Edwin Forrest and James Bowie

Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) 

A celebrated 19th-century stage actor, Edwin Forrest, claimed to have been a close friend of James Bowie when both lived in New Orleans; in fact, Forrest claimed that Bowie gave him the knife he had used at the Sandbar fight. Forrest made his claim at a time when the Bowie name had become famous and there is no independent evidence that the two ever knew each other. Perusing my copy of The Bowie Knife: Unsheathing an American Legend, I note that its author, Norm Flayderman, shares my suspicion that Forrest concocted his relationship with Bowie for purposes of self-aggrandizement. The "relationship" was described in several sycophantic biographies of Forrest. The following is from Edwin Forrest (1881), by Lawrence Barrett:

His associates, if we may trust his biographers, were not of a character to purify his nature or refine his manners. While an awful curiosity hovers about the inventor who gave his name to the bowie-knife, it seems unreasonable to attach any great importance to the friendship of the man upon that ground alone. He may have had qualities mitigating the ferocity which characterized his many bloody contests at arms, but these are not dwelt upon, and the only advantage which Forrest ever reaped from this intimacy was the possession of the identical knife which had played so prominent a part in the hands of Colonel Bowie. At least this is all the benefit which his biographers have shown as growing out of their friendship. At no time of Edwin Forrest's life did he need masculine or barbarian influence, — he always had a surplus in that direction, — and it would have been better for him could he have drawn his inspiration from the gentle and refining spirits which have ever animated the audiences and society of the Crescent City. He made his choice, and selected the coterie which was most congenial to him. We see in this no natural outcropping of a "Democratic" spirit; rather the haughty conceit of the self-made man who scorned to submit to judicious training. With Bowie, with a large-hearted, powerfully built, fighting steamboat captain (whose best exploit was not in conquering a crowd of loafers by his muscle, but in the tenderness of his care of Forrest when ill of the fever), with Push-ma-ta-ha, the Indian who is said to have suggested the production of "Metamora," and with other original spirits like these, Forrest passed his unoccupied time in New Orleans. They charmed the young athlete by their novel freedom, and he was too full of the warm blood of the barbarian himself to resist their fascination.

Bowie was a "steamboat captain"? Methinks the biographer had him confused with Mike Fink of flatboat fame. Also, Bowie tenderly nursed Forrest back to health when he was ill with a fever? Sounds unlikely, somehow.

The "original bowie knife" Forrest claimed was given to him by Bowie himself.

The following is from Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian, Volume 1 (1877), by William Rounseville Alger:

The one of Forrest's New Orleans friends first to be named is James Bowie, inventor and unrivalled wielder of that terrible weapon for hand-to-hand fights named from him the bowie-knife. He was a member of the aristocratic class of the South, planter, gentleman, traveller, adventurer, sweet-spoken, soft-mannered, poetic, and chivalrous, and possessed of a strength and a courage, a cool audacity and an untamable will, which seemed, when compared with any ordinary standard, superhuman. These qualities in a hundred conflicts never failed to bring him off conqueror. In heart, when not roused by some sinister influence, he was as open as a child and as loving as a woman. In soul high-strung, rich and free, in physical condition like a racing thoroughbred or a pugilist ready for the ring, an eloquent talker, thoroughly acquainted with the world from his point of view, he was a charming associate for those of such tastes, equally fascinating to friends and formidable to foes. As a personal competitor, taken nakedly front to front, few more ominous and magnificent specimens of man have walked on this continent.

His favorite knife, used by him awfully in many an awful fray, he presented as a token of his love to Forrest, who carefully preserved it among his treasured keepsakes. It was a long and ugly thing, clustering with fearful associations in its very look; plain and cheap for real work, utterly unadorned, but the blade exquisitely tempered so as not to bend or break too easily, and the handle corrugated with braids of steel, that it might not slip when the hand got bloody. Journeying in a stage-coach, in cold weather, after stopping for a change of horses a huge swaggering fellow usurped a seat belonging to an invalid lady, leaving her to ride on the outside. In vain the lady expostulated with him; in vain several others tried to persuade him to give up the place to her. At last a man who sat in front of the offender, so muffled and curled up in a great cloak that he looked very small, dropped the cloak down his shoulders, took his watch in his left hand, lifted a knife in his right, and, straightening himself up slowly till it seemed as if his head was going through the top of the coach, planted his unmoving eyes full on those of the intruder, and said, in a perfectly soft and level tone which gave the words redoubled power, "Sir, if within two minutes you are not out of that seat, by the living God I will cut your ears off!"

The man paused a few seconds to take in the situation. He then cried, "Driver, let me out! I won't ride with such a set of damned murderers!"

That was Bowie with his knife. Fearful, yet not without something admirable. Another anecdote of him will illustrate still better the atmosphere of the class of men under whose patronizing influence Forrest came in the company of his friend Bowie.

The plantations of Bowie and a very quarrelsome Spaniard joined each other. The proprietors naturally fell out. The Spaniard swore he would shoot Bowie on the first chance. The latter, not liking to live with such an account on his hands, challenged his neighbor, who was a very powerful and skilful fighter with all sorts of weapons and had in his time killed a good many men. The Spaniard accepted the challenge, and fixed the following conditions for the combat. An oak bench six feet long, two feet high, and one foot wide should be firmly fastened in the earth. The combatants, stark naked, each with a knife in his right hand, its blade twelve inches in length, should be securely strapped to the bench, face to face, their knees touching. Then, at a signal, they should go at it, and no one should interfere till the fight was done. The murderous temper of the arrangements was not more evident than the horrible death of one of the men or of both was sure. But Bowie did not shrink. He said to himself, "If the Spaniard's hate is so fiendish, why, he shall have his bellyful before we end."

All was ready, and a crowd stood by. Bowie may tell the rest himself, as he related it a dozen years after to Forrest, whose blood curdled while he listened:

"We confronted each other with mutual watch, motionless, for a minute or two. I felt that it was all over with me, and a slight chill went through my breast, but my heart was hot and my brain was steady, and I resolved that at all events he should die too. Every fight is won in the eye first. Well, as I held my look rooted in his eye, I suddenly saw in it a slight quiver, an almost imperceptible sign of giving way. A thrill of joy shot through my heart, and I knew that he was mine. At that instant he stabbed at me. I took his blade right through my left arm, and at the same time, by an upward stroke, as swift as lightning and reaching to his very spine, I ripped him open from the abdomen to the chin. He gave a hoarse grunt, the whole of his insides gushed out, and he tumbled into my lap, dead."

If Bowie told Forrest this story a dozen years afterward, one wonders when it could have occurred. It would have had to have predated the Sandbar Fight by four or five years, yet that would not correspond to the account of Bowie's life given by his brothers John and Rezin.

Col. James Bowie at the Battle of Concepción

James Bowie is of course well known for his role in the defense of the Alamo and, ultimately, his death there. However, he had a leadership role in several earlier battles of the Texas War of Independence, such as the Battle of Concepción. On October 28, 1835, Col. James Bowie and Capt. James W. Fannin Jr. led a force of 92 men against a Mexican force four times their number, led by Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos, brother-in-law of General Santa Anna.

The following newspaper article, which was published on the 100th anniversary of the battle, tells the story, relying on the report written by Bowie and an account left by Noah Smithwick.

FIRST BLOOD DRAWN
Bowie's Men Win at Concepción Battle
A century ago today the Battle of Concepción was fought and won by the Texas army. The story is told in the following article.
By Bess Carroll 

Topping the cupola of Mission Concepción was a shock of wild red hair, as an incongruous figure peered into the foggy dawn.

Henry Karnes and his Kentucky rifle were out of place. Monks who had greeted other days here would doubtless have uttered sudden prayers had they come face to face with such a stranger, in their sanctified confines. Yet Henry Karnes of Tennessee was in reality a high priest of another creed, that of the freemen who lay on their arms below him 500 yards away in the bend of the San Antonio river. Within the bend a stretch of river bottom nearly 100 yards wide had sunk lower than a plain in front, and this depression was bounded by a bluff which, the night before, had seemed to James Bowie an excellent cover for his men in case of attack. Behind the natural embankment his command slept, each man clasping a long rifle.

