00:00:05 Speaker 1: They're wearing themselves out trying to receive reinforcements, receive supplies, and they can't. 00:00:12 Speaker 2: They can't. 00:00:14 Speaker 1: On February twenty third, Santa Anna and the Mexican Army arrive. 00:00:20 Speaker 3: The final episodes of these series are always somber for me. I think we all know what's about to happen to our boy, David Crockett. I'm interested in the best information that we have about the Alamo, not the narrative we've heard from the likes of John Wayne and Walt Disney, or maybe their narratives were right. Sometimes nationalistic narratives have to be sorted through, because I'm mainly interested in not that, but the inner workings and character and fabric of the man David Crockett. I'm also interested in why people from Texas are so crazed about the Alamo and passionate about how Crockett died. Learned that it was far more important in US history than you might think. Holly's Comet soared over North America in eighteen thirty five and thirty six and was blamed for some of the time's ill fate. Andrew Jackson sarcastically commissioned Crockett to catch it by the tail before it hit the United States, destroying the country. He didn't catch it, but he did help change the course of this nation by his death. And we're gonna learn did Crockett die fighting or was he executed? And why do we care? I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. 00:01:37 Speaker 4: Most people who think they know history don't know how they know what they think they know. 00:01:52 Speaker 3: My name is Clay Knukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans. 00:02:06 Speaker 2: Who live their lives close to the land. 00:02:09 Speaker 3: Presented by FHF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Over twenty buckskin clad horsemen are riding through the dry plains of Texas. One sure looks a lot like John Wayne, and he's wearing a coonskin hat. I think that's Davy Crockett. 00:02:47 Speaker 5: Well that you big down after twenty days a hard riding, we're gonna have to learn the lingo they use down here, Davy. 00:02:55 Speaker 2: Why don't we go davy to the town or to the part part. 00:02:58 Speaker 5: It's an all make you better take a better look. A lot of people moving in there. 00:03:04 Speaker 2: Them guns don't give it no mistion. Look to me, Arnel, what do you see? A n ti and a spell cantina? 00:03:16 Speaker 3: Do it mean what I think you do it? 00:03:17 Speaker 5: Dude, it means all of these DearS gets it into our boobie. 00:03:26 Speaker 3: This was near the opening scene of John Wayne's nineteen sixty movie titled The Alamo. It's rife with historical inaccuracies, but this scene depicting these guys entering into San Antonio as more relaxed than they should have been, is probably accurate. On February eighth, eighteen thirty six, the real David Crockett, our gentlemen from the Cane, America's first celebrity, voluntarily rode into a Mexican war zone. His one month in San Antonio would be the most scrutinized, studied, and mythologized portions of his storied life, because on the morning of March sixth, eighteen thirty six, he and one hundred and eighty eight other men would die at the hands of the Mexican army, making this one of the most infamous days in Texas and American history. The mystery of this day, because of the lack of survivors, would set many Americans on a lifelong journey to understand what happened, including John Wayne, whose passion project was this Alamo movie, which he directed and funded. But it wasn't just the Duke who was passionate about the Alamo. 00:04:39 Speaker 2: And Crockett. 00:04:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, Crockett's bigger than Disney and John Wayne. Even John Wayne couldn't play Davy Crockett. John Wayne played John Wayne playing Davy Crockett. So before my moved to Texas, my dad had renovated his childhood home, Jacksonville Beach, Florida, with the bell shaped parapet of the Alamo. So here we were ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean, and we had neighbors asking why we were building a taco bell in the middle of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, my dad was eventually hit with foreclosure. We knew we were going to lose the house, and so I was about twenty at the time. I'm thirty four. Now I realized I had to leave the nest. So I moved to San Antonio in twenty ten and within four months of living in San Antonio, I was working at the Alamo. 00:05:42 Speaker 3: Passion comes in many shapes, but it's the special breed that are passionate about the Alamo that was the voice of David Crockett. Fanatic and historical illustrator Wade Dylon. He worked for eight years at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, which to many people surprised despite Wayne's movie, is still standing, well most of it in John Wayne's movie, it got blown up. The real Battle of the Alamo is a central feature in the Texas Revolution that eventually led Texas to independence and statehood, and though Texas is now part of these United States, many would say that that statehood didn't remove that Texas independence. The most debated question of the Alamo, though, is how did David Crockett die? This has become a really important question. John Wayne's version showed that he died the iconic death of a hero in the midst of battle. However, there is another version of his death that many aren't happy about. 00:06:43 Speaker 4: The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, the editor asked me if I would review a new book that a New York City fireman by the name of Bill Groeneman, whose amateur historian had written it was called Defense of a Legend, David Crockett and the Delapinia Diary. And to make a long story short, Delapeno was a junior officer in the Mexican Army who wrote a diary. Later re rote it as a memoir, but it's almost always called his diary. And he witnessed the capture and execution of a handful of men after the Battle of the Alamo. They were captured right at the end, executed within a few minutes, and he identifies one of them as being David Crockett. 