The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrors, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit.

In 1838 Robert Patton Crockett went to Texas to administer his father's land claim. Secondly there is some speculation that de la Peña's account may have been a deliberate fabrication with the intention of presenting Santa Anna in a far more diabolical light than American (and especially Texan) historians have given him since the fall of the Alamo. That same night outside the Alamo there was a skirmish between Mexican and Texian troops.

After his death he continued to be credited with acts of mythical proportion. S. After being made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County Tennessee he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821.