Remembering the Alamo

Dawn.  March 6, 1836, Santa Anna's 1800 men charged the Alamo.  Twice they were repelled.  The third time their reserves joined in, scaling the walls and Col. William Travis died, slumped over a cannon.  Hand to hand fighting with knives and clubbed rifles against bayonets ensued.  The defenders fell back and died in the barracks and chapel.  By 7am the fighting was over, but as Santa Anna approached the mission, a last defiant shot went over his head and he turned and ran. 

Santa Anna later strolled through the Alamo over the dead bodies of Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett and said, "It was but a small affair." Santa Anna was wrong.  He had lost 600 men and given Texas a symbol - a battle cry that would come back to crush him just six weeks later.

The Alamo defenders had included combative, hot-tempered Colonel Travis who believed the Alamo was the key to Texas; Jim Bowie, who grieving over the death of his wife and two children to illness, said, "we would rather die in these ditches that give it to the enemy." Sam Houston said of Bowie, "there is no man on whose valor I place a higher estimate."  Finally there was Davy Crockett, who along with his Tennesseans fought to the death on the south wall.  All became legends in history. 
legend says that Bowie fought his last fight from his sickbed near the main gate armed with pistols and the knife that bears his name.

The Mexican attackers were led by Juan Amador Manuel Fernandez Castrillon.  Santa Anna directed the attack from a nearby command post.  Reports say Castrillon offered protection to six wounded men (of which Crockett may have been one) but Santa Anna ordered all six tortured and executed instead.

Colonel Travis' last message: "Fellow citizens - I am besieged by a 1000 or more Mexicans for 24 hours and have not lost a man.  Our flag still waves proudly from the walls.  I shall never surrender or retreat.  I am determined to die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country.  Victory or Death!"

Next time - First Citizen of Texas Houston
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Today in Pioneer History: "On September 26, 1820, the great pioneering frontiersman Daniel Boone dies quietly in his sleep at his son’s home near present-day Defiance, Missouri. The indefatigable voyager was 86.

Sheriff Joe Walker

As the new sheriff in Jackson County, Walked was never a "braggert, always soft-spoken, yet capable of maintaining discipline" states the historical records.

Stories circulated later that Walker was the first of the gunslinger western sheriffs before Earp, Hickock, and others.  During his term, 33 criminal cases were tried in Jackson circuit court, none involving guns, hand to hand combat only.

The weapon of choice at that time was a knife - one named after Jim Bowie of Arkansas who didn't invent it as legend leads us to believe, but could wield it like no one else ever could.  The new hatchet was considered more manly than a gun - especially fighting Comanche or a grizzly bear.  Following the Civil War, the six-shooter offered better opportunities to murder opponents - if you afford one. and knew how to use it.  Unlike the movies,  the six-shooters weren't your ordinary man's weapon.

By the time Joe became sheriff he was 29 years old and had been living and traveling the rough road for 10 years already.  Chances were slim that anyone got the best of Sheriff Walker.  No records exist of him actually having to overpower anyone, but people knew he could and that was enough in those days.  Only three times in his entire life was he ever confronted physically and all three men backed up before it came to violence.  That is respect.

Next time ...some of Sheriff Walkers cases