Bowie and his brother officer, Capt. James W. Fannin Jr., anxiously scanned the cupola for signals. They had disobeyed orders to spend the night here because they had reached the spot late. Now. at the first faint hint of day, they planned to break camp and return to their commander, Stephen Austin, whose main army lay waiting at Espada.

Texans Surrounded by Cos' Soldiers
They had no way to knowing that late in the afternoon of the previous day, Gen. Martin Perfecto de Cos (who held Bexar) had himself gone on a reconnoitering trip, and had discovered the small detachment of Texans at Concepción. Nor could they know that Cos had sent all of his cavalry and a body of infantry, with an artillery company, to surround the little detachment under Bowie during the night. The dense fog added to the grayness of early dawn and made it impossible to see. And now perhaps Bowie's report to Austin can tell the story best: “The night passed quietly off, without the least alarm, and at dawn every object was obscured by a heavy dense fog which entirely prevented our guard, or lookout from the Mission, seeing the approach of the enemy.

“At about half an hour by sun an advance guard of their cavalry rode upon our line, and fired at a sentinel who had just been relieved, who returned the fire and caused one platoon to retire; but another charged on him (Henry Karnes) and he discharged a pistol at them, which had the same effect.

Henry Karnes was earning his breakfast. “The men were called to arms; but for some time were unable to discover their foes, who had entirely surrounded the position and kept up a constant firing, at a distance, with no effect other than a waste of ammunition on their part.

Bowie Disposes Men Cleverly
“When the fog rose it was apparent to all that we were surrounded and that a desperate fight was inevitable, all communication with the main army being cut off.

“Immediate preparation was made by extending our right flank to the south, and placing the second division on the left, on the same side, so that they should, be in a position to rake the enemy should they charge into the angle, and prevent the effects of crossfire on our own men; and, at the same time, be in a compact body, that each might reinforce the other . . . The men, in the meantime, were ordered to clear away bushes and vines, under the hill [the embankment] and along the margin, and at the steepest places to cut steps for footholds.”

Noah Smithwick, one of the soldiers, describes at this period of the battle how one man fell “thinking was killed,” but “he was just sick from the impact of a bullet on his Bowie knife, which he had tucked over his stomach. The bullet only broke his knife, which saved his life.”

 Noah Smithwick

As the Mexican bullets whizzed through the pecan trees, Smithwick said, “a shower of ripe nuts rained down on the Texas soldiers. And I saw men picking them up and eating them with as little apparent concern as if they were being shaken down by a norther.”

Enemy Makes First Advance
Bowie's account continues: “The work of clearing the embankment of brush was not completed to our wish before the enemy infantry were seen to advance, with arms trailed, to the right of the first division, and form the line of battle at about 200 yards from the right flank. Five companies of their cavalry supported them, covering our whole front and flanks.

“In this manner, the engagement commenced at about the hour of 8 o'clock, on Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of October, by the deadly crack of a rifle from the extreme right. The engagement was immediately general. The discharge from the enemy was one continual blaze of fire, whilst that from our lines was more slowly delivered, but with good aim and deadly effect, each man retiring under cover of the hill and timber to give place to others whilst he reloaded.”

Smithwick says that in those moments Bowie proved himself a “born commander.” He never needlessly spent a bullet or imperiled a life, Smithwick recalled.

“Keep under cover, men, and reserve your fire; we haven't a man to spare,” Bowie would shout. And now the one tragedy of the episode occurred for the Texans. In crossing a small number of men to Fannin's flank, a few reckless troops exposed themselves to Mexican fire. Among them was Richard (“Dick”) Andrews. A bullet dropped him and he remained where he fell; Smithwick a little later paused beside him as the battle moved forward and was won. “Great drops of sweat were already gathering on his drawn, white face, and the life blood was gushing from a hole in the left side. ‘Dick,’ I cried, ‘are you hurt?’ ‘Yes, Smith,’ he replied, ‘I’m killed. Lay me down.’ I laid him down and put something under his head. It was the last time I saw him alive. There was no time for sentiment.”

Mexicans Bring Cannon Into Play
Bowie wrote: “The battle had not lasted more than 10 minutes before a brass double-fortified four-pounder was opened on our line with a heavy discharge of grape and canister, and a charge sounded.

“But the cannon was cleared, as if by magic, and a check put to the charge. The same experiment was resorted to with like success three times, the division advancing under the hill at each fire, and thus approximating near the cannon and victory. ‘The cannon and victory’ was truly now the war cry, and they only fired it five times and it had been three times cleared, before a disorderly and precipitate retreat was sounded and most readily obeyed, leaving to the victors their cannon.”

The last Mexican gunner to attempt to stem the tide of Texans was killed with a match in his hands. The farmers and the barristers and the carpenters and their neighbors of the colonies reached the silent cannon, yelling madly, running now, yet still taking deadly aim.

On the field of battle lay 67 dead Mexicans and many wounded. Not a man of their artillery company had escaped unhurt. The inert forms and the writhing forms were passed by those avenging Texans. There were 16 lifeless figures around the cannon. But the Texans were interested in the Mexicans who rode ahead, those left of the 400 in the attack. They were dropping their muskets in their flight, and splashing through the shallow water of the river crossing, they “fled helter-skelter as if pursued, by all the furies.” [Smithwick quote]

Pickets on the mission roof gave the dragoons a parting volley.

Mexicans Vanish as Austin Arrives
And now as the last Mexicans vanished Austin's main army appeared, and the commander spurred his horse into the swarming Texas troops to find Bowie. A historic argument took place in the din and confusion then, with Austin anxious to follow the frightened enemy into San Antonio and take the town at once.

Bowie, who had seen the town's fortifications, begged Austin not to do this. The commander-in-chief reluctantly yielded to Bowie’s advice. He knew that had he not been delayed for two hours that morning, his main army would have met the Mexicans at Concepción and would have succeeded in killing or capturing so many that Cos would have been left without a garrison, and San Antonio could have I been taken easily without further bloodshed. That knowledge dimmed  the glory of the victory of Concepción for Austin.

But there were no bitter ashes in the mouths of the victorious colonists. They ran after the uniformed dragoons afoot until they were exhausted. Back on the battlefield the wounded Mexicans, “having no knowledge of civilized warfare,” believed they were to be killed. “It was pitiful to hear them begging for the miserable lives that no one thought of taking. Soon a padre came out with a train of carts and after a parley with Austin, carted the dead and wounded away to San Antonio, leaving us in undisputed possession. of the field.” [Smithwick quote]

Triumphs always have their price. The returning soldiers ceased shouting and removed their hats as they paused beside the spot where Dick Andrews lay. He had lived long enough to know that the fight was won. “He recklessly, foolishly threw away his life; but his was the first freeman's blood that wet the soil where the germ of the young republic was just bursting into life,” Smithwick writes. “We buried him at the foot of a pecan tree on the battlefield, where his bones were left to mingle with the silent dust, ‘with not a stone to mark the spot.’ The tree has no doubt long since gone to decay, the battlefield has been converted into a cotton field whose snowy fleece bears no trace of the crimson tide which that day soaked its soil. Thus the first gun, the first flag and the first martyr have all gone down to oblivion together.”

While the James Bowie of legend comes off as a habitual brawler whose greatest joy was arranging bizarre knife fights, the James Bowie of the historical record appears to have been highly intelligent and enterprising individual, a capable military officer, and a natural leader of men. Bowie's full reports can be read in A History of Texas and Texans, Volume 1.

Smithwick's full account can be read here.

