Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  Living virtually in the midst of a people with whom where was no easily obvious way to tell friend from foe, Travis wisely cultivated increasingly better relations with the tejano community, even though he may have suspected that some of them, loyal to the centralist regime, sent information of his strength and plans to Santa Anna. He helped tejano cattle owners file their claims for animals taken by Austin's and Burleson's army during the siege, and seemed happily to attest to good behavior.84 He got along well with both Seguíns, and by the third week of February, José Rodriguez thought that Travis was “a very popular man and was well liked by everyone.” Travis walked daily from his headquarters on the Plaza de Las Yslas to the Alamo to oversee the work, and often stopped at the Rodriquez home, the last one he passed before crossing the San Antonio. The family there thought him a fine-looking fellow, and he sometimes passed an hour or so in conversation with them. The man of the house sometimes urged Travis to take his command and leave San Antonio, for everyone knew that Santa Anna was coming. That was no surprise, of course, but Travis told him what he had told Governor Smith: “Well we have made up our minds to die in the Alamo fighting for Texas.”85 None of them had any intention of dying anywhere if they could help it, of course, but the same bold and determined posture that might persuade some help out of San Felipe would also be useful in sustaining the support of that part of the tejano community loyal to Texas.

  The garrison worked long days, and yet there were a few hours for some conviviality. While Travis cultivated the tejanos, Crockett visited frequently at the quarters of Almeron and Susanna Dickenson, and wherever he went he took mirth and cheer with him.86 In the erratic weather of February, when one day it was just forty-six degrees, then two days later exceedingly hot, Crockett might be seen alternately in his hunting shirt, his traveling suit, or even under wraps in a caped overcoat, and probably still wearing that crude hat he traded for the beaver.87 Bowie, staying for a while at the Veramendi house, fell right into the old society, though at least one of the tejanos thought that now he seemed to be “a sad man.” He took a liking to young Gregorio Esparza, who came with his mother every day to the fortifications to sell tamales and beans to the working Texians, possibly saving the boy's life once when he pulled him out of the San Antonio after an accidental fall. “I was very fond of Señor Bowie after this,” Esparza recalled. Bowie may even have spoken of helping to educate the boy one day. “I had to keep close to Señor Bowie,” said Gregorio. “He knew my language and I could feel his strength.”88

  What he could not feel was that Bowie's strength was waning. He had led a hard life, much of it outdoors, pushing his system to the limits of its resilience. Then there were the wounds, a sword thrust through the lung, a bullet in the breast and yet others in the leg and chest. If the recent bouts of drinking were not just isolated incidents, then spirits, too, could be debilitating his body, especially the indifferent and sometimes extremely powerful liquor available on the frontier. Malaria less than three years before took an added toll, and though he was only thirty-nine, still he felt older.

  Perhaps melancholy played its part. Living there in the Veramendi house he saw everywhere reminders of Ursula and what he had lost. If they had and lost a child, it explained his fondness for young Gregorio, seeing in him the son Bowie never had. He had his own possessions about him, but they were miserably few for a man who had lived the life he led, and made small fortunes. Moths dined on his black dress coat, and all but devoured another. He had a few books, a dictionary to help with his Spanish, a book on mechanics for the cotton mill he never built, and few tools. The coach he once owned in Monclova was sold to pay debts he owed the Veramendi estate, and he had little else but a few of those eleven-league grant forms and some of the papers representing his land speculation efforts.89 The other bundled papers in his room were debts. Once the owner of scores of slaves, now he had only his servant and cook.90 No wonder he was susceptible. Even now, he began to feel the symptoms of something coming on.

