Legends of The Alamo
©Lee Paul

"The defenders were dragged out like dead cattle and stripped. Burn them, Santa Anna ordered, and wood and oil were brought to consume the remains of 182 men. Never in the history of man has so few waged such a desperate struggle against so many in the name of freedom."

Alamo legends, of which there are many, grace the topics of Texan conversations each year on San Jacinto Day, April 21. For without the valiant efforts of the Alamo defenders, General Sam Houston would not have had time to weld a force that won Texas its independence. Yet for all its infamy and all the research into the events leading up to 6 March 1836, little is known about the actual 13-day siege itself. All the defenders died, leaving only rumors and legends behind. With conflicting testimony from Mexican soldiers and noncombatant survivors, history is left with the unsettling truth that no one really knows anything for certain.

It began simple enough. "We the People of the Province of Texas, protesting the rectitude of our intentions before the Supreme Judge of the Universe, declare that the chains which bound us...are forever dissolved; that we are free and independent; that we have the right to establish our own government; and that henceforth all legitimate authority shall emanate from the People, to whom alone this right belongs."

When Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara made his speech before an impassioned crowd on 6 April 1813, he not only summoned the seed of revolt which led to Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, he also fostered the seed of independence which raged across Texas fifteen years later. For when Mexico gained freedom from Spain, she gained a tyrant of another sort, a tyrant most Mexican Federalists and all Texan Anglos abhorred. That man was Generalisimo Antonio Miguel de Santa Anna Perez de Labron, a self-proclaimed President and Dictator of all Mexico.

Santa Anna was alternately a hero and a villain in his own country, rising to power five times before his death in 1876. Cited for bravery in battle, he defeated a Spanish invasion, overthrew the government in the name of liberalism, and later lost a leg in a battle attempting to repel the French in the 1838 Pastry War. On the flip side of his story, he repudiated the democracy guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of 1824, a democracy which extended to all people on Mexican soil, and installed himself as Dictator. Ruthless to opposition, many Mexican villages felt the same harsh wrath he unleashed on Texas.

To Texans, Santa Anna was a man completely without honor. When he set aside the Mexican Constitution in 1831, opting for Nationalism and the removal of all foreigners from Mexican soil, rumblings of revolt swept across Texas like wildfire. And almost as if by fate, he forced the circumstances which led to a ruined mission in the heart of San Antonio becoming the linchpin in American history. For by winning its independence, Texas forged the way for expansion to the Pacific, which added a million square miles of territory and more than doubled the size of the American Nation at that time.

Since the siege of the Alamo, which began 23 February 1836 and ended in a blaze of glory on March 6, the mystique continues to grow, with theories and interpretations rehashed, stirred, and served again with viewpoints drawn from the particular prejudice of the author. Still, with a lacking of first-hand accounts, nothing fully explains the fact that some 183 men, for whatever reason, fought to the death in the Alamo after General Sam Houston, on 17 January 1836, ordered it blown up and abandoned (Note:  183 men died, but only 182 bodies were burned by Santa Anna...one body was allowed to be buried.). These men came from everywhere: Tennessee, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Georgia, Connecticut, Alabama, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Rhode Island, Ohio, Vermont, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Louisiana, Illinois, as well as England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Germany, Denmark, and France. And, of course, Texas...all parts of Texas. Everyone, however, became Texans in their sacrifice.

Before 6 March 1836, few really cared why an old broken-down ruin of a Spanish mission was known by such an ignoble name as "The Alamo." Since that date, however, The Alamo has become as much a legend as the men who fought here. Here, then, are some legends from the Alamo.

There’s an old rumor which claims the Mission now known as The Alamo isn’t really THE Alamo. This is also one story not mentioned very loudly around Texans, for obvious reasons, because Texans tend to take it the wrong way. Actually, the people who bring it up don’t know what they are talking about, either. The Alamo is THE Alamo and always has been THE Alamo. It just has another Christian name.

San Antonio has always been predominately Spanish. In 1691, a Spanish missionary expedition, looking for a more suitable site to build another mission, chose the area because of its beauty. Their first attempt the year before in the piney woods of East Texas at Nachodoches with SAN FRANCISCO DE LOS TEJAS was a complete disaster---not so much from trying to Christianize the hostile Caddo Indians, which definitely wasn’t going very well, but more from the location chosen. The log mission stood hidden in a tiny clearing amid towering pine trees, not to mention the nearby rivers, which flooded with every rainstorm.

When the missionary expedition stopped under a spreading cottonwood tree in Central Texas and surveyed the surrounding hills and the gently-flowing river at their feet, they were enthralled. The military commander, Domingo Teran de los Rios, called the spot "the most beautiful part of New Spain." Father Damien Massanet agreed. Since it was June 13, the feast day of Saint Anthony, Father Massanet promptly named it: "I call this place San Antonio de Padua, because it was his day."

