The death of David 'Davy' Crockett at the Battle of the Alamo (6 March 1836) has been understood as a heroic last stand at least since 1880 when Texan historian Reuben M. Potter dismissed eyewitness accounts that Crockett had surrendered as "calumny against the hero", insisting that Crockett fought to the end (Kilgore, 27).

Other historians then followed Potter's lead, and the prevailing image of Crockett's death became the one that concludes Disney Studio's Davy Crockett miniseries (1954 to 1955) in which Crockett, surrounded by enemy troops, the last man standing at the Alamo, swings his rifle valiantly at his attackers as the screen fades to black.

Potter was trying to establish a narrative for the State of Texas, and the reports of Crockett surrendering, or being taken captive and then executed, did not fit his vision. Reports of Alamo defenders surrendering, however, were circulating as early as 11 March 1836, less than a week after the battle, and the news that Crockett had been one of these was being repeated by 27 March 1836.

Potter's vision prevailed in the United States, however, until the 1970s when the diary of Colonel José Enrique de la Peña, published in Spanish in Mexico in 1955, was translated to English in 1975 by Carmen Perry and published by Texas A&M University Press under the title, With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution. The book aroused a storm of controversy over one passage in which Peña, a participant in the assault on the Alamo, describes the capture and execution of David Crockett.

The 13-day siege of the Alamo ended the morning of 6 March 1836 when the Mexican forces under President/General Antonio López de Santa Anna stormed the fort and, under orders to take no prisoners, massacred the garrison. Lt. Colonel William Barret Travis, commanding the Alamo, had sent out pleas for reinforcements regularly since the siege began – but no help came except for 32 volunteers from Gonzales.

The Alamo was impossible to defend with the few men under Travis' command – usually given as 185/187 to 250 – holding against thousands of well-equipped Mexican troops, and Travis made this clear in his letters. General Sam Houston, however, dismissed his reports as exaggerations. Houston did not believe Santa Anna could have possibly arrived in Texas as early as 23 February and claimed Travis was only posturing in an attempt to win support and take Houston's place as General of the Regular Army.

On 11 March, two Tejanos from San Antonio de Béxar – Andrés Barcena and Anselmo Vergara – appeared at Gonzales, where Houston was organizing his troops, to report that the Alamo had fallen. Houston accused them of being spies who had fabricated the report and had them arrested. Privately, however, he was concerned that the reports could be true and sent a letter that evening to Colonel James W. Fannin at Goliad, saying so. In his letter, he included the first mention in print of Alamo defenders surrendering:

After the fort was carried, seven men surrendered and called for Santa Anna and quarter…They were murdered by his order.

(Kilgore, 17)

Scholar Dan Kilgore continues:

Travelers from Texas arriving in New Orleans on March 27, 1836, three weeks after the assault, brought the first news of the battle. The New Orleans Post-Union reported that "Crockett and others had tried to surrender but were told there was no mercy for them." Northern newspapers reprinted this news, which was probably the first word received throughout the United States of the fall of the Alamo and of the death of David Crockett.

(17 to 18)

Ramon Martinez Caro, Santa Anna's personal secretary, recorded the surrender of "five men" directly after the battle. Although the number of men differs from the account Houston heard, the details are similar to the report given by Barcena and Vergara: General Castrillon found survivors after the Alamo, promised them his protection, and brought them to Santa Anna, who ordered them to be executed.

These are not the only accounts in circulation in 1836, as other officers present on the morning of 6 March 1836 gave similar reports, some of them in the days following the Battle of San Jacinto (21 April 1836) and others later on. These accounts were only suppressed because they did not fit the national narrative that required heroic deaths for all the Alamo defenders who, following Travis' lead in his famous "Victory or Death" letter, were said to have determined they would "never surrender or retreat."

When With Santa Anna in Texas was published in 1975, these early reports of Crockett's capture and execution had been long forgotten, and the prevailing understanding of Crockett's death came from two Alamo survivors, Susanna Dickinson and Joe, Travis' slave.

Dickinson, as she left the Alamo chapel the morning of 6 March, claimed she saw Crockett's body "surrounded by piles of assailants," and Joe reported seeing the same, Crockett's corpse "surrounded by heaps of the enemy slain" (Groneman, 22 to 23). Neither ever claimed they had seen Crockett die, only that they had seen him dead, but the "heaps of the enemy slain" report suggested the popular image of Crockett falling in battle. Kilgore, however, notes:

Whatever the two survivors observed while being escorted through Santa Anna's milling troops would have been seen under intense stress and even in the shadow of imminent death. Both said simply that they saw the bodies of Crockett and several others lying in the open yard. Both described the scene as it would appear if Crockett and the others had been brought before Santa Anna and executed.

