In 1847, at the Battle of Cerro Gordo during the Mexican War, soldiers from the Fourth Regiment Illinois Volunteers sneaked behind enemy lines and emerged with the Mexican commander’s leg. It wasn’t as grisly as it sounds: the leg was artificial and the general, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, wasn’t wearing it at the time. The leg was brought to Pekin, Illinois, as a war trophy and was displayed to curiosity seekers at ten cents a peek. Sent briefly to the Crystal Palace in London and shown in Washington, D.C., it’s now under glass at the Illinois National Guard headquarters in Springfield, where you can see it. Periodically requests come to return the leg to Mexico or Texas, but such a move is unlikely. “It was bought with the blood of Illinois volunteers,” says retired colonel William “Dutch” Holland, director of the Illinois State Military Museum.
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Santa Anna, five-time president of Mexico, is best known for his victorious siege at the Alamo in 1836, where Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were killed. Two years later, during a skirmish with the French navy in Veracruz, a cannonball injured Santa Anna’s left leg and it was amputated below the knee. The leg in Springfield is one of two identical legs he had custom-made in New York City for $1,300. It’s made of cork, and a square-toed boot is attached to the ankle by ball bearings. There’s a pad for the stump to rest on, and there appear to be bloodstains on it; it’s been said that the surgeon left part of the bone sticking out of the stump, so the prosthesis was uncomfortable to wear. An attached wooden slat holds canvas straps that buckle around the thigh.
In a 1998 episode of Fox Television’s King of the Hill two characters stole the leg from a museum and returned it to Mexico. At the end of the show, an announcer urged viewers “to join the movement to help return the leg to the Mexican people.” Captain Mark Whitlock, curator of the museum, says the Mexican government has not asked for the leg, and in fact representatives of the Mexican Embassy and the Mexican Consulate in Chicago didn’t know anything about it. Adds Whitlock, “The program was not approved by our department.” At the time a Fox spokesperson told the Springfield Journal-Register the episode was “all in fun.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/courtesy of Illinois State Military Museum, Springfield.