00:07:30 Speaker 3: Wait a minute, did our ears just partake of an account of pure heresy? Everybody who knows our Crockett, the king of the wild Frontier, who knows no fear, they would know that Crockett would never surrender to anyone. You can't just capture a Bobcat grinnin Whirlwind Brothers. That was doctor James E. Crisp, Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University in Texas. Native He is from te He's a national expert on the last five minutes of David Crockett's life, and his whole career has been involved In this debate, he wrote a book called Sleuthing the Alamo and another titled How did Davy Die? 00:08:14 Speaker 2: And Why Do We Care so much? 00:08:16 Speaker 3: The Lapoena Diary is big news, but there's more. 00:08:21 Speaker 2: Here's way. 00:08:23 Speaker 1: Now, this is where the controversy comes into play. The Dailapenia Diary shows up after the big crocket craze of the nineteen fifties. 00:08:32 Speaker 3: All right, so like one hundred and twenty five years later, this diary shows up, which is kind of convenient. 00:08:39 Speaker 1: Well, the thing about the diary is a great deal of the diary is legitimate, is authentic. But what is debated is the section that specifically talks about the execution of David Crockett. The pages of that section of the diary are different sizes, and they're quite popossibly forged. 00:09:02 Speaker 3: Wait a minute, the whole diary is legit, but just the section about Crockett's death is a fraud. 00:09:09 Speaker 2: I'm no detective, but that sounds sketchy. 00:09:12 Speaker 3: But it also sounds sketchy that it appeared in nineteen fifty five, conveniently right when Walt Disney resurrected Crockett's legacy with the trilogy of films. Weren't there security cameras or military body cams that we can review to see how our boy Crockett died. 00:09:29 Speaker 4: Within weeks after the fall of the Alamo, two stories had reached New Orleans and was printed in the New Orleans papers. One was that Crockett had died fighting like a tiger and fell in combat, and the other that he was among those handful of men who were captured and executed. Both stories were there from the very beginning. There's an artist from Texas who painted two pictures of Crockett in the Alamo. One was him fighting and one was him captive. That was in the nineteen thirties, so the stories were always there. But by the time they started making you know, the John Wayne movie and the Fest Parker Disneyland version of Crockett, they went with the alternate stories. In fest Parker, he dies, you know, swinging his rifle, although they never show him die. And in John Wayne, I believe he gets blown up in the powder magazine after getting stabbed through the chest. We're living in a age right now where there's so much falsehood put out as conclusions that people don't look at how the conclusions were arrived at what you have to do, as a professional historian or someone who reads professional historians is look at the evidence. And what I've done is describe the evidence. There are no eyewitnesses to Crockett dying in combat. Zero. 00:11:01 Speaker 3: This man speaks with conviction, and by the end of this episode, you're gonna have a gut feeling of what happened to Crockett. 00:11:08 Speaker 2: But that's all. It will be, just a feeling. 00:11:13 Speaker 3: There are multiple first hand accounts of seeing Crockett's dead body with his Coonskin hat by his side, no joke. 00:11:21 Speaker 2: There are zero. 00:11:22 Speaker 3: Accounts of anyone actually seeing him die fighting, and there are three accounts from soldiers in the Mexican Army of him being executed, but none of them seemed to be rock solid. But before we can answer those questions, we need to understand why our Tennessee boy was in Texas. In episode three of our Crockett series, we left him in eighteen thirty five, when he'd been defeated in a race for Congress by Adam Huntsman. 00:11:50 Speaker 2: The defeat chapped him bad. 00:11:52 Speaker 3: He said he was rascaled out of the election, and then he finalized a plan that he'd likely had for some time. 00:12:01 Speaker 4: Crockett had been in Congress and he lost an election. He was defeated by a guy with a wooden leg, and he told his constituents, if you're going to vote for that Timbertow instead of me, you can all go to Hell, and I'm going to Texas. Now. The question is why would he choose Texas well. Texas was a wide open place for American immigration to where they could get good land very cheap, and Crockett needed that because he was not a wealthy man. In fact, Crockett had lost his life savings more than once in his life. 00:12:39 Speaker 3: Crockett is forty nine years old, and in the words of Bono, he still hasn't found what he's looking for, which was primarily land in a stable life. Crockett had vowed that if Martin van Buren was elected president, he'd leave the country, and he famously said, you can all go to h double hockey sticks, and. 00:12:59 Speaker 2: I'll go to Texas. And he did just that. 00:13:03 Speaker 3: Matilda Crockett's daughter, wrote that when her father left their home in Rutherford, Tennessee, he was quote dressed in his hunting shirt, wearing a coonskin cap, and carried a fine rifle presented to him by his friends in Philadelphia. He seemed very confident the morning he went away that he would soon have us all join him in Texas. 00:13:24 Speaker 2: End of quote. 00:13:25 Speaker 3: Crockett would cross the Mississippi River, and he arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas on November the twelfth, where it's recorded that he killed a deer and skinned it behind the Jeffreys Hotel and was entertained by a puppet showed a local tavern. 