And besides John Wayne, there was Fess Parker's Crockett, also going down fighting in the Disney TV series. That series had almost no interest in historical accuracy in telling Crockett's life, but it sure was fun. When Parker and John Wayne made their films, it was thought Davy went out swinging. Then in 1975 Dan Kilgore put forward the idea that Davy had been executed, and it's been a hot topic ever since.

This is a very good example of a question that can't be decisively answered because the sources don't clearly answer it. There is no doubt that five of the defenders were captured alive after the battle and Santa Anna had them killed. We also know that Santa Anna identified Crockett after the battle , stating in his first dispatch, " Among the dead were the first and second in command of the enemy, the so-called colonels Bowie and Travis, Crockett of equal rank and all the other leaders and officers." As to whether Crockett was in that group of five prisoners and immediately identified among them by Santa Anna , whether Santa Anna would have had him killed and then not mentioned having killed him in his dispatch, there's room for doubt. Few would say that Santa Anna was a paragon of virtue, would not lie about not knowingly having Crockett killed. But there would be plenty of Mexicans later who hated him and would have happily accused him of executing Crockett., and this complicates the use of two very similar 1836 letters, one anonymous, and one, the "Dolson letter", supposedly originating from Mexican sources , which say Crockett was executed. Are these honest eyewitnesses, or people who want just to hinder Santa Anna? And there's Francisco Ruiz , the mayor of San Antonio , said later in his memoir, " Toward the west in a small fort opposite the city, we found the body of colonel Crockett ", which does not suggest an execution.

One important piece of evidence which might settle the matter is the diary of Lieutenant Colonel José Enrique de la Peña . This is at the heart of the dispute. It might state that Santa Anna ordered Crockett's execution with the other prisoners. There seems to be quite a complex, even corrupt, publication history of it or parts of it, and some doubt the manuscript is genuine.

If you'd like to get a notion of how robust an historical dispute can be, Michael Lind, a conservative political scientist, ventured his opinion of the sources in the Wilson Quarterly and got a few responses, including one from Dr James Crisp, a historian at North Carolina State University who's researched the matter and written a book on the subject that defends the de la Peña MS. Crisp also defends the Dolson letter here , and responds to a critique of it by Thomas Ricks Lindley.