Professor Wins Prestigious Prize for Alamo Article

By Tribune Reporter

Among the most vivid images in Paul Hutton's memory is the picture of the battle of the Alamo in his fourth-grade history book in San Angelo, Texas.

It was stirring, epic, heroic and - as much as anything else - responsible for planting a love of the American West in Hutton, now 55 and a University of New Mexico history professor.

"I grew up believing that the Alamo was the greatest battle ever fought in world history," Hutton said.

So when he learned Touchstone Pictures was making "The Alamo," an anti-heroic retelling of the 1836 battle, it got his hackles up.

In response, he fired off "It Was But a Small Affair: The Battle of the Alamo," an article that appeared in the February 2004 issue of Wild West magazine - before Touchstone's film appeared on movie screens.

Hutton's article not only established the Alamo's defenders as heroic, liberty-minded men, but also won a Western Heritage Awards Wrangler, presented by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Okla.

Wranglers, bronze trophies derived from a Charles M. Russell sculpture, are among the most prized awards in the field of Western history and literature. Categories include Western movies, television, music, fiction, and nonfiction. Hutton won for outstanding magazine article. This trophy, presented during ceremonies earlier this month, was Hutton's fourth Wrangler.

"Touchstone's movie got delayed, so my article came out a couple of months before it did," Hutton said during a recent interview. "But I knew the tone of the movie, that it would be somewhat anti-heroic and very dark, that in it no one at the Alamo seems to know what they are fighting for, that Davy Crockett just kind of bumbles into the place by accident."

Hutton takes strong exception to all of that.

"They knew exactly what they were fighting for," he said of the Alamo's defenders. "They were fighting for the liberation of Texas from Mexico. The tyranny they were opposed to was the tyranny of Mexican misrule - which was just incompetence - and of Mexican poverty."

The Mexican troops under Gen. Santa Anna outnumbered the Alamo's fighting men 3,000 to 200.

The discussion continues at The Alamo Site Forums...