Alamo Traces (49 page)

5
Rafael Ecay Muzquiz to Minister of State and Relations, November 12, 1835, page 48, L-E-1060,
Tomo
6,
Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriares
, Mexico City, Jack Jackson research notes, July 2000, copy furnished to this investigator.

The other combat actions in which Cos had some dead and wounded were two skirmishes near Stephen F. Austin's army at the Cibolo Creek ford on the Gonzales road, twenty miles east of San Antonio. Austin reported that on October 22 the Mexican army had “one or two wounded, one mortally.” The second encounter was on October 24 for which Austin reported: “. . . they had 4 or 5 killed and many wounded.”

6
Maverick,
Samuel Maverick
, 33.

7
Samuel Augustus Maverick,
Notes on The Storming of Bexar: In the Close of 1835
, Frederick C. Chabot, ed. (San Antonio: Frederick C. Chabot, 1942), 28, n. 37; General Nicolas Condelle statement in regard to Faustino Moro's service at Bexar, August 1, 1836, Matamoros, Box 2Q174, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 90; C. D. Huneycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo: The Memoirs of Capt. Navarro
(New London, NC: Gold Star Press, 1988), 1-6; Maverick,
Samuel Maverick
, 38-39; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 156.

Maverick reported that on November 15 a Mexican soldier had his “shin bone” broken and that “Vidal” cut the man's leg off using John W. Smith's carpenter saw. Maverick wrote: “His operation was singular and savage; he (the man) died at sunset, killed by Vidal.” Vidal came to Texas from Louisiana and was married to the daughter of Joseph de La Baume, eventual heiress to one-fifth of the estate of Baron de Bastrop.

Based on the time of their arrival at San Antonio, the Mexican medical troops appear to have traveled with Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea and Sanchez, but the medical corps did not enter with the cavalry reinforcement for some unknown reason—perhaps safety. Doctors and interns would not have been able to help anyone if they had been killed attempting to ride into Bexar during the night.

8
Condelle statement, August 1, 1836.

9
Ibid.; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 96-97. According to the
Batalon Perm. Morelos. Rexista de Comissanio parado en Bejar on 3 October de 1835
, Bexar Archives, CAH, second Lieutenant Don Ignacio Solio appears to have been sublieutenant “D. Ignacio Solis” of the Third Company of Morelos.

10
Martin Perfecto de Cos to Santa Anna, December 15, 1835, Box 2Q174, CAH;
Batalon Perm. Morelos
, October 3, 1835; Erasmo Seguin affidavit, October 3, 1835, Bexar Archives, CAH. This document shows that 200 Bexar citizens, probably members of the militia company of San Antonio, were serving with General Cos. Their names, however, were not listed. The Moroles battalion document also shows that Cos had 13 men from the Permanent battalion of Abasolo, 21 men from the Permanent battalion of Ximienes. The roll even lists the Moroles battalion's mules (6) and gave their colors. The presidial cavalry companies of San Antonio de Bejar, Agua Verde, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Rio Grande were also with Cos.

The Campo Santo burial records indicate two soldiers from the Morelos battalion were buried in that graveyard in 1835; Captain Jose Maria Escalante, buried October 23, and Sergeant Felipe Salazar, buried December 5. Both are alleged to have died from wounds suffered at the battle of Concepcion. The record, however, shows that Escalante was put under five days before the battle. The date may be a transcription error. Salazar was third sergeant in the Morelos Cazadore company. The Morelos battalion muster roll does not include the name of a Captain Jose Maria Escalante. Captain Felipe Gomez Escalante, however, was the commanding officer of the fourth company of Morelos.

11
Huneycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo
, 34 and 36. The
Batalon Perm. Morelos
, October 3, 1835, shows that the commanding officer of the Morelos Cazadores company was one Captain “D. Benito Zenea.” One could argue that because the Sanchez account includes the name Zenea that is proof the narrative is authentic. Any person doing a little research in the Bexar archives could have found (just as this investigator did) the Morelos battalion muster roll and learned of the name in that manner.

12
Juan Jose Andrade,
DOCUMENTOS QUE EL GENERAL ANDRADE Publica sobre la evacucion de la ciudad de San Antonio de Bejar, de Departamento de Tejas, A SUS COMPATRIOTAS
, 1836, Monterey, Mexico. This document gives Moro's first name. Jack Jackson furnished this investigator a copy of the Andrade document.

