David Crockett (37 page)
Authors: Michael Wallis
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Adventurers & Explorers, #Political, #Historical
For the next several days, the volunteers and mercenaries stepped up their preparations for the coming confrontation with the Mexican army. While they stocked the Alamo with rations, water, and ammunition, Crockett did his best to keep everyone entertained with his litany of backwoods yarns and jokes. On February 22, with the Mexican force within striking distance, another fandango was held to celebrate George Washington’s birthday and also out of defiance in the face of what was expected to be a horrific fight. The following day, the garrison of about two hundred Texians barricaded themselves inside the Alamo just before Santa Anna and his troops marched into town. There would be no quarter—only the promise of death. The siege was on.
Crockett was undoubtedly the most famous person to take part in the thirteen-day siege at the Alamo. Sharing the limelight with him were James Bowie and William Travis. This Alamo trio has often been portrayed as romanticized heroes. In truth, they were—like all humans—flawed and no more or less heroic than any of those from either side who took part in the siege and storming of the Alamo. Bowie had become famous in many circles because of the trademark knife he used with much proficiency in bloody duels and altercations. He did not himself make the knife; rather, his brother Rezin commissioned it for him. Some years earlier, the Bowie brothers partnered with Jean Lafitte, the notorious privateer who supplied mercenaries for Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. The Bowies helped Lafitte traffic the many slaves he smuggled into Galveston Island and sold to plantation owners.
Beside making a fortune as a dealer in human cargo and subverting the ban on the slave trade, Bowie—like Stephen Austin—also became a land speculator. He sold fraudulent claims in Arkansas Territory, masterminded a series of property swindles in Louisiana, and speculated in Texas land. Bowie saw that there was an immense profit to be made in Texas real estate. He learned Spanish, joined the Catholic Church, became a Mexican citizen, and married into one of San Antonio’s prominent Tejano families. When his wife and two children died during a cholera epidemic, Bowie went into an alcoholic depression that lasted until his death in a sickbed at the Alamo, where he served as commander of volunteer soldiers.
William Barrett Travis, commander of the regular army troops defending the old mission fortress, was an attorney by trade. He knew Bowie from San Felipe, where he served as the knife fighter’s counsel. A South Carolina native, Travis—like many others—came to Texas to escape bad debts and avoid going to prison. After abandoning his pregnant wife and young son in Alabama, he entered Texas illegally and immediately became involved in the slave trade.
18
He settled in San Felipe de Austin in 1831, obtained some land from Stephen Austin, and established his law practice. He enjoyed the company of women, was known to devour Sir Walter Scott novels, and divorced his wife in 1836 when she showed up to save their marriage.
19
Although he neglected to pay off the debts left behind in Alabama, Travis soon began acquiring land and slaves, including a young black man known only as Joe.
20
He would stay with his white master all the way to the end at the Alamo, where his life was spared because he was a slave. Travis was one of the first to die at the final Alamo assault, of a bullet to the brain. He was twenty-six years old.
Then there was Crockett—the real-life Nimrod Wildfire and Lion of the West. What transpired at the Alamo was pure theater and an ideal venue for Crockett, who was center stage. His participation in the quint-essential event in Texas history was all part of a drama that had been playing out for the almost half-century that he had lived, and the final scene took place at the Alamo. The curtain calls, however, have never ceased for the Davy Crockett of imagination. The Alamo is what most people think of when they hear his name. Other than the ubiquitous raccoon cap only worn in later years for the benefit of his adoring fans, it is the Alamo that most evokes the image of Crockett.
Accounts of Crockett’s activities during the siege include reports of his effort to bolster morale among the men with stories and playing lively jigs on a borrowed fiddle. It was said that Crockett and a Scotsman named John McGregor, who brought his bagpipes to the fight, amused the garrison, and perhaps even the surrounding Mexican troops, with their musical interludes in between skirmishes and repulsed assaults.