The Fighting Knife Through the Ages

In the picture above, we see two daggers that were entombed with King Tut (1341 BC – 1323 BC). The top has a blade of what is called "hardened gold," presumably gold alloyed with copper or some other metal, and the lower one has a blade made of iron, which appears to have held up quite well over the millennia. A detailed description of the gold dagger can be found here. The overall length of the gold dagger is 31.9 centimeters (12.5 inches), with the blade being 20.1 centimeters, or just shy of eight inches.

My friend Bob Dickerson sent me the link and observed how similar in design these daggers, over 3,400 years old, are to knives sold today. For example, compare the shape of the gold dagger to the coffin-handled dagger made by Elk Ridge:

Elk Ridge Dagger

And compare the iron dagger to a Randall #2 Fighting Stiletto:

Randall #2 Fighting Stiletto

Granted, the Randall has a crossguard and a more ergonomically shaped handle, but the wound it creates is going to be substantially the same.

Though the topic of "who invented the bowie knife" is much discussed, the fact is that there is no element of its design that cannot be found on earlier knives, particularly the Spanish navaja. An interesting article by J. O. Dyer, titled “Truer Story of the Bowie Knife,” was published in the Galveston Daily News in 1920. Dyer wrote:

Men have made knives from the time when primeval man first scratched his roast with a piece of sharp flint; and since the Stone Age knives of stone and of bone have successively been superseded by those, of bronze, iron and steel. Possibly by the time that James Bowie first looked upon the stormy turmoil of this world, all kinds of slashing, cutting, stabbing instruments had been invented, from the metal cutting disk of the Greeks to the razor; from the dagger to the butcher knife, from a pen knife to a machete. Therefore it is rather doubtful if James invented anything new as to shape or size in the carver line. Now in the preceding part of this sketch stress has been laid on the murderous quality of the blade, endowed by a particular grade in its temper, when rather the temper of the fighter should be considered.

Given a blade sharp enough to cut; long enough to penetrate; strong enough not to break readily; given also a hand strong enough to dexterously wield such a simple weapon, and it requires no Bowie record; such a one in the hands of a madman has often wreaked terrible execution.

"Who Invented the Bowie Knife?"

The following article appeared in Western Folklore in 1949. Some of the issues that the author raises have been settled, while others continue to stir debate. I've included all the footnotes; the last one, a critique of Thorp's book, which had only recently been published at the time the article was written, is of particular interest.

Who Invented the Bowie Knife?

by Robert F. Scott

About 1844 a short but eventful era of western history came to an end. In that year, Captain Jack Hays and part of a company of Texas Rangers, newly equipped with the Walker model of Samuel Colt's revolver, fully demonstrated the superiority of that weapon over all others for close combat. This history-making event occurred during the Battle of the Pedernales in what is now Kendall County, Texas, where the fifteen Texas Rangers stood off and severely defeated about seventy Comanche Indians.[1] The rapid volleys from Hays and his men sounded the death knell of a weapon which until that time had been the favorite for infighting and a part of the regular equipment of frontiersmen and backwoodsmen from the Mississippi to California. That weapon was the Bowie knife and its many imitations and modifications.

The question of the identity of the originator of the first Bowie knife has been around for many years. Today the answer can be only that no one really knows who made the first of these famous weapons. At least a dozen different accounts have been accepted as true, depending on the author and the locality--for even the place of origin is difficult to fix--and the exact time when the first Bowie knife was made is anybody's guess. As a matter of fact, in dealing with the many stories that have come down through the years regarding the origin of the Bowie knife, it is impossible now to draw the line where history leaves off and legend begins.

However, all accounts--or legends, if you choose to call them that--are agreed on one point: Some member of the Bowie family had a hand in the design, manufacture (either purposeful or accidental), or use of the first blade. Like everything else connected with the Bowie knife, the history of the Bowie family itself is rather difficult to trace, even though the name was an old one in America even before the Revolution, with branches in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. By all odds, the most colorful member of this family was James Bowie--soldier, lost-mine hunter, and fighter for Texan independence. Of all the characters connected with the history of the Southwest, James Bowie comes nearer to being a true folk hero than any other. His brave and tragic death in the Alamo only added to the legends already begun by the hair-raising tales of his fights with Indians, his duels to the death while lashed to his opponent, and his fondness for alligator-wrestling, to name but a few.

"Big Jim," as he was called, was born in Georgia, or in Kentucky, or in Tennessee--historians are not clear about the place. The date is variously given, as 1795, 1796, or 1799; some writers place it as late as 1805, but this date is inconsistent with the generally accepted statement that his parents moved to Louisiana in 1802, taking him with them. He was the son of Rezin Bowie and Alvina (or Elvira) Jones; again, the surname of his mother may be only a blundering attempt to write the name "Jane" on the early Spanish records in which it appears. He had four brothers--David, Rezin P. (also spelled Resin, and Reason), John J., and Stephen--whose names are among the certain facts of Bowie history which have come down to us. Relatively little is known about his early life. Tradition makes him a participant in a desperate encounter on the Vidalia Sandbar in the Mississippi River on September 19, 1827--the "Sandbar Duel"--in which, after being badly wounded, he killed his opponent with his now-famous knife. About 1828 he went to Texas, making his home in San Antonio and searching in the San Saba region for the lost mine that bears his name.[2]

If numbers count for anything, then James Bowie may well have been responsible for the Bowie knife, for he figures in more different accounts of the origin of the first blade than any other member of the clan. One account with an early and wide circulation is that of the broken sword: James Bowie, while he was engaged in a fight with some Mexicans, it is said, broke off his sword some fifteen or twenty inches from the hilt. He found the broken blade so useful in hand-to-hand fighting that others rushed to imitate his weapon. This version was printed by Harper's Weekly at the time of the Civil War as the true story of the origin of the Bowie knife, a weapon that was again finding favor with Southern troops.[3]

But there are still other accounts, in which James Bowie is given credit for devising the first blade rather than fortuitously contriving it. One has it that in preparation for the "Sandbar Duel," he took a fourteen-inch file to a cutler named Pedro, in New Orleans. It seems that Pedro had learned his trade in Toledo, the famous sword-making center in Spain.[4] Another version tells that James Bowie whittled a pattern of the knife from soft wood--but after the "Sandbar Duel," while he was recovering from his wounds--and that a blacksmith named Lovel Snowden fashioned the weapon.[5] Yet another story avers that James Bowie injured himself in an Indian fight by letting his hand slip from the hilt to the blade of his knife. Bowie afterward discussed the addition of a guard, with John Sowell, a blacksmith of Gonzales, Texas, who made the first weapon from a wooden model carved by Bowie, according to a descendant of Sowell.[6]

Other members of the Bowie family are also given credit for the invention of this lethal weapon. According to John S. Moore, a grandnephew of James Bowie,[7] the original blade was modeled as a hunting knife by Rezin Bowie, the father of James, and was wrought by his plantation blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe. Later, according to Moore, James Bowie met Major Norris Wright while riding, and Wright, in a very unneighborly manner, took a shot at Bowie, whose life was saved by the fortuitous presence of a silver dollar in his pocket. Bowie drew his own gun to return Wright's fire, but his flint was faulty and the gun "snapped." When his father, Rezin Bowie, heard of the incident, he gave his hunting knife to his son, telling him, "This will never snap."

