How Did Davy Die? And Why Do We Care So Much?
How Did Davy Die? And Why Do We Care So Much?

Author: Dan Kilgore

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1603443479

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Just over thirty years ago, Dan Kilgore ignited a controversy with his presidential address to the Texas State Historical Association and its subsequent publication in book form, "How Did Davy Die?" After the 1975 release of the first-ever English translation of eyewitness accounts by Mexican army officer Jose Enrique de la Pena, Kilgore had the audacity to state publicly that historical sources suggested Davy Crockett did not die on the ramparts of the Alamo, swinging the shattered remains of his rifle "Old Betsy." Rather, Kilgore asserted, Mexican forces took Crockett captive and then executed him on Santa Anna's order. Soon after the publication of "How Did Davy Die?, " the "London Daily Mail" associated Kilgore with "the murder of a myth;" he became the subject of articles in "Texas Monthly" and the "Wall Street Journal;" and some who considered his historical argument an affront to a treasured American icon delivered personal insults and threats of violence. Now, in this enlarged, commemorative edition, James E. Crisp, a professional historian and a participant in the debates over the De la Pena diary, reconsiders the heated disputation surrounding "How Did Davy Die?" and poses the intriguing follow-up question, ." . . And Why Do We Care So Much?" Crisp reviews the origins and subsequent impact of Kilgore's book, both on the historical hullabaloo and on the author. Along the way, he provides fascinating insights into methods of historical inquiry and the use--or non-use--of original source materials when seeking the truth of events that happened in past centuries. He further examines two aspects of the debate that Kilgore shied away from: the place and function of myth in culture, and the racial overtones of some of the responses to Kilgore's work.

Born on a Mountaintop
Born on a Mountaintop

Author: Bob Thompson

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2014-03-04

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 030772090X

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Pioneer. Congressman. Martyr of the Alamo. King of the Wild Frontier. As with all great legends, Davy Crockett's has been retold many times. Over the years, he has been repeatedly reinvented by historians and popular storytellers. In Born on a Mountaintop, Bob Thompson combines the stories of the real hero and his Disney-enhanced afterlife as he delves deep into our love for an American icon. In the road-trip tradition of Sarah Vowell and Tony Horwitz, Thompson follows Crockett's footsteps from his birthplace in east Tennessee to Washington, where he served three terms in Congress, and on to Texas and the gates of the Alamo, seeking out those who know, love, and are still willing to fight over Davy's life and legacy. Born on a Mountaintop is more than just a bold new biography of one of the great American heroes. Thompson's rich mix of scholarship, reportage, humor, and exploration of modern Crockett landscapes bring Davy Crockett's impact on the American imagination vividly to life.

How Did Davy Die? And Why Do We Care So Much?
How Did Davy Die? And Why Do We Care So Much?

Author: Dan Kilgore

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2010-01-19

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 1603441948

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Just over thirty years ago, Dan Kilgore ignited a controversy with his presidential address to the Texas State Historical Association and its subsequent publication in book form, How Did Davy Die? After the 1975 release of the first-ever English translation of eyewitness accounts by Mexican army officer José Enrique de la Peña, Kilgore had the audacity to state publicly that historical sources suggested Davy Crockett did not die on the ramparts of the Alamo, swinging the shattered remains of his rifle "Old Betsy." Rather, Kilgore asserted, Mexican forces took Crockett captive and then executed him on Santa Anna's order. Soon after the publication of How Did Davy Die?, the London Daily Mail associated Kilgore with "the murder of a myth;" he became the subject of articles in Texas Monthly and the Wall Street Journal; and some who considered his historical argument an affront to a treasured American icon delivered personal insults and threats of violence. Now, in this enlarged, commemorative edition, James E. Crisp, a professional historian and a participant in the debates over the De la Peña diary, reconsiders the heated disputation surrounding How Did Davy Die? and poses the intriguing follow-up question, “. . . And Why Do We Care So Much?” Crisp reviews the origins and subsequent impact of Kilgore’s book, both on the historical hullabaloo and on the author. Along the way, he provides fascinating insights into methods of historical inquiry and the use—or non-use—of original source materials when seeking the truth of events that happened in past centuries. He further examines two aspects of the debate that Kilgore shied away from: the place and function of myth in culture, and the racial overtones of some of the responses to Kilgore’s work.

Writing History with Lightning
Writing History with Lightning

Author: Matthew Christopher Hulbert

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0807170909

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Films possess virtually unlimited power for crafting broad interpretations of American history. Nineteenth-century America has proven especially conducive to Hollywood imaginations, producing indelible images like the plight of Davy Crockett and the defenders of the Alamo, Pickett’s doomed charge at Gettysburg, the proliferation and destruction of plantation slavery in the American South, Custer’s fateful decision to divide his forces at Little Big Horn, and the onset of immigration and industrialization that saw Old World lifestyles and customs dissolve amid rapidly changing environments. Balancing historical nuance with passion for cinematic narratives, Writing History with Lightning confronts how movies about nineteenth-century America influence the ways in which mass audiences remember, understand, and envision the nation’s past. In these twenty-six essays—divided by the editors into sections on topics like frontiers, slavery, the Civil War, the Lost Cause, and the West—notable historians engage with films and the historical events they ostensibly depict. Instead of just separating fact from fiction, the essays contemplate the extent to which movies generate and promulgate collective memories of American history. Along with new takes on familiar classics like Young Mr. Lincoln and They Died with Their Boots On, the volume covers several films released in recent years, including The Revenant, 12 Years a Slave, The Birth of a Nation, Free State of Jones, and The Hateful Eight. The authors address Hollywood epics like The Alamo and Amistad, arguing that these movies flatten the historical record to promote nationalist visions. The contributors also examine overlooked films like Hester Street and Daughters of the Dust, considering their portraits of marginalized communities as transformative perspectives on American culture. By surveying films about nineteenth-century America, Writing History with Lightning analyzes how movies create popular understandings of American history and why those interpretations change over time.

