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Three
Alamo expressions are almost universally known: “A line in the sand,” “Remember
the Alamo,” and “The
Alamo had no back door.”
The world will never know whether Col. William
B. Travis used his saber to draw a line on the ground and invited all who chose
to fight to the death to cross it. But the expression endures as resolutely as
our memory of the siege that ended on the morning of March 6, 1836.
The
second leg of the triad, “Remember the Alamo,”
is well-documented as the last three words hundreds of Mexican soldiers heard
before they died at the hands of Sam Houston’s vengeful army during the battle
of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.
But who first noted that the old
Spanish mission in San Antonio
had no back door? And what if the Alamo
did have a back door, or at least a secret escape route?
On
Sept. 15, 1894, the Eagle Pass Guide reprinted a story from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
“The Alamo’s Secret Passage.”
The piece began:
“There has been a
tradition among the Mexicans of this city [San
Antonio], since the early part of the present century, that the old Alamo
and Conception Missions are connected…by means of an underground passage, and
a discovery has just been made …which leads to the belief that the tradition is
well founded.”
A few days earlier, the story went, workmen digging a
well on the farm of one Walter Scott, just south of town, struck a layer of rock.
“After penetrating this barrier they came upon a passage which is about 8
feet in height and 5 feet wide,” the story continued. “The sides are walled with
rock slabs, and the bottom seems to be laid with a material resembling cement.
The passage runs in a north and south direction, and at the time the discovery
was made it was half filled with water, it being just after heavy rains…. The
top of the passage is about 12 feet from the surface. It is in direct line between
the two missions, and Mr. Scott is thoroughly convinced that he has at last discovered
the long-lost passage, and that upon further exploration he will bring some wonderful
things to light.”
The story said a brief exploration of the passage had
been made, but no one had gone very far because of the water. The unidentified
author of the article said secret passages were common in the missions of Mexico
and the Southwest and that they were “constantly [being] discovered and explored,
even at this late day, and in some of them immense amounts of treasure have been
brought to light.”
While that’s possible, the notion of secret tunnels
is a definite folk tale sub-category, often connected with the broader treasure
story genre. The idea behind the tunnels, of course, is that they were used as
escape routes in the event of Indian attack.
The story went on:
“When the Franciscan Fathers came to the new world they found many enemies …with
which to contend in their work of advancing [religion] and civilization. They
built these missions and fortified them so that in case of attack from the savages
or other …enemies they could make resistance. [It]…is a well-known fact that in
many places in Mexico they were successfully used in turbulent times, and when
the attacking party would enter the religious edifice it would be found deserted.”
The passages were both well-built and well-disguised, the story noted.
“Another thing that lends color to the theory that the Alamo
and Conception Missions are connected…,” the story said, “is that in the north
wing of the Alamo in one of the
cell-like rooms that was formerly occupied by the severe and sober-appearing monks,
there is a spot about five feet square in the cement floor which within the past
few years has sunk several inches, and when one walks upon the spot there is a
hollow sound.…”
Should the existence of a passage running three miles
from the Alamo to Mission Conception
be proven, the story said, “the discovery will also reveal that the Texas martyrs
who lost their lives in the Alamo,
had they known of the existence of this outlet, [could] have saved their lives
by escaping through it.”
None of the basic Alamo
histories mention anything about a tunnel ever having been found, though scholars
do believe some of the Alamo defenders
tried to escape once they realized they had no hope of survival inside the mission.
The underground rock-lined structure found in 1894, assuming the story wasn’t
made up, might have been a remnant of the Spanish irrigation system that connected
to the San Antonio River.
As for the “back door” line, it is variously
attributed to the late Maury Maverick Jr. or some unnamed member of the Daughters
of the Republic of Texas. Supposedly, when President John K. Kennedy visited the
Alamo in 1960, he asked following
his appearance to be escorted out the back door of the old mission.
“There
is no back door to the Alamo,” Kennedy
learned. “That’s why they were all heroes.”
© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales"
March 6 , 2008 column
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