The purpose of this research is to examine the issue of Davy Crockett's death. The plan of the research is to set forth popular accounts of precisely how and when Davy Crockett died, either during or after the famous battle of the Alamo in Texas in 1836, and then to discuss the so-called culture wars surrounding these accounts. The theme that the author wishes to develop is one of weighing probable evidence of Crockett's death in the midst of battle against comparatively improbable evidence of Crockett's death after the end of battle at the hands of General Santa Anna, who commanded the victorious Mexican army at the Alamo and who ordered the summary execution of six prisoners of war after the fighting had ended. The author takes the view that many questionable, problematic, and difficult-to-prove circumstances must be believed before it becomes possible to believe that Crockett (called, formally, David Crockett, in this article rather than Davy Crockett, as in the popular imagination) was one of the six prisoners executed. This view is also problematic in the sense that a body of textual evidence exists that identifies Crockett as one of those six prisoners; however, Lind's judgment of various accounts of the battle of the Alamo is that stories of Crockett's surviving the battle only to be singled out for a cruel execution are products of lively and romantic imagination rather than careful attention to known facts.
The background of the author of "The Death of David Crockett" goes far to explain the reason for his lengthy treatment of evidence for one account of Crockett's death over another. Michael Lind explains (51) that the impulse to investigate the accounts of Crockett's death in depth came about when he composed a poem about the revolution of the people of Texas against Mexico, which until the 1830s controlled that territory and which after a period of national independence from Mexico became a part of the United States. His...