But even the lineal descendants of the Bowie family are not agreed on the subject. Notes kept by another, Dr. J. Moore Soniat du Fosset of New Orleans, give credit for the design to James Bowie's brother, Rezin P. (for Pleasant or Pleasants) Bowie. This version has it that Rezin P. Bowie cut his hand on a knife while killing wild cattle and decided to design a knife that would not slip through his hand. He drew the design of the desired knife and gave it to the previously mentioned Jesse Cliffe, together with a file, from which Cliffe fashioned the knife. Apparently, the resulting weapon was highly prized by Rezin P. Bowie; but when James Bowie told his brother about the encounter with Wright and how the faulty pistol had prevented him from evening up the score, Rezin immediately presented his knife to his brother, with the advice: "Here, Jim, take 'Old Bowie.' She never misses fire."[8]

If the stories of the "Sandbar Duel" that followed are to be believed, the knife fully lived up to its expectations. What started out as a duel between Dr. Thomas H. Maddox and Samuel Levi Wells became a free-for-all fight among about ten partisans of the duelists,[9] in which two men were killed and three badly wounded. Bowie himself was shot in the arm and hip and stabbed in the chest. The same Major Wright had rushed up to Bowie in the course of the fight and stabbed him with his sword cane, saying, "Damn you, Bowie, you have killed me." Bowie made this statement completely accurate and final by disemboweling Wright. But if the version ascribing the invention of the knife to Bowie's father is correct, it must have occurred before 1819, the year of Rezin Bowie's death. The careful reader may point out that the "Sandbar Duel" did not take place until 1827, eight years after Rezin Bowie was dead, but history has no more business challenging legend than legend has challenging history. However, the evidence is certain that Bowie used a knife in the "Sandbar Duel"; but whether it was only a butcher knife or a true Bowie knife is unknown.

Rezin P. Bowie has received wide acceptance as the inventor of the Bowie knife; the chief evidence to support this is the word of Rezin P. Bowie himself, contained in a letter dated August 24, 1838, to the Planters' Advocate, a small weekly newspaper in French and English published in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. A series of articles by a New Orleans correspondent who signed himself "P. Q." had appeared in the Baltimore Commercial Transcript on June 9 and 11, 1838, and were subsequently copied by Alexander's Weekly Messenger, a Philadelphia newspaper. The articles claimed that the first knife had been made in Arkansas by Rezin P. Bowie, with the help of an itinerant blacksmith, and described the duels of the Bowie brothers in great detail. But the facts, according to Rezin P. Bowie's letter, were these: The first knife had been made by him in the parish of Avoyelles in Louisiana as nothing more than a hunting knife. In what may have been a reference to the "Sandbar Duel," Rezin P. Bowie stated that the knife was used by his brother only once after its manufacture--"in a chance medley or rough fight"--and then only after he had been shot and as a means of saving his life. He disclaimed any credit for the fine state of perfection the knife had since acquired in the hands of experienced cutlers and asserted that neither he nor his brother had ever had a duel with any person. It seems probable that Rezin P. Bowie was anxious to destroy the growing legend that his dead brother had been a bloodthirsty duelist. That he was unsuccessful can be concluded from the legends which remain current about Jim Bowie's prowess as a knife wielder.[10]

For a long time the Bowie knife was also known as the "Arkansas toothpick"; and that state takes credit in some versions for a part in the manufacture of the first weapon. A former judge in Arkansas, William F. Pope,[11] insists that Rezin P. Bowie carved a pattern of the first knife from the top of a cigar box and gave it to James Black, an early-day smith in Washington, Arkansas. Black's charge for making this knife was ten dollars, but Bowie was so pleased with the workmanship that he gave the smith a bonus of fifty dollars. In a burst of state patriotism, Judge Pope maintains that no genuine Bowie knives were ever made outside the State of Arkansas.

Another claimant, Daniel Webster Jones, governor of Arkansas from 1897 to 1901, concurs that Black had a hand in making the first Bowie knife, but insists that Black was also responsible for the design. His story[12] is that Black, who had been a silversmith in Philadelphia, came to Washington, Arkansas, and set up a blacksmith shop there on the route of the Southwest (or Chihuahua) Trail to Texas, specializing in the making of knives. In 1830, James Bowie came to his shop and gave Black an order for a knife, furnishing the desired pattern. Black completed the knife according to Bowie's pattern and, because he had never made a knife that had really suited his own taste, he made another based on his idea of what a knife should be. When Bowie returned, Black showed both knives to him, offering him his choice at the same price. Bowie immediately selected Black's design. The fame and reliability of this knife soon spread, until people were telling Black, "Make me a knife like Bowie's." This eventually became, "Make me a Bowie knife."[13]

Governor Jones claims that Black had worked out a process something like that used in making Damascus steel, and kept it a jealously guarded secret. After making and tempering a knife and before polishing it, Black would test it by carving on a tough old hickory axe-handle for half an hour. Then, if the knife would not easily shave the hair from his arm, he would discard it. After many years of knifemaking, Black grew old and blind and was treated by Dr. Isaac N. Jones, father of Governor Jones. In 1870, Black, then living with Jones, tried to impart the secret to him but discovered, to his consternation, that he could not remember a single one of the dozen processes through which he had put the knives.

Some of the blacksmiths scorned such prosaic tests as whittling hickory axe handles and instead drove their Bowie knives through silver dollars. Others rejected blades that did not quiver at the touch of a finger, or give off a bell-like, vibrating tone when plucked with a thumbnail. In Texas, the knife is sometimes attributed to Noah Smithwick,[14] a pioneer blacksmith and gunsmith in the town of San Felipe on the Brazos River, although Smithwick said only that he had cut a pattern of the original knife carried by James Bowie and set up a factory to manufacture authentic copies of Bowie knives. The completed blades brought him from five to twenty dollars, depending upon the finish desired.[15] Antiquarians in Pennsylvania have claimed that James Bowie himself hammered out the first model there when he visited the city of Philadelphia.[16] In Natchez, Mississippi, it is said that the design was Rezin P. Bowle's, that a blacksmith's file furnished the crude steel for the first Bowie knife, and that the cutler was a Natchez craftsman.[17]

Stories concerning the fate of the "original" Bowie knife are today almost as numerous as those describing the circumstances of its manufacture. One story is that Bowie left it on the ground after butchering a deer with it near the Goliad road, and that when he rode back to get it, it was gone. He decided that a wolf had found it and carried it away because of the scent of blood on it.[18] Another tradition is that Bowie gave the original knife to the famous actor, Edwin Forrest,[19] who used it in his presentation of the play, Metamora.[20] And still another avers that a Louisiana descendant of Rezin P. Bowie lost the original knife in a bog many years ago.[21] The stories of the fall of the Alamo usually include the information that James Bowie had the original knife with him there.[22] The heap of dead Mexican attackers said to have been found around his cot (he was ill at the time of the attack) would seem to bear witness to the corpse-making qualities of the blade. A Bowie knife with a silver plate on the handle, bearing the name "Jim Bowie," was presented to a Texan by one Juan Padillo, said to have been a member of Lafitte's band of pirates.[23] An "original" Bowie knife is among the relics on exhibition in the Alamo today, and the Witte Museum in San Antonio has another that is supposed to have been presented by Bowie to a friend.

A comparison of several descriptions indicates that the original knife had a superbly tempered blade, from ten to fifteen inches long, curved concavely along the back, and convexly along the edge near the point. It was about two inches across at its broadest part and was equipped with a wide guard and a man-sized hilt, the whole thing being so well balanced that it could be thrown with unerring accuracy, as well as wielded. The hilt was usually of wood, but in the more elaborate versions was often of inlaid horn or ivory. Whatever the original knife may have looked like, it was soon copied throughout the Southwest. About 1840, copies were being made in large quantities by a cutlery firm in Sheffield, England, exclusively for the Texas trade.

The Bowie knife was a weapon of many uses. The hunter and pioneer found it handy for skinning game, cutting up meat, eating, or fighting. The handle was ideal for hammering nails or pounding a bag of coffee beans. On the trail the knife was unexcelled for cutting firewood, blazing a trail, or even for hacking a path through the underbrush.

A Texas folklorist and historian, J. Frank Dobie, once attempted to unravel the many conflicting tales connected with the first Bowie knife and to separate the truth from the legend.[24] He concluded, however, that "Bowie's knife has become nothing less than the American counterpart of King Arthur's 'Excalibur' or of Sigmund's great sword ‘Gram.’ Its origin is wrapped in multiplied legends as conflicting and fantastic as those that glorify the master weapons of the Old World." And so it seems destined to remain.[25]

---

[1] Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, Mass.: Ginn and Company, 1931), p. 174. Surprisingly enough, the exact date of this important battle has been the subject of speculation. Some writers place it as early as 1842, but Webb dates it as May 27, 1844, on the strength of the diary kept by Mrs. Mary A. Maverick of the pioneer Texas family, who recorded the visit of Captain Jack Hays to her home less than two weeks after the battle.