Two years later, the friars at the tiny mission in the piney woods finally gave up trying to convert the Indians. Deciding that martyrdom was no way to teach the heathens anything, they buried the mission bell, torched the dry walls of the church, and walked away. Once back in Mexico, they talked of building a mission at the San Antonio de Padua site, only Father Massanet insisted it should be a PRESIDIO, a fort built and manned by enough armed men to force respect for the missionaries. Shocked church authorities sent Father Massanet a letter, part of which said, "The [church] marvels at the proposal of violence and the use of the force of arms in the conversion of these savages to our holy faith...."

Seven years later found the Franciscan Seminary in Mexico City mulling over the idea of building missions like stepping stones across the isolated outposts and the colonized parts of New Spain---with an army contingent, of course. In 1699, construction began on SAN JUAN BAUTISTA on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande at Laredo. A presidio also went up nearby for the Spanish soldiers. On New Year’s Day, 1700, SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO was begun about ten miles further upriver.

By the time civilization crept into Central Texas to San Antonio de Padua in 1718, a new mission stood near the river. It was SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO, moved from below the Rio Grande to its new site and renamed SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO, after the Viceroy of New Spain, the Marques de Valero. It also stood just about halfway from the Rio Grande to new missions being established in East Texas. The PRESIDIO DE SAN ANTONIO DE BEXAR, named in honor of the Viceroy’s father, was built across the river from the mission. The area grew to become the capital of New Spain.

At first, the Mission was situated on the east bank of the San Antonio River at the junction with San Pedro Creek, but when the river flooded a year later, the Fathers wisely decided to move it to the west bank and further away from the meandering course of the stream. Whiplash winds from one of the notorious Gulf Coast hurricanes flattened the flimsy structures and the Mission was moved once again, this time upstream and to the east side of the river where it now stands. The Presidio followed every move of the Mission.

Twenty years later, the crumbling adobe walls were replaced with stone, and the stone church constructed, a measure that saved the Fathers and Christian Indians within the fortifications of the church from certain death from marauding Apaches on the warpath. Directly across the river on the west bank, the city of San Antonio de Bexar flourished around the Presidio. It grew into the sprawling metropolis of San Antonio.

With the success of SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO, the river corridor through the Central Texas hills all the way to the Gulf Coast soon became dotted with missions. One mission, thought by the Fathers of SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO to be in direct competition with their own, lay not quite four miles downriver on the west bank. It was the customary practice to establish missions two leagues apart (about seven miles), but the Fathers of SAN JOSE Y SAN MIGUEL DE AGUAYO convinced the New Spain authorities that by following the twisting and turning San Antonio River, their mission was two leagues away. Ironically, SAN JOSE Y SAN MIGUEL DE AGUAYO was destined to be the Queen of Missions in all Texas---until her shoddy sister upriver achieved infamy years later.

By 1758, the San Antonio area boasted five missions, all of which are not only still in use today, but are within nine miles of each other. One, NUESTRA SENORA DE LA PURISIMA CONCEPCION, became the site of the Battle of Concepcion in October 1835, when Stephen Austin, Jim Bowie, James Fannin, Juan Seguin and a detachment of ninety volunteers took on a force of some 400 regulars of the Mexican army under General Martin Pefecto de Cos. The Texans lost one man, the Mexican army about sixty.

Eventually, as civilization crept west of the Mississippi River, the Spanish began secularizing their missions. They started with SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO in 1793. When Mexico began its campaign for independence ten years later, Spanish troops from the city of San Jose y Santiago del Alamo de Parras in Coahuila-Texas moved into the now abandoned mission and stayed for many years. Since it was the common practice to identify the men by the full name of their town, and their town was named after a landmark cottonwood tree growing on a ranch near Parras, the Spanish soldiers became known as "Los Hombres del Alamo." SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO became known as EL ALAMO. (Parras today is called Viesca and is located in Coahuila, Northern Mexico.)

Whether or not this is the sole reason why the old fortress achieved such an informal name is still a matter of debate. Some claim the nickname really stemmed from the cottonwood trees that lined the river in front of the church. Alamo is Spanish for cottonwood. In any event, by the time the Texans got there, the old fortress had long been known as The Alamo, although its official, Christian name is still SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO.

Another legend of the Alamo is the death of David Crockett who, without doubt (along with James Bowie), was the most famous defender of the siege. Shortly after the capture of Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, one month after the Alamo fell, rumors began to circulate that Crockett did not die alongside his men in the final moments of the Alamo. Conflicting testimony claimed that Crockett and a handful of others---including Lieutenant James Butler Bonham, who is today thought to be Travis’s second cousin and who rode back into the Alamo on March 3 knowing full well that it was a death trap---survived the siege, only to be destroyed on the orders of an enraged Santa Anna a few minutes later. True...or not? No one may ever really know.

