James Bowie
James Bowie was an American military officer, landowner and slave trader who played a prominent role in the Texas Revolution. He was among the Americans who died at the Battle of the Alamo. Stories of him as a fighter and frontiersman, both real and fictitious, have made him a legendary figure in Texas history and a folk hero of American culture. Bowie was born on April 10, 1796, in Logan County, Kentucky. He spent most of his life in Louisiana, where he was raised and where he later worked as a land speculator. His rise to fame began in 1827 on reports of the Sandbar Fight near present-day Vidalia, Louisiana. What began as a duel between two other men deteriorated into a mêlée in which Bowie, having been shot and stabbed, killed the sheriff of Rapides Parish with a large knife. This, and other stories of Bowie's prowess with a knife, led to the widespread popularity of the Bowie knife.
Bowie enlarged his reputation during the Texas Revolution. After moving to Texas in 1830, Bowie became a Mexican citizen and married Ursula Veramendi, the daughter of Juan Martín de Veramendi, the Mexican vice-governor of the province. Bowie led an expedition to find the lost San Saba mine, during which his small party repelled an attack by a large Native American raiding party. This enhanced his reputation, although they didn't find the mine.
At the outbreak of the Texas Revolution, Bowie joined the Texas militia, leading forces at the Battle of Concepción and the Grass Fight. In January 1836, he arrived at the Alamo, where he commanded the volunteer forces until an illness left him bedridden. Bowie died on March 6, 1836, with the other Alamo defenders. Despite conflicting accounts of his death, the "most popular, and probably the most accurate" accounts maintain that he died in his bed while defending himself against Mexican soldiers.
Early life
According to his older brother, John, James Bowie was born in Logan County, Kentucky, on April 10, 1796. In his 1948 book, Bowie Knife, historian Raymond Thorp gives Bowie's birth date as April 10 but does not support it with any documentation. Bowie's surname was pronounced .. His ancestry was predominantly Scottish and English.Bowie was the ninth of ten children born to Reason and Elve Ap-Catesby Bowie. His father was wounded while fighting in the American Revolutionary War, and in 1782 he married Elve, the young woman who nursed him back to health. The Bowies first settled in Georgia and then moved to Kentucky. At the time of Bowie's birth, his father owned eight slaves, eleven head of cattle, seven horses, and one stud horse. The following year, the family acquired along the Red River. They sold that property in 1800 and relocated to what is now Missouri. In 1802, they moved south to Spanish Louisiana, where they settled on Bushley Bayou in what soon became Rapides Parish.
The family moved again in 1809, settling on Bayou Teche in Louisiana before finding a permanent home in Opelousas in 1812. Raised on the frontier, the Bowie children worked from a young age, helping to clear the land and plant and cultivate crops. All the children learned to read and write in English, but James and his elder brother Rezin could also read, write, and speak Spanish and French fluently. The children learned to survive on the frontier, learning how to fish, butcher meat, and run a farm and plantation. James Bowie became proficient with pistol, rifle, and knife, and had a reputation for fearlessness. When he was a boy, one of his Native American friends taught him to rope alligators.
In late 1814, in response to General Andrew Jackson's plea for volunteers to fight the British in the War of 1812, James and Rezin enlisted in the Louisiana militia. The Bowie brothers arrived in New Orleans too late to participate in the fighting. After mustering out of the militia, Bowie settled in Rapides Parish. He supported himself by sawing planks and lumber, and floating them down the bayou for sale. In June 1819, he joined the Long Expedition, an effort to liberate Texas from Spanish rule. The group encountered little resistance and, after capturing Nacogdoches, declared Texas an independent republic. The extent of Bowie's participation is unclear, but he returned to Louisiana before the invasion was repelled by Spanish troops.
Land speculator and slave smuggler
Shortly before the senior Bowie died, circa 1820, he gave ten servants and horses and cattle to both James and Rezin. For the next seven years, the brothers worked together to develop several large estates in Lafourche Parish and Opelousas. Louisiana's population was growing rapidly, and the brothers hoped to take advantage of its rising land prices by speculating in land. Without the capital required to buy large tracts, in 1818 they entered into a partnership with pirate Jean Lafitte to raise money. By then, the United States had outlawed the importation of slaves from Africa, and most southern states allowed anyone who informed on a slave trader to receive half of what the imported slaves would earn at auction as a reward. Bowie made three trips to Lafitte's compound on Galveston Island. On each occasion, he bought smuggled slaves and took them directly to a customhouse to inform on his own actions. When the customs officers offered the slaves for auction, Bowie purchased them and received back half the price he had paid, as allowed by the state laws. He could legally transport the slaves and resell them at a greater market value in New Orleans or areas farther up the Mississippi River. Using this scheme, the brothers collected $65,000 to use for their land speculation.In 1825, the two brothers joined with their younger brother, Stephen, to buy Acadia Plantation near Thibodaux. Within two years, they had established there the first steam mill in Louisiana for grinding sugar cane. The plantation became known as a model operation, but on February 12, 1831, they sold it and 65 slaves for $90,000. With their profits, James and Rezin bought a plantation in Arkansas.
