Alamo Traces

by Thomas Ricks Lindley

  The Pena memoir information about the Mexican dead and wounded at the Alamo supports a forgery explanation for the creation of the Pena memoir manuscript. The Pena data about the Mexican dead and wounded and the army’s medical services appears to be a compilation of data found in Filisola’s Memoirs, Ramon Caro’s account of the Texas campaign, Barnard’s diary, Dr. Moro’s letter of August 11, 1836, and an alleged letter from an unknown person.

  Today historians recognize that the Pena memoir is based on other sources. Randy Roberts and James S. Olson: “It [the fact that the Pena narrative was not published in 1836] meant that his [Pena’s] story was not constructed immediately after the war but rather written and rewritten over a period of years, during a time when other Mexican officers were publishing their accounts and de la Pena was languishing in prison for opposing the centralist regime. Although the diary is almost certainly not a forgery, it is a highly charged political document, aimed at discrediting the centralist and defending the federalists. As a whole, de la Pena’s description of the look, smell, and feel of the campaign is unsurpassed; his grasp of grand strategy, his description of leaders, and his sympathy for the plight of the soldiers is outstanding. But in many cases he clearly drew from a deep pool of rumors, details, and stories that suited his overarching interpretation of the campaign and Mexican politics.” Thus, Pena supporters can argue that Pena might have seen Caro’s account and Moro’s letter. That is true. Pena, however, could not have seen Filisola’s Memoirs and Barnard’s journal.49

  Pena true believers may argue that Pena did not need to see the Barnard diary. They will say that both Pena and Barnard were correct in their assessment of the medical situation at San Antonio and that Barnard verifies the Pena claim. Thus, the Pena memoir is authentic. An authentic primary account, however, shows that the Pena and Barnard accounts are wrong in their claims about the Mexican surgical care at San Antonio in the days following the fall of the Alamo. The document is Dr. Mariano Arroyo’s report on the medical corp’s activities at San Antonio and Matamoros between December 12, 1835, and August 1, 1836. It reads:

  Notes:

  First. The number of sick which is on record in this report are those from the attack on the Alamo and those which resulted from the taking of the Plaza of Bexar by the enemies, with the one who subscribes to the care of them remaining with a scant stock of medicines and without more aid for the maintenance of them than that which the enemies themselves provided them, due to Senor General Don Martin Perfecto Cos not having asked to take them when he undertook his withdrawal.

  Second. The wounded coming from the Alamo, in spite of not having received more than a scant stock of medicines, which were commanded to be turned over by order of the General in Chief, were attended with all meticulousness and efficiency by him who signs and [by] three aides, as is attested by the discharges and casualties of the foregoing report.

  Third. The amputations that it was necessary to carry out were two, one with good success and the other unfortunate.50

  The Barnard journal and the Pena memoir are almost identical in what they report about amputations and the removal of rifle and musket balls from the Mexican wounded after the fall of the Alamo. Also, both accounts claim that many Mexican soldiers died because of that lack of surgical care. Pena said there was no surgical care because there were no surgeons. Thus, no amputations were conducted and no balls were removed. Barnard said there were surgeons, but they were incompetent and that amputations were only performed after his arrival. Barnard, however, did not claim that he performed any surgery. Seventy-five men did die, but their wounds may have been beyond the surgical care of the day, not because of the lack of care. Also, Arroyo’s report of two amputations and 408 incidents of surgery refutes both Barnard and Pena. One of the amputations may have been performed on Colonel Francisco Duque, who suffered a grave wound in one of his legs. He almost bled to dead and was abandoned on the field. The wound would have required immediate attention and surgery, and it appears to have disabled him. He remained in San Antonio and departed with General Andrade in May 1836. On September 3, 1836, he requested that he be separated from the army because of his wounds.51

  The fact that the Pena memoir and the Barnard journal make the same wrong claims about the Mexican surgical care is strong evidence that the writer of the Pena memoir copied from the Barnard journal. But then Pena and Barnard could have used the same source for their claims about the lack of surgical care for the Mexican wounded from the Alamo. Sure, it is obvious that the published Pena memoir was created from other written sources. The Barnard journal, however, is a contemporary diary. There is no evidence that Barnard’s journal is not an authentic eyewitness narrative. There is no evidence that Barnard used other sources to pad his account. That, however, does not mean every word Barnard wrote is true. His claim about the Mexican surgeons appears to be a misrepresentation to enhance his role in the events and portray his enemy in a negative light. Dr. Jack Shackelford, Barnard’s companion, made no such remarks about the skills of the Mexican doctors.52