Forty-nine-year-old Davy Crockett was a national folk hero and legend in his own time long before the events of the Alamo. Born 17 August 1786 in a wilderness cabin on the Nolachucky River in the heart of Creek country in East Tennessee, he struck out on his own at the tender age of twelve to help drive a herd of cattle to Virginia. Returning home a few months later, he departed the next year---this time for good---after a dispute with his father over schooling. By 1813, he was in command of a group of scouts under General Andrew Jackson in the Creek Indian War.

In 1821, he was elected to the Tennessee legislature for the first time, representing a district of eleven western counties in the state. He later served two terms in the United States Congress, where he enthralled America with his honesty and conscientiousness at a time when political skullduggery was the rule. Friends described him as being extremely generous and polite which, when coupled with his good sense of humor and keen sense of fairness, earned him respect from even the most stalwart of adversaries.

Crockett was always one for adventure. When defeated at the polls for a third term in Congress in 1835, he turned in typical Crockett fashion to the cause of Texan freedom, as a way to completely cut off one phase of his life and begin another. Before leaving for Texas, however, he gave his constituents one last speech, a speech pure Crockett in every sense of the word. He concluded "...by telling them that I was done with politics for the present, and that they might all go to hell, and I would go to Texas."

Crockett and his Tennessee Mounted Volunteers, estimated to be as many as seventeen, arrived in San Antonio around February 9, after having been chased into town by Mexican soldiers who only abdicated when they saw the "independent flag flying from the battlements of the fortress of Alamo." On the 23rd, with the first of the massive Mexican army on the horizon, Crockett and the other defenders began the retreat across the river into the Alamo.

The old fortress spread over three acres, as it surrounded a rough rectangle of bare ground about the size of a gigantic city block, called the "plaza." On the south side of this plaza, and detached from the Church by a distance of some ten feet, was a long one-story building called the Low Barracks. Adobe huts spread along the west side, which was protected by a twelve-foot-high stone wall. A similar wall ran across the north side. A two-story building, called the Long Barracks/Convent/Hospital, covered the east side, along with the Church, which sat in the southeast corner, facing west.

Crockett and his men defended a low, wooden palisade erected to breach the gap between the Church and the Low Barracks of the south wall. The position of the Low Barracks was in front of, and perpendicular to, the right side of the Church when facing it today, an area which is now covered in flagstone. This palisade consisted of two rows of pointed, wooden stakes with rocks and earth between the rows. The outer row of stakes was higher than the inner row with the earth and rocks serving as a firing step. All combatants considered the position to be the most vulnerable and hardest-to-defend area of the fortress, but Crockett and the Tennessee-ans were sharpshooters, expert marksmen, the best the small Texan army had. They held their position until death.

As news of Crockett’s death swept across America, most stories portrayed him as standing in the thickest of the fighting, using his trusty flintlock like a club, until being cut down by Mexican bayonets and bullets. And for many years, a large painting to that effect graced the north wall of the Chapel. Well...maybe that's the way it really happened. Then again...maybe not.

Minutes after the fighting ceased, Santa Anna instructed Alcalde Francisco Ruiz to identify the bodies of the dead Texans, especially those of the leaders. According to the Alcalde, "Toward the west and in a small fort opposite the city, we found the body of Colonel Crockett...and we may infer that he either commanded that point or was stationed there as a sharpshooter." The only logical explanation is that the small courtyard bounded by the palisade on the south, the Church on the east, and the Hospital on the north, where Crockett and the Tennessee-ans were stationed, was considered a small fort all its own.

But General Martin Perfecto de Cos one month later from his prison cell in Anahuac, the chief Texas port on Galveston Bay, told Doctor George Patrick that Davy Crockett survived the battle. According to General Cos, Crockett locked himself in one of the rooms of the barracks. When the Mexican soldiers discovered him, Crockett explained that he was on a visit and "had accidentally got caught in the Alamo after it was too late to escape." Cos further said that Crockett asked him to intercede with Santa Anna, asking for mercy, which Cos agreed to do---only Santa Anna had ordered "no quarter" and was incensed at such a request. The Mexican President refused to spare Crockett’s life.

As late as 1840, rumors of Crockett surviving the siege and working a prison sentence in the Salinas Mine near Guadalajara, Mexico, floated into Texas. Although another story shortly thereafter claimed it a hoax, Davy’s son, John Crockett, who was then a congressman from Tennessee, had sufficient doubt as to his father’s death to write the Secretary of State, asking that the Secretary "institute an investigation of the matter through the minister to Mexico."

Writer Josephus Conn Guild presented yet another version of Davy Crockett’s death in 1878. According to Guild, Crockett and five others survived the siege. When overrun by the Mexican soldiers, the Alamo survivors surrendered to General Manuel Castrillon under promise of his protection, "...but being taken before Santa Anna, they were by his orders instantly put to death. Colonel Crockett fell with a dozen swords sheathed in his breast."

