The final moments of an American hero.
For many, the enduring image of the Battle of the Alamo is Davy Crockett fighting like a wildcat to the bitter end. According to one dramatic account shortly after his death, his body was found encircled by “seventeen dead Mexicans, eleven of whom had come to their deaths by his dagger and the others by his rifle and four pistols.”
So goes the legend. What about the truth?
While the 189 Texans who fought at the Alamo were all killed, numerous Mexican soldiers wrote accounts of the battle. They paint a far different picture of Crockett’s last moments.
Mexican general Santa Anna ordered his troops to “give no quarter” when they stormed the Alamo, and the hand-to-hand fighting that followed was bloody and desperate. It lasted until dawn. That’s when Crockett and six other men were found, quite alive, in a back room, to which they had retreated. Crockett, by one account, then tried to talk his way out, telling his captors he had planned to become a loyal Mexican citizen, and had done no fighting at the Alamo.
When the men were brought to Santa Anna, the general was so enraged that his “take no prisoners” directive had been disobeyed, he ordered his soldiers to execute the captives on the spot. “With swords in hand,” wrote one Mexican officer, they “fell upon these unfortunate, defenseless men just as a tiger leaps upon his prey.”
The truth was known within weeks of the battle, and published in many newspapers. But the myth proved far more appealing, and so endures to this day.
That Crockett fought bravely is not in question. A letter smuggled out of the Alamo recounted that during an initial bombardment, “The Hon. David Crockett was seen at all points, animating men to do their duty.” But there is no evidence to support the legend of his fighting to his very last moments.
Mexican general Manuel Fernande Castrillón recognized the famous frontiersman and pleaded with Santa Anna to spare the captives. An indignant Santa Anna refused, saying, “Have I not told you before how to dispose of them? Why do you bring them to me?” Then he ordered the execution.
While Crockett carefully cultivated his image as a backwoodsman, he was well on his way to becoming a career politician. He spent four years in the Tennessee Legislature and six in the U.S. Congress before he was voted out of office. He came to Texas in hopes of replenishing his finances and jump-starting his political career.