Date:08/22/99
From:Charles J. Erion
How was the famous south wall that Crockett and boys defended arranged? I have seen various paintings that depict it as a single row and those with two rows of wood with earth packed in between. Recently I read that there were two rows of wood that were separated by a gap of several feet. What did they use for wood? And last, why didn't the Mexican artillery just blast it down. Even some of their light artillery, that could fire a greater distance than the defender's rifle's may have been able to open up the "wooden wall." Unless the Alamo doing counter battery fire would have prevented this. Thanks for your help.
Charles J. Erion Nevada City, CA.
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Subject:The South Wall Palisades
From: Thomas R. Kailbourn
Date: 08/26/99
According to a report of a March 1977 archaeological excavation (Jack D. Eaton, Excavations at the Alamo Shrine: San Antonio, 1980), the palisades consisted of two rows of cedar pilings approximately 6 feet apart.
The inner (i.e., north) row terminated near the baptistry window of the Alamo church, while the south row terminated near the southwest corner of the church. There was a narrow (approx. 65 cm.) passway between the west facade of the church and the east end of the palisades. The trench in which the logs were set was about 70 cm. wide and 45 cm. deep. The space between the two rows of palisades was filled with earth excavated from a "deep fronting ditch" (p. 47: i.e., the ditch was south of the palisades.)
Thomas R. Kailbourn
Wellsville, NY
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Subject: List of men killed on-line.
Date: 08/25/99
From: Michele Hodges
As a small child, I remember visiting the Alamo with my parents. I remember my mother pointing out the names of two or three ancestors on a large plaque in the main foyer. Is there a copy of that list on-line?
Thank you,
Michele Hodges
Springtown, Texas
Dr. Richard Bruce Winders, Alamo Historian & Curator
Special Consultant to Alamo de Parras
Subject:The South Wall Palisade
Date: 08/27/99
From: Jake Ivey
Eaton did indeed describe the Palisade as two rows of pilings six feet apart (pp. 24-25, 47). He tacitly accepted Frederick Chabot's description published in 1941 as the final statement on the structure that had occupied this area. I worked on that excavation, and found the front, or southernmost of the two "palisade" lines. I also watched the excavation of the larger, northern trench. The two trenches were quite different, although you wouldn't be able to tell that from the report, where Eaton does not describe the southern trench -- he says only that "traces of what appear to have been the edge of a second palisade trench were uncovered in Units 7 and 12..." He shows it as a single line in his plan of the area (figure 3).
Based on the great differences between the two trenches I saw in the field, I was surprised that Eaton chose to accept Chabot's description, rather than to interpret the structure according to the actuality we could see in the dirt. I argued at the time that the physical evidence clearly showed that the southernmost, narrow trench was a palisade wall, while the north trench was not. I'll quote a description I wrote then:
"The second trench, in units 4, 7, and 12 ... was ca. .75 feet wide [9 inches], with a U-shaped cross-section and a row of irregularly-spaced posts placed along its south side."
Eaton's northern trench was 70 cm (2.3 feet) wide, and had no associated post-holes. My argument was dismissed by Anne Fox, in her Archaeological Investigations in Alamo Plaza, 1992, the report on the 1988 and 1989 field schools at the Alamo that found the trench extending along the southern face of the palisade wall. Fox (p. 16) said Eaton's 1977 excavation "revealed rather conclusively that the palisade was comprised of a double row of timbers, thus invalidating Ivey's ... single-row theory." However, Eaton gave no description of the southern trench line, and made no effort to explain the differences between the two trenches. Instead, he simply stated that the two were both palisade trenches, with no supporting argument except to quote Frederick Chabot's description, written in 1941. This hardly constitutes a "conclusive" revelation.
So, let's review the evidence from the ground and from the plans of the period. In my experience, when you build a palisade wall, you dig the trench for the posts just a little wider than the posts themselves (see, for example, the palisado houses built at Las Cabras, the archaeological traces of which are illustrated in my Archaeological Testing at Rancho de Las Cabras ... Second Season, pp. 12-16 and fig. 2). That way, the walls of the trench help support the posts as you place them and pack down the dirt around them. Since it is unlikely that the posts would have been two feet thick, Eaton's north trench simply did not match a typical way of making a palisade wall, while the southern trench did -- and if you were making a double wall, why would you make the two trenches completely different?
The two most dependable depictions of this area, the Labastida (Nelson, The Alamo: An Illustrated History, pp. 23-24) and Sánchez-Navarro (Nelson, pp. 21-22) maps, both show the palisade wall as a single line of posts running from the southwestern corner of the church to the southeastern corner of the Low Barracks. Labastida even appears to show Eaton's gap between the end of the palisade and the corner of the church. The Labastida map has regularly proven itself to be the best plan of the defenses of the Alamo, because every trace of defensive structure we've found in the ground is shown on his plan -- no other plan comes close. Rather than simply accepting earlier, unproven descriptions of the Alamo defenses, it seems reasonable to evaluate the best evidence and make our own conclusions.
Based on the maps and archaeological evidence, it appears that the narrow, southern trench was the actual palisade wall as shown on Labastida, and the northern trench was a narrow excavation probably made to supply the earth for a banquette, or firing step, against the northern face of the palisade, and to be a space where the defenders could step down to get their heads below the firing slots left in the palisade wall -- firing slots that were protected for part of their height by the posts set outside the southern trench. You protect this single wall of logs with a packed earth padding against its exterior, taken from a ditch that, if dug on the outside of the defenses, adds a further defensive ditch as well.
Fox's excavations in 1988 and 1989 show the existence of this ditch, as shown on the Labastida map. So, we have the evidence of archaeology and the Labastida map, so far always correct in its depiction of the defenses of the Alamo, against the unsupported statements of Fox, Eaton and Chabot. I, for one, would accept the single palisade without hesitation.
Jake Ivey,
Archaeological Consultant to Alamo de Parras