History professor Jesus F. de la Teja of Southwest Texas State University informed this investigator of the meaning of the Spanish word
fulano
.

13
Huneycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo
, 34; Filsola,
Memoirs
, II: 96-97; Capitulation Entered into by General Martin Perfecto De Cos, of the Permanent Troops, and General Edward Burleson, of the Colonial Troops of Texas, December 11, 1835, Bexar, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 158. De Rada was one of the Mexican commissioners who negotiated the surrender agreement. Thus, it is unlikely that he was wounded.

14
Huneycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo
, 39-40, 42, 46; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 137-138. If a forger used the Filisola history to create the Sanchez account, why would he or she have made such an obvious mistake? Simple; forgers, like all humans, make mistakes.

15
Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 95-96; Huneycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo
, 29 and 48; Martin Perfecto de Cos to Secretary of War and Marine, February 1, 1836, Leona Vicario, Box 2Q174, CAH.

16
Jake Ivey, “Mystery Artist of the Alamo: Jose Juan Sanchez,” a paper read at The Daughters of the Republic of Texas Ninth Texas History Forum, February 16, 2001. Jack Jackson furnished this investigator a copy of this paper.

A complete analysis of the Sanchez account has not been conducted for this chapter. The basic argument about the authenticity of Sanchez boils down to one major question. Did Filisola copy from the Sanchez ledger or did the creator of the Sanchez diary copy from Filisola's history and other written sources of the period? Ivey and Jackson believe that Filisola used the Sanchez ledger as a primary source, which explains the identical data in the two accounts in a way that lets the alleged diary remain authentic. I believe whoever wrote the Sanchez narrative copied from Filisola and other sources, which, coupled with other forgery characteristics of the Sanchez book, indicate that the journal is a forgery. See Bill Groneman,
Defense of a Legend: Crockett and the de la Pena Diary
(Plano, Texas: Republic of Texas Press, 1994), 95-106, for more information on the belief that the Sanchez account is a modern forgery.

17
Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 212; Jake Ivey, “Another Look At Storming the Alamo Walls,”
The Alamo Journal
, number 120, p. 10. Filisola, like everybody who has used it, probably obtained his Almonte diary data from the New York
Herald
version that was published in the summer of 1836.

18
One of the historians who oppose me on the authenticity of the Pena and Sanchez accounts said this argument “stacked the deck” against Sanchez because I claim it would be a forgery either way, that I leave no way out for the question of authenticity. That historian appears to be confused about a
self-evident axiom of logic, known as the Law of Non-Contradiction, which says something cannot be both A and non-A. I, however, said that Sanchez could be a forgery if it was either A or non-A. I do not claim it was both A and non-A.

19
Huneycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo
, 23-24.

20
Ibid.

21
Stephen F. Austin order, November 22, 1835, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, II: 489; Robert Morris to Sam Houston, Nov. 29, 1835, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 31-32; “Sundry Individuals to Republic of Texas of amounts of goods purchased by them of the public property taken from the [Mexican] army at the Battle of San Jacinto,” February 1, 1839, Audited Military Claims, Texas State Library, Austin. General Sam Houston bought the most captured property at $426. Santa Anna's army did the same with the Texian property they obtained at the fall of the Alamo. It was part of the game.

22
Cos to Minister of War, December 3, 1835, Box 2Q174, CAH; Maverick,
Samuel Maverick
, 43.

23
Cos to Santa Anna, December 15, 1836.

24
Alwyn Barr,
Texans In Revolt: The Battle for San Antonio, 1835
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 41; Hardin,
Texian Iliad
, 67-68.

25
Cos to Minister, Dec. 3, 1835.

26
Pena,
With Santa Anna
, 83.

27
F. W. Johnson to Edward Burleson, December 11, 1835, Bexar, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 164; F. W. Johnson to Government, December 17, 1835, Bexar, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 226.