[2] For an account of the search for the lost Bowie mine, see: J. Frank Dobie, Coronado's Children (New York: The Literary Guild of America, 1931), pp. 1-61.

[3] "Concerning Fire-Arms," Harper's Weekly, Vol. V, No. 240, August 3, 1861, p. 495. As much space is devoted to a description of the Bowie knife as is given to siege artillery.

[4] J. Frank Dobie, "Bowie and the Bowie Knife," Southwest Review, XVI (193l), 355.

[5] Ibid., P. 356.

[6] Gid L. Sowell of Rosedale, Oklahoma, in Frontier, August, 1925, as quoted by W. J. Ghent in his article on James Bowie in the Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), II, 510.

[7] In an unpublished letter dated 1890 in the Archives of the University of Texas.

[8] Dobie, "Bowie and the Bowie Knife," op. cit., pp. 354-355.

[9] The number of participants range; from ten to fifty in various accounts. Descriptions of the duel purportedly written by spectators are spurious; there were no witnesses other than the actual participants.

[10] Dobie, "Bowie and the Bowie Knife," op. cit., p. 363, says that estimates of the number of men James Bowie killed with a knife vary from sixteen to nineteen.

[11] William F. Pope, Early Days in Arkansas (Little Rock, Arkansas: Frederick W. Allsopp, 1895), pp. 44-46. Judge Pope may have mistaken Rezin P. Bowie for James Bowie, for he describes the man for whom the knife was made, as follows: "There was then living at Walnut Hills, Lafayette county, a wealthy planter named Reason Bowie, who afterwards fell at the storming of the Alamo."

[12] Governor Jones's remarkable manuscript account of the design and manufacture of the first Bowie knife by James Black was long unpublished but was finally printed in the Centennial Edition of the Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, November 20, 1919. It has since been reprinted several times.

[13] This origin of the name "Bowie knife" is also described in Dallas T. Herndon, The High Lights of Arkansas History (Little Rock: The Arkansas History Commission, 1922), p. 55.

[14] U. S. Works Progress Administration, Arkansas: A Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1941), p. 217.

[15] Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State (Austin, Texas: The Gammell Book Company, 1900), pp. 136--137.

[16] Arkansas: A Guide, p. 217.

[17] U. S. Works Progress Administration, Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), p. 328.

[18] Dobie, "Bowie and the Bowie Knife," op. cit., pp. 366-367.

[19] American Notes and Queries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Vol. 1, No. 5, June 2, 1888, pp. 49-50, citing Durand's History of the Philadelphia Stage.

[20] Metamora, a drama of Indian life by John H. Stone and starring Edwin Forrest, was first produced at the Park Theatre in New York on December 15, 1829.

[21] Dobie, "Bowie and the Bowie Knife," op. cit., p. 366.

[22] Dallas T. Herndon, Centennial History of Arkansas (Chicago and Little Rock: The S. J. Clarke
Publishing Company, 192 2), I, 985.

[23] American Notes and Queries, Vol. II, No. 21, March 23, 1889, p. 251, reprinting a clipping from the Honey Grove (Texas) Special of unidentified date.

[24] Dobie, "Bowie and the Bowie Knife," op. cit., pp. 351-368.

[25] Since the completion of this article, a detailed study of the Bowies and the Bowie knife has appeared: Raymond W. Thorp, Bowie Knife (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1948).

Author Thorp relates some of the many accounts of the invention of the Bowie knife but accepts James Black as the "true" inventor of the original Bowie knife. Unfortunately, this work is marred by frequent errors that indicate faulty research and checking. For example, because of an omission, a quotation on pages 32 and 33 seems to indicate that the owner of an original Bowie knife was a resident of Philadelphia, whereas the owner in question actually lived in Texas.

On page 39, the author speaks of the Green River knife as having been made "at the famous Green River works." The Green River knife was not manufactured at any Green River works; the origin of the name is a far more interesting bit of folklore: The Green River from which the knife took its name is the Green River that flows through Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah and whose waters make the chief contribution to the Colorado River. It was for many years the favorite trapping ground and rendezvous area of the American fur trappers, who made this knife famous. However, the connection of the Green River with this name actually resulted from a misunderstanding. In the early days of the Western fur trade, knives were highly desired by the Indians, who often bartered away many valuable furs for a particularly fine example of the cutler's art. The best knives were made in Sheffield, England and bore the initials "G R" incised on the blade near the hilt. The letters, of course, stood for "Georgius Rex" and indicated the then British ruler's name in Latin. To meet the highly competitive trade, the same initials were also stamped on American-made knives. (Paradoxically, even down through the reign of Queen Victoria, when the correct inscription on the British product should have been "V R" for "Victoria Regina," the letters "G R" were retained to convince the wary Indians that they were getting the genuine article.) But to the American trappers "G R" meant only one thing: "Green River," and soon knives bearing these initials were everywhere referred to as "Green River knives."

Again, on page 39, Thorp speaks of "Al Parker, 'The San Juan Man-Eater,' " but that killer's name was Alfred Packer, not Parker. On page 92, he states that "John Henry Brown, in his Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, has James Bowie contriving the knife while recuperating in Texas." As a matter of fact, Brown in this book credits Rezin P. Bowie with the invention of the Bowie knife on the basis of his own statement. On pages 145 and 148, in a description of Japanese swordmaking procedure, the author speaks of a "kakemona"; the correct word is kakemono.

Christmas and the Bowie Knife

You've gotta love a guy who would title a book Christmas and the Bowie Knife. It is a 65-page collection of short articles and is available here.

Its author, J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964), was a Texas writer, journalist, and folklorist who wrote many articles about James Bowie. He retold the Bowie legends in a number of newspaper articles, but also published more scholarly examinations of the Texas hero in historical society journals. The following article was published in the Southwest Review in 1931:

BOWIE AND THE BOWIE KNIFE
By J. Frank Dobie

A "cutting scrape" nowadays is apt to connote Negroes with a razor, Mexicans with any sort of knife settling "their jealousies over some señorita at a fandango," or Italians in a back-alley dive. The glory of the "knife men" wearing proudly their ivory-handled Bowies in embroidered sheaths has indeed faded. Nevertheless in the traditional tales of the frontier tales yet to be heard all over the Southwest, Bowie's knife has become nothing less than the American counterpart of King Arthur's "Excalibur" or of Sigmund's great sword "Gram," forged with runic rhymes by the dwarf smiths of the old Norse gods. And its origin is wrapped in multiplied legends as conflicting and fantastic as those that glorify the master weapons of the Old World.

On the bloody grounds of Kentucky, in the mountains of Tennessee, and all down the Mississippi Valley the frontiersman's knife was used with deadly effect for years before the Bowie men of history came on the scene, in the 'twenties and 'thirties of the last century; but it was one or more of the Bowie men who gave it a name and a final form and brought its vogue to a climax. The fame of the Bowie knife is forever interwoven with that of the Bowie men.

Of all the characters connected with pioneer history in the Southwest, James Bowie comes nearer being unadulterated legend than any other. He did nothing really great or constructive; yet his name has probably been more widely popularized than that of the truly great and constructive founder of the Texas Republic, Stephen F. Austin. He affected the destiny of the nation little, if at all, and merely a scrap of his paper survives; yet the stories that sprang up about him are second in number only to those about the voluble and spectacular Sam Houston. He is remembered popularly for three things: first, his brave death in the Alamo, fighting for Texan independence; second, his supposed connection with a lost Spanish mine on the San Saba River that came to bear Bowie's name and that today, after thousands of men over a period close to a hundred years have vainly sought to find it, is yet the object of ardent search; third, the knife that bears his name--and that to many people symbolizes his character.

