Table Of ContentHISTORY AND LEGENDS
of
THE ALAMO
and
OTHER MISSIONS
IN AND AROUND SAN ANTONIO
by
Adina De Zavala
Edited and Introduced by
Richard R. Flores
Arte Público Press
Houston, Texas
1996
Original copyright
Copyright, 1917, by Adina De Zavala
All rights reserved.
Published December, 1917.
141 Taylor Street,
San Antonio, Texas.
This volume is made possible through grants from the Sum-
merlee Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Recovering the past, creating the future
Arte Público Press
University of Houston
Houston, Texas 77204-2174
Cover : Mural in G.B. Dealey Library
by Eugene Savage titled Texas of Yesterday
Cover design by Mark Piñon
De Zavala, Adina, 1861-1955
History and Legends of the Alamo and other
missions in and around San Antonio /
by De Zavala
p. cm.
ISBN 1-55885-181-X (paper : alk. paper)
1. Spanish mission buildings—Texas—San
Antonio Region—History. 2. Alamo (San Antonio,
Tex.)—History. 3. Missions—Texas—San Antonio
Region—History. 4. San Antonio Region (Tex.)—
Church history. 5. San Antonio (Tex.)—History.
I. Title.
F394.S2D196 1996
976.4’351—dc20 96-19969
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
Copyright © 1996 by Arte Público Press
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Table of Contents
____
Adina De Zavala and the Politics of Restoration
(Introduction) by Richard R. Flores- - - - - - - - - - - - - - v
Foreword- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1
Texas—(Verse)- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2
History of the Alamo (Mission San Antonio de Valero) - - - - - 3
The Men of the Alamo (Verse) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 47
Ghosts of the Alamo (Verse)- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 50
Legend of the Ghosts of the Alamo - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 51
Legend of the Statue of Saint Anthony in the Niche
of the Church of the Alamo- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 52
The Padre’s Gift- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 54
The Mysterious Woman in Blue and Her Gift to
San Antonio by the Hands of One Woman
in Every Generation- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 57
The Courteous and Kindly Child and the Good People
of the Underground Passageway- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 58
Legend of the First Christmas at The Alamo - - - - - - - - - - - 61
Mission San Francisco de la Espada- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 65
Mary Coronel of Agreda - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 99
Mission de Nuestra Señora de la Purósima Concepción
de Acuña - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 103
Legends of Mission de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima
Concepción de Acuña - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 112
Mission San Juan de Capistrano- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 114
A Legend of the Mission (Verse) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 121
Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo - - - - - - - - - - - - 123
Legend of the Window of the Voices - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 138
Legend of the Bells of San José- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 139
The Venerable Anthony Margil- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 142
Two Miracle Plays of the Missions—Los Pastores- - - - - - - 149
El Via Crucis - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 156
Francis of Assisi, Founder of the Franciscans - - - - - - - - - - 166
San Antonio (Saint Anthony) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 174
San Fernando Cathedral - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 178
Legend of El Señor de los Milagros- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 191
Lawrence (Lorenzo) De Zavala - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 193
“De Zavala Daughters” and De Zavala Chapter- - - - - - - - - 208
ADINA DE ZAVALA AND
THE POLITICS OF RESTORATION
Introduction
The life of Adina De Zavala was perhaps as tumultuous,
heroic, noble, and contradictory as was her life’s passion —the
Alamo, and more specifically, Texas history. From resolutions
of praise upon her death to notes of reprise from former col-
leagues and collaborators, Adina De Zavala was, without a
doubt, a woman whose resolve and determination were not to
be underestimated. A descendent of one of Mexico’s and
Texas’s foremost political families, she had witnessed first-
hand a crucial period in American life; as a chronicler, collec-
tor, and self-taught historian on all things Texan, she was
committed to Texas history’s presentation and restoration.
Her greatest accomplishment remains the least known: it was
her vision and tenacity that led to the preservation of the
Alamo, an irony that she, the consummate keeper of records,
could not appreciate. For criticizing the misconstrued sense of
history by the gatekeepers of the Alamo, she became the most
stigmatized of its heroines, but there were other honors, other
—v—
accomplishments, other battles for which she was remem-
bered.