  Travis had crossed a domestic Rubicon of his own, though word of it never reached him. On February 14, Valentine's Day, the same day that Travis and Bowie agreed on a joint command, Rosanna married his old acquaintance and near neighbor Samuel G. Cloud.91 Scarcely a month had passed since the divorce, and some in Monroe County no doubt whispered that she must not have waited for her freedom before letting Cloud come courting, but then Travis had pursued his amorous whims for nearly five years before the decree. He bore her no malice now, and if it had mattered at all, it might have relieved him to know that Rosanna's marriage meant that his daughter would have a father who could support her comfortably. Travis's more immediate concern was money. Having spent all he had and borrowed all he could, he needed more just for himself. He knew that his friend John R. Jones was in San Felipe, and so were his former partner Nibbs and his current partner Starr. When he spent probably his last $2 for corn on February 17, he decided to send an accounting of his expenditures since leaving San Felipe back to the council for reimbursement. It was only $143, but that could go a long way at the moment. He included in his dispatches that day the little red-morocco-bound book in which he recorded his expenses, directing it to one of those three who could see that he would be paid.92

  Most of Travis's attention went to the work on strengthening the fortifications around the Alamo, though he left direct oversight of that to the would-be engineer Jameson, and Travis was unstinting in his praise of what the man accomplished. He dug wells to provide a water supply inside the compound, emplaced the cannon in spite of the lack of proper tools, and even envisioned quite ambitious extensions to the fort if given the time and resources. Travis sent Jameson's report out in the hands of Bonham, along with his usual request for assistance, and reiterated his suggestion that Fannin's command at Goliad be sent to Béxar, even though if Fannin arrived himself, being a full colonel, he would supersede Travis as commander. There would have been a logic to it not lost on Travis, for a fort was primarily an artilleryman's command, and Fannin was an artillerist. Besides, Fannin was well known to many of Bowie's volunteers, and his assumption of command might have helped morale. The men seemed to be getting along, but there were still those volunteers who felt entitled to leave at will, and on February 14 at least eleven of them were planning to depart to the Cibolo to stake out land headrights.93

  Bonham carried other dispatches and letters, including probably Travis's statement of expenses, and also a letter to Houston- -the first time Travis had written to the general since arriving.94 Perhaps Travis only now got word that Houston was back from his diplomatic mission to the Indians and was starting to muster volunteers at Nacogdoches. He was brief. He needed at least five hundred more soldiers, and he wanted them to be regulars. “Militia and volunteers are but ill suited to garrison a town,” he said from sad experience, and he desperately needed money. “Enthusiasm may keep up an army for a few days, but money, and money alone, will support an army for regular warfare.”95

  Travis's sense of urgency was well fed by the time he wrote to Houston, for now the reports of Mexican buildup and imminent advance were coming in repeatedly. The day before a cousin of Rodriguez's arrived from Laredo and said that the enemy was on the move, and from February 18 onward more and more tejanos came into Béxar with the same news.96 The next day, in response to the increasing threat, Travis sent Capt J. L. Vaughan on a wide recruiting sweep that would take him as far south as Matamoros. Travis hoped that Vaughan would be able to enlist several companies, and as he filled the quota of each he was to send it on to Béxar, meanwhile remaining vigilant for intelligence of enemy movements.97 By sending Vaughan to Matamoros and Camargo, it is evident that Travis hoped to entice some of the men he believed still to be with Grant and Johnson into joining the regular service.

  Meanwhile Travis tried another scouring of the countryside for provisions. He sent two men toward Gonzales to gather cattle, and employed a number of Seguín's cavalry in foraging.98 But then on February 20 the intensity
of the situation mounted. It was a Saturday, and Seguín came to Travis in the evening with a report just received from one of his cousins who had recently been on the Rio Grande. After a hard three-day ride, he reported that Ramírez y Sesma's forces had crossed and were on their way. At a hastily summoned council of war, Travis, Bowie, and the other officers discussed the report, as well as another saying that Ramírez y Sesma had fifteen hundred men and was making a forced march hoping to take Béxar by surprise. Some of the officers refused t believe it. After all, there had been so many conflicting reports in the past several weeks. Travis and Bowie may have been divided on it themselves, and the council adjourned without taking any decisive step.99