21
The storming and seizing of the Alamo was inevitable, coming as it did after nearly two weeks of steady bombardment. On the night of March 5, the Mexican guns went silent. In the cold early morning darkness of the following day, the Mexican soldiers advanced. This time, despite great casualties, they were not turned away. They came in great waves and penetrated the walls and defenses. The battle lasted less than an hour. Every defender of the Alamo was killed. Only Travis’s slave and the wife and infant of one of the slain defenders survived.
Almost immediately the “last stand” at the Alamo was compared to the resolve of the Spartans facing the Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae. A newspaper editorial published just eighteen days after the fall of the Alamo read:
That event, so lamentable, and yet so glorious to Texas, is of such deep interest and excites so much our feelings that we shall never cease to celebrate it, and regret that we are not acquainted with the names of all those who fell in that fort, that we might publish them, and thus consecrate to future ages the memory of our heroes who perished at the
Thermopylae of Texas
.
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The press and the public dissected the lives and deaths of the principal players, including Crockett. Even his estranged wife, Elizabeth, and his family back in Tennessee could not grasp the fact that this seemingly invulnerable frontiersman was dead. He had fooled death too many times in the past. Not until several months after the fall of the Alamo did Elizabeth know for sure that her husband would never again walk through the cabin door. She was convinced when a parcel was delivered to her home. Inside was Crockett’s watch, the one he sold for thirty dollars to help with costs during his trek to Texas. There was also a letter to Elizabeth from Isaac Jones, the man who had purchased the timepiece.
The object of this letter, is to beg that you will accept the watch . . . as it has his name engraved on the surface, it will no doubt be the more acceptable to you. With his open frankness, his natural honesty of expression, his perfect want of concealment, I could not but be very much pleased. And with a hope that it might be an accommodation to him, I was gratified at the exchange, as it gave me a
keepsake
which would often remind me of an honest man, a good citizen and a pioneer in the cause of liberty, amongst his suffering brethren in Texas.
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Elizabeth was grateful, for she and Crockett’s kinfolk had no one to bury. Just hours after the fall of the Alamo, the bodies of approximately 183 defenders were laid in layers on a large pile of wood and dry branches and the pyre was set ablaze.
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Left with many unanswered questions, the family went ahead, just as Crockett would have done. Robert Patton Crockett, the oldest son from Elizabeth’s first marriage, went to Texas in 1838 and joined the new republic’s army. John Wesley Crockett went to the U.S. Congress in 1837 and served two terms, representing his father’s former district. He was able to push through the passage of a land bill similar to the measure Crockett had long championed. By 1854, Elizabeth was finally granted the “league of land” promised to Crockett as his share for serving as a Texas soldier. She and some of the family moved to Texas and built a good cabin. Elizabeth wore black every day until her own death, in 1860.
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She died never knowing for sure how her husband had been killed on the morning of March 6, 1836, at the Alamo.
Indeed, no one knows with any certainty how David Crockett died. His death has been obscured by legend, with accounts and theories of his death including scenarios both implausible and ludicrous. The two adult survivors, Travis’s slave Joe and Susannah Wilkerson Dickinson, had managed to stay hidden during the battle. Both of them independently claimed that, after the fighting stopped, they saw Crockett lying dead and mutilated with the corpses of Mexican soldiers all around him. Neither of them saw or knew how or when Crockett was killed. Nonetheless, the popular press and dime novelists used these accounts to perpetuate the Crockett myth.
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One popular theory was that Crockett died while swinging old Betsey over his head. Some claimed that Crockett donned a disguise and snuck away from the Alamo like a sniveling coward. Still others believed Crockett was among a gang of fifty or more defenders who tried to escape the doomed mission only to be cut down by Mexican cavalry. Stories appeared claiming that reports of Crockett’s death were false. An Ohio newspaper stated that Crockett was discovered alive among a stack of Texians executed by the Mexican troops and was taken to a private residence, where his wounds were dressed and he was making a successful recovery: “He had received a severe gash with a tomahawk on the upper part of his forehead, a ball in his leg, and another through one of his thighs, besides several other minor wounds.”