All three of these claims to remembrance are wrapped legend. The traditional tales, some of them truly extraordinary, centering around the Lost Bowie Mine would, if compiled, fill a volume. History is clear as to Bowie's part in the Alamo, but the best stories about him there do not get into documented histories. Nor do the tales of how he succored abused slaves, took the part of bullied preachers, and rescued wronged women. But our subject is the Bowie knife.

The known facts about James Bowie's early life are that he was born in Tennessee in 1795, two years later than his distinguished brother, Rezin P. Bowie, and that in 1802 he came with his parents and their numerous progeny to Louisiana. The name Bowie at that time was already more than a century old in Maryland and had been known two generations in Virginia and South Carolina, the several branches of the family having shot out from a stout clan of Scottish Highlanders. The male members of it--hard riding, hard-headed, well propertied, decently educated, contentious in politics, and ready to die in adherence to the code of the Cavaliers--generally deserved the epithet given to them, "the fighting Bowies".

The pair that whelped James were equal to holding their own in a wilderness where turbulent men were made more turbulent by the confusion of land claims following the Louisiana Purchase. On one occasion, relates the historian of the Bowie family, Rezin Bowie, Sr., father of James, in defending his land against a gang of squatters killed one of them. He was arrested, charged with manslaughter, and put in jail to await trial. Mrs. Bowie, accompanied by a slave, rode on horseback to the jail, demanded entrance, and entered. In a few minutes she and her husband reappeared, each armed with a brace of pistols. While the jailer retreated, they mounted the horses in waiting and rode away. It is not recorded that Rezin Bowie was again molested. Years later when this wife and mother was told how her son had been killed by Mexicans in the Alamo, she calmly remarked, "I'll wager no wounds were found in his back."

In time James Bowie and his brother Rezin P. came to own and operate a great sugar plantation on Bayou Lafourche called Arcadia. Meantime John J., a third brother, had moved to Arkansas and established a large plantation that he proudly named "Bowie." The times and the territory carved out of the Louisiana Purchase were conductive to the wildest speculation and the most glaring frauds in land. There is evidence that James Bowie, in partnership with John, sold "honest but ignorant" settlers in Arkansas land titles that, despite claims of Spanish origin, were held by the Federal courts to be fraudulent.

Whatever his activities in land may have been, Jim Bowie was a man of surpassing vigor, of headlong energy, and of great ambition to lead. He was six feet tall and all muscle. He roped and rode giant alligators for fun. Generally polite and courteous, in anger he appeared "like an enraged tiger." He was somehow connected with Doctor Long's filibustering schemes against Mexico, and with one or more of his brothers he seems to have carried on an extensive business in slave smuggling. The Bowies are said to have bought blacks from the pirate Lafitte on Galveston Island at a dollar a pound. On one occasion, says the historian Thrall, Jim Bowie while driving ninety of his purchases through the swamps of Louisiana lost the entire band. Thereafter he prepared himself against a similar disaster by wearing "three or four knives" so that he could transfix any nigger that tried to run away. Jerking a knife was quicker by far than reloading a horse pistol at the muzzle. "Big Jim," as they called him, showed the "knife men" among Lafitte's crew several things in the art of knife throwing.

And this brings us to our theme--a theme concerning which history must stand abashed before the riot of legend. Who made the first Bowie knife? How did it originate?

According to an unpublished letter, dated 1890 and preserved among the historical archives of the University of Texas, from John S. Moore, grandnephew of James Bowie, the original knife was modeled as a hunting knife by Rezin Bowie, Sr., and wrought by his own blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe. Some time later Jim Bowie had a "difficulty" with one Major Morris Wright, in which a bullet from Wright's pistol was checked by a silver dollar in Bowie's vest pocket. While Wright was in the act of shooting, Bowie "pulled down" on him, but his pistol snapped and the two foes parted expecting to meet another day. When Jim told his father of the trouble and of how his pistol had snapped, the old gentleman got out his prized hunting knife and presented it to his son with these laconic words: "This will never snap."

In the "Sandbar Duel," as it is called, that followed, the knife fully realized all expectations. This duel was in reality a free-for-all fight that took place among twelve men who met on a sandbar of the Mississippi River near Natchez, September 19, 1827. In it two men were killed and three badly wounded. Bowie was down, shot in four places and cut in five, when his mortal enemy, Major Wright, rushed upon him, exclaiming, "Damn you, you have killed me." Bowie raised himself up and stabbed Wright to the heart. At once Bowie's knife became famous and copies of it were widely disseminated.

According to notes kept by another scion of the Bowie family, Dr. J. Moore Soniat du Fosset, of New Orleans, now deceased, it was Rezin P. Bowie, the brother of James, who devised the knife. The occasion for it arose thus:

The Bowie brothers were very fond of riding wild cattle down--a sport popular among planters of Louisiana at the time. There were two ways of dealing with the maverick animals. One was to shoot them from horseback as sportsmen on the plains shot buffaloes; the other was to ride against them and stab, them with a large couteau de chasse [hunting knife]. Sometimes the cattle were lassoed and then stabbed. The chase with knife and lasso was wilder and more exciting than the chase with pistol or rifle. Hence the Bowies preferred it.

One day while Rezin P. was thrusting his knife into a ferocious bull, the animal lunged in such a way as to draw the blade through the hunter's hand, making a severe wound.

After having his hand dressed, Rezin called the plantation blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe, and told him that he must make a knife that would not slip from a man's grasp. Using a pencil in his left hand, he awkwardly traced on paper a blade some ten inches long and two inches broad at its widest part, the handle to be strong and well protected from the blade by guards. The model having been settled upon, Rezin gave the smith a large file of the best quality of steel and told him to make the knife out of that. With fire and hammer the smith wrought the weapon--just one. It proved to be so serviceable in hunting and Rezin came to prize it so highly that for a long time he kept it, when he was not wearing it, locked in his desk.

Then one day, Dr. Soniat du Fosset's account goes on, Jim Bowie told his brother how his life had been jeopardized by the snapping of a pistol while it was pointed at a man firing on him. After hearing the story and learning how the final reckoning between the enemies was yet to be made, Rezin unlocked the desk, took out his prized personal possession, and handed it to his brother with these words: "Here, Jim, take 'Old Bowie'. She never misses fire."

Another story has it that in preparation for the "Sandbar Duel" Jim Bowie himself took a fourteen-inch file to a cutler in New Orleans known as Pedro. Pedro had learned his trade in Toledo, where the finest swords in all Spain were forged; and all his skill went into the making of a blade which was to be, in Bowie's words, "fit to fight for a man's life with." Yet another story avers that while recovering from wounds sustained in the famous fight Jim Bowie whittled from soft wood a pattern of the knife that was to make his own name historic, and had a blacksmith named Lovel Snowden fashion the weapon.

When in doubt go to the encyclopedia. This is what the Encyclopedia Americana (1928) sets forth: "Colonel James Bowie is said to have had his sword broken down to within about twenty inches of the hilt in a fight with some Mexicans, but he found that he did such good execution with his broken blade that he equipped all his followers with a similar weapon"--the Bowie knife.

But let us not be too rash in drawing conclusions. Arkansas has yet to be heard from, and Arkansas has better right to speak on the subject than any encyclopedia. The Bowie knife used to be commonly known as the "Arkansas toothpick," and Arkansas is sometimes yet referred to as "the Toothpick State." Arkansans certainly knew their toothpicks. The very spring that Bowie died in the Alamo, Arkansas became a state, and, fittingly enough, history records that the members of the first legislature used, after adjournment in the cool of the evening, to take their knives and pistols and repair to a grove hard by, there to practice throwing and shooting at the trees.