  On the other hand, Pena supporters might argue that the surgical care of the Mexican wounded did not start until after the arrival of Dr. Moro, when Pena had been long gone from Bexar, and that would explain why Pena did not know about the doctors. In Moro’s letter of August 11, 1836, which in part is quoted in the Pena account, Moro wrote: “Hurtado, Reyes, and the practitioners [interns] with them did not arrive at Bejar until many days after the events, and Arroyo, who was there at the time, had exhausted the little I had left him during the month of December of the previous year.

  “He [Arroyo] had neither bandages nor material for making them, no gauze for the initial dressings, and nothing had been ordered or prepared for him; lacking everything, he made repeated requests, to no avail. The bandages finally given to him were of cotton material which, as your Excellency well knows, is noxious to wounds. Many had been admitted, among them two superior officers and some twenty others, to whom not a single surgeon could attend.”53

  Nevertheless, it appears that Arroyo and his interns, despite their lack of sufficient medical supplies and medicines began cutting on the wounded on March 6 or soon afterward because the number of wounded men being treated decreased as time passed. More likely they started extracting lead balls on February 23 when the army suffered its first casualties: two men killed and eight wounded. While the Francisco Ruiz account is not always reliable, it reports that a “temporary fortification” had been erected “in Potrero Street with the object of attending the wounded, etc.” Of course a number of the wounded men died while being treated. Andrade’s early report of the Alamo dead and wounded reported there were 251 wounded men. On April 10 Andrade reported he had 150 wounded men and 40 sick men. On April 22 Barnard reported the Mexican wounded at 100 men, down from a start of 400 on March 6. On May 16, the day after Moro arrived in Bexar, Andrade wrote that, after two months, the wounded men were dying because of the lack of medicines. Then, on the way out of Texas, Andrade reported he had more than 150 sick and wounded soldiers.54

  Again, it appears that Pena’s incorrect claims about the medical care of the Mexican wounded at the Alamo indicates that the published Pena manuscript is a forgery. The Pena narrative, however, is not the only account that claims there were no surgeons to treat the Mexican soldiers at the siege and storming of the Alamo. The Sanchez chronicle reports: “There are no hospitals, medicines, or surgeons; and the condition of the wounded is such as to cause pity. They have no mattresses on which to lie or blankets with which to cover themselves, in spite of the fact that on entering Bexar, we took from the enemy the remnants of three or four stores and that one has been set up and called the Government Store, where everything is sold at a high price and for cash.”55

  True, there was no established hospital at Bexar similar to what might have been found in Mexico City or any major city in the United States or Europe. There was, however, a facility of some kind in which Dr. Mariano Arroyo and his two in
terns worked on the Alamo wounded. The medicines were severely limited, but Arroyo did have some medicine.

  Like the Pena memoir, if the Sanchez account is authentic and he was in San Antonio at the fall of the Alamo, why does the account also incorrectly claim there were no surgeons at San Antonio to treat the Alamo wounded? While there is no evidence, independent of the Sanchez account, that puts Sanchez at the storming of the Alamo, he probably was in Bexar sometime during the spring campaign. So it is not logical that Sanchez would have claimed there were no surgeons to treat the Mexican army’s Alamo wounded. Moreover, the account reports that Arroyo and two interns were left behind in San Antonio by General Cos. Then the chronicle reports that there were no Mexican surgeons in the city in March—a claim that is refuted by the Arroyo report about the Alamo wounded. Like the case with the Pena memoir, the incorrect data about the Mexican medical care at the Alamo indicates that the Sanchez account is most likely a forgery.

