In his article on the Alamo, Cecil Adams bases most of his claims on the diary of Jose Enrique de la Pena. I did a bit of searching on the Internet and there seems to be claims that this diary is a fake. So is the diary real or was Cecil Adams fooled?
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_104.html
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/lincoln_forgers/6.html?sect=27
http://www.freedomalliance.org/view_article.php?a_id=357
another link. http://www.cnn.com/US/9811/19/alamo.auction/
the diaries do seem very suspect - I think you are right about Cecil - he should have been more careful
I was going to comment that perhaps when Cecil wrote that column in 1981 the prevailing scholarship hadn’t yet revealed the de la Pena diaries to be likely forged. But I see from scm1001’s CNN link that critics have been calling them just that—forgeries—since 1975. Interesting that Cecil doesn’t make note of the controversy in his article.
Since this is a comment on one of Cecil’s columns, I’ll move this thread to the Comments on Cecil’s Columns forum.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Is the Straight Dope article be updated?
Sorry, that should say:
Will the Straight Dope article be updated?
Anything is possible. Just give it another 23 years and see what happens.
None of the articles cited, however, seem to give a balanced view of what the “prevailing scholarship” is. The CNN article doesn’t mention, for example, who was critical of the document in 1975 - these critics only surfaced after it was translated into English, and could be simply people who didn’t wish to believe it.
I would also note that the two critics cited in the CNN article are an illustrator and an arson investigator, not (apparently) experts on the detection of forgery. (And the latter admits he cannot prove the document is a fake.)
On the other hand, the article cites a history professor with regard to the document’s authenticity:
Given that several of the critics cited so far seem to be non-experts with a vested interest in the heroic version of the Alamo being valid, I personally would withhold judgement until I see more solid evidence either pro or con.
I just wanted to say I didn’t mean to imply that the article should be updated to say the diary is a fake - just an update on the controversy about the diary, since the entire article seems to be based on the diary. Maybe Cecil Adams could do an article on what the current scholarship says about the diary and the Alamo. This might be an interesting article with the new movie coming out soon.
While the memoirs are controversial, my impression is that a majority of historians still accept them as authentic. As a counterweight to the links already provided, coverage of the forensic tests that the manuscript passed.
Most of the case against derives from the series of books by William Groneman (none of which I’ve read). Most other recent writers on the seige respect his work, but suggest he’s got a bee in his bonnett about this specific question. Groneman’s major argument is to finger John Laflin as the forger. This is at least possible, since Laflin has also been caught forging another supposed Alamo document.
However, the case against seems to be overly caught up in the issue of how Crockett died. If you accept that the document is true, with possible reservations over a few passages - including the account of the execution of him - then there’s nothing about it that’s terribly surprising. And if you’ve no particular prejudice about how he died, then the memoirs just look like one more problematic source amongst all the others.
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/elsewhere/119.html
This may or may not be an update. I don’t mean to imply that the author is scholarly, just that it might provide more info.
Consider it a supplement to what bonzer found.l
Unlike the author of the ‘Movie Poop Shoot’ article (as posted by samclem), I have actually read David Gracy’s article in one of the recent issues of Southwestern Historical Quarterly. (Unfortunately, I don’t the exact reference to hand.) I can highly recommend it. The case he makes for authenticity is a strong one. He is particularly good on why, even if it is a forgery, Laflin is especially unlikely to have been the forger; the dates just don’t fit.
It is also worth emphasising that even if the diary is genuine, it doesn’t necessarily follow that de la Peña’s account of Crocket’s death is accurate. His comments need not imply that he was an eyewitness of that specific incident and he may just have been reporting unreliable camp gossip. The aftermath of a battle is the perfect breeding ground for unfounded rumours.
As Star Was says, the controversy would be a perfect one for Cecil to tackle.
Crockett died during the fighting, not afterward. His body was identified in place by the palisade, just outside the chapel, by at least two witnesses - Susanna Dickinson and Travis’s servant Joe. Joe’s account is quoted in William Fairfax Gray’s diary as follows:
<quote>
Sunday, March 20, 1836
This morning Messrs. Zavalla, Ruis and Navarro arrived. The cabinet are now all here, except Hardiman.