What does it all mean? It means that no one really knows exactly what happened. Did Crockett and five other Texans face the furious Santa Anna in the courtyard of the Chapel, only to be destroyed on orders from the Mexican Dictator? Or did Crockett die in battle with as many as twenty-four enemy dead surrounding him? One account from Mexican Sergeant Felix Nunez related details of the death of a Texan on the palisade as, "He was a tall American of rather dark complexion and had a long buckskin coat and a round cap without any bill, made of fox skin with the long tail hanging down his back. This man apparently had a charmed life. Of the many soldiers who took deliberate aim at him and fired, not one ever hit him. On the contrary, he never missed a shot." He may not have been describing Davy Crockett, but who else dressed in that fashion?

Susannah Dickerson, one of the noncombatant survivors of the battle, knew well David Crockett on sight. She stated in her memoirs that she saw Crockett and a handful of others lying mangled and mutilated between the "church and the two-story barrack building and even remember seeing his peculiar cap laying by his side," as she was led from the scene by a Mexican officer.

Perhaps Reuben Marmaduke Potter had it right all along when he wrote, "David Crockett never surrendered to bear or tiger, Indian or Mexican."

There’s also a strange tale surrounding James Bowie, namesake of the famous Bowie knife engineered by his brother Rezin, and finder of the old Spanish silver mine of San Saba fame. It claims that Bowie was the last to die in the fighting at the Alamo, a story which can never be proved one way or the other.

Jim Bowie, whose exploits made his name familiar in almost every American home during his lifetime, was born in Kentucky in 1796, the ninth of ten children in a family with a remarkable ancestry. According to family tradition, his grandfather and two brothers emigrated from Scotland to America some time before the American Revolution, carrying with them a seal bearing the Bowie coat of arms. This coat of arms indicated noble birth, which prompted a descendant to trace the Bowies back to the famed Scot, Rob Roy, and his wife, Helen McGregor. Jim’s father, Rezin Sr., was a member of General Francis Marion’s (The Swamp Fox) dragoons during the Revolutionary War, and his life rivaled that of his famous son’s for adventure, excitement, and romance.

When Jim was fifteen-years-old, the family settled at Bayou Boeuf, Rapides Parish, Louisiana. And here, Bowie made his living sawing and selling lumber. Although he later operated a sugar plantation with his brother Rezin, using the first steam-powered sugar mill in Louisiana, it was his involvement with pirate Jean Lafitte in the slave trade that earned him a measure of notoriety. Never one to let insult go unchallenged, he also became involved in a brawl on a Mississippi sand bar just above Natchez in September 1827. It was this fracas which firmly established him as a legendary fighter throughout the South.

The "Sand Bar Fight," as it was called, began as a duel between two long-warring parties from Rapides Parish. There were six men on one side and six on the other, and the duel was to be fought between one man chosen to represent each side. The remaining men were to act as witnesses, seconds, and surgeons. The original orderliness of the fight, however, quickly erupted in a wild melee whereby everyone attempted to kill everyone in the opposition. Bowie, clasping his huge knife covered in blood in one hand and a pistol in the other, suffered several severe wounds in the fight and was hauled from the battle in what was thought to be a dying condition.

Bowie left for Texas in 1828 to settle in San Antonio de Bexar. He became a Catholic, as decreed by Mexican law for anyone owning land on Mexican soil, and pursued land dealings, some of which were shady in nature, but lucrative nonetheless, making him modestly wealthy almost overnight. Bowie also became a Mexican citizen and married into the Mexican aristocracy which, more than anything else, gained him the friendship, confidence, and support of the Mexican population. By 1831, he was fluent in Spanish. It was also in 1831 that another chapter was added to his legend.

That year, Bowie befriended an old Lipan Apache chief named Xolic in the hopes of discovering the whereabouts of an old Spanish mine near San Saba, which the Lipans used as their source of silver. After Xolic adopted Bowie into the tribe and showed him the location of the mine, Bowie returned to San Antonio, where he recruited his brother Rezin and eight others to follow him into the hills after the silver. Before he could relocate the mine, however, Xolic died, and the new chief, Tres Manos, ambushed the party with more than 200 warriors. It was eight days after the Lipans broke off the attack, due to heavy casualties, before Bowie’s wounded were healed enough to travel. In those eight days, Bowie scouted---and found---the legendary missing mine. Although thought to be anywhere within a 25-mile radius of the old presidio at San Saba, it’s location is a secret Bowie took with him to the Alamo, a secret that has baffled and frustrated treasure hunters ever since.

In spite of his many shady undertakings, Bowie was always welcomed into the homes of the highest society. He also had the savvy and respect of the men of the frontier. Since he had been a Colonel in a Texas Ranger company in 1830, he carried this title and authority when he answered the call for Texan volunteers.

