Funeral pyres

Paul, it's not directly answering the question you're posing, but I was thinking about this topic due to what might have been one of the other reasons: If Santa Anna was ultimately out to cripple the Alamo compound's capabilities as a defensive structure, might they have started by beginning to dismantle gun platforms and palisades? That's where there was a lot of wood handy, and wouldn't many of the cannon already have been rolled down for use in blasting open doors/windows in houses and barracks? Santa Anna wasn't worried about a Texian assault or siege, he'd have met that in the open, wouldn't he? So the platforms became superfluous immediately.

I know it's said that the townspeople were sent to gather brush for pyres, but some think that was for pyres for bodies from the breakout groups, and I have to wonder how much suitable dry wood was available close in to town at the end of winter, especially if a lot had recently been cut for palisades. The quick, low-effort way to construct pyres inside the compound (at least two large ones? I haven't checked) would be to order people to strip wood off the ramps, and maybe use dry brush only for kindling to get the pyres started.

They weren't going to go a single step farther for wood than they had to, and if they made a pyre close to the north wall, where else was so much wood available? The ramps extended pretty far into the compound. I should think the last added/first removed principle was involved; rather than digging palisades out of the ground, first take up the decking. In fact, if finished planks were evidence of collusion on somebody's part, burn that stuff first so they can't get their lumber back, you know?

I haven't done any research into the contemporary accounts yet, it's just what little I remember off the top of my head, so I don't know what support for this notion can be found, or whether it's been suggested before. But it occurred to me that maybe the civilians-gathering-brush account has kept us from thinking more about how and why the interior pyres were constructed.

Throwing the soldados' bodies in the river seems fairly routine, to hope that bodies would float down the river and away from the immediate vicinity. Less effort than burying them, if you were taking any trouble about the enemy's bodies at all: bury your own and throw the enemy in the river. And thus perhaps in relative terms it didn't look so bad to the soldados as it does to us: Look, we're taking the trouble to carry our bodies clear over to the river, but we're just cremating these rebel dogs.

One thing I am aware of, thanks to this site and the additional readings it has pointed me to, is that I think it's safe to assume the bodies were not burned inside the compound. If you go over to Commerce Street, (walk to the corner where the old and now closed Dillard's -- I think it was a Dillard's -- is, and take a left east on Commerce, past the Catholic Church, to the bridge, opposite the Commerce Street entrance to the Rivercenter Mall, and you will find a marker on the bridge indicating the pyres were in that area. This was in the area of the Alameda, as it was called at the time, which was a tree-lined roadway. That would place the pyres southeast of, and some distance, away from the compound.

The Campo Santo, which was where Milam Park is now (across from today's El Mercado) couldn't hold all the Mexican bodies, or so it's been said. Why they didn't burn their own, I don't know, but some consideration should be given to the Catholic faith and the long-standing belief that cremation somehow would affect the dead's path to heaven. Basically, it was frowned on by the church, and I know many Catholic people today who refuse to consider cremation as an option after their death for the same reason. I think it had/has something to do with keeping the body intact, but don't quote me on that.

Regardless, tossing an intact body in the river was probably preferable, according to the religious beliefs of the day, than incinerating it. Just a thought.

Paul

If burial at sea did not conflict with Catholic beliefs, then throwing bodies into a river probably got in under the same dispensation. I don't know whether the Mexican or Spanish navies accompanied the act with a ritual like the familiar U.S. ceremony, but if a prayer from a priest was part of the process, and the Mexican dead were taken to the river in several cartloads, then the cartloads could have had their prayer and it might pass muster as a Christian burial by the soldiers' standard. Maybe even without a prayer. I doubt the lower ranks expected anything better in the circumstances, and as I said, to them it would look like significantly better treatment than the Texians got--the perception needed for morale purposes.