  The scout's information was strikingly good. Ramírez y Sesma, at the head of the fifteen hundred men of the First Brigade, had crossed several days earlier, and at the very moment of the council was camped just a day's march from the Medina.100 Even if some of the Texians were prone to disregard information brought by a tejano as suspect, Seguín and the tejanos in his company thought better. Later that night or early the next morning, Seguín approached Travis with a request to furlough some of his men whose families and farms lay in the path of the Mexican advance, and in the next day or two at least a dozen of them left the garrison with his permission.101 Others clearly intended to go in time, yet Travis seemed to entertain no ill will toward them. His feeling toward native Mexicans he summed up in his recommendation of one of them, Antonio Cruz, who had fought well in the siege of Béxar. “I think a distinction ought to be made between those who lost property while in our service & those who were against us or were neutral,” he said.102 Travis could ill spare men now most of all, but he could hardly deny a faithful soldier's need to see to the safety of his family, and he made no distinction between Texians and tejanos.103

  Perhaps in part because of the reduction of the strength of their best scouting company with these furloughs, Travis and Bowie seem to have gotten no further accurate reports of Mexican movements in the next forty-eight hours. Thus on the evening of February 22 they felt it safe enough to let the town and garrison stage a fandango on Soledad Street to celebrate the birthday of George Washington. The women of the town came wearing their rebozos drawn over their faces like bonnets, smoking their cigarettes, and joining the volunteers and regulars in both traditional reels and Mexican dances to the tune of fiddle and guitar. The local women prepared tamales and enchiladas, and the men bought small cakes to present to the young ladies with whom they danced. Crockett himself could play the fiddle, and may have helped with the music, and certainly Travis danced, though Bowie, feeling increasingly ill and feverish, probably stayed in bed.104 In fact there were twenty-five or more men on the sick list now, and Dr. Amos Pollard was hard pressed to attend to all of them, especially since he still had the care of fifty or more Mexicans too seriously wounded to leave when Cós evacuated in December. Pollard exhausted his small stock of medicines, most of them ineffectual in any case, and asked Dr. John Sutherland to contribute his store of nostrums in helping the sick. One of those sick was Bowie, not yet confined to hospital but clearly unwell. Sutherland actually moved from his room at the Dickensons' to share a chamber with Bowie at the Alamo barracks, but he could not identify Bowie's problem from the symptoms, and therefore could not treat it even if he had sufficient medications.105 On the morning after the fandango, February 23, with no fresh intelligence on the enemy, Travis prepared to conduct a court-martial of one of the soldiers for some infraction perhaps connected with the recent insubordination of Bowie's volunteers. Even before it got under way he noticed unusual activity in the streets of town. Many of the tejanos were loading their carts, hitching their teams, and starting to leave for the countryside. Somehow, it seemed, they knew something that he did not.

  21

  APOTHEOSIS

  February 23-Dawn, March 6, 1836

  I feel confident that the determined valor & desperate courage, heretofore exhibited by my men, will not fail them in the last struggle.

  WILLIAM BARRET TRAVIS, MARCH 3, 1836

  From his headquarters on the Plaza de Las Yslas on Potrero Street, Travis went among the milling tejanos and asked them what they were about. Their answers that they were just leaving to prepare for the spring planting seemed evasive. Travis and Bowie felt especially suspicious when they found the wife of Ramón Músquiz about to leave. Her husband, once prominent in Béxar affairs, remained loyal to the new Mexican regime and even now acted as a guide to the advancing Mexicans. Suspecting that Músquiz somehow had gotten word to her to leave, Travis ordered her arrest, even though she was pregnant, and only the intervention of Capt. Philip Dimitt in her behalf secured her release shortly thereafter. Travis meanwhile continued with his courtmartial, while his other officers continued to try to find the reason for all the activity among the townsfolk. Nathaniel Lewis was just giving his evidence in the case when a messenger came to Travis. He knew why the tejanos were leaving: The Mexican army was almost in sight.1

  A friendly tejano told Travis that Ramírez y Sesma and his column had just been seen on Leon Creek, not five miles from San Antonio, and marching fast in the hope of taking the garrison by surprise. Somehow the word of his coming got into town during the night, which was why so many of the citizens were trying to leave.2 Travis gave orders to stop the evacuation of the people, hoping that would quell any panic, especially if the report proved to be untrue. Until some confirmation came in, he put a man in the belfry of San Fernando to keep an eye on the southwestern horizon. Then he waited.

