Alamo Traces (26 page)

Thus, Travis was confronted with good news and bad news. Fannin had left Goliad to reinforce the Alamo, but he had yet to arrive there. Where was he? Then, there was the bad news. Bonham told Travis that Houston would not be coming to their aid anytime soon. Houston had instructed Bonham to “urge Colonel Travis . . . to fall back and unite his forces with the main army to more successfully defend the country against the invaders.”
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Nevertheless, Fannin's former New Orleans Greys had probably joined the Chenoweth and De Sauque company and Seguin's Tejano unit the previous evening or that morning at the Cibolo ford on the Bexar/Goliad road. That afternoon the combined force rode northwest to join J. J. Tumlinson's rangers at the Cibolo ford on the Gonzales road. Seguin probably guided the combined force cross country, traveling on the east side of Cibolo Creek. The terrain was open prairie and the distance was about thirty-five miles.
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Also, this date, the Tennessee men known as Gilmore's company probably joined the relief group that was massing at the Cibolo ford. Just how many of the men joined the mounted reinforcement is unknown, but at least two of the men died at the Alamo.
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At Goliad, Ben Highsmith, after a good night's rest and a couple of meals, departed for the Alamo. He knew it was important to let Travis know of Fannin's plans.
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In the afternoon, between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., reinforcements arrived at San Antonio. The troops, however, were the Mexican battalions of “Zapadores, Aldama, and Toluca.” The men were exhausted from their forced march from the Medina River. Santa Anna now had the troops he had been waiting on for the final attack on the Alamo.
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Travis, soon after the arrival of the Mexican units, wrote the Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, saying: “In the present confusion of the political authorities of the country, and in the absence of the commander-in-chief, I beg leave to communicate to you the situation of this garrison.” He detailed what had occurred since the start of the siege and requested reinforcements and provisions. He acknowledged that Fannin was supposed to be on the way with aid, but he feared that was not the case. Of his men, Travis wrote: “The spirits of my men are still high although they have had much to depress them. . . . Their [the enemy] threats have no influence on me or my men, but to make all fight with desperation and that high-souled courage that characterizes the patriot, who is willing to die in defense of his country's liberty and his own honor.”
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The Alamo force appears to have increased to two hundred men by that time. Travis had started with 150 effectives on the evening of February 23. Five couriers had departed. Fourteen or more Tejanos had left. Three couriers and thirty men from Gonzales had joined the garrison. The total as of March 3 should have been around one hundred and sixty-four men. Where did the other thirty-six men come from? Given that Santa Anna's soldiers were not going to take any prisoners, the Alamo sick and wounded may have been included in the count of two hundred. Regardless of their condition, the sick and wounded would have to fight to live. Also, a group of ten to thirty men had left the city on February 14, 1836, to locate headright sites on Cibolo Creek. David P. Cummings, a young surveyor from Pennsylvania, was one of those men. Susanna Dickinson reported that Travis had sent a rider to find the men
who were out on the Cibolo. The group appears to have returned to the Alamo, probably during the early days of the investment, most likely on February 24. Travis would not have identified the men as a relief force because they were already members of the garrison.
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Still, the Alamo was far short of the number of soldiers needed to repulse Santa Anna's centralist force. Travis, knowing that Houston was involved in political activities and would not be coming to their aid, needed to know the whereabouts of Fannin's three hundred men and four cannon. The Goliad troops were the only men close enough to the Alamo to do Travis's people any good. Thus he sent three of his mounted spies (scouts) out to find Fannin.
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There is limited but tantalizing evidence that David Crockett commanded the scouting mission to locate Fannin. In 1876 Susanna Dickinson reported that Crockett was one of three spies who had been sent out and had returned to the Alamo three nights before the final attack on the Alamo. Crockett probably volunteered for the mission as he was an experienced scout who did not like being shut up in the Alamo.
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Moreover, Crockett had been concerned for some time about the government's failure to send troops to the Bexar garrison. Sometime in February, probably around the middle of the month, James Bowie and Crockett sent a courier to the east to raise volunteers for Bexar. They selected a skinny young man named David Harmon to ride to Jefferson with their plea for men to be sent to San Antonio.
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Almost fifty years later, Harmon wrote of his mission. He reported: “A day or two after our arrival at San Antonio, one morning, in company with Payton Bland, David Crockett & George Evans (afterward Maj. Evans, [who was] killed in the Alamo; Maj. Evans was a member of David Garner's company when we left Jefferson).
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– When we went out to look after our horses, that were staked out on the high ground, or second bank [probably the east side of the San Antonio River near the Alamo], we met up with two soldiers (I can't remember their names) – who asked Col. Crockett if he thought there was any chance for a fight, [for] if not they were going home.

