• October 13, 1975
• Vol. 4
• No. 15

Did Crockett Die at the Alamo? Historian Carmen Perry Says No

In the 1960 film epic The Alamo, John Wayne as Davy Crockett went down swinging. Crockett may not have "kilt him a b'ar when he was only three," but his heroic death while defending the chapel at the Alamo has been an accepted fact in his legendary life. Now word comes from Texas that it warn't that way at all. Davy Crockett surrendered to the Mexicans and was later executed, says 70-year-old Carmen Perry, the head archivist of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Surrendered? In Texas that's a fighting word. Although the rifles were stilled at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, the first shot in this new battle was fired off last month. Perry's translation of a diary kept by José Enrique de la Peña, a lieutenant colonel in Santa Anna's army, was published by University of Texas, Texas A&M Press.

According to De la Peña, Crockett was one of seven men taken before General Santa Anna who ordered them tortured and put to death. "These unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers," De la Peña wrote in his diary. (Thus, regardless of the circumstances, historians agree that Crockett died a hero.)

Few Texans are better equipped than Carmen Perry to revise history. Born in Monclova, Mexico, she has lived since 1913 in San Antonio, devoting herself to straight-shooting research on the state's founders. Her aim in urging the university to publish the diary was not to darken Crockett's reputation but "to make the Mexican version available to the Anglo reader—our children have been raised on a one-sided version of the battle." Perry defends the new account. "De la Peña had no reason to change things. He didn't have to report to anyone. His diary was very objective."

Mrs. Charles Hall, chairman of the Alamo committee of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, is predictably aghast. "We don't believe Davy Crockett ever surrendered. We feel he went down fighting. And by 'we' I mean all Texans." Not Carmen Perry. She thinks "we have to face facts and rewrite the textbooks."