William Travis

From Joe, age 20-22, survivor of the battle, negro slave of William Travis:

I was sleeping in the room with my master when the alarm was given. Mr. Travis sprang up and seized his shotgun and sword and called to me to follow him. I took my gun and followed. We ran across the Alamo and mounted the (west) wall. Travis discharged his gun as did I. In an instant Travis was shot down. He fell within the wall, on the sloping ground, and sat up. When my master fell, I ran and hid in a house where I fired on the Mexican soldiers several times after they got inside the wall.

As Travis sat wounded on the ground, General Mora, who was passing him, made a blow at him with his sword, which Travis struck up and ran his assailant through the body, and both died on the same spot.

The Negroes, there were several Negroes and women in the fort, were spared. Only one woman was killed, and I suppose she was shot accidentally, while trying to cross the courtyard. She was found lying between two guns.

The officers came around after the massacre and called out to know if there were any Negroes there. I stepped out, said, "Yes, here is one." Two soldiers tried to kill me, one by discharging his gun at me, the other with a thrust of his bayonet. I was saved by Capt. Baragan.

Santa Anna questioned me about Texas and the army. He asked if there were many soldiers from the United States in the army, and if more were expected.  He said he had men enough to march to the city of Washington.

3. William F. Gray, Diary of Col. Wm. F. Gray: From Virginia to Texas, 1835 (1909; reprint, Houston: Fletcher Young Publishing Co., 1965), pp. 136-138; Bill Groneman, Alamo Defenders, A Genealogy: The People and Their Words (Austin: Eakin Press, 1990), p. 65; Frederick C. Chabot, The Alamo: Mission, Fortress and Shrine (San Antonio: Frederick C. Chabot, 1936), p. 64; Nolan Thompson, "Joe," in The New Handbook of Texas, vol. 3 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), p. 946; Stephen Hardin, Texian Iliad (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p. 274n.