At the outset of the siege, Colonel Bowie was a seasoned frontiersman and Indian fighter, forty years old, and described as a "normally calm, mild man until his temper was aroused." Absolutely fearless, he commanded the volunteers. Twenty-six-year-old Colonel William Travis, on the other hand, was a lawyer from Alabama with a somewhat dramatic temper prone to moods of melancholy. A strict disciplinarian, he commanded the regulars and cavalry. The difference in their personalities, coupled with the difference in their ages, resulted in the two men sharing a somewhat antagonistic competition for command of the entire garrison. On one point they did agree: the Alamo was the most important stronghold of Texas.

Sometime around February 21, Bowie decided to help construct a lookout post or gun garrison along one of the walls. Although there are conflicting opinions on what actually happened, most accounts think that he lost his balance on the scaffold and fell eight feet to the ground, breaking either his hip or his leg. This incident has also been called "hogwash" by other historians, who claim that Bowie never suffered any accident while at the Alamo. Whether or not he also suffered from tuberculosis, diphtheria, or the dreaded typhoid-pneumonia is also a matter of conjecture. In any event, Bowie’s incapacitation around that date ended the confrontation of who was to command the fortress because Colonel Travis had full authority from that point onward.

Bowie took to his sick bed in the Low Barracks on or about the second day of the siege, and there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that he would have succumbed to his illness in a matter of days had not the Mexican soldiers dispatched him when they did.

Since Davy Crockett was also a volunteer, he and Jim Bowie became friends. In writing of their first meeting when Bowie drew his huge knife to cut a strap, Crockett said, "I wish I may be shot if the bare sight of it wasn’t enough to give a man of a squeamish stomach the cholic, especially before breakfast." On the final day of the 13-day siege, legend claims that it was Crockett who stole into Bowie’s room and gave the sick man two pistols to be used for defense.

Most accounts agree that Bowie was found dead on his cot, but since his nurse Madame Candelaria never told the exact same story twice about the sequence of events, who really knows what happened that day? In one instance, Madame Candelaria testified that Bowie died the day before the final onslaught. On another occasion, she claimed she received two wounds from the Mexican soldiers when she threw her body over Bowie’s to shield him during the attack. Since the soldiers weren't inside the Low Barracks until the very end of the assault, it seems unlikely that she would shield a corpse. She also said that Bowie fired both his pistols, dropping Mexican soldiers in the doorway to his room, and killed another with his great knife before being overrun.

Bowie must have lived through the battle, dying in the fall of the Alamo with the other defenders. But last? Everyone agrees that the last position to fall was the Church, and Bowie was nowhere near the Church. He wasn’t even close to the Church. As the Mexican soldiers stormed over the walls of the compound, the defenders raced to the Long Barracks, where there was no exit, and to the Church. None of them ferried a sick man on a cot.

Still, the Mexican soldiers could have taken pity on Bowie when they saw him more dead than alive, prostrate on his cot in his room in the Low Barracks. In fact, an odd report claims that as the funeral pyres blazed high and soldiers heaped dead Texans on the pile, some soldiers carried out a man on a cot, a man the captain of the detail identified as "no other than the infamous Bowie." Although the man was still alive, Santa Anna ordered him thrown into the fire along with the rest. Would Santa Anna be so cruel? Yes, if the man were a Mexican citizen fighting in the Texan army. Jim Bowie was a Mexican citizen, having married nineteen-year-old Ursula Veramendi in April 1831, the daughter of Don Juan Veramendi, the vice-governor of Coahuila-Texas....

Hidden graves are always the basis of legends, especially when associated with old battlegrounds and folk heroes. The defenders of the Alamo are no exception. Their burial site is possibly the most famous hidden grave in the history of America, and its location is the subject of many debates. But will it ever be found? "Not very likely," historians agree. Its location is one of the best kept secrets of the Lone Star State.

According to legend, all the defenders of the garrison are still there---lost for all eternity somewhere very near the old mission’s walls. A few hours after the final assault on the Alamo, the bodies of 182 Texans were gathered by the Mexicans, laid in three heaps, mingled with fuel, and burned. One defender, Jose Gregorio Esparza of Juan Seguin’s native Texan volunteers, called "Tejanos," escaped cremation because his brother Francisco was a member of Mexican General Martin Perfecto de Cos’ Leal Presidios. When Santa Anna arrived, Francisco was ordered to stand by in case he was needed. After the battle, Francisco asked General Cos, who was Santa Anna’s brother-in-law, if he could remove the body of his brother and not burn him with the others. Gregorio Esparza (1808-1836) was found in a small room in the Chapel with a bullet wound in his chest and a sword wound in his side. He was buried in Campo Santo, on the west side of San Pedro Creek, where Milam Square is now located.