00:13:41 Speaker 2: That's no joke. 00:13:42 Speaker 3: It was reported that hundreds of people gathered and held a banquet for Crockett at a hotel, and the newspaper quoted Crockett as saying, I kid you not. He said quote, if I could rest anywhere, it would be in Arkansas, where the man a real half horse, half alligator, breathe such as grow nowhere else on the face of the universal Earth, but just around the backbone of North America. I am literally blushing with pride. I didn't make that up. But Crockett did leave the Creation State and went to Texas. The editor of an Arkansas newspaper would write, quote, we shall die contented. We have seen the honorable David Crockett, who arrived in this place this evening on his way to Texas, where he contemplates ending his days. It's not entirely known what this editor meant by this cryptic statement, but the prophetic utterance was accurate. 00:14:39 Speaker 1: Crockett leaves for Texas November of eighteen thirty five. He's traveling. In each major town that he's crossing through, he's receiving updates as to the politics of Texas. They're in the middle of a war, so the northern Federalist States of Mexico that includes Texas. 00:15:02 Speaker 5: Now. 00:15:03 Speaker 1: Of course, at this time, Texas is filled with American and European immigrants who have brought their ideologies and practices with them. Mexican Representative mere Itehan, when he took a tour of Texas, stated that the American immigrants carried their constitutions in their pockets. 00:15:23 Speaker 3: These people were energized by the new ideals of America. The handwriting was on the wall that this place was about to be its own country and it would likely be a lot more like America than Mexico. But why was Crockett there. 00:15:38 Speaker 1: Crockett comes down to Texas volunteering for six months because he realizes during wartime land offices are likely closed, and the quickest way for him to acquire land at this point upon arrival is by volunteering. 00:15:56 Speaker 3: All these guys were always looking for land. That he had been promised over four thousand acres of land for his military service. That's a pretty good deal if you don't die. Other accounts said he was only guaranteed six hundred and forty acres, but Crockett had more on his mind than land. Remember, this guy has national fame and was a potential candidate for U as president, and now he believes that he can be a significant player in Texas politics, maybe even president of Texas. Here is Crockett's last correspondence with his family that he wrote to his daughter Margaret. This is the first time I've had the opportunity to write you with convenience. I am now blessed with excellent health and him in high spirits. 00:16:42 Speaker 2: Although I've had. 00:16:43 Speaker 3: Many difficulties to encounter and have got through safe and have been received by everybody with the open arm of friendship. I am hailed with a hearty welcome to this country, a dinner and a party of ladies have honored me with an invitation to participate with them. Both in naked Dedosius. In this place. The cannon was fired here on my arrival. I must say as to what I have seen of Texas, it is the garden spot of the world. The best land and the best prospect for health I have ever saw is here. I do believe it's a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country to settle, and it's not required here to pay down for your league of land. Every man is entitled to his head right of four thousand, four hundred and twenty eight acres. They might have the money to pay it off the land. This is just how this letter reads, So this grammar's kind of wild. I expect an all probability to settle on the Bow Dark or the chalktaw by you, the Red River that I have found, no doubt the richest country in the world, good land, plenty of timber, and the best springs and good millstreams, good range, clear water, in every appearance of good health and gain plenty. It is in the past where the buffalo passes from north to south back twice a year, in bees and honey plenty. I have a great hope of getting the agency to settle that country, and I would be glad to see every friend I have settled there. It would be a fortune to them all. I have taken the oath of the government and have enrolled my name as a volunteer for six months, and will set out for the Rio Grand in a few days with the volunteers from the United States. All volunteers is entitled to a vote for a member of the Convention, or to be voted four and I have but little doubt of being elected a member to form a constitution for this province. I am rejoiced at my fate and had rather be in my present situation than to be elected to a seat in Congress for life. I am in hopes of making a fortune for myself and family, as bad as have been my prospects. I have not wrote to William, but have requested John to direct him what to do. I hope you will show this letter to him and also your brother John, as it is not convenient at this time for me to write them. I hope you will do the best you can, and I will do the same. Do not be uneasy about me, for I am with friends. I must close with great respects, your affectionate father Farewell, signed David Crockett, January ninth, eighteen thirty six. This letter leaves little speculation of the intentions of Crockett in Texas. He encountered many people during his time there, one of which was a Swisher family. They would later write about their time with Crockett. 00:19:35 Speaker 2: This is what they said. Quote. 00:19:37 Speaker 3: He conversed about himself in the most unaffected manner, without the slightest attempt to display any genius or smartness. He told us many great anecdotes, many of which were commonplace and amounted to nothing within themselves, but his inimitable way of telling them would convulse us in laughter. 00:19:57 Speaker 2: End of quote. 