Standoff at High Noon
Standoff at High Noon

Author: Bill Markley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-10-22

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1493053361

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In Standoff at High Noon, the sequel to Old West Showdown, coauthors Kellen Cutsforth and Bill Markley again investigate ten well-known, controversial stories from the Old West. Through their opposing viewpoints, learn more about notorious figures and infamous events, including the controversial death of Davy Crockett at the Alamo; the life and death of Sacagawea who assisted Lewis and Clark on their Corps of Discovery Expedition; the tragic fate of the Donner Party snowbound in the Sierra Nevada; the assassination of Wild Bill Hickok; Arizona’s Lost Dutchman Mine; and the controversy over Butch Cassidy’s death in South America. No matter whose side you are on, there’s always something new to discover about the mythic Old West.

Texan Identities
Texan Identities

Author: Light Townsend Cummins

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2016-09-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1574416480

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Texan Identities rests on the assumption that Texas has distinctive identities that define “what it means to be Texan,” and that these identities flow from myth and memory. Each contributor to this volume provides in some fashion an answer to the following questions: What does it mean to be Texan? What constitutes a Texas identity and how may such change over time? What myths, memories, and fallacies contribute to making a Texas identity, and how have these changed for Texas? Are all the myths and memories that define Texas identity true or are some of them fallacious? Is there more than one Texas identity? Many Texans do believe the story of their state’s development manifesting singular, unique attributes, which are prone to expression as stereotypical, iconic representations of what it means to be Texan. Each of the essays in this volume addresses particular events, places, and people in Texas history and how they are related to Texas identity, myth, and memory. The discussion begins with the idealized narrative and icons revolving around the Texas Revolution, most especially the Alamo. The Texas Rangers in myth and memory are also explored. Other essays expand on traditional and increasingly outdated interpretations of the Anglo-American myth of Texas by considering little known roles played by women, racial minorities, and specific stereotypes such as the cattleman.

Lone Star Mind
Lone Star Mind

Author: Ty Cashion

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0806162082

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There is the story the Lone Star State likes to tell about itself—and then there is the reality, a Texas past that bears little resemblance to the manly Anglo myth of Texas exceptionalism that maintains a firm grip on the state’s historical imagination. Lone Star Mind takes aim at this traditional narrative, holding both academic and lay historians accountable for the ways in which they craft the state’s story. A clear-sighted, far-reaching work of intellectual history, this book marshals a wide array of pertinent scholarship, analysis, and original ideas to point the way toward a new “usable past” that twenty-first-century Texans will find relevant. Ty Cashion fixes T. R. Fehrenbach’s Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans in his crosshairs in particular, laying bare the conceptual deficiencies of the romantic and mythic narrative the book has served to codify since its first publication in 1968. At the same time, Cashion explores the reasons why the collective efforts of university-trained scholars have failed to diminish the appeal of the state’s iconic popular culture, despite the fuller and more accurate record these historians have produced. Framing the search for a collective Texan identity in the context of a post-Christian age and the end of Anglo-male hegemony, Lone Star Mind illuminates the many historiographical issues besetting the study of American history that will resonate with scholars in other fields as well. Cashion proposes that a cultural history approach focusing on the self-interests of all Texans is capable of telling a more complete story—a story that captures present-day realities.

Forget the Alamo
Forget the Alamo

Author: Bryan Burrough

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 198488011X

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A New York Times bestseller! “Lively and absorbing. . ." — The New York Times Book Review "Engrossing." —Wall Street Journal “Entertaining and well-researched . . . ” —Houston Chronicle Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head. Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos--Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels--scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness. In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark.

Drumbeats from Mescalero
Drumbeats from Mescalero

Author: H. Henrietta Stockel

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2011-04-07

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1603442308

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Wisdom from the past . . . hope for the future . . . In 1945 the hot wind from a nuclear explosion at Trinity Site on a nearby missile range raged across the Mescalero Apache Reservation in south-central New Mexico, killing hundreds of head of livestock and causing sickness among the descendants of some of the most famous Apache heroes in American history. In many ways, this disaster typified what these Apaches had come to expect from the federal government: attention was often accompanied by undesired results. Four thousand Apaches of the Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Lipan bands now live on this reservation. In twelve remarkable oral history interviews, three generations of Mescalero, Chiricahua, and Lipan Apaches reflect on the trials of the past, the challenges of the present, and hope for the future. A common thread among all of the interviewees is a collective memory of their people as formidable enemies of the U.S. government in the not-too-distant past. Author and ethnographer H. Henrietta Stockel has structured these interviews to encompass three groups of Mescalero Apache society: the elders, the “warriors” (middle-aged), and the “horseholders,” or young apprentices.

We Never Retreat
We Never Retreat

Author: Edward A. Bradley

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 1623492610

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The term “filibuster” often brings to mind a senator giving a long-winded speech in opposition to a bill, but the term had a different connotation in the nineteenth century—invasion of foreign lands by private military forces. Spanish Texas was a target of such invasions. Generally given short shrift in the studies of American-based filibustering, these expeditions were led by colorful men such as Augustus William Magee, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, John Robinson, and James Long. Previous accounts of their activities are brief, lack the appropriate context to fully understand filibustering, and leave gaps in the historiography. Ed Bradley now offers a thorough recounting of filibustering into Spanish Texas framed through the lens of personal and political motives: why American men participated in them and to what extent the US government was either involved in or tolerated them. “We Never Retreat” makes a major contribution by placing these expeditions within the contexts of the Mexican War of Independence and international relations between the United States and Spain.