Immediately after the funeral pyres died down, citizens from the village of San Antonio de Bexar, which was often called either San Antonio or Bexar in those days, across the river from the Alamo, wanted to give the Texans a burial similar in style to the burials afforded the fallen Mexican soldiers.  No, declared Santa Anna, and that was the end of it.

At this point, the burial legend becomes hopelessly confused. One story claims that Francisco Antonio Ruiz, the Alcalde of San Antonio, secretly collected the remains and buried them after the pyres stopped smoldering---all under Santa Anna’s nose and without El Presidente knowing of it. Francisco’s father, Don Francisco Ruiz, opposed Santa Anna’s tyranny and treatment of the Texans. Favoring liberty, he was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2. It’s his son’s testimony which gives the numbers of the Alamo defenders as 182: "The men burnt were one hundred and eighty-two. I was an eyewitness...." (Jose Gregorio Esparza, remember, was buried, not burned with the rest.)

Another story claims that three months after the massacre and after Santa Anna’s defeated army had returned to Mexico, a company of Texas Rangers under the command of Captain Byrd Lockhart (1782-1839) found the remains and promptly buried them in an unknown site near the old Church. Byrd Lockhart had raised Ranger volunteers in the towns of Gonzales and Milam before rejoining Travis’s command at the Alamo. These volunteers were to deal with the Comanche Indians, who were taking advantage of the revolution and threatening the settlements. Sometime after the beginning of the siege on 23 February 1836, Lockhart and Andrew Sowell left the fortress under Travis’s orders to obtain supplies for the garrison. The two men were delayed in Gonzales, buying cattle and supplies, and were unable to return to the Alamo before its fall.

Still another legend claims that as late as April 1838, the area of the funeral pyres could still be seen. Big Foot Wallace (1817-1899), who became a famous Texas Ranger and a legend himself, in his first visit to San Antonio that Spring, turned up pieces of charred bones while raking among the ashes. Legend says he also dug a hole and buried all he could find.

The most accepted theory is the Juan Seguin burial story. Juan Nepomuceno Seguin (1806-1890) was just twenty-nine years old at the time of the Alamo siege and one of the most influential citizens in Texas. He favored all Anglos and counted all Texan leaders as his close, personal friends. At the outbreak of the revolution in the Fall of 1835, he raised a company of Tejanos from Bexar and the surrounding ranches and led these men in the Battle of Concepcion on October 25. (MISSION NUESTRA SENORA DE LA PURISIMA CONCEPCION is located about five miles south of the Alamo, and Juan Seguin’s Tejanos fought with Jim Bowie’s command.)

Seguin and his Tejanos also participated in the Storming of Bexar in December, which sent General Cos from Texas in defeat and prompted the invasion from Santa Anna. Commissioned a Captain in the regular Texas cavalry in January 1836, Seguin took his Tejanos into the Alamo and joined Colonel Travis’ command. On February 29, Seguin and one of his men, Antonio Cruz y Oroche, slipped out of the Alamo, under cover of darkness on orders from Travis, to rally reinforcements. Using Jim Bowie’s horse, Seguin headed toward Fannin’s command at Goliad, and then on to Gonzales when he learned Fannin could not help the men at the Alamo. By March 6, his meager reinforcements were at Cibolo Creek on the eastern outskirts of San Antonio, watching the western horizon, as great billows of black smoke floated into the sky. Juan Seguin vowed to himself and his dead friends, when I return I will see that your ashes have a proper burial. You will not have died in vain. He then turned his men eastward to rejoin Sam Houston’s forces.

According to the Seguin legend, it was a full year before he could return to San Antonio, a year in which "REMEMBER THE ALAMO!" remained on every tongue in America. The Alamo defenders were also still resting in their funeral pyres near the old Chapel, exposed to wind, rain, and all elements of time. Sequin, who had just been promoted to Colonel in charge of the Texan Army in San Antonio, immediately set about collecting the remains for proper burial. He posted this message on the town’s main plaza:

ON FEBRUARY 23RD AFTER MASS, WE WILL PAY FINAL RESPECTS TO OUR FRIENDS WHO DIED AT THE ALAMO. JUAN SEGUIN, COMMANDER LT. COL.

As well as could be done, Seguin had the bones and ashes placed in a large coffin. With an eulogy that began, "These remains, which we have had the honor to carry on our shoulders, are the remains of those valiant heroes who died at the Alamo...," he laid the bodies to rest with full military honors.

Supposedly, the site chosen for interment was a beautiful patch of earth in a nearby peach orchard outside the village and only a few hundred yards from the Chapel. But with the passage of time and without any marker on the burial site, the location of the grave became lost. It’s completely hidden by the city of San Antonio, which totally surrounds the Alamo compound, and irrecoverably lost to history.