00:19:59 Speaker 3: This reminds me of John Gadsby Chapman, the portrait painters recollections of Crockett. Sounds like it would have been. 00:20:06 Speaker 2: Hard not to like him. 00:20:08 Speaker 3: This land deal was good for most folks, but there were some groups who didn't get a good deal at all. This is interesting. 00:20:17 Speaker 4: Crockett was going to where lots of Americans were going. The population had gone up to close to thirty thousand people from the United States, including two or three thousand slaves that they had brought in, and slavery was a touchy subject in Mexico because good many people in Mexico wanted to get rid of it. By the time of the Texas Revolution, they had gotten rid of it, and virtually all of Mexico except for Texas. Texas had been accepted, had been allowed to keep slavery legal. You weren't supposed to bring slaves in, but they got around that by signing ninety nine year in dentures with their slaves. I've seen a copy of one of those. You know, I the slave in order to learn the art and science of agriculture hereby pledge ninety nine years of labor to this guy who's taking me in. 00:21:10 Speaker 3: Crockett had crossed into Texas near Clarksville on the Red River in late December eighteen thirty five, traveling with his nephew and two neighbors from Tennessee. It takes him about a month, and we're not sure why, but he ends up in San Antonio. 00:21:26 Speaker 1: There, in San Antonio de Bajar, he arrives around February nineth eighteen thirty six. He arrives outside of town near the old Campo Santo, the old town cemetery, and he's greeted with a kind of grizzly scene. I kind of see it as foreshadowing in regards to Crockett. But he arrives at the cemetery. That's an acre of land surrounded by an eight foot wall, and in the center of the cemetery is a large cross, and at the base of this cross are human skulls, and then throughout the cemetery are just boones promiscuously scattered throughout. 00:22:09 Speaker 3: A soldier would later write about this cemetery, describing the poorly buried human remains on the surface of the ground. In twenty seventeen, the Children's Hospital of San Antonio found the remains of seventy people when they discovered this spot. The Campo Santo Cemetery the same one that likely greeted Crockett when he arrived. Just f why if you haven't been to what remains of the Alamo. It's literally in downtown San Antonio. Shortly after Crockett gets there, things escalate quickly. There are two divisions of the Texas military that Wade talks about, the Bahard and the Golead Garrisons. 00:22:51 Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Bahart Garrison, as well as the Mendana Goliad are receiving reports that the Mexican Army is marching north. They have crossed through the presidiod Ario Grande and they're heading into Texas. And there's a lot of disbelief because it's winter. They don't think the Mexican Army is going to come up until the spring because all their pack animals, they don't have grass to feed. What they don't realize is that the Mexican Army has marched through two blizzards to put down this rebellion. You're going to have a division of the Mexican Army under General Jose Urea head towards Goliad. Santa Anna will head towards Bajart. So Crockett, yeah, he is in the thick of it. 00:23:42 Speaker 3: San Antonio was the key to Texas. That's why they needed to defend it and why Santa Ana wanted to take it. The Bahart Garrison has two guys struggling for the leadership of the group, James Bowie and William Travis. Both of these guys were wild dudes. Here's an excerpt from Michael Wallace's biography of Crockett, titled David Crockett And Again, if you're looking for a Crockett biography. This is the one I would suggest. Here's what he said about Bowie and Travis. 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, and became a Mexican citizen, and married into one of San Antonio's prominent Tehano families. When his wife and two children died during a colliria epidemic, Bowie went into an alcoholic depression that lasted until his death in his sick bed at the Alamo, where he's 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 Council, a South Carolinian 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. He settled in San Felipe de Austin in eighteen thirty one, obtained some land from Stephen Austin, and established his new practice. Enjoyed the company of women, was known to devour Sir Walter Scott novels, and divorced his wife in eighteen thirty six when she showed up to save their marriage. 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. He would stay with his white master all the way to the end of the Alamo, where his life was spared because he was a slave. I realize that's just two paragraphs about these guys, but sounds like they were pretty wild. And now these two are struggling to see who's gonna lead. 00:26:20 Speaker 1: Eventually, these two men put together an olive branch. They come together. They realize they need to stick together to defend the town in the best interest of the defensive Texas. And so for the next few days, I imagine that they're really trying to assess the situation. How can they with their meager force of maybe one hundred and fifty volunteers at this time, how can they defend the town. They realize they really can't if they were to be attacked now based on the reports, But they can continue fortifying the Alamo. The Alamo is an old Spanish mission. It has been converted into a fortress and used as a military outpost. Ever sense the mission was desecularized in seventeen ninety three. So there it is the Alamo, four and a half acre compound, fortified with eighteen pieces of artillery. They realize if the Mexican army were to arrive, they would have to retreat into the Alamo. Now every single day, Travis and Buie, I mean, they're just they're wearing themselves out, trying to receive reinforcements, receive supplies, try and get some sort of response out of this forming government within Texas, and they can't. 00:27:35 Speaker 2: They can't. 00:27:36 Speaker 1: On February twenty third, Santa Anna and the Mexican army arrive. 