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By Dr. Richard Bruce Winders,
Former first professional Historian at The Alamo
Can you remember the first time you heard about the Battle of the Alamo?
For me, it was as a child back in the late 1950s.
Born in 1953, I was too young to have seen Disney’s “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier” when it aired in 1955. However, Johnny Brooks, an older companion took it upon himself to educate me on the battle and its larger-than-life heroes. Thus, I was well aware of the Alamo when John Wayne’s epic film, “The Alamo,”debuted in 1960.
My family did not see the movie, but again, an older friend’s family did. The next day Stan Richardson came over and wanted to play “Alamo.” Of course, being my senior by two years he insisted on the right to play who else but John Wayne.
These episodes from my own early life likely mirror those of a great many people. To Baby Boomers, the Alamo was our Star Wars. The difference, however, is that the story we revered was based on an actual historical episode and not in a galaxy far, far away.
But as Stan’s conflation of the actor playing Crockett with the actual man, popular culture and history are often intermingled.
The problem for society is that historical events and figures are often reduced to easily remembered fables. In one extreme case of this confusion, I once encountered an older woman at the Alamo who believed that Crockett was just a television character and had no idea he had actually ever really existed.
Like the woman in this example, I also saw my share of Western movies and TV series. Not being satisfied by these shows, I began going to the library for books, something we did in the age before the internet. Like others with the same urge to learn, I realized that popular culture rarely presents history accurately. My pursuit of historical knowledge resulted in my becoming a Historian, which enabled me to serve as the Alamo’s curator and Historian from 1996 until 2019.
One of the first challenges I encountered when I arrived was that many visitors had seen the John Wayne film and believed that the Alamo was an old abandoned mission in the middle of nowhere. As such, was not any attempt to defend it vainglorious and foolish?
I wondered how to answer this and make the Alamo make sense and meaningful to those who came to see what remains of the historic site. First, I took a longer view of the Alamo’s past going back to its beginning in 1718 as Mission San Antonio de Valero. Although the mission’s role ceased in 1793, the site was turned over for use by the Spanish military. Its use as a barracks continued after Mexico declared its independence in 1821. Hence, it never was abandoned but just served a different function for the community.
The second point centered on the Alamo’s location on the eastern edge of the town of San Antonio de Béxar. More than one-hundred years old at the time of the 1836 battle, Béxar served as a way-station between the towns of the Rio Grande Valley and the settlements on the Texas-Louisiana border. Capital of the Department of Bexar, it hosted a military garrison as well as served as the commercial center for the region. The fact that Bexar was some distance from other municipalities added to its importance.
As to the third point, why did the Alamo’s garrison attempt to hold it?
It is crucial to realize that the town and not just the Alamo was the prize.
Béxar was important to both the rebels and the Mexican government. Antonio López de Santa Anna’s Centralist government had planned to launch a campaign against Anglo and Tejano supporters of the Federal Constitution of 1824 from Béxar in the fall of 1835. This prompted the rebels to attack and capture the town in December. As Santa Béxar must be recaptured before the colonies could be brought back under control. Knowing this, the Alamo’s garrison hoped to hold out long enough for the rest of the colonists to come to their aid. If this happened the war could be confined to the frontier and not spread to the Anglo communities further to the east. This was the logic behind and the reason for the defenders’ stubborn defense.
I enjoyed my twenty-three years at the Alamo. Over the years I started to notice a particular trait about visitors. They no longer came expecting to find John Wayne’s Alamo. Many younger visitors not only have never seen his movie but do not know who he was. While that is a sad commentary on the state of our society’s cultural literacy, it does present us with an opportunity to find new ways to think about the history of the Texas Revolution. Although visitors may not remember the Duke, let us work to make sure they never forget the Alamo.
Dr. Richard Bruce Winders earned his PhD in History at Texas Christian University in 1994. Hired by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 1996, he became the Alamo’s first professional historian. In addition to his role as curator and director of education at the famous site, Winders has authored a number of books on Texas and the Southwest. His latest work is entitled Queen of the West: A Documentary History of San Antonio, 1718-1900.