But, is this peach orchard theory really the way Colonel Seguin conducted the burial? Or is it a description of the burial conducted by the Rangers, Big Foot Wallace, or Francisco Ruiz? Or by someone else as yet unidentified? One of the most asked questions is how did Colonel Seguin manage to find the ashes after they reposed on the Texas prairie for a few days short of one year? Were the remains, as some claim, already collected and preserved by some good Samaritan just waiting for an authority like Colonel Seguin to come along and formalize the ceremony? Incredibly, no one knows.

That fact is that although Colonel Seguin respectfully buried his fallen friends while Antonio Oroche softly whistled the tune, Will You Come to My Bower?, he did not adequately mark the ultimate grave site. He even complicated the issue shortly before his death when he responded to an inquiry about the burial site. He wrote that the ashes were found in three places and that the two smallest piles were placed in a coffin with the names of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett carved inside the lid. This would also lend credence to the Big Foot Wallace account of finding a pile of the remains when he visited the city in 1838.

Seguin further wrote that ‘I placed them in an urn and buried it in the Cathedral of San Fernando immediately in front of the alter---that is in front of the railing near the steps.’ At the time, Seguin’s version of the interment was largely dismissed as the ramblings of an old man with a frail memory, especially since it was known that he had the funeral ceremony conducted in the Cathedral. Everyone suspected that he had confused the funeral ceremony with the burial ceremony. But then in July 1936, a coffin was unearthed in the Cathedral at the exact same spot that Sequin had suggested! Inside the rotting old casket were charred remains, some bones, and even uniform fragments. In the excitement that followed, many thought that the remains of the Alamo defenders had finally been located---until astute historians pointed out that the men of the Alamo did not wear uniforms. Although a burial certainly took place in the Cathedral and Sequin was aware of it, the identity of the person or persons who were buried remains a mystery.

Another old legend stems from the misconception that Texans at the Alamo went to war to gain independence as a Republic. Although that was the ultimate outcome, it isn’t technically accurate. The Alamo Texans, which included many Mexican defenders, didn’t know the Texas Constitutional Convention had voted for independence on 2 March 1836. And not knowing this, many theorize that they may have gone to battle in honor of the Mexican Federal Constitution of 1824, a constitution which gave Mexico its freedom from Spain and which guaranteed the rights of everyone, Anglos and Mexicans, living on Mexican soil.

At the time of the final attack on the Alamo on March 6, Travis fully expected the Texas Constitutional Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos to make a declaration of independence. Because of the siege, however, he never learned the vote. As Reuben Marmaduke Potter wrote in 1860, "The Alamo defenders died for a Republic of whose existence they never knew."

And this brings up the legend of the flag. All accounts agree that there was a flag flying over the Mission during the siege. There are even several paintings depicting that fact. But which flag was it? The Mexican Federal flag of 1824? The Lone Star of Texas flag? What about the "Come and Take It" flag of Gonzales?

Everyone disagrees on this issue, possibly because of the stories, myths, and legends surrounding the events of that day. It’s true that because of the siege, the Alamo defenders had no way of knowing what was happening elsewhere in Texas, but they did know that the Constitutional Convention of March 1 was to decide the issue of independence once and for all. Travis sent two delegates, Sam Maverick, after whom the term "maverick" was coined because he did not brand his cattle on the open range, and Jesse Badgett to represent the defenders at the convention and sign just such a declaration. The two delegates from San Antonio de Bexar, the Alcalde’s father Don Fransisco Ruiz and Jose Antonio Navarro, also signed the document voting for independence.

Since the Alamo defenders expected the delegates to vote for independence, it seems unlikely that the Flag of the Mexican Constitution of 1824 flew over the Church as some claim. That flag was a tricolor of green, white, and red with 1824 stitched across the white stripe. At the time of the Alamo siege, "popular opinion swung violently and overwhelmingly for independence." Furthermore, Mexican soldiers described the flag they saw as an "independent flag flying from the battlements of the fortress of Alamo," when they chased Davy Crockett and his party into San Antonio in February. Surely these soldiers would have recognized the 1824 Mexican flag and reported it as such.

By the same assumption, it appears evident that the Lone Star of Texas flag also did not fly that day. Travis was a strict disciplinarian. Without a formal declaration of independence in his possession, it is illogical to believe that he would have flown such an inflaming standard. In fact, on March 3, he wrote to Jesse Grimes: "Let the convention go on and make a declaration of independence; and we will understand what we are fighting for. If independence is not declared, I shall lay down my arms and so will the men under my command. But under the flag of independence, we are ready to peril our lives a hundred times a day..."

So what flag was it? Gonzales was the only town to answer Colonel Travis’ pleas to send help. They sent thirty-two men into the Alamo on March 2, men who would all die four days later. Gonzales was also the town that started the revolution. They had a tiny, borrowed, spiked, 4-pound cannon from the Presidio de Bexar which they intended to use for the defense of their town against Indian attack. Later, when the rumblings of revolt began stirring throughout the colonies and the Mexican army demanded their cannon back, Gonzales residents refused to surrender it. "Come and take it!" they taunted the Mexican troops.