00:27:48 Speaker 3: The people in San Antonio were very surprised at Santa Anna's early arrival. 00:27:54 Speaker 1: Santa Anna's attached to the vanguard. They number roughly fifteen hundred Travis Bowie Crockett. They realize again they cannot defend the town, so they withdraw in to the Alamo. Slowly but surely. The Mexican army arrive without resistance, they take the town. They mount a blood red banner from the top the bell tower of the San Fernando Church. That blood red banner meaning death tall Traders, Death tall Pirates. It is Santa Anna's symbol to the Bahar Garrison or the Alamo Garrison at this point that he is there to carry out the Tornell Decree, which by Mexican law states, if you rebel against the Mexican government under an unrecognized flag, you are labeled a pirate and put to the sword. So Santa Anna is going to follow that. 00:28:46 Speaker 3: To the tee, Death to all pirates. Turns out pirates don't need water. The word pirate means a person who appropriates or reproduces the work of another without permission. So Santa Anna has taken the city and the Texas soldiers and the people of the town have retreated into this old Spanish fort, the Alamo. The second day of the siege, Bowie becomes deathly ill and turns over full command to Travis. Travis wrote a famous letter on that day pleading for reinforcements, and he signed it Victory or Death. In Billy Bob Thornton's two thousand and four movie on Crockett, it shows Crockett on the wall of the Alamo playing the fiddle for the Mexican army. To hear Crockett playing the fiddle at the Alamo is likely a myth because it didn't show up in the literature until almost fifty years after the battle, and we're not even entirely sure that he knew how to play the fiddle. 00:29:46 Speaker 2: This is important stuff. 00:29:49 Speaker 1: The very next day of February twenty fifth, third day of the siege, the Mexican army is already starting to be to surround the Alamo fort with artillery, batteries and the fort. It's the same day that sant Anna decides to test the defenses on the southern end of the fort, and the Mexican army begins to attack on the south side, and for two and a half hours, the Alamo garrison is holding their own. Crockett, in a letter written by Travis, is seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty. So Crockett, having been in battles, been in conflict, his natural leadership skills are coming through. And at the age of forty nine. You know, I'm sure Crockett's you know, firing the rifle himself. But he is out there despite being a private, acting like Colonel Crockett. 00:30:47 Speaker 3: I think this is an important part of the story if we're trying to know who Crockett was. This isn't myth, but was recorded in an official letter from the commanding officer that Crockett is out there leading and fighting, which seems entirely consistent with the crocket we've seen. 00:31:03 Speaker 1: The siege lasts for thirteen days, and a great deal of that time is spent by these men endearing an artillery bombardment, living off of rations. The Mexican Army eventually cuts off their access to water, and so the slaves within the fortress are likely assigned to dig a new well inside of the fort. Morale is just going down. They're waiting and waiting for reinforcements, thinking that any day now Fannin is going to arrive. 00:31:38 Speaker 3: Fannin is the leader of the closest garrison of Texas troops, and they've been communicating with him, but he just can't get there in time. 00:31:46 Speaker 1: There's some debate as to whether towards the end of the siege, Travis requests a parley. There's some debate as to whether or not Travis is trying to save the lives of his men, but eventually the the answer is very clear that they're not going to march out of that fort alive. So the end of the siege, Travis gathers his men and has a talk. Now, there's one rendition of this story that comes to us from William P. Zuber that Travis drew a line in the sand asking his men to stay and fight with him. But whether that happened or not, the Alamo garrison that they stay. Crockett stays. 00:32:35 Speaker 2: My luck gargo, not a lod. 00:32:57 Speaker 1: The heartbreak for me personally, when I try and get into the minds of these men is what was their headspace like, you know, Crockett. Crockett came all this way for forty nine years he had been trying. He's come all this way to now get stuck inside of a fort in a foreign country. I'm sure he's dealing with some reluctance. All of these men are scared. But come Sunday, March sixth, five point thirty in the morning, one six hundred Centralist Mexican soldiers attack the fort from all sides. So it's very possible that Crockett is somewhere along the west wall or even the north wall. During the battle, the Mexican army spills into the compound, and all of this action is taking place so quickly that the Alama defenders are unable to spike or disable their artillery. So as the Alamo defenders retreat into the Long Barrack, into the old convent of the Spanish Mission, the Mexican army turned the cannons inward and them through the doors in fire across the plaza. The Mexican army, now congregating in the heart of the fort inside of the plaza, now race across and they begin sweeping through each individual rooms of the Long Barrack, where we would see the last stand at the Battle of the Alamo. This is the deadliest grizzliest hand to hand fighting taking place. 