  In total, the medical-care data in the Sanchez account apes the incomplete data found in Filisola’s Memoirs and Ramon Martinez Caro’s account. First, Filisola reports: “Those killed suffered no more, but the wounded were left to lie without any attention and with no shelter.” Second, he wrote: “No troops carried a medicine chest, and much less surgeons.” Third, the old general reports: “A large number of the wounded died because of poor care and lack of beds, surgical instruments, etc.” Then Caro wrote: “. . . the wounded died afterwards as a result of the lack of proper medical attention and medical facilities in spite of the fact that their injuries were not serious.” In regard to the sale of captured items, Caro wrote: “In the meantime, the public sale of the goods and supplies taken from the enemy, who had hurriedly taken refuge in the Alamo the moment we entered Bexar, continued.”56

  Lastly, one thing about Andrade’s figures has to be explained for his numbers to make sense. Andrade’s first report of the Alamo dead and wounded reported a total of 251 wounded men. Yet, Arroyo’s report indicates that he treated 408 men with surgery and 48 with medicine for a total of 456 wounded men. That gives us a difference of 205 wounded men. The explanation is simple. Historians and writers have assumed all these years that the Andrade report represented the dead and wounded of March 6. That appears to be wrong. Andrade did not reach Bexar until March 10. More likely, his report shows the status of the hospital soon after March 31 when he assumed command at Bexar because Santa Anna had left for the Colorado River. Thus, it appears that around April 1, Arroyo and his two interns had treated and released at least 205 men who had been wounded on or before March 6. Thus Andrade’s report of 70 dead appears to be the number of wounded who had died between March 6 and April 1.57

  Therefore, using Arroyo’s numbers, the Mexican wounded for the siege and storming of the Alamo would have been 456 men. Of that number, 14 came from the siege and storming of Bexar in 1835. So the actual Alamo wounded number would have been 442 men. Of that number 75 died while under the care of Arroyo and his interns. Add the 70 dead reported by Santa Anna, and the total dead for the March 6 attack was 145. Santa Anna reported that 300 men were wounded on March 6. If that is correct, then the Mexican army suffered 142 wounded during the twelve days previous to the final assault. Adding Santa Anna’s 70 dead for March 6 to 442 wounded for siege and storming of the Alamo results in 512 dead and wounded. Add the two men killed on February 23 and the two killed on February 25, and we have 516 dead and wounded for the entire siege. The total known dead would be 149. The total of 149, however, is most likely not the total number of Mexican soldiers killed during the thirteen days. There is no evidence that indicates the total number of men killed during the twelve days previous to the March 6 attack. Thus, the number may have been higher than four soldiers.58

  But what of the Sutherland’s claim of over 1,600 Mexican dead? What of the Ruiz claim of a similar number? The explanation for both claims is simple. The Sutherland and Ruiz accounts are not what they appear to be, and because of that, the accounts are not totally trustworthy.

  John Sutherland wrote the original manuscript about the fall of the Alamo in 1860 as a reply to Reuben M. Potter’s Alamo account. He submitted the manuscript to James P. Newcomb for inclusion in the Alamo Express, a pro-union newspaper in San Antonio. Secession sympathizers, however, destroyed the press in May 1861, before Newcomb could publish Sutherland’s narrative. After the Civil War and Sutherland’s death (1867), Newcomb returned the manuscript to one of Sutherland’s sons. That manuscript is not the narrative published in 1936 by Annie B. Sutherland, Dr. John’s granddaughter. The 1936 version is the work of John S. Ford. Ford obtained (probably in the 1880s) a copy of Sutherland’s disjointed manuscript and reworked it into what today is known as the Sutherland account. He did that by cutting certain elements and adding new material to the narrative.59

  In the original manuscript, Sutherland wrote that Ramon Caro, not Santa Anna, made the claim of 1,544 Mexican dead, and that Susanna Dickinson and Joe, Travis’s slave, verified Caro’s number. Sounds good, but other false allegations in the narrative discredit most of what Sutherland wrote about the Alamo. Sutherland was not Travis’s courier to Gonzales on the afternoon of February 23. Sutherland was not even in San Antonio on that date. His expense record for his trip to San Antonio with Captain William H. Patton indicates that Sutherland and Patton departed Bexar for Gonzales on February 19. They probably rode with Jesse Badgett, Samuel Maverick, and other individuals, who were headed to the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos.60

  Sutherland first made the courier claim in January 1854 in a petition to the Texas legislature. The doctor wanted the government to grant him bounty and donation grants for his alleged military service. First, Sutherland, instead of having his representative, Samuel Maverick, submit the petition, had a relative, who was a member of the legislature, submit the request. Second, Sutherland failed to furnish that body any witness statements to support his claim. The request was forwarded to the land committee, where it was rejected for the lack of evidence. If Sutherland had been telling the truth, there were numerous individuals such as Susanna Dickinson, Samuel Maverick, Juan Seguin, Antonio Menchaca, and R. M. Williamson, who were still living and could have probably furnished Sutherland statements to verify his claim.61