Some members of the legislature were in fine practice. The speaker of the house was John Wilson, sometimes known as "Horse Ears," from the fact that when he was excited, whether by love, humor, or anger, his ears worked up and down like those of an aroused horse. One of his political enemies in the house was Major J. J. Anthony. When a bill relating to bounties on wolf scalps came up, Anthony arose and in the course of his remarks made a cutting allusion to Speaker Wilson.

With ears working and quivering "in a horrific manner," Wilson leaped from his chair, at the same time drawing a Bowie knife and started towards his antagonist. Alfred W. Arrington, the author of a very scarce and lurid item entitled The Lives and Adventures of the Desperadoes of the Southwest, describes the blade of this particular Arkansas toothpick as being engraved on one side with a coiled rattlesnake about to strike and on the other with a bear hugging a man to death while the man fiercely gouged at its heart with a Bowie knife.

Anthony was waiting for Horse Ears with his own knife drawn. A legislator thrust a chair between them. Each seized a rung in his left hand and went to slashing with his right. Anthony cut one of Wilson's hands severely and in the scuffle lost his knife. Wilson came on and literally disemboweled his enemy. He fell on the floor beside the dead man. However, he quickly recovered, was in court triumphantly cleared of the charge of murder, and at a meeting of the legislature a few years later drew his Bowie on another member. Those were the days when the Bowie knife governed in Arkansas.

So it is not without reason and just basis for pride that Arkansas insists on having originated the Bowie knife. It has already been said that John J. Bowie established a plantation in that state. A former Arkansas judge, William F. Pope, maintains in his Early Days in Arkansas (1895) that Rezin P. Bowie once came to Washington, Arkansas, and engaged an expert smith named Black to make a hunting knife after a pattern that he, Bowie, had whittled out of the top of a cigar box. "He told the smith that he wanted a knife that would disjoint the bones of a bear or deer without gapping or turning the edge of the blade. Black undertook the job and turned out the implement afterwards known as the Bowie knife. The hilt was elaborately ornamented with silver designs. Black's charge for the work was ten dollars, but Bowie was so pleased with it that he gave the maker ten dollars [more].

"I do not hesitate to make the statement," concludes Judge Pope, "that no genuine Bowie knives have ever been made outside the state of Arkansas. . . . Many imitations have been attempted, but they are not Bowie knives."

Despite such strong assertions, it would appear that Judge Pope based his judgment on a false premise. The classic Arkansas story comes from Dan W. Jones, governor of Arkansas from 1897 to 190 1. The manuscript containing it lay long unpublished but finally saw the light in the Arkansas Gazette, November 20, 1919, and has since been several times reprinted.

According to Governor Jones, the James Black who alone made the only "genuine" Bowie knife also designed it. Black was born in New Jersey, May 1, 1800, and, after having served as apprentice to a Philadelphia silver-plate manufacturer, came south in 1818, settling that year at Washington, Hempstead County, Arkansas.

Here he found employment with Shaw, the village blacksmith. Shaw was an important man and he had ambitions for his daughters. Consequently, when Anne fell in love with the young smith, only a hired hand, Shaw objected. The young people married nevertheless, and James Black set up a smithy of his own.

He specialized in making knives, and very soon they had won a reputation. "It was his rule," to quote the Governor Jones narrative, "after shaping and tempering a knife, and before polishing it, to cut very hard wood with it, generally an old hickory axe-handle which had been used for a long time and had become quite tough and hard. This he would do f or half an hour, and then if the knife would not easily shave the hair from his arm, he would throw it away. . . .

"About 1831 James Bowie came to Washington and gave Black an order for a knife, furnishing a pattern and desiring it to be made within the next sixty or ninety days, at the end of which time he would call for it. Black made the knife according to Bowie's pattern. He knew Bowie well and had a high regard for him as a man of good taste as well as of unflinching courage. He had never made a knife that suited his own taste in point of shape, and he concluded that this would be a good opportunity to make one. Consequently, after completing the knife ordered by Bowie, he made another. When Bowie returned, he showed both the knives to him, giving him his choice at the same price. Bowie promptly selected Black's pattern.

"Shortly after this Bowie became involved in a difficulty with three desperadoes, who assaulted him with knives. He killed them all with the knife Black had made. After this whenever anyone ordered a knife from Black, he ordered it made 'like Bowie's', which finally was shortened into 'Make me a Bowie knife.' Thus this famous weapon acquired its name. . . .

"Other men made knives in those days, and they are still being made, but no one has ever made 'the Bowie knife' except James Black. Its chiefest value was in its temper. Black undoubtedly possessed the Damascus secret. It came to him mysteriously and it died with him in the same way. . . . He often told me that no one had taught him the secret and that it was impossible for him to tell how he acquired it. Large offers were made him for the secret, but he refused them all. He was stealthily watched, in order that his process might be discovered, but his reputation for courage was such that no one approached him too closely after having been warned to desist."

The death of the secret is a part of the story. About 1838 Black's wife died. Not long thereafter Black himself was confined to his bed by a fever. While he was down, his father-in-law, who had all along been jealous of Black's growing reputation, came into him and beat him over the head with a stick. Probably he would have killed him had not Black's dog seized Shaw by the throat. As it was, inflammation set up in Black's eyes and he was threatened with blindness. As soon as he had strength enough to travel, he set out for expert treatment. A quack doctor in Cincinnati made him stone blind. He returned to Arkansas to find his little property gone and himself an object of charity. A Doctor Jones, father of the future Governor Jones, gave him a home. When Doctor Jones died, the blind man went to live with the son.

"Time and again," recalls Governor Jones, "when I was a boy, he said to me that notwithstanding his great misfortune, God had blessed him in a rare manner by giving him such a good home and that he would repay it all by disclosing to me his secret of tempering steel when I should arrive at maturity and be able to utilize it to my own advantage.

"On the first day of May, 1870, his seventieth birthday, he said to me that he was getting old and could not in the ordinary course of nature expect to live a great while longer; that I was now thirty years old, with a wife and growing family, and sufficiently acquainted with the affairs of the world to utilize properly the secret which he had so often promised to give me; and that, if I would get pen, ink, and paper, he would communicate it to me and I could write it down.

“I brought the writing material and told him I was ready. He said, 'In the first place'--and then stopped suddenly and commenced rubbing his brow with the fingers of his right hand. He continued this for some minutes, and then said, 'Go away and come back again in an hour.'

"I went out of the room, but remained where I could see him, and not for one moment did he take his fingers from his brow or change his position. At the expiration of the hour I went into the room and spoke to him. Without changing his position or movement, he said, 'Go out again and come back in another hour.' I went out and watched for another hour, his conduct remaining the same.

"Upon my speaking to him at the expiration of the second hour, he again said, 'Go out once more and come back in another hour.' Again 1 went out and watched. The old man sat there,

His frame sunken, immobile, his only movement the constant rubbing of his brow with the fingers of his right hand.

"When I came in and spoke to him at the expiration of the third hour, he burst into a flood of tears and said: 'My God, my God, it has all gone from me! All these years I have accepted the kindness of these good people in the belief that I could repay it all with this legacy, and now when 1 attempt to do it, I cannot. Daniel, there were ten or twelve processes through which 1 put the knives, but I cannot remember one of them. When I told you to get pen, ink, and paper, they were all fresh in my mind, but they are all gone now. My God, my God, 1 have put it off too long!'

"I looked at him in awe and wonder. The skin from his forehead had been completely rubbed away by his fingers. His sightless eyes were filled with tears, and his whole face was the very picture of grief and despair. . . .

"For a little more than two years longer he lived on, but he was ever after an imbecile. He lies buried in the old graveyard at Washington, and with him lies buried the wonderful secret of the genuine Bowie-knife steel."

Texas, too, has asserted her claim to being the place where Bowie originated the knife. There are other stories-many of them. However they may contradict each other, the preponderance of evidence goes to show that the knife used by Jim Bowie in the "Sandbar Duel" of 1827 set the fashion for Bowie knives. It was duplicated in many places-by solitary smiths over a vast pioneer country, by a factory in Sheffield, England. It was improved upon and elaborated upon, and until the six-shooter supplanted it, it was the chief weapon employed to settle personal difficulties over a vast territory of the South and West where pioneer conditions obtained. (The knife that the "Mountain Men" of the Northwest relied most upon was, from a trademark, known as the Green River knife.)