00:34:40 Speaker 3: I hesitated to use these clichet sounds of battle with the corny dramatic music. These were real humans, real fear, real blood, real pain. In the moment, these men weren't thinking about being immortalized he rose on TV or in books. They were trying not to die and be swallowed by. 00:35:01 Speaker 1: And by seven o'clock in the morning, the battle of the Alamo is over. The moment the Battle of the Alamou is over, that's when you can really begin to track the myth of the death of David Crockett. How did Crockett die? To me, it doesn't matter how Crockett died, because he fought and died at the Alamo. But after the battle, survivor Susannah Dickinson, who was the only English speaking female survivor. The rest were Tehana. They spoke Spanish. As she is escorted out of the church, holding her fifteen month old daughter, Angelina and also nursing a wounded ankle she had been shot. She states in her account, which was dictated later in life, she states, I saw Colonel Crockett lying dead between the church and the two story barrack building. Mutilated with his peculiar cap lying by his side. 00:36:00 Speaker 3: That peculiar hat was most likely a Coonskin hat for real, because there are two different accounts of Crockett wearing it when he was leaving Tennessee, one from his daughter and another from a guy named John Davis who saw him wearing a Coonskin hat when he left Memphis. This is one place I like Crockett better than Boone. A man's got to have a touch of pizzazz, and a Coonskin hat delivers that. It was said that Daniel Boone wore a beaver Felt hat, and now that's pretty classy. And that's why I actually wear both, not at the same time. In case you're wondering, Josh Landbridge spilmaker makes my coonskin hats, and Seeing Hat Company made me my one hundred percent beaver Felt hat that I wear a lot. 00:36:47 Speaker 1: Now this is Crockett's body being identified. Of course, we don't know how Crockett died. Most accounts state that Crockett went down fighting, but of course those accounts, for the most part, are not from reliable sources. And then we have the account of Lieutenant Colonel Jose Enrique de Lapina, who states that Crockett identifies himself as a naturalist, one of seven amongst a group of survivors. Shortly after the battle, they are brought before Santa Anna. Where Santa Anna he's going to carry out the Tornello decree deathall pirates, and these men are executed. They are beaten to death by swords. 00:37:33 Speaker 2: Here's doctor Crisp. 00:37:35 Speaker 3: We're gonna learn that he one hundred percent believes in the accuracies of the day La Pina Diaries. But I want to ask him appointed question. Why do you think it's so important for the legacy of Texas for Crockett to have died fighting rather than, you know, just being taken to captive. Why is that so important do you think to people? 00:37:59 Speaker 4: Well, you can and get some clues from the paintings. I'm looking at the cover of my book Slothing the Alamo, and there's a painting done around nineteen one nineteen two. It's the last moments of Crockett's life when he's fighting there at the Alamo. And this figure of Crockett is actually copied from a figure of George Armstrong Custer, which was at the time the most famous painting in lithograph in America, it's the same pose. And what Custer is doing is he's fighting the Indians and he's about to die. And the way I try to interpret this is that people were saying, there are certain enemies that you never surrender to. 00:38:49 Speaker 3: I can understand how this idea could be important to a state's identity. Doctor Chris believes that it's rooted in ideas of racial supremacy, and when you hear him out, he makes a compelling point. But was that the true motivation of this painting and the whole reason that these people are passionate about Crockett died in battle? 00:39:11 Speaker 4: Why were people angry at me and writing and writing hate mail to me when I said, look, the Mexicans executed Crockett, and they were accusing me of being pro Mexican. They just couldn't take the idea that Crockett had allowed himself to be captured. I never used the S word, that is surrender. Crockett was captured when his weapons were no longer useful, when he was out of ammunition, when these half dozen men were taken, and Santa Anna got very angry. He said, I told you no prisoners today, and so he immediately ordered the men around him to execute the prisoners. He gave the order to the Zappadores, but instead of firing their guns, the Sappers didn't fire their guns, and and his own retinue, his own junior officers stepped forth and killed the men with swords and bayonets. They weren't executed firing squad style. They were executed with bayonets and swords. And what Dellapinia said, and it was mistranslated into English, but what he said into the Spanish is that they died moaning, but they did not humiliate themselves. That's what he said about the men who were killed. There's a mindset that anyone who says something like this about Crockett, you know that Crockett was killed after the battle, is somehow tearing down the Texan myth, the Texan personality, the Texan attitude, everything that makes Texans Texans. I'm a historian. I have to look at the evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming that Crockett was executed. 00:40:53 Speaker 3: Big if true. Big if true. Here's his thoughts on the day La Poena Diaries. 00:40:59 Speaker 4: The Deleapinia diary. Since I worked on it has been subjected to forensic analysis, paper, water damage, insect damage, inc. It passed every test, every test, and those are by experts at the University of Texas. So I don't have any doubt about the authenticity, and I don't have much doubt at all about the accuracy. I know it's authentic. I believe because they're corroborating witnesses that it was, that it was accurate. You know, history is not religion. You don't learn it on your mother's knee and just know it's true. You need to take a look at how you know what you know. A lot of people don't ever want to do that. They tell me what they believe. I say, how do you know? And most of them don't have a good answer for that. When I first started talking to high school students after I got into this controversy, one of the students said, listen, you can't change history, as if it all got written down by somebody, and now we have to take everything that was written down as true, no matter what the documents say, no matter what other eyewitnesses say. But most people who think they know history don't know how they know what they think they know. 00:42:20 Speaker 3: Doctor Chris believes the Daila poena diary to be accurate. Here's what our boy Wade thinks. 