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Post by sloanrodgers on Mar 20, 2012 15:48:02 GMT -5
I think that was actually Madame Candelaria doing charcoal sketches to sell to tourist How did she sell a wall portrait?
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 20, 2012 16:14:27 GMT -5
No idea, but I think she thought she could sell anything. Maybe she sold views of it at 10 cents a view with an autographed Alamo Stone thrown in.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Mar 20, 2012 17:08:38 GMT -5
She certainly sold a bill of goods to all of us. LOL.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Mar 20, 2012 17:41:30 GMT -5
Clearly, from a Mexican point of view, cremation was no big deal and indeed seemingly a perfectly respectable way of dealing with large numbers of dead soldiers. Old Creed Taylor claimed in a newspaper article before his death that it was a horrid scene. Taylor said his ranger company was the first to arrive at the Alamo after the battle. They rode down a cart trail northeast of the fort and came to a mesquite flat, where they found the funeral pyre of the Texans. He stated that the bodies were stacked in a long row atop wood logs and some were only partially consumed by the fire. Of course Creed testimony can't always be trusted completely. I won't defend Taylor's veracity. It was kinda loose, but one detail here rings true to me. North of the Powder House a few hundred yards, a road crossed Powder House Hill that eminated from east gate of the Alamo that early maps have listed as the Camino Viejo de las Carretas (The Old Cart Road). If Taylor truly did come in that way, then it would put him right in line with one of the cremation site theories. Seguin alluded to three funeral pyres. Bexarenos identified only the two which flanked the Alameda. If those two were only the dead removed from the interior of the fort -- it WAS to be the victorious army's barracks for several months -- and additional bodies were found somewhere east of the fort from the breakouts attempts, then it is logical that THOSE bodies would have been stacked and cremated basically where they fell rather than carted to another location hundreds of yards away. Also, if there is any connection between charred bones unearthed when excavating for the fire station decades later and the cremated men of the Alamo, then Taylor's direction of approach down the Cart Road becomes even more intriguing. That fire station was directly in the path of the Cart Road!!!
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Mar 20, 2012 20:17:44 GMT -5
Are there ANY after battle reports ANYWHERE by the Mexican army that discusses disposal of their dead soldiers? Is there any reference to this in their military literature and manuals? - Paul Meske I thought I read somewhere that many of the Mexican dead were buried in the old cemetery in what is now Milam Park. Anybody else have any supporting info, or am I imagining I read this? Paul
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Post by Hiram on Mar 21, 2012 13:20:08 GMT -5
I thought I read somewhere that many of the Mexican dead were buried in the old cemetery in what is now Milam Park. Anybody else have any supporting info, or am I imagining I read this? Paul Mexican dead were reportedly buried in what is often referred to as "Campo Santo." This Catholic cemetery was adjacent to the north side of what was the first Protestant cemetery in San Antonio, now known as Milam Park.
Campo Santo was actually a relatively small section of the Catholic cemetery. Giraud indicated that in his 1840s survey for the city.
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Post by Tom Nuckols on Mar 22, 2012 0:13:56 GMT -5
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. This discussion now leads me to believe that, too. Because of the stigma their faith attached to cremation, the Mexican officers would want to avoid stating in official reports (which would be read by many folks in Mexico) that they had cremated their own soldados rather than burying them. Moreover, stating that the extra 60 or so cremated bodies were defenders rather than soldados had the added benefit of inflating the enemy body count. Clearly, dead soldados were thrown in the river, but did any official report from a Mexican officer disclose that? If not, I think it makes for a strong case that the Mexican officers officially covered up how the bodies of most soldados were disposed of.
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Post by Hiram on Mar 23, 2012 15:00:53 GMT -5
Clearly, dead soldados were thrown in the river, but did any official report from a Mexican officer disclose that? I don't think it's quite that clear. The accounts of Francisco Ruiz (1860) and Pablo Diaz (1906) make mention of it, but there are some credibility issues with both of those accounts for different reasons.
