Frontier Hero Davy Crockett

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The Mexicans turned the Texan cannons around, firing point-blank into the barracks doors. The dazed and wounded defenders inside were then bayoneted. In one of these rooms Bowie was slain in his sickbed. The enraged Mexicans tossed his body atop their bayonets like hay. Finally the heavy doors of the church were battered down, and after brief but fierce hand-to-hand combat, the last defenders were killed. In a nightmarish aftermath, the Mexicans murdered the wounded and mutilated the dead.

General Castrillon, however, stopped his advancing soldiers before a handful of bloodied, exhausted defenders. Offering clemency, he convinced them to surrender. Among this pitiful remnant was Crockett.

The sun had just come up as Castrillón marched his prisoners, seven in number, into the Alamo courtyard. Santa Anna and his staff had finally dared to enter the fort, and the Mexican leader busied himself haranguing the troops on their glorious victory. Having lost almost a third of their number in killed and wounded while taking the Alamo, the soldiers were not in a particularly vainglorious mood.

Lieutenant Colonel José Enrique de la Peña saw Castrillón’s approach, noting in particular one man with him: ‘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.’

Santa Anna flew into a rage as Castrillón presented the prisoners. Turning to the troops nearest him, the sappers, he ordered the execution of the Texans. No officer or soldier moved. They had had enough of killing. Humiliated, Santa Anna ordered his staff officers and personal guard to carry out the murders. As Castrillón and de la Peña watched in horror, the officers used their sabers on the defenseless prisoners.

Castrillón stormed off to his tent and did not again speak to Santa Anna. The gallant Cuban would perish at San Jacinto in April as Houston led the Texans to victory and independence. Not long after the captives were slain, Mrs. Dickinson was brought out of her hiding place in the church. ‘I recognized Col. Crockett lying dead and mutilated between the church and the two story barrack building,’ she recalled years later, ‘and even remembered seeing his peculiar cap lying by his side.’

Crockett’s body was thrown onto a funeral pyre with his fellow Alamo defenders. From these ashes rose a legend of towering proportions. Crockett, for so long the symbol of democratic America, had now perished in defense of the very virtues he symbolized. A glorious immortality was to be his reward.

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