Date: 10/25/98
From: Tom Cannon tcannon@ibm.com
I've noticed that the columns on the front of the Alamo spiral upwards while the columns on the Bracketville "Alamo " spiral downwards. What was the reason for such a noticeable difference?
Subject: Crockett's battle attire
Date: 10/28/98
From: Ron D'Ambrosi
What type of clothes did David Crockett wear during the siege and final assault on the Alamo? Did he wear a buckskin coat, buckskin breaches and a coonskin cap or did he wear conventional attire? Did he wear a combination of both? Did he wear moccasins, shoes or boots during the siege and battle?
No one can say for certain what Crockett wore during the siege and battle of the Alamo. Decades after the event, when both Texian noncombatant survivors and Mexican veterans were asked to offer their reminiscences, some details of his dress were mentioned, although these may have been influenced by the popular art and literature that had been spawned by his legend. Thus, we have "long buckskin coat" and "coonskin cap" alongside accounts of his wearing "a coat with capes", or of being dressed "like a gentleman". In fact, all of these are suggestive of what was probably the reality.
In 1835, when Crockett arrived in Texas, the Mexican province was in its greater part a wilderness. Like all "tourists" in all times, Crockett would have packed and worn several changes of clothing; and, like most sensible Western travelers, he would have donned his toughest, most durable outdoor wear for the wilder stretches of the journey, not his Sunday best. This would mean his hunting clothes; and buckskin was the most durable in this category. Hunting shirts of linen, linsey-woolsey or pure tow were also worn by the frontiersmen of his day; and Crockett himself was described during an 1834 riverboat voyage down the Ohio as wearing a ruffled hunting shirt of calico.
While touring Massachusetts that same year, he visited a factory that produced a variety of items made of India rubber, and was given a present of a hunting coat made of the same material. He might very well have brought this to Texas, too. In fact, James W. Fannin was wearing an India rubber coat at the time of his execution at Goliad. It is therefore no leap of logic to assume that Crockett would not have worn his very best clothes during the grim and dirty business that the Alamo siege became.
A warm shirt of flannel or wool, perhaps, and a vest over that; and over that a hunting coat of buckskin or other material; and over that, if the weather grew cold enough, a greatcoat, blanketcoat, or perhaps even blanket worn like a cloak?this might have been Crockett's attire during his last days.
As for the coonskin cap, or any cap made of animal fur, it would have been far more sensible than a top hat?for one thing, you could go to sleep wearing a cap?though Crockett probably also took a common top hat of beaver into Texas. Often it boils down to which account of his dress you choose to believe. However, it is no stretch to consider the likelihood that other members of the garrison wore a variety of hunting clothes, too, perhaps even Travis himself. One merely has to recall the full-length, ca. 1833 portrait of Texas' most "civilized" early colonist, Stephen Austin, dressed not in top hat and tails, but dark, fringed hunting shirt, and accoutered with bullet pouch and powder horn, knife, long rifle and tomahawk!
What Crockett wore on his feet at the Alamo is as much an uncertainty as his overall attire is. Naturally, moccasins were the preferred footwear of the southern forests; and since spurs could be attached to them frontiersmen could even wear them while riding. According to Noah Smithwick, the men of Houston's army, after the fall of the Alamo, lacked boots entirely, wearing instead either shoes or moccasins. But chances are that Crockett might have carried a pair of boots into Texas, and perhaps a pair of plain shoes, or even brogans, as well as the familiar moccasins.
However, the footwear situation in Texas was generally dismal. At Goliad on February 25, 1836, John Sowers Brooks wrote to his father that "many of us are naked and entirely destitute of shoes." Some of the men of the Alamo might even have made crude hide moccasins from the skins of the "beeves" of the garrison's herd that were butchered for their daily meals.
Gary Zaboly
Subject: One Texan's view
Date: 10/30/98
From: Brady L. Hutchison
I am currently working on a term paper for a college history class. My paper concerns the backgrounds of the lesser-known defenders as well as their motivations for fighting at the Alamo. I pretty much have everything down, but if anyone has any additional information that I might be able to use, I would appreciate it. In return, I will share the research that I have done.
Also, I am, on the side, interested in the theory that David Crockett surrendered at the Battle and was executed on Santa Anna's orders. As a Texan, I find this claim absurd, but I would like to hear others' opinions on the matter too.
Brady Hutchison
Box 30610 SHSU
Huntsville, TX 77341
We can do better than that, beginning this month we will be presenting the first in a series of a six part debate between Thomas Ricks Lindley and Dr. James E. Crisp on that very subject. Check out the "Crockett Debates".
Subject: The Degüello
Date: 10/31/98
From: Chuck
I would like to know when the Army of General Santa Anna sounded the military bugle call of "take no prisoners." De Guello"??? I think the English translation means "Cut off all their Heads??" What is the correct Spanish name and spelling of that call and if anyone could provide the musical score for the call I'd appreciate that.
According to the New Handbook of Texas, The degüellowas the music played by the Mexican army bands on the morning of March
6, 1836. It was the signal for Santa Anna's attack on the Alamo. The word
degüellosignifies the act of beheading or throat-cutting and in Spanish history
became associated with the battle music, which, in different versions,
meant complete destruction of the enemy without mercy.