Legend says that two ladies, Sarah Seely and Evaline DeWitt, widow of empresario George C. DeWitt, who had founded Gonzales in 1825, used the white fabric of Evaline’s silk wedding gown to make a battle flag. On the six foot flag, the ladies painted a picture of the little cannon. Above the gun, they placed a lone star. The words "COME AND TAKE IT" were emblazoned across the bottom. On 2 October 1835, Gonzales became enshrined in history as "the Lexington of Texas."

Did the Gonzales flag go with its men to the Alamo? Was it the flag seen flying over the Mission? Probably not, but who really knows? Travis had brought his own five-dollar flag to the Alamo. So did Davy Crockett and several others. Since there is no record what any of them looked like, any one could have been flying the ramparts that day.

It is a historical fact that Santa Anna sent only one Texan banner back to Mexico, only where it was found and removed from remains a mystery. It was the flag of the New Orleans Greys taken by Lieutenant Jose Maria Torres, who was killed in the process. The flag is azure blue with the words "First Company of TEXAN VOLUNTEERS from New Orleans" encircling a center shell proclaiming "God & Liberty." As late as 1965, it still reposed in a disused filing cabinet in Chapultepec, Mexico City, secured in brown wrapping paper and crumbling to pieces with Santa Anna’s faded victory message still attached to it. Today, it is on display at the Museum of the Insurrection in Churubusco, Mexico City. A replica of this battle flag also hangs in an alcove inside the Alamo Chapel in San Antonio.

There are many stories of the Alamo, none of which can be proved or disproved with any degree of accuracy. All the defenders died, and the noncombatant survivors remained remarkably reticent about the events of the siege. At the time of the battle, the Alamo was a fortress in various stages of decay. About the only buildings of any value were the barracks, which the Mexican army had used as a prison for political dissenters. The Church itself was nearly in ruins. It was, however, the strongest structure in the entire area, being in the shape of a cross with stone walls five feet thick and twenty-two feet high. It stood in the southeast corner of the compound, facing west. Before it and to the north lay about three acres of land surrounded by buildings and walls called the Main Plaza. Behind it on the south and east sides lay the open prairie and tree-covered hills.

General Sam Houston had ordered the fortress blown up in early January, but for reasons that will now never be completely understood, Colonel Jim Bowie ignored the orders. Instead, when it became apparent that Santa Anna’s troops were reclaiming San Antonio, the Texans retreated across the river to the old mission. The main part of the Church was roofless at the time of the siege, but the windows were high above the ground, and the front doors were of heavy oak.

A courtyard adjoined the Church on the west side, forming a small fort all its own. It was about 100 feet square with left walls perpendicular to the Church (when facing it) which were sixteen feet high and three feet thick. The Low Barracks were located on the right side and also perpendicular to the Church about ten feet away. The breach between the Church and the Low Barracks was filled in with stakes, dirt, and rocks, and this palisade formed the outer wall of the courtyard.

The left wall of the courtyard was an inner wall in the compound, and on the other side of the wall were the livestock pens which were well protected from the open prairie beyond by another series of rock walls. This inner courtyard wall led to an adobe structure two stories tall, eighteen feet wide, and which extended northward for 191 feet where it met with the north wall. About halfway to the wall, it became a one-story. The Hospital and Convent, or priests’ quarters, were on the two-story end closest to the Church. After the missionaries abandoned the site, the subsequent Spanish and Mexican armies turned the Hospital and Convent into one long hospital room with a number of small cells. The one-story end of the structure was called the Long Barracks.

The Main Plaza extended out before the Hospital/Convent/Long Barracks. It was enclosed by a wall eight feet high and three feet thick and had crumbling adobe huts around the inside perimeter. At the southwest corner, past the Low Barracks, was an artillery position which housed the Alamo’s largest cannon, an 18-pounder. Somewhere along the north wall or at the northwest artillery position is where Colonel William Travis fell with a bullet in the forehead in the opening minutes of the last day.

Today, most of the original compound is gone. All that remains is the Church, the Long Barracks/Hospital/Convent, part of the Main Plaza, and the stock pens. All other walls and fortifications have long ago been destroyed, and their original sites are all now part of the city of San Antonio. The part of the Main Plaza that remains leads to the entrance of the Chapel, and through the Chapel, out the north side, is a new compound where the stock pens once stood. Within this area lies serenity and peace, preserved for all time by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. The State of Texas may own the site, but the Daughters lovingly maintain it. "The Alamo" is the most famous shrine in the world.

Legend claims that today, when footfalls are heard in the shrine when no one is there, it’s the men of the Alamo, still standing guard over Texas.

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