00:42:27 Speaker 1: I don't think Crockett was executed. I think Crockett died in battle, whether he was shot crossing the plaza or he went down fighting swinging his rifle as depicted in popular culture. The reason I don't believe Crockett was executed is well, I have a hard time buying that the most famous American at the time is brought face to face to Santa Ana. He's identified and executed, Whereas if Santa Anna realized who Crockett was, Santa Anna would have used him as leverage of American intervention in this war. I see that if Santa Anna truly realized who Crockett was, that Santa Anna may have spared him sent him back down to Mexico to show of a foreign involvement. Instead, Santa Anna, after the battle, sends down to Mexico the flag of the New Orleans Grays, showing American involvement, and he writes in a letter stating that he had seen the bodies of the leader Travis, the Braggart Bowie, and some man named Crockett. 00:43:41 Speaker 3: So that would mean that he didn't execute Crockett. He just saw the body of Crockett. 00:43:46 Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's what happened. I think Travis's slave Joe is identifying the bodies of the leaders, and of course Joe has the task of trying to find the bodies in the midst of this chaos. And Joe in his account that Crockett was surrounded by friend and foe, so like he died fighting quite possibly. 00:44:08 Speaker 5: Now. 00:44:09 Speaker 1: Now, of course, if Crockett was involved in an execution scenario, that could have occurred anywhere inside of the fort, and of course there's bodies strewn throughout. I just think the likelihood of that happening is it's It sounds too good to be true. Really, it sounds like well, Hollywood, Yeah, I think Crockett went down in battle. 00:44:35 Speaker 2: Hmm. 00:44:36 Speaker 3: Interesting. I love the passion of both of these positions. Are you starting to develop a gut feeling? Here's doctor crisp. 00:44:47 Speaker 4: So you know, you believe what you want to believe. Very often it becomes a matter of ideology and a matter of self definition, a self image. Dan Kilgore, who first published the Little book How did Davy Die? And who looked at the evidence and decided that dell opinion was correct. He was called a communist. People told me I ought to wash his mouth out with soap. They called him a smut peddler because they didn't want to hear his conclusion. And at one time Dan Kilgore said, well, I wouldn't mind so much if they had just read the book. But they didn't read it. They just saw the conclusion and they knew they didn't like him, and so then they attacked him personally. You know, there's a lot of that going on today. Still. I've experienced some of it myself, although I have, in fact made friends of some people who originally wanted to, as one woman said, gut me with a bowie knife because hanging is too. 00:45:43 Speaker 2: Good for me. 00:45:44 Speaker 4: I met her in front of the animal That's when she said that, and I said, have you read the article? She said no, I'm just a Crockett loyalist. She later became a good friend and decided I wasn't a bad guy after all. 00:45:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, we get to these ideas of our heroes, and then when they're torn down, we think that that that idea is. 00:46:08 Speaker 4: Well, let's be careful about using the Let's be careful about using the term toned down. People accused me of the very beginning when I first published this stuff, of saying that Crockett was a coward. And I said, wait, just a minute. Were the guys at Batan and Corrigador cowards? These were guys who held out until they just couldn't hold out anymore. Are these cowards? Absolutely? And so by saying that someone was, it's like John McCain, Is John McCain some kind of coward, some kind of you know, awful guy because he allowed himself to be captured. No, Crockett was a Crockett was a good guy. I like David Crockett more a lot more than I like Andrew Jackson. You know, Crockett was a very admirable person. He was a popular figure in America, and deservedly so. 00:47:03 Speaker 3: I asked Wade why he thought the way David Crockett died with such an important question. 00:47:09 Speaker 1: I think it has everything to do with closure. Everybody needs closure in their lives. Everybody needs answers, especially to big questions. And unfortunately, a lot of the big questions in our lives will go unanswered, and in regards to in regards to Crockett, will likely never know for sure. 00:47:38 Speaker 3: Wade is such a Crockett Alamo die hard that he's working on a fully illustrated book about Crockett. Basically, it's a really cool, detailed comic book that will be a couple hundred pages long when it's finished. I wanted to ask him why the Alamo was so special to him. 00:47:58 Speaker 1: It's a story of so few against so many. It's an underdog story. You have this congregation of all of these very colorful characters at this one spot. It's almost too good to be true, but it happens. 