Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Alamo


I don't stray very far from WWII or Civil War history in my studying/research, but my wife and I are on vacation this week in San Antonio and of course we had to go to the Alamo. Time and development have not been kind on this significant location. Now, it is an old Mission and no building can survive the ware of time with grace, but this one has had only limited preservation given the significance of the legend and place some of the names hold in our lexicon of heros.


The chapel ediface is the only real part of the Alamo that still stands, other buildings have been re-created and turned into museum space, but of all that still stands it is the most recognizable as an old mission church.


Because the site is run by the Daughters of the Texas Revolution, I was given a renewed appreciation of the NPS run civil war battle sites. The museum portion did lay out the events that lead up to the siege and fall of the Alamo garrison. The story sticks to what is generally accepted as indesputed fact. The Alamo was garrisoned by at least 147 men (could have been as many as 300 but due to the militia nature of its primary defenders there are records to account for only the 147 known), was besieged and was attacked and its defenders wiped out to a man.


From just a casual observer, one would wonder that anyone besides Jim Bowie, William Travis, and Davey Crocket were the only ones present and of those Davey Crocket must have been the most important. The DTR does little to speak to historical realities but instead would rather feed the sense that Crocket was the saving grace and saint of the whole episode. While Crocket was a personage of fame in his own time, he looms larger than the role he actually played in the battle. This then brings to bear an uncomfortable situation for an historian. We need heroes, they remind us that regular people can do or participate in extrodinary deeds. But, is Crocket really the hero of the Alamo? I like John Wayne, but his version and vision of Crocket loomed large in his making of The Alamo. The heroic death where he blows himself and a handful of Mexican soldiers with him, the story of attacks beaten off at incredible odds before they finally overrun the defenses is a fiction. Yet, how many, myself included until I undertook independant study, have this very series of events as our understanding of what really happened?


In the shrine, the now covered ediface of the chapel, are a few personal items on display belonging to Travis and a few other officers as well as Crocket. Yet, by far the Crocket memorabilia and artifacts are the mainstay of the display. In the gift shop John Wayne's face emblazons many curios. Wayne has probably done more for Davey Crocket than Fess Parker and probably more for the DTR and the Alamo than anyone.


I did pick up Bill Groneman's "Eyewitness to the Alamo" at the Tower of the America's gift shop and read through Paul Hutton's forward to the book. I studied under Hutton at UNM and remember his relating how he began recieving hate mail after writing an article defending the Pena diary description relating that Crocket was one of a number of survivors who surrendered and were executed after the battle. I'm curious to read this book as Groneman is on the opposite side of the debate as to how credible the Pena diary is.


So, again, the delimma. Should people know the truth even though it challenges a myth and legend? How much should that myth be allowed to stay because it does speak to our need to see something good and noble about our history?

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