  The Alamo compound as it appeared in February–March 1836. In the foreground the long west wall faces San Antonio. In the center of the north wall (at left), stands the north battery, where Travis fell. The south wall is to right, with the main gate in its center. The rooms immediately east of the gateway were hospital quarters, and the best evidence places Bowie in the room next to the gate when he was killed. Crockett mat have died anywhere in the compound, or even outside it with one of the breakouts. The most persistent tradition, based solely on the unreliable statements of Susanna Dickenson, has him dying somewhere in the small enclosure in front of the church in the center rear. Yet Francisco Ruiz, who had the task of identifying the bodies, said that he found Crockett in a small fort to the west of where Travis fell, which would suggest either the fortified northwest corner that the Mexicans called the Fortine de Condelle, or else the embrasure projecting from the middle of the west wall. The nagging fact is that we will almost certainly never know for sure.

  (Drawing by Gary Zaboly; courtesy of Stephen L. Hardin and the artist)

  The hours passed slowly. Noon came, and no word, and nothing from the belfry. One o'clock. … Two o'clock. … Three o'clock … and then the sound of the bell in San Fernando pealing and the watchman yelling: “The enemy is in view,” almost unheard for the ringing. Travis and others ran to the church and climbed to the belfry, but by the time he got there he could see nothing. The sentry told him that he had seen hundreds of mounted Mexican cavalry a moment before, but they just turned off the road into a mesquite grove out of view. One or two with him thought the sentinel mistaken, but the man insisted on what he had seen. Dr. Sutherland suggested that Travis should send out someone to take a look, and John Smith, called “El Colorado” because of his red hair, volunteered. Sutherland said he would go along, and Travis said that he would watch them as they moved down the road. If they saw the Mexicans, they were to wheel and gallop back, and that would be a signal that the enemy was truly there. A few minutes later Travis spoke to Crockett, who of course had wide experience as a scout in the Creek War, and he started preparing to go out on a more extensive survey.

  Joined probably by Bowie, Travis stayed in the belfry and looked on as the two riders cantered down the road toward the Leon. As he watched, they got perhaps a mile and one-half from town to the crest of a low rise. Suddenly both horses spun about and started to race back. Then Sutherland's went down, falling across his legs, and they
saw Smith quickly stop and dismount to help the doctor back into the saddle.3 Even before the riders returned, Travis began yelling out the orders for the garrison to prepare to evacuate the town. Seguín was with him. “In the act of the moment,” he said, “Col. Travis resolved to concentrate all his forces within the Alamo.”4 At the same time he ordered Dimitt and Lt. Benjamin Nobles to make a major reconnaissance.5

  Crockett just heard Travis give the order for the move to the Alamo when he mounted and started out on his own scout, but at the end of town he met Smith and Sutherland returning, the doctor in pain from a bad sprain to his leg. He told them what was happening, then rode on out a little way before turning back to join them as they went to report that the Mexican cavalry had indeed arrived. As they turned their horses toward the Alamo, expecting already to find Travis there, they ran into Dimitt and Nobles on their way out. Everything seemed to be happening at once.

  Crockett helped Sutherland dismount and assisted him in walking into Travis's headquarters room in the Alamo compound. They found him penning a hasty dispatch. “The enemy in large force is in sight,” he wrote. “We want men and provisions. Send them to us. We have 150 men and are determined to defend the Alamo to the last. Give us assistance.”6 At the moment there was time for nothing more. Seeing Sutherland's injury, Travis realized he would be unable to do any good to the garrison just then, but if he could ride he might take the message to Gonzales, the nearest source of men. Even before Sutherland left the room, Crockett asked Travis to tell him where he and his Tennesseans should post themselves. They were ready to fight.7