In the late 1820s, Bowie and his brother John were involved in a major Arkansas court case over land speculation. When the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803, it promised to honor all former land grant claims. For the next 20 years, efforts were made to establish who owned what land. In May 1824, Congress authorized the superior courts of each territory to hear suits from those who claimed they had been overlooked. In late 1827, the Arkansas Superior Court received 126 claims from residents who claimed to have purchased land in former Spanish grants from the Bowie brothers. Although the Superior Court originally confirmed most of those claims, the decisions were reversed in February 1831, after further research showed that the land had never belonged to the Bowies and that the original land grant documentation had been forged. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the reversal in 1833. When the disgruntled purchasers considered suing the Bowies, they discovered that the documents in the case had been removed from the court. Left without evidence, they declined to pursue the lawsuit.
Bowie knife
Bowie became internationally famous as a result of a feud with Norris Wright, the sheriff of Rapides Parish. Bowie had supported Wright's opponent in the race for sheriff, and Wright, a bank director, had been instrumental in turning down a Bowie loan application. After a confrontation in Alexandria one afternoon, Wright fired a shot at Bowie, after which Bowie resolved to carry his hunting knife at all times. The knife he carried had a blade that was long and wide.The following year, on September 19, 1827, Bowie and Wright attended a duel on a sandbar outside of Natchez, Mississippi. Bowie supported duelist Samuel Levi Wells III, while Wright supported Wells's opponent, Dr. Thomas Harris Maddox. The duelists each fired two shots and, because neither man had been injured, resolved their duel with a handshake. Other members of the groups, who had various reasons for disliking each other, began fighting. Bowie was shot in the hip, and, after regaining his feet, he drew a knife, described as a butcher knife, and charged his attacker. The man hit Bowie over the head with his empty pistol, breaking the pistol and knocking Bowie to the ground. Wright shot at and missed the prone Bowie, who returned fire and possibly hit Wright. Wright drew his sword cane and impaled Bowie. When Wright attempted to retrieve his blade by placing his foot on Bowie's chest and tugging, Bowie pulled him down and disemboweled Wright with his large knife. Wright died instantly. Bowie, with Wright's sword still protruding from his chest, was shot again and stabbed by another member of the group. The doctors who had been present for the duel removed the bullets and patched Bowie's other wounds.
Newspapers picked up the story and named it the Sandbar Fight, describing in detail Bowie's fighting prowess and his unusual knife. Witness accounts agreed that Bowie did not attack first, and the other combatants had focused their attack on Bowie because "they considered him the most dangerous man among their opposition." Bowie's reputation as a superb knife fighter was set across the South.
Scholars disagree as to whether the knife Bowie used in this fight was the same design as the blade now known as a Bowie knife, which was fabricated by a knifemaker in Arkansas who also created another renowned large blade, the Arkansas toothpick. There are multiple accounts of the design and fabrication of the first Bowie knife. Some claim that Bowie designed it, while others attribute the design to noted knife makers of the time. In a letter to The Planter's Advocate, his brother Rezin claimed to have designed the knife. Many Bowie family members, as well as "most authorities on the Bowie knife tend to believe it was invented by" Rezin. However, Rezin Bowie's grandchildren said that Rezin only supervised his blacksmith, who was the designer of the knife.
After the Sandbar Fight and subsequent battles in which Bowie used his knife in self-defense, the Bowie knife became very popular. Many craftsmen and manufacturers made their own versions, and major cities of the Old Southwest had "Bowie knife schools" that taught "the art of cut, thrust, and parry." Bowie's fame, and that of his knife, spread to Great Britain, and by the early 1830s, many British manufacturers were producing Bowie knives for shipment to the United States. The design of the knife continued to evolve, but a Bowie knife is now generally considered to have a blade long and wide, with a curved point, a "sharp false edge cut from both sides", and a cross-guard to protect the user's hands.