Adina De Zavala was a woman of predictable passions
and complexity of character. In a time long before women’s
suffrage, she was making and writing history. She was edu-
cated when few people, men or women, were. A public and
self-made intellectual, she participated in the academic forays
of her time. Of partial Mexican heritage, at a time when Mex-
icans were being socially and economically exploited, she
became perhaps the most fervent defender of “Texas” history
and culture. And yet, embedded in her work, in her ardor to
preserve and recover the material treasures and oral render-
ings of previous Indian, Spanish and Mexican habitations of
Texas, there was an Utopian desire to socially restore and rec-
ognize a romantically perceived past.
Adina De Zavala was a patriot of Texas, unabashedly so;
however, unlike the Alamo defenders, her life cannot be
reduced to a singular act of heroism but must encompass an
understanding of the longue durée. She lived and toiled for
ninety-three years to recover the past so as to set it right, to
celebrate Texas history so as to augment it, to restore the
achievements of Mexico and Spain and a sense of culture lost.
History and Legends of the Alamois the distillation of
more than twenty years of collating, collecting, writing and
research. It was compiled from personally recovered historical
documents, previously published sources, folklore and legends
concerning the Alamo and missions in other areas of Texas. It
was published at the author’s expense and lists her personal
residence as the place of publication. It is this combination,
the historical and legendry, when read in conjunction and
against each other that supplies the necessary basis for a crit-
ical reading of Texas history on the part of De Zavala. Pub-
lished after years of working to recover the Alamo from
capitalist entrepreneurs and to restore it to its Spanish and
Mexican mission past, History and Legends of the Alamois a
—vi—
work at once original, romantic and, embedded in its sedi-
mented layers of factual and fictional texts, critical.
Adina De Zavala was born on November 28, 1861, at
Zavala Point, just a short distance from the historic battlefield
of San Jacinto near Houston, Texas, where the forces of Sam
Houston defeated those of Antonio López de Santa Anna a few
weeks after the Battle of the Alamo. She was a granddaughter
of Lorenzo de Zavala, a Mexican statesman who also became
the first Vice-President of the Republic of Texas. Lorenzo de
Zavala was deeply influenced by the emerging spirit of liberal-
ism and played a major role in constructing the Mexican Con-
stitution of 1824, modeling it after its U.S. precursor. He was
twice elected governor of the State of Mexico, serving also as
Mexico’s ambassador to France. He and his first wife, Teresa
Correa, had a son Lorenzo, Jr., and in 1831, he married Emily
West with whom he had three children: Augustín, Ricardo
and Emily.
After serving the Mexican government, de Zavala and his
family moved to a plot of land at Zavala Point. It is here that
he encountered and collaborated with the founders of the
Texas Republic, citing the annulment of the Mexican constitu-
tion by President Santa Anna as his reason for joining the
Texas forces. Already an established statesman and historian,
de Zavala’s intellectual and political acumen was recognized
by his Texas colleagues, and led to his appointment as the
first Vice-President of the Texas Republic under the presiden-
cy of James Burnett.
There are various interpretations of the events that pre-
ceded the Battle of the Alamo and the move for an indepen-
dent Texas. In February 1836, General Antonio López de
Santa Anna, dictator and president of Mexico, approached the
town of San Antonio de Béxar in the province of Coahuila y
Tejas for the purpose of enforcing a centralist regime against
those who sought to follow the federalist constitution of 1824.
—vii—
Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, and,
like many post-colonial governments, its search for a political
and national identity was forged through fractionalized politi-
cal strife. The main source of discontent was over political ide-
ology: should Mexico develop as a strong centralist state, with
power located in the center, or as a cohesively structured fed-
eralist nation that allowed more autonomy to its member
states? The balance of power teetered in one direction then
the other for several years until 1824, when the issue was
seemingly settled with the writing of a constitution forming
the United States of Mexico as a federalist republic.