I think that cremation of the Mexican dead is a strong possibility. Part of the reasoning behind the burning of the Alamo dead was public health. The Army of Operations re-established a garrison in Bexar and poisoning the water supply would be counter-productive. Were there Mexican dead floating in the acequia? I'm sure there were. It's river water, but it's not the river.
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Post by stuart on Mar 24, 2012 11:55:45 GMT -5
I'm inclined to doubt the throwing of bodies into the river bit because it doesn't make a lot of sense and its also messy in that all that happens is that half rotted corses fetch up all along the river bank, let alone what it does to the coffee.
As Rich suggested above its entirely possible some ended up in the water accidentally - both Mexican and Texians - but that's not the same thing at all.
There are essentially two soldierly options. The officers get buried properly in individual graves in the campo santo, but the men either go into a mass grave or a couple of mass graves. They need to be dug of course and while none of the accounts from Ruiz or anybody else mentions mass graves it is the sort of thing likely to be done by the men themselves rather than by a civilian labour force. Casualties may have been heavy, but they were manageable.
Otherwise its the flames and is that why there were two pyres immediately outside the Alamo itself, one for the soldados and one for the gringos?
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Post by Rich Curilla on Mar 24, 2012 17:41:07 GMT -5
Am I recalling a primary or secondary account when I remember somebody saying that the Mexican soldiers were cleaning the battle grime off faces in the Alamo compound to determine which were Mexican and which Anglo? If this were the case, then it might be assumed that there was an order to handle them differently.
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Post by jamesg on Mar 25, 2012 0:13:42 GMT -5
The Great Majority of Mexico including the Soldados were Catholic in 1836 and back in those days Cremation was a Big No-No for Catholics..Had they cremated the Mexican Soldados it would have caused a serious morale and moral problem in the ranks of the Soldados because it could happen to them next battle and their soul would be in Danger.... Had it occured surely it would have been documented as a outrage and even the Mexican Civilian Population of Bexar would have been horrified. Also seems too many witness of such a event for even a cover-up.
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Post by loucapitano on Mar 25, 2012 11:56:51 GMT -5
I think to the extent possible, most Mexican soldiers were buried. At least those that perished in the assault in the general vicinity of the walls. But the battle site area was huge and wounded soldados who managed to crawl away from the carnage and die may not have been discovered for days. I suspect their bodies may have received a burial of convenience (i.e. tossed into the river.) I've always favored the Pablo Diaz witness of the Texan funeral pyres. To me his 1906 account of the vivid childhood memory of a dreadful holocaust must have haunted him all his life. I think his account is plausible and not without some historical support.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 25, 2012 13:16:24 GMT -5
I wonder if Mexican casualties were buried in more than one place (assuming any were buried and not burned). The many wounded were left in Bexar and any number of them died from their wounds and would have been buried, perhaps weeks after the battle -- buried somewhere. Also, how many Mexican dead were Indians who had been impressed into service on Santa Anna's march north? If any were killed in the battle, they may have been burned.
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Post by jamesg on Mar 25, 2012 15:38:23 GMT -5
Historically thru out time in battles with allot of casualties The dead would have a mass burial together, unless it was someone special.
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Post by Tom Nuckols on Mar 26, 2012 0:37:19 GMT -5
Am I recalling a primary or secondary account when I remember somebody saying that the Mexican soldiers were cleaning the battle grime off faces in the Alamo compound to determine which were Mexican and which Anglo? If this were the case, then it might be assumed that there was an order to handle them differently. Per p.190 of Blood of Noble Men, Nunez says SA ordered the faces of the dead to be wiped so no soldados were burned. These were the same soldados whose death SA had just brushed off as the death of "so many chickens." Given that SA was that callous about about his own troops dying, why would one believe he exerted any effort to care how their corpses were disposed? I think Nunez was disremembering things to cover up his own guilt for burning his brothers in arms.
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