockett’s death until 1856. The tales, presumably told by Crockett himself, became more and more outrageous, crude, bawdy, and downright offensive as the years went by, helping to buttress his legendary folk status.6