If the pyres were all outside the compound, then I agree that they'd have used brush--thanks for the correction. I asked my brother the ex-cabinetmaker, and he said fresh wood burns better/hotter for a purpose like that. I see that they had an accelerant to pour on the pyres for starters, and my brother said that to be frank, once a pile of bodies got burning, it's a wicking phenomenon involving fat in the bodies and the wood isn't that important. A Tejano noted a ring on the ground around the main pyre afterward, evidence of that combustion process. Sorry about the graphic image, but I'm afraid the gruesome details suggest that the Mexican army knew exactly how to run a funeral pyre.

And sorry about what has been rendered a digression, but I doubt the Texians were burning wood from the platforms to keep warm and cook. I thought the palisades were needed for the structural integrity of the platforms and ramps, preventing collapses, and the decking was needed to aim and work the guns. The cannon were the most effective weapon against an assault, and Travis would have tried to maintain their effectiveness. Keeping warm at night was less of an issue if much of the garrison was busy on nocturnal repair of the damage from shelling--a lot of their sleeping would have been done while holed up during the day, when it was warmer. Their fatigue on March 6 testifies to the extent of their nightly labors.

I think, an intentional "degradation" is more Texian propaganda, that has wound its way into "historical fact" than really an intended slight. Funeral pyres on battlefields were a long tradition - to include Catholic Armies. Quite simply it was the easiest way to dispose of a mass number of bodies - before mechanization.

What I think was truly offensive (especially at Goliad) was after the fires, the remains were not collected and buried, but were left for the coyotes and other carrion (Steve Hardin gives - and Gary Zaboley illustrated - a very graphic description of what the Texians found at Goliad in Texian Macabre).

Lt Col Pedro Delgado, captured at San Jacinto, reflected this fact when he said of the Mexican dead at that battle, that the Texians "had not the generosity of heart to burn or to bury" the bodies of his dead comrades (Eighteen Minutes, p. 394), (emphasis added).

The stories of the Campo Santo being filled in aftermath of the battle are simply false. Kevin Young is far more an expert on this than me, but I believe the records show only the Mexican Officers were buried in the cemetary.

Although, there is no real evidence (except the total lack of evidence of any burials - other than the officers), I now believe that most of the Mexican enlisted men were burned in the same pyres as the Alamo defenders. Very coincidentally, the Mexican enlisted dead plus the known defenders come very close to the total number of bodies the Mexicans say were burned.

Mexican killed numbered around 60, so it would have been no big deal to toss them onto the pyres with the 190+ Texian dead, minus the officers who were buried (as was Guerrero).

Also, rather than seeking to dismantle the Alamo, the Mexicans began shoring it up after the battle in order to garrison it themselves as the war moved forward. I believe that some of the surviving plats and drawings of the Alamo may actually reflect improvements made by the Mexicans after the battle, but I'm rusty on the dates of these documents. It's worth remembering that most of the improvements to the Alamo also had been made by the Mexicans under Cos in 1835.

Paul, I realize what the Catholic Church believed (and a lot of other Christians), but on the battlefield Catholic Armies, eg. Spain, Holy Roman Empire, France had all historically - long before the Alamo - practiced cremation of their own and their enemies dead (especially when they couldn't simply march away).

Delgado's, a Mexican officer, quote that he basically considered the Texians barbaric for not burning the bodies of his fellow Catholic soldiers after San Jacinto, bears it out, to me, that he at least considered battlefield cremation a normal practice.

Now, I'm not saying this to promote the idea that the Mexican enlisted men were cremated after the Alamo (though as I said, I think it is at least a possiblity), but that it was considered a "normal" policy when policing up the battlefield and not some sort of threat to Texians.

In The Face of Battle, John Keegan points out that unusually hot weather at the Swedish battle at Visby in 1361 resulted in at least a couple of thousand bodies being buried with a lot of their gear like chain mail still on, because the weather sped decomposition before the bodies could be stripped--so more is known about that battle than most medieval ones.

One message I think Santa Anna didn't mind making clear was the price of rebellion, and the pyres' remnants were a serendipitous, long-lasting way to advertise that while sparing the town the health hazards of leaving the bodies to rot close by.