The Death of Davy Crockett and Other Reasons to Visit Disneyland



Davy Crockett's final monents as depicted in story and song---dawn on March 6, 1836

 

     Everyone knows that Davy Crockett died in the courtyard of the Alamo, swinging his Kentucky long rifle like a club, surrounded by sixteen dead Mexicans.  That’s basically the story Joe, William B. Travis’ slave, told after he was spared by Santa Anna.  Susannah Dickinson, the teenage mother who was also spared, said she saw Crockett’s body on the floor at the door of the chapel.  Not enough difference to quibble about.  Enter Walt Disney, who un-earthed the story,  identified the market, wrote a catchy ditty, and cornered the market for coon-skin caps.

     In 1837, Ramon Martinez Caro, Santa Anna’s personal secretary during the Texas campaign, published his memoirs which contained an interesting paragraph mentioning Davy Crockett.  According to Caro, after the battle, General Castrillon brought five prisoners to Santa Anna and asked him to spare them, saying he had guaranteed their safety.  One of the prisoners was identified as the famous ex-congressman, David Crockett.  Santa Anna, incensed that his “no quarter” instructions had been ignored, ordered the immediate execution of the entire group, and turned his back.  The five were fallen upon by soldiers and murdered on the spot.

     In June of 1836, a letter reportedly written by William H. Attree, was published in the New York Courier and Enquirer, telling essentially the same story.  The story was picked up and published in several newspapers of the time, among them the Frankfort Commonwealth of Kentucky.  Attree was an eastern reporter of some note, who was visiting Galveston Island in the weeks immediately following the Texas Revolution.  He attributed the story to a Mexican officer being held in a prisoner of war camp there.

      In 1960, a graduate student working on his thesis discovered a letter from one Sergeant George Dolson to his brother, written in July of 1836 and published in a Detroit newspaper in September of that year.  Sergeant Dolson was a Texas army interpreter at Camp Travis, a prisoner of war camp on Galveston Island, and interviewed Mexican prisoners being held there.  He related a story of the death of Crockett, told him by an unnamed Mexican officer who supposedly witnessed the event.   In Dolson’s version, General Castrillon brings six prisoners to Santa Anna, but outside that detail, the stories are identical.

     The eastern reporter and Sergeant Dolson may have interviewed the same Mexican officer, or two different officers may have recounted the same event.   According to all reports, there were dozens of witnesses.  When added to these stories, the account given by twenty-eight year old Jose Enrique De La Pena, written in his diary during the battle for Texas in 1836, makes a compelling case.  Lt. De La Pena tells the same story, except in his version, Castrillon delivers seven prisoners to Santa Anna, not five or six.

     De La Pena came to Texas with Santa Anna’s army and distinguished himself in combat at the Alamo.  He kept a daily journal through the whole Texas Revolution and was truthful, but less than kind, about his military superiors..  He blamed Santa Anna for the debacle at San Jacinto and Filasola for the disastrous retreat across the muddy Gulf Coast.  He accused Sesma and Gaona of everything from avarice to cowardice.   

      De La Pena, fiercely proud of his Mexican heritage, mistrusted foreign generals, mercenaries hired to shore up the leadership of Mexico’s army.  He praised every action of General Urrea, one of the few Mexican generals in the army, and constantly found fault with Filasola, an Italian.  

     His journal may have been published in 1838 or 1839, but, if so, was likely quashed by officials high in the Mexican government.  In 1955, a hundred and seventeen years later, De La Pena’s diary was published in Mexico at the height of the Davy Crockett frenzy created by Walt Disney.  While much of the two-hundred-page document was accepted as fact, the two paragraphs concerning Crockett’s demise were considered questionable.  For this reason, the whole work was brushed aside by many historians.    

      When De La Pena’s journal was translated into English by Carmen Perry in 1975, all hell broke loose among serious students of Texas History.  One side held that Crockett died fighting in the battle and any other tale is akin to blasphemy.  Another group believed that the manner of Crockett’s death was not important, because it was honorable—a nod to Hillary Clinton’s “What difference does it make?” defense.

     The original story, based upon two “eyewitness” accounts, leaves ample room for doubt.  Joe, Travis’s slave, was known to tell whatever story he felt his audience wanted to hear, and he disappeared (ran away) not long after the war.  Susannah Dickinson’s recollections grew more vivid and outlandish as time passed while she sank deeper into alcoholism and debauchery.  

      Doubt was cast on the De La Pena narrative because he was mistaken in his account of the death of Travis.  He told of a handsome, blond Texian officer that he assumed was Travis,  killed while bravely rallying his troops on the south wall.  According to Joe, the dark-haired Travis was killed on the north wall by a random shot to the head in the first moments of the battle.

      The debate over De La Pena’s diary continues to rage. Detractors claim it is a forgery, but cannot say who forged it, or why, or even when it was done.  The high rag content paper used in the document was tested and found to have been made in Lisbon between 1825 and 1832.  Historians agree that this Lisbon paper was used by the army in Mexico in 1836, and De La Pena had access to it.

     Mature, level-headed, intelligent scholars are at odds over what happened to Davy Crockett.  Four different accounts, from at least three different eye-witness sources, tell essentially the same story.  Learned individuals frantically search for details that differ, or accuse long-dead writers of making up bald-faced lies for less than apparent reasons, or claim forgery on hundred-year-old paper.  Carmen Perry was castigated by some of her peers for simply translating De La Pena’s work.  When the paper from the diary was proven genuine, the opposition quickly assumed the position that even if the diary was authentic, there was no reason to believe it was accurate.  Historians want to be precise.  Sometimes.

      De La Pena wrote a rough draft, his diary, with entries faithfully scribbled every day during his sojourn in Texas.  When he returned to Mexico, he revised and expanded his notes and provided conclusions for many of the questions he raised.  His announced intention to publish this work in 1838 was not met with universal enthusiasm.  After spending some time in prison, he was mysteriously murdered one night on a dark street in Mexico City.  Historians think it was 1841, but, to be precise, it might have happened in 1842.