  Moreover, as for Sutherland being a medical doctor, the title was self-conferred. He was of the “Thomsonian System.” The method was not the model of treatment practiced by Dr. Amos Pollard, the garrison physician at San Antonio. In Pat Ireland Nixon’s The Medical Story of Early Texas, the Thomsonian System is discussed in the section titled: “Quackery and Medical Ethics.” Nixon explained: “Steam treatment, based on the absurd ideas of one Samuel Thomson, a New Hampshire blacksmith, was quite the vogue in Texas. It was the accepted plan of the charlatans of the day.” It may upset many individuals, but little of what charlatan Sutherland wrote about the Alamo can be trusted.62

  The Francisco Ruiz Alamo account, like the Sutherland narrative, is a report that has been accepted by historians and writers without sufficient examination. Most recently, historian William C. Davis and illustrator Gary Zaboly used the Ruiz report to claim that David Crockett’s body might have been found near the Alamo’s west wall or just outside the west wall.63

  The report was translated into English by Jose Agustin Quintero, a Cuban, who later wrote for the New Orleans Daily Picayune. Quintero’s translation was published in the 1860 Texas Almanac. Did Ruiz approach Quintero or did Quintero seek out Ruiz for the Almanac? We don’t know the circumstances of how the account was created. Nevertheless, Quintero was clearly a competent translator. New evidence shows that the problem with the report is not the translation, but the author, Francisco Ruiz.64

  Even without the new data, the credibility of the Ruiz narrative is compromised by a number of factors. First, incorrect statements such as: “At the third charge the Toluca battalion commenced to scale the walls and suffered severely. Out of 800 men, 130 were only left.” The Toluca men did get hit hard but
not that hard. The unit only contained 364 to start with and suffered about 20 dead and 74 wounded in the March 6 attack. The battalion went on to fight at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Just why Ruiz made such an outrageous claim is hard to understand, unless it was done to appease the racist Texans of 1860.65

  Second, unbelievable claims such as: “The dead [1,600] Mexicans of Santa Anna were taken to the graveyard, but not having sufficient room for them, I ordered some of them to be thrown in the river, which was done on the same day.” This Ruiz claim is refuted by a statement Sam Houston made on March 13, 1836: “. . . all killed in the fort were burned: The Mexicans killed in the assault were buried.”66

  Nevertheless, the figure of 1,600 Mexican dead appears to have been a rumor that started soon after the Mexican defeat at San Jacinto. On May 18, 1836, Samuel T. Allen wrote his brother: “Santa Anna says he lost a thousand men in Storming the Alamo and about as many more at Goliad, but all the rest of the prisoners say that their loss at the Alamo was upwards of 1600 so that his victory there was worse than an ordinary defeat.” Thus, the myth of the tragic defeat as a victory was born. More likely, Santa Anna and the prisoners appear to have been trying to convince the Texians that enough enemy blood had been shed. Because the Texians were consumed with the belief that they were far superior soldiers to the soldiers of Mexico, they seem to have accepted the unbelievable figures.67

  Also, would Ruiz, who already had at least one strike against him because his father was a delegate to the independence convention, have thrown the bodies of the Mexican soldiers into the San Antonio River, rather than giving them proper Catholic burials? Had he been caught doing such a thing, Santa Anna might have had him executed. Moreover, given the family’s pro-Texian role in events, would Ruiz have remained in San Antonio?68

  Third, Ruiz claimed he was the alcalde (mayor) of San Antonio during the siege and storming of the Alamo in February and March 1836. On February 28 Santa Anna wrote that there was no political authority in San Antonio, which indicates that the city fathers had departed the town for a safer situation. If Ruiz was the alcalde at the time and was in town, why does Santa Anna say there was no political authority in San Antonio? Given that the ayuntamiento had previously given Colonel J. C. Neill and the Alamo garrison a five-hundred-peso loan, it certainly makes sense that they had hit the road. The actual alcalde, however, was Francisco Flores, not Ruiz. Historians have assumed, without independent evidence, that Santa Anna appointed Ruiz alcalde to replace the absent Flores. On April 6, 1836, an election was conducted to fill the Flores vacancy. At that time, Ruiz was elected regidor (alderman). What happened to Francisco Flores? Other than being a pro-Texian mayor, why was Flores out of town? Was Ruiz also out of town during the Alamo siege and storming?69