ON CROCKETT'S B-DAY, THE DEMYTHIFICATION OF HEROISM

By Juan Montoya
Today is the birthday (in 1786) of Texas myth and Alamo hero David Crockett.
For years Hollywood has given us a mythologized version of the final days of a coonskin-cap-clad Crockett and the other "martyrs" at the Alamo, the cradle of Texas liberty.
But a Crockett biography lays bare the cold facts: that Crockett was slave-owning n'er-do-well who came to Texas after having abandoned his family and was escaping his debtors.
The book, David Crockett, the Lion of the West, by Michael Wallis, W.W. Norton and Company, 2011, 379 pages, is a no-frills account of the life of one of the most mythologized figures in U.S. and Texas folklore. Even though everyone from stage plays in the 1800s and later Walt Disney characterized him as a happy-go-lucky backwoodsman whose folksy yarns and coarse humor endeared him to 19th Century voters who elected him to state representative of Western Tennessee in 1821, the picture that emerges from Wallis' book is vastly different.

Crockett here emerges as an avowed expansionist whose push west coincided with the rush to acquire as much free land as possible and to stay one step ahead of his creditors. Among those he met when he was a state rep was one James K. Polk, who was a senator in the Tennessee legislature and would later go on to become president.

In 1821, Missouri was annexed into the U.S. as a slave state and was the same year that Stephen F. Austin started moving settlers into the Mexican state of Texas-Coahuila. Crockett would go on to serve in the U.S. Congress where Wallis notes that he served with the greatest distinction that he did not get a single bill passed during his tenure. While he started out as an Andrew Jackson adherent, he fell out with "Old Hickory" after they parted ways on Crockett's proposal to allow settlers to squat on vacant land in the west. Jackson favored the construction of towns and allowing land speculators to profit in the process.

Under the so-called Manifest Destiny coined in 1845 by magazine editor John L. Sullivan, the national aspirations were defined "in terms of so many bears destroyed, so much land preempted, so many trees hacked down, so many Indians and Mexicans dead in the dust," Wallis wrote.

Crockett not only met Polk, but also met Sam Houston, another Tennessean who was escaping a ruinous personal relationship who as of 1834 was already "making plans for the liberation of Texas."

Houston and Crockett wanted to "liberate" Texas from a Mexican government that had abolished slavery, required new settlers to become Mexican citizens, join the Catholic Church, accept the language and laws of the country, and observe the ban on the enslavement of human beings.

Wallis notes that: "Like many others making the same journey at the time, Crockett understood what he faced once he crossed the Red river and left the United States. He had to be aware that, in the weeks before he departed (1835), the animosity had increased between the government of Mexico, and the American settlers, called Texians, in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. 

The white colonists were becoming increasingly tired of living under Mexican rule, and they headed for war with hopes of forming their own separate republic. Many of these Anglos were illegal immigrants and did not abide by Mexican law...By 1823 at least 3,000 U.S. citizens had entered Texas illegally, along with 700 legitimate settlers...

"By 1830 there were more than 20,000 settlers and 2,000 slaves living in Texas, making Anglos more numerous than Mexicans...

"The situation only worsened for the Mexican government," Wallis wrote. "By 1835. the population had ballooned to 35,000, including 3,000 black slaves."

In a letter to his cousin Mary Austin Holley, Austin wrote that in no uncertain terms: "Texas must be a slave country. It is no longer a matter of doubt."

Crockett arrived in Texas just a month or two before the confrontation at the Alamo in San Antonio. When he arrived, the Texians saw it as a good omen that the Lion of the West on their side. And even though Houston himself ordered the defenders of San Antonio to destroy the old mission and depart, Crockett, along with James Bowie and William Travis did not heed his call and were killed in the futile struggle with Antonio de Santa Anna.

"Bowie had become famous in many circles because of his trademark knife he used with proficiency in bloody duels and altercations," writes Wallis. "He did not himself make the knife; rather, his brother Rezin commissioned it for him. Some years earlier, the Bowie brothers partnered with Jean Lafitte, the notorious privateer who supplied mercenaries for Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. The Bowies helped Lafitte traffic the many slaves he smuggled into Galveston Island and sold to plantation owners.

"Besides 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...(When his wife and two children died during a cholera epidemic)...Bowie went into an alcoholic depression that lasted until his death in a sickbed at the Alamo..."

And what about that other Texas martyr, Travis, an attorney by trade?

"A South Carolina 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, hen entered Texas illegally and immediately became involved in the slave trade...He was one of the first to die at the final Alamo assault, of a bullet to the brain. He was 26 years old."

"No  one knows with any uncertainty how David Crockett died," Wallis writes. "His death has been obscured by legend. with accounts and theories of his death including scenarios both implausible and ludicrous...One popular theory was that Crockett died while swinging old Betsy over his head...some claimed he donned a disguise and snuck away from the Alamo like a sniveling coward..."

Houston spelled out what may have been the most likely scenario soon after the fall of the Alamo. In a dispatch sent to Col. James Fannin March 11, he said that "after the fort was carried seven men surrendered and called for Santa Anna, and for quarter. They were murdered by his order."

Houston's account was bolstered by Mexican army officer Jose Enrique de la Peña, an army officer under Santa Anna during the siege.

"Among the (seven)...was one of great stature, well proportioned, with regular features, in whose face 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...

"Santa Anna answered (General) Castillon's intervention in Crockett's behalf with a gesture of indignation and, addressing himself to the the sappers, ordered his execution."

To those of us accustomed to the Hollywood and Texas history versions of the Siege of the Alamo, this unflattering description of this historian might not be pleasing to read, but Wallis' documentation leaves little room for argument.
Crockett mythology notwithstanding, many Texans of diverse ethnicities have embraced the history of the Alamo as the Cradle of Texas Liberty and the old mission continues to draw visitors from throughout the state. In the picture above, Brownsville resident Gabriela Zavala (left), Mars Diaz (right) and Cameron Diaz (center) pose for a family picture in front of the Alamo grounds in San Antonio recently.