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In 1840, four years after the battle, a Texas newspaper published an account of William C. White, who maintained that he had seen “with his own eyes in the mines of Gendelejera [Guadalajara], in Mexico our own immortal CROCKETT, and heard from his own lips an account of his escape from the massacre at the Alamo.”
28
As late as 1893, the
New York Times
reported that San Antonio policemen saw Col. Crockett at the Alamo after it had been converted into a subpolice station. The bold headline read, davy crockett’s “ghost.” According to the report, on rainy, dismal nights Crockett and “the spirits of those who lost their lives within…hold a levee in the upper rooms of the structure.” Especially troubling were the loud sounds that sounded like dancing and an apparition in the place where Crockett lost his life.
29
Gen. Sam Houston spelled out what may be the most likely scenario soon after the fall of the Alamo. In a dispatch sent March 11 to Col. James Fannin, Houston broke the news of the deaths of all of the defenders and stated, “After the fort was carried seven men surrendered, and called for Santa Anna, and for quarter. They were murdered by his order.”
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Although Houston did not mention Crockett by name, his letter adds credence to the persistent rumor that at least seven individuals were taken captive and summarily executed. Another reference to prisoners being executed appeared in 1837, when Ramón Martínez Caro, Santa Anna’s secretary, wrote that Gen. Manuel Fernández Castrillón had discovered five men hiding inside the Alamo after it had been taken by Mexican troops. Instead of immediately killing them, the general ordered the captives taken before Santa Anna, who reprimanded Castrillón for disobeying his command to give no quarter and take no prisoners. Santa Anna then turned his back while soldiers killed the prisoners. “We all witnessed this outrage which humanity condemns but which was committed as described,” wrote Martínez Caro. “This is a cruel truth, but I cannot omit it.”
Almost 140 years after the fact, the strongest source of proof of Crockett’s death emerged. In 1975, the memoir of a Mexican army officer serving under Santa Anna at the Alamo, which had come to light in Mexico in 1955, at the height of the Disney-inspired Crockett television series, was first translated into English. The 680-page diary, written by José Enrique de la Peña, supported the claims that Crockett was one of seven survivors captured by Mexican soldiers and executed by order of General Santa Anna:
Some seven men survived the general carnage and, under the protection of General Castrillón, they were brought before Santa Anna. Among them was one of great stature, well proportioned, with regular features, in whose face was the imprint of adversity, but in whom one also noticed a degree of resignation and nobility that did him honor. He was the naturalist David Crockett, well known in North America for his unusual adventures, who had undertaken to explore the country and who, finding himself in Bejar at the very moment of surprise, had taken refuge in the Alamo, fearing that his status as a foreigner might not be respected. Santa Anna answered Castrillón’s intervention in Crockett’s behalf with a gesture of indignation and, addressing himself to the sappers, the troops closest to him, ordered his execution. The commanders and officers were outraged at this action and did not support the order, hoping that once the fury of the moment had blown over these men would be spared; but several officers who were around the president and who, perhaps, had not been present during the danger, became noteworthy by an infamous deed, surpassing the soldiers in cruelty. They thrust themselves forward, in order to flatter their commander, 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.
31
Publication of the Peña narrative in the United States set off an avalanche of controversy in Texas and beyond. The many staunch defenders of the popular and romanticized image of the Alamo and Crockett were livid and not only challenged the diary but insisted it was a forgery. A rush of articles and books either defending the historic document or attacking it followed. Despite careful expert examination of the narrative and the declaration of a University of Texas forgery professional that the memoir appeared to be authentic, many skeptics were still unconvinced.
32
They could not accept Peña’s explanation of Crockett’s death and continued to refer to it as the most famous unsolved homicide in history.