It was during the struggle for independence that Moses
Austin petitioned the Spanish Crown for permission to settle
in Coahuila y Tejas. While he died before achieving his goal,
his son, Stephen F. Austin, received colonization rights from
the recently established Mexican government. Many of
Austin’s early frontiersmen, as well as those who soon fol-
lowed, came seeking opportunity in this new land, but found
the presence of Mexicans an unwanted sight. As Arnoldo De
León states,
The immigrants, then, did not arrive in Texas with
open minds concerning the native Tejanos: their two-
hundred-year experience with “different” peoples had
so shaped their psyche that their immediate reaction
was negative rather than positive.... They had
retained impressions acquired before their arrival in
the state then reapplied and transposed those racial
attitudes upon the native casta.1
By 1827, twelve thousand Anglo-Americans had entered Mex-
ico and were living in Texas, outnumbering the Mexicans in
the province by 5,000 people. And, by 1835, Mexicans citizens
in Texas were 7,800 to 30,000 Anglo-Americans. These num-
bers alarmed Mexican officials and, in an effort to curb the
growing immigration from the United States, they passed an
—viii—
emancipation proclamation in 1829 forbidding slavery. While
slavery was not a practice in Mexico, this law was aimed at
the growing number of U. S. citizens holding slaves in the
Mexican province of Texas.
Another issue was the relative distance between Texas
and Mexico City. Texas was appended to the state of Coahuila
for governmental purposes. Citizens of Coahuila y Tejas, both
Mexican and Anglo-American, were discouraged by the ineffi-
ciency of the Mexican government and by the distance to the
state capital, Saltillo, where government and appellate court
offices for Coahuila y Tejas were housed. Austin, in 1833,
traveled to Mexico City to try to persuade President Santa
Anna to allow Texas to become an independent Mexican state.
Santa Anna refused, but he did agree to allow citizens of the
province more latitude in conducting their affairs, including a
revision of the tariff laws, repeal of the anti-immigration law
and institution of trial by jury.
Tensions between Anglo-Americans in Texas and the
Mexican government came to a head when Santa Anna dis-
carded the Constitution of 1824, causing both Mexicans and
Anglo-Americans in Texas to call for independence. In an
effort to suppress this movement, Santa Anna led his forces
north and made his move on San Antonio de Béxar and the
Alamo. Less than two hundred men, organized into a small
militia, gathered to defend this former Franciscan mission
against Santa Anna’s forces late in February 1836. On March
6, the Mexicans, greatly outnumbering those in the Alamo,
made their final siege, taking the Alamo and leaving no pris-
oners.
This proved to be a decisive point in rallying support for
the cause of Texas independence. Soon afterward, at the bat-
tles of Goliad and San Jacinto, as Texas nationalist legend has
inscribed in all Texas school children’s repertoire of populist
history, the battle cry of “Remember the Alamo!” led the
Texan forces. And on April 21, Sam Houston’s troops engaged
—ix—
Santa Anna’s forces at the “Battle of San Jacinto,” capturing
the Mexican leader several days later on his retreat south.
Critical to any historical portrait of this era are several
factors. First, as noted above, the initial dispute in Texas
stemmed from both Mexicans and Anglo-Americans seeking
to restore a federalist government in Mexico. Mexicans in the
province also tired of Santa Anna’s exploits and of the tedious
political circumstances affiliated with their distance from the
provincial and national capitals in Coahuila and Mexico City.
Second, in spite of his unilateral control of Mexican affairs
and politics, and his egotistical and personal ambitions, Santa
Anna’s actions can be viewed as an effort to control an inter-
nal uprising in his own country.
Finally, an element that seems quite overlooked is the
men who died. The Texas nationalist discourse surrounding
the Alamo claims this was a battle between Texans and Mexi-
cans. This is not correct. There were only thirteen native-born
Texans in the group, and eleven of them were of Mexican
descent; furthermore, native Texans were, by birth, Mexican
citizens. Of those remaining, forty-one of them were born in
Europe, two were Jews, two were black, and the remainder
were Americans from other states in the U. S. (Rosenthal and
Groneman 1985). The portrayal of the Battle of the Alamo as
a clearly demarcated zone of interests between Texans and
Mexicans is clearly unwarranted. Prominent Mexican citizens
fought on both sides, dividing their allegiance along lines of
political and ideological interests, and not along the ethnically
or nationally circumscribed positions that have been fabricat-
ed by the custodians of the Alamo and popularized at various
levels through collective memory.
During Santa Anna’s foray into Texas, de Zavala was
meeting with members of the Texas cabinet on Galveston
Island. When Sam Houston defeated the Mexican forces and
captured Santa Anna not far from where this historic meeting
was being held, the Mexican general requested a meeting
—x—