(41)

Even so, when Peña's work appeared in English in 1975, it was dismissed as a forgery. There were grounds for suspicion as the original work, edited and self-published in 1955 in Mexico by Jesús Sanchez Garza, although it included documentation, seemed to come out of nowhere and, conveniently (according to some), at exactly the same time that 'Crockett mania' was sweeping across the United States owing to Disney's Davy Crockett miniseries.

This latter objection makes little sense, as the book was published in Mexico, which did not experience 'Crockett mania,' and, further, as it was published in Spanish, scholars in the United States did not even know it existed. When it came out in English in 1975, however, the first point – "where did the original manuscript come from?" – became paramount. Garza never said where Peña's diary had been stored for over one hundred years or how he had obtained it.

As noted, the controversy over the authenticity of the work was focused primarily on the one passage describing the death of David Crockett, and many scholars devoted enormous effort to debunking the book. An aspect of the account that seems to have enraged many in the 1970s (and later) was that Crockett is said to have surrendered – but Peña never says that – only that some defenders survived the battle and were brought by Castrillon to Santa Anna. Still, as that was considered 'surrender,' it became a sore spot that required discrediting the entire book.

In October 2001, Professor David B. Gracy II of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin established the authenticity of With Santa Anna in Texas, concluding that the work "is, indeed, what it is purported to be" (Crisp, 102). Although there are still some scholars who choose to reject the work, Peña's book, including his account of Crockett's death, is today generally accepted as an accurate report of the events as presented.

The following excerpt is taken from With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution by José Enrique del la Peña, translated and edited by Carmen Perry, pp. 52 to 54. The narration begins after the Battle of the Alamo has ended, when Santa Anna tries to boost the morale of the troops who had suffered heavy losses in the early morning assault on the fort.

Toward the end of the passage, Peña addresses Santa Anna's falsifying the number of the Alamo defenders in his official report – claiming there were over 600 – when, according to Peña, there were no more than 253. He speculates that this was done to make the fall of the Alamo an honorable victory in that, in Santa Anna's fiction, he had been facing a large force of professional soldiers and so his loss of 400 to 600 men was justifiable.

Actually, of course, Santa Anna had launched an unnecessary assault on a crumbling fortification that could have easily been reduced by cannon fire or by continuing the siege until the defenders were forced to surrender for lack of food, water, and ammunition. Further, most of the Alamo defenders were not professional soldiers, and it is to their credit that they held the fort for as long as they did and took so many of their enemies with them when they fell.

The general then addressed his crippled battalions, lauding their courage and thanking them in the name of their country. But one hardly noticed in his words the magic that Napoleon expresses in his, which, Count Segur assures us, was impossible to resist.

The vivas were seconded icily, and silence would hardly have been broken if I, seized by one of those impulses triggered by enthusiasm or one formed to avoid reflection, which conceals the feelings, had not addressed myself to the valiant chasseurs of Aldama, hailing the republic and them, an act which, carried out in the presence of the commander on whom so much unmerited honor had been bestowed, proved that I never flatter those in power.

Shortly before Santa Anna's speech, an unpleasant episode had taken place, which, since it occurred after the end of the skirmish, was looked upon as base murder and which contributed greatly to the coolness that was noted.

Some seven men survived the general massacre and, under the protection of General Castrillon, they were brought before Santa Anna. Among them was one of great stature, well-proportioned, with regular features, in whose face there 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 Bexar 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 Castrillon'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 moment of 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. It was rumored that General Sesma was one of them; I will not bear witness to this, for though present, I turned away horrified in order not to witness such a barbarous scene.

Do you remember, comrades, that fierce moment which struck us all with dread, which made our souls tremble, thirsting for vengeance, just a few moments before? Are your resolute hearts not stirred and still full of indignation against those who so ignobly dishonored their swords with blood? As for me, I confess that the very memory of it makes me tremble and that my ear can still hear the penetrating, doleful sound of the victims.

To whom was this sacrifice useful and what advantage was derived by increasing the number of victims? It was paid for dearly, though it could have been otherwise had these men been required to walk across the floor carpeted with the bodies over which we stepped, had they been rehabilitated generously and required to communicate to their comrades the fate that awaited them if they did not desist from their unjust cause. They could have informed their comrades of the force and resources that the enemy had.

According to documents found among these men, and to subsequent information, the force within the Alamo consisted of 182 men; but according to the number counted by us, it was 253. Doubtless the total did not exceed either of these two, and in any case the number is less than that referred to by the commander in chief in his communique, which contends that in the excavations and the trenches alone more than 600 bodies had been buried. What was the object of this misrepresentation? Some believe that it was done to give greater importance to the episode, others, that it was done to excuse our losses and to make it less painful.