“Col. Crockett said there had been plenty of men there to take the town, but that the men were going away as fast as they came, and remarked that if he (Crockett) was in command he would have given them ‘Sheet'
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long ago, meaning that he would whip them [reinforcements] out [of the colonies] – & [he] said that they needed some
one to carry orders back to hurry up the drafted men & all soldiers at home.”
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David Crockett

Photo courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission

Thus, when the time came during the siege for someone to go out and “whip” reinforcements into the Alamo, it appears that Crockett volunteered for the job. Also, it was a chance for him to do what he did best: scout and talk. A better man could not have been found to locate and motivate Fannin's American volunteers to ride to the aid of the Alamo than the old “half horse, half alligator” himself, who had a reputation for “whipping his weight in wildcats.” Sure the Crockett tales were fiction. Nevertheless, the Goliad men were already boasting about how David Crockett had “grinned down” the Mexicans. Crockett had a reputation that would have appealed to the men from the United States; he was one
of them, having come to Texas for the same reasons. If he could not talk them into the Alamo, nobody could. Sometime after dark, Crockett and two other men left the Alamo. One man's task was to carry a packet of letters to Gonzales. Crockett and the third man's mission was to locate Fannin's force and guide it back to the Alamo.
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That night Santa Anna wrote General Jose C. Urrea to congratulate him on his rout of “the colonists at San Patricio.” In closing the missive, the “Napoleon of the West” mentioned that he was busy planning his final assault on the Alamo.
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Sometime before midnight, Crockett and his scouts probably located the combined force (Tumlinson's rangers, Seguin's Tejanos, Chenoweth and De Sauque's men, Gilmore's men, and about fifty other Fannin men) that were camped at the Cibolo ford on the Gonzales road, twenty miles east of the Alamo. Travis's letter to the convention, with at least three other missives, was sent on to Gonzales. Also, Crockett would have informed the combined force that Houston was not coming to the Alamo's aid. Nevertheless, he would have told them that additional men were forming at Gonzales and that Major Williamson was probably en route with more men as they talked. Chenoweth and De Sauque would have told Crockett that Fannin would join Williamson's force, provided Fannin received timely notice. That is, if he was not engaged with another Mexican force at Goliad.
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Sometime before daylight, part of the combined force broke through the enemy perimeter and entered the Alamo. The Texians appear to have approached, like the March 1 group, from upriver of the Alamo, near the sugarcane mills. As with the first unit, the force did not go undetected. In 1838 Bennett McNelly, former second sergeant of Breece's Greys company, put it this way: “. . . on the 4th [March] was driven across the prairie by enemy. . . .” The exact number of men who made it into the Alamo is unknown. The
Arkansas Gazette
of April 12, 1836, however, reported: “Col. Crockett, with about 50 resolute volunteers, had cut their way into the garrison, through the Mexican troops only a few days before the fall of San Antonio.” Word of the reinforcement reached Goliad by March 10. Joseph B. Tatom wrote his sister about the Alamo, reporting: “. . . I believe they have been reinforced by about fifty militia. . . .”
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Again, the Mexicans did not know exactly what had occurred. Colonel Almonte's journal only contains a simple note: “The enemy attempted a sally in the night at the Sugar Mill, but were repulsed by our advance.” It appears that Almonte believed that the “enemy” came from the Alamo. That makes no sense. There would have been no reason for men from the Alamo to have gone on a mission to the mills during the night. General Filisola, writing many years later, appears to have confused the second relief with the March 1 entry. He wrote: “. . . 32 people of the Town of Gonzalez who under the cover of darkness joined the group two days before the attack on the fort. . . .” His date for Crockett's group is exactly right, but the number is wrong.
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Historians, however, might argue that a reporter in Arkansas could not have known about a reinforcement of the Alamo. Regardless, the paper's source for Crockett leading the men into the Alamo appears to have been Jesse B. Badgett, one of the Alamo's convention delegates. But how would Badgett have learned of the relief? Badgett's source for the information would most likely have been his brother, William Badgett, a member of Chenoweth's company, who appears to have taken part in the March 4 reinforcement. At first it was believed that William had been killed at the Alamo. Jesse, however, informed the
Arkansas Advocate
, the
Gazette's
competitor, that William had not been killed and that as of March 20, he was with Houston's army on the Colorado River.
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Conclusive identification of all the men who entered the Alamo with Crockett that morning is probably impossible. Still, evidence exists for the following men.