28
De la Pena to Editors of
El Mosquito Mexicano
, February 3, 1837, translation in Roger Borroel,
The Papers of Lieutenant Colonel Jose Enrique de la Pena, Selected Appendixes from His Diary, 1836-1839
(East Chicago: La Villita Publications, 1997), 10. The Pena memoir's pro-Texian and anti-Mexican passages certainly worked their magic on historian Llerena Friend, who wrote the introduction for the first Texas A&M University Press edition of the narrative. She wrote: “Perhaps this book will provoke further writing: a character analysis of Santa Anna based on descriptions of him by de la Pena, an essay on the potential of Texas as seen by a man sensitive alike to pain and beauty and possessed also of a sense of history, or an essay on de la Pena as a writer.”

29
Relacion de los senores Gefes Y Oficiales perteneciente al Ejercito de Operaciones sobre Tejas, Operaciones
, 17, XI/481.3/1713,
tomo
2, ff. 375-384v,
Archivo Historico of the Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional
; phone interview with Dr. “Red” Duke, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, January 5, 2001; Jose F. Moro letter, August 11, 1836, in Roger Borroel, ed. and trans.,
The Papers of Lieutenant Colonel Jose Enrique de la Pena, The Last of His Appendixes
(2 vols., East Chicago: La Villita Publications, 1997), II: 33.

The roll of the officers and units in San Antonio in 1836 shows Mendoza alive and lists him under Permanent Infantry, General Command of Coahuila y Texas. Captain Pedro Saliega, Captain Juan Cortina, and Lieutenant Gregorio Berdejar are listed with Mendoza.

Dr. Duke stated that Mendoza's total loss of the lower leg in question probably saved his life. When a limb is lost, the artery closes at the damage point and the blood starts to clot. Whereas, a partial injury or cut of an artery will cause an individual to bleed out because the artery does not collapse at the wound site.

30
Edward Burleson to Government, Nov. 27, 1835, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 6; Cos to Tornel, Nov. 27, 1835, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 8.

31
Pena,
With Santa Anna
, 43, 59, 63; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: xii, 178; Caro, “A True Account of the First Texas Campaign” in Castaneda, trans. and ed.,
The Mexican Side
, 105. Caro and Filisola did not report that there were no surgeons or other medical staff at the Alamo. They only claimed that the medical response was far from adequate for the situation. Perhaps that was the case, but the Texians were no better off.

Susanna Dickinson in “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876, reported that during the Alamo siege: “Among the besieged were 50 or 60 wounded men from Cos's fight.” The number does not appear to refer to the Mexican wounded left behind by General Cos, but to the Texian wounded from the siege and storming of Bexar.

32
Pena,
With Santa Anna
, 43-44, 59. There is no way to know if the letter quoted in the account is authentic. The writer of the account failed to give a citation for the alleged missive.

33
Ibid., 62-63.

34
Pena, Campaign Diary, 17-18, Jose Enrique de la Pena Papers, folder 8, 2J146, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.

35
Borroel,
The Papers
, II: 33; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: xii.

36
Pena,
With Santa Anna
, 42-44.

37
Pena,
With Santa Anna
, 45, 62; “Extract of General Orders of The Army of Operations in Texas,” Borroel,
The Papers
, II: 27. The Pena memoir also claims that Mora was soon replaced by Lieutenant Trinidad Santos Esteban of the Guerrero battalion. This investigator has not been able to locate any other source that verifies the Pena claims about Mora and Esteban being directors of the hospital at Bexar after the fall of the Alamo. Esteban is not listed as an officer in the Guerrero battalion on the
Relacion de los Senores
master list of officers and units that passed through Bexar in the Texas campaign in 1836.

38
Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 178.

39
Ibid.; Santa Anna to Tornel, March 6, 1836, Bexar, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, V: 11-12; Almonte, “Private Journal,” 23; Roger Borroel, ed. and trans.,
The Itineraries of the Zapadores and San Luis Battalions During the Texas War of 1836
(East Chicago: La Villita Publications, 1999), 20; Santiago Rabia
diary, Santiago Rabia Papers, DRT Library, Alamo; Honeycutt, ed.,
At The Alamo
, 66; Caro, “A True Account of the First Texas Campaign” in Castaneda, trans. and ed.,
The Mexican Side
, 105.

This investigator's use off the alleged San Luis daybook does not mean that this writer believes it is an authentic document. The manuscript is extremely suspect because it is part of the Jose Enrique de la Pena collection and is not in Pena's handwriting.