00:48:17 Speaker 3: I wanted to ask Wade why Crockett was so important to him. 00:48:22 Speaker 1: With David Crockett, my appeal to him has always been he's the common man, and he's the common man who is always hit with these obstacles in his life, death in the family, loss of his businesses, but he always finds the strength to keep going to as he would say, go ahead. Yeah, Crockett lost a lot, and that connected with me and my father because we lost a lot. My mother, my dad's wife, passed away in nineteen ninety eight, we lost the house to foreclosure, lost Uncle Jamie to cancer. So you know, when putting all of that together, trying to make sense of things and just you know, realizing that other people have been through the same thing you have and in you know the context, Crockett he took that pain, he took those struggles, and you know he pushed forward. 00:49:26 Speaker 3: Do we love Crockett because of his failure? Most American heroes we love because of how successful they were, But in almost every area of Crockett's life, he seemed to fail. Even at the very end of his life. 00:49:41 Speaker 2: They lost. 00:49:43 Speaker 3: The Alamo movie was John Wayne's passion project. He made several promotional and inspirational videos about his movie. I want us to hear from the Duke what he thinks about. 00:49:55 Speaker 2: The Alamo. 00:49:59 Speaker 5: Boy. Travis and Dickenson and the others had died in the Alimal held off an army for thirteen days, and it's hard to believe that they ever existed, had become legends before the smoke over the battle had blown away. What kind of men were they? Well, we know that they died and that they were heroes, But nobody wants to die, and nobody just decided to be a hero has to be forced on you. That's what happened to them, was forced on them. Because they were stuck with ideas like freedom and the rights of the individual, hatred a dictators. Crockett, for instance, refused to sign the Health of Allegiance. The Government of Texas in the late changed it to the Republican Government of Texas. Living free meant a lot more to them than cowering in security. Another thing about Crockett, When he left for the Alamo, he said his children this message, I hope you'll do the best you can. I'll do the same. Don't be uneasy about me. I am with my friends. Worked out just about that way. He stayed with his friends, and he did the best he could. 00:51:27 Speaker 3: I really don't think the motivations of those at the Alamo were as clarified as John Wayne is proposing in his movie promotion. Time has a way of honing the narrative of people's motivations, sometimes shaping them into things that are far more noble than they were. But sometimes it's the opposite, and it makes their motivations way worse than they actually were. The only thing we know for sure is that those men fought and died for a cause that would deeply affect the trajectory of America. Here's our old friend Robert Morgan with an overview of how Crockett affected America. 00:52:07 Speaker 6: Well, there's several ways that Crockett is very important to the history and the culture of this country. I think the first is he created the model of the backwoods politician with all the jokes and the backwood language and humor, which culminates in Abraham Lincoln. As a matter of fact, I mean there are many parallels between them their behavior in Washington. He has a huge impact on American literature, showing how you can create literature in the voice of the ordinary people in his autobiography and his speeches. That probably culminates in Huckleberry Finn, which has got to be one of the two or three greatest novels in American literature. He had a huge impact on oratory of bringing back woods preaching. It's really preaching that the greatest speaker in the American history is almost certainly Tecumse, who could move people to do whatever he told them to do. Never they wrote down so impressive white people, they had never seen anybody who could speak that way, and Crockett had some of that. He was from that world, and talking to the big talk was a very important thing. Also by dying at the Alamo. He was so famous that he influenced the sympathy of the whole country for Texas independence. Because of Texas independence, it was ten years later annexed as a state. Because it was annexed as a state, Polk was able to create the Mexican War by sending soldiers down there who were attacked on the Rio Grande by the Mexican Army. It's an excuse for fighting Mexico. Because of the Mexican War, Polk was able to claim paying fifteen million dollars for the whole West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California. 00:54:18 Speaker 3: The Texas Revolution would become a critical component of American expansion, and the social popularity supporting that revolution was dramatically influenced by crocketts popularity and death at the Alamo. Just hours after the Alamo fell, the Texas Declaration of Independence was proposed and passed, and that would eventually form the Republic of Texas, which stayed an independent nation from eighteen thirty six until December twenty ninth, eighteen forty five, when it was admitted into the Union of the United States as the twenty eighth state. The bodies of the dead at the Alamo were burned by the Mexican Army, and their ashes are now incorporated into the soil lying beneath the Alamo. After the report of Crockett's death, many claim to have seen him alive. Crockett's son John Wesley ended up going to Texas to investigate his father's death for himself. In the mid eighteen fifties, Crockett's widow, Elizabeth, and their two sons would receive three hundred and twenty acres of land for David's military service and move to Texas, where Elizabeth would live until her death at the age of seventy two on January thirty first, eighteen sixty in Hood. 00:55:39 Speaker 2: County, Texas. 00:55:42 Speaker 3: I can't thank you guys enough for listening to Bear Grease. I hope you'll share our podcast with a friend, and I look forward to talking with everybody on the Render about Crockett's death at the Alamo next week.

Save this episode