The servant of the late lamented Travis, Joe, a black boy of about twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, is now here. He was in the Alamo when the fatal attack was made. He is the only male, of all who were in the fort, who escaped death,[27] and he, according to his own account, escaped narrowly. I heard him interrogated in presence of the cabinet and others. He related the affair with much modesty, apparent candor, and remarkably distinctly for one of his class. The following is, as near as I can recollect, the substance of it:
The garrison was much exhausted by incessant watching and hard labor. They had all worked until a late hour on Saturday night, and when the attack was made, sentinels and all were asleep, except one man, Capt. -----, who gave the alarm. There were three picket guards without the fort, but they, too, it is supposed, were asleep, and were run upon and bayonetted, for they gave no alarm. Joe was sleeping in the room with his master when the alarm was given. Travis sprang up, seized his rifle and sword, and called to Joe to follow him. Joe took his gun and followed. Travis ran across the Alamo and mounted the wall,
and called out to his men, “Come on, boys, the Mexicans are upon us, and we’ll give them Hell.” He discharged his gun; so did Joe. In an instant Travis was shot down. He fell within the wall, on the sloping ground, and sat up. The enemy twice applied their scaling ladders to the walls, and were twice beaten back. But this Joe did not well understand, for when his master fell he ran and ensconced himself in a house, from which he says he fired on them several times, after they got in. On the third attempt they succeeded in mounting the walls, and then poured over like sheep. The battle then became a melee. Every man fought for his own hand, as he best might, with butts of guns, pistols, knives, etc. As Travis sat wounded on the ground General Mora, who was passing him, made a blow at him with his sword, which Travis struck up, and ran his assailant through the body, and both died on the same spot. This was poor Travis’ last effort. The handful of Americans retreated to such covers as they had, and continued the battle until only one man was left alive, a little, weakly man named Warner, who asked for quarter. He was spared by the soldiery, but on being conducted to Santa Anna, he ordered him to be shot, and it was done. Bowie is said to have fired through the door of his room, from his sick bed. He was found dead and mutilated where he lay. Crockett and a few of his friends were found together, with twenty-four of the enemy dead around them…
<end quote>
Poured over like sheep?
A point which I did consider mentioning. But the OP was about the authenticity of de la Peña’s diary, not about Crockett’s death. How Crockett did or did not die actually doesn’t have much bearing on the diary’s authenticity given that de la Peña might simply have been misinformed. Only a mistake in the text that one cannot imagine him having made can count as internal evidence against his authorship. There are a number of contemporary newspaper reports which said something similar so there is no doubt that the story was doing the rounds at the time. All witnesses are fallible and the value of any one witness varies, depending on what they’re talking about.
Which is also why many historians are equally unwilling to take any of the statements made by Mrs. Dickinson and Joe at face value. How much did they know about who was doing what during the battle? How likely is it that they were able to inspect the bodies of the dead afterwards and, if so, how closely did they do so? Might they not just have been telling their listeners what they wanted to hear? Did those who reported what they said report them accurately? This need not mean that what they said was wrong, only that it can and has been questioned. It really is a case of paying your money and judging which bits of which accounts you think are more reliable.
Personally, I think it rather more likely that Crockett did die fighting. But that doesn’t mean that I must therefore believe that the de la Peña diary is a fake. Nor, for that matter, would someone who did believe that the diary was a fake necessarily discount the other sources which claimed that Crockett had been executed.
I own the book “Three Roads To The Alamo”, by William C. Davis, which discusses the lives of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, and my comments will come from it.
Commenting on the letter that Clothahump posted (in part), the claim that Travis killed a General Mora is myth. Dickenson would have known nothing about the battle: she spent the entirety of it in the sacristy of the church. Joe fled after the death of Travis. The Mexican accounts show that Bowie didn’t shoot back at them: he was too ill to do that. There is no evidence that either Dickenson or Joe ever saw Crockett’s body, and Dickenson is known to have fooled around with her claims in later years.
Moreover, Francisco Ruiz, who identified the bodies of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, places Crockett’s body in an earthwork on the western wall.
The “execution” rumors involving Crockett are suspect, as they 1) aren’t claimed until a few weeks after the battle, and 2) seem to be borrowed from Texian claims.
Davis determines that, overall, the evidence involving Crockett’s death is too scant and contradictory for there to be any certainty over when he died, or where.
Congrats, Star Was, the column has been updated and will appear tomorrow (14 May 2004), and your OP here is the lead in! (I’ll provide a link when it’s posted.)
Link: Remember the Alamo?
Slug is indulging in a little artistic license today. There wouldn’t have been any saguaro cacti at the Alamo–they’re native to the Sonora Desert, several hundred miles west of Texas. Perhaps he was thinking of prickly pears?
Actually, my cousin’s hairdresser’s best friend saw him working as a greeter at Wal-Mart just last week! And she wouldn’t lie!