The exact proportions of the original Bowie knife will probably never be known, though the blade was undoubtedly about ten inches long. The ideal Bowie knife was forged from the best steel procurable. It was differentiated from other knives by having more curve to the blade, near the point, by having a heavier handle--often of horn--and by having handle, blade, and guards all so well balanced that the knife could be cast a maximum distance with the most deadly effect.

It was the rule to "use a knife and save powder and lead." The Bowie knife was the best possible knife to use, and knife throwing and thrusting were arts to be excelled in as well as shooting and wrestling. Indeed, many frontiersmen regarded any other weapon than the knife, for work in close quarters, as "fit only for the weakly." Bowie himself, it is claimed, could juggle a number of knives in the air at the same time and at twenty paces send one through a small target of thick wood.

The handiness of the Bowie knife and the skill of the frontiersman in its use are well illustrated by an incident taken from the memories of a Texas Ranger named Maltby. After a raid by Kiowa Indians, Maltby and his men rushed to a well known crossing on the San Saba River, hoping there to waylay the marauders. By the time they struck camp they had been two or three days with almost nothing to eat, for a gun could riot be fired at game without risk of alarming the expected Indians. At dark Maltby took one man with him and, leaving the other rangers to guard the crossing, went up the trail a short distance to keep watch.

The two men sat down under a live-oak tree three or four feet from the trail. About midnight they saw an object approaching. Presently it revealed itself to be a buck deer. Noiselessly Maltby drew his Bowie, cautiously raised himself up against the trunk of the tree, and threw the knife. The deer gave but one leap before falling dead, its heart pierced. The surprise of the men in camp next morning when they saw dressed venison for breakfast was equalled only by their appetites. Noiselessness in operation often gave the knife a value appreciated as highly as its not "snapping".

For dozens of purposes the Bowie knife was "as handy as a shirt pocket." The hard bone or horn handle of it was often used as a kind of pestle to grind coffee beans, the blade, sometimes as heavy as a Mexican machete, served to hack limbs from trees and to cut underbrush as well as to dress and skin game. An Englishman named Hooten who visited Texas in 1841 and straightway wrote a book had much to say about this striking phenomenon of the frontier. A blow from a well wielded knife, he recorded, "is sufficient to break a man's arm. . . . I have myself seen skulls of unburied Mexicans brought in from the battle-ground of San Jacinto that were cleft nearly through the thickest part of the bone behind, evidently at one blow, and with sufficient force to throw out extensive cracks, like those of starred glass."

How many men Bowie killed with the blade that saved his life on the Mississippi sandbar we do not know. Rezin P. Bowie flatly affirmed that the knife was never used more than the once for other than hunting purposes. Maybe Bowie used at other times an improved model, though, as we shall see, he was passionately devoted to "Old Bowie." Estimates of the number he stabbed--exclusive of his work in the Alamo--vary from sixteen to nineteen. In the absence of authentic history the rule for readers and writers alike to follow in considering killers is to choose the most interesting number. (See accounts of Billy the Kid and Wild Bill Hickok.) It is significant that Rezin was careful to make a distinction between a "difficulty" and a "duel"; consequently his flat assertion that neither he nor James "ever had a duel with any person whatsoever" is to be taken technically.

The technically trained judge Pope, already quoted from, overruled, we might say, Rezin's definition--or assertion. "Several months ago," he records, "I met a descendant of the Bowies who informed me that his great-uncle James once fought a desperate duel with a Mexican with knives, the combatants, face to face and within mutual striking distance, sitting on a log to which the stout leather breeches each wore were securely nailed." The historian of the Bowie family inserts the tale that on one occasion James and a neighboring Spanish planter, having become "involved in a difficulty, decided to fight it out with knife and dagger." The Spaniard, of course, was the man who chose the dagger. The left hands of the two opponents were lashed securely together. The duel was brief. "As the Spaniard drew his arm back to strike, Bowie thrust forward and drove his awful knife through his antagonist's body; then, coolly cutting the cords that held them, he allowed the corpse of his adversary to sink to the ground."

Bowie was as gallant as he was gory. One time, so another yarn goes, he met in Natchez Under-the-Hill a young man named Lattimore whom he recognized as the son of a much esteemed friend. Young Lattimore had sold a large amount of cotton and in a faro game was being cheated by "Bloody Sturdivant," a notorious gambler.

"Young man," said Bowie, "you don't know me, but your father does. Here, let me take your hand."

In a short time Bowie exposed the cheat. Then he won back the money Lattimore had lost and gave it to him with the advice to gamble no more. "Bloody Sturdivant," meantime, ignorant of who his opponent was, had become so incensed that he challenged Bowie to a duel, proposing that they lash their left hands together and fight with knives. Bowie accepted, at the first stroke disabled the right arm of his antagonist, and then forebore to take his life.

Duels of this character, between men lashed together, were not exactly everyday affairs, but the fact that they occurred at all bespeaks the spirit of the times-and the popularity of the Bowie knife. In the region of Texas below San Antonio they were called "Helena duels," from the fact that the town of Helena fostered them rather frequently. Sometimes they were known as "Mexican fights."

More dramatic perhaps, and certainly as chilling to the imagination, was another form of duel that Bowie is said to have inaugurated. He was challenged, so the story goes, and had the privilege of arranging the combat. He stipulated that the fight should take place at night in a dark room into which the combatants, stripped to the waist, barefooted--so that sound would not reveal movement--and armed with Bowie knives, were to be locked.

In the dead of night they were accompanied to the appointed room, in a deserted house. They entered. The door was locked. The seconds outside listened for long minutes without hearing a sound. Then they heard a scuffle, accompanied by a click of steel, a moan, and a voice crying, "Come in." By the light of a lantern Bowie was seen standing in a pool of blood, the other man dead.

Two testimonials have come down regarding Bowie's attitude towards the knife that bears his name.

In 1828, the year after the "Sandbar Duel," Noah Smithwick was a blacksmith in San Felipe de Austin on the Brazos River when James Bowie came along with his knife.

"The blood-christened weapon," says Smithwick, "was an ordinary affair with a plain wooden handle, but when Bowie recovered from his wounds, he had the precious blade polished and set into an ivory handle mounted with silver; the scabbard also being mounted. Not wishing to degrade it by ordinary use, he brought the knife to me at San Felipe to have a duplicate made. The blade was about ten inches long and two broad at the widest part. When it became known that I was making a genuine Bowie knife, there was a great demand for them; so I cut a pattern and started a factory, my jobs bringing all the way from five to twenty dollars, according to finish."

The other testimonial is from David Crockett's rollicky Adventures in Texas, probably written by someone other than Crockett:

"I found Colonel Bowie, of Louisiana," Crockett is made to say, "in the fortress [of the Alamo], a man celebrated for having been in more desperate personal conflicts than any other in the country, and whose name has been given to a knife of peculiar construction now in general use in the Southwest. I was introduced to him by Colonel Travis, and he gave me a friendly welcome, and appeared to be mightily pleased that I had arrived safe. While we were conversing, he had occasion to draw his famous knife to cut a strap, and I wish I may be shot if the bare sight of it wasn't enough to give a man of squeamish stomach the colic, specially before breakfast. He saw I was admiring it, and said he, 'Colonel, you might tickle a fellow's ribs a long time with this little instrument before you'd make him laugh; and many a time have I seen a man puke at the idea of the point touching the pit of his stomach.' "

So Bowie still had his knife at the Alamo, then--at least a Bowie knife. Dallas T. Herndon, Arkansas historian, says that he died in the Alamo "with the knife made by James Black clasped in his hand." Others have said that around Bowie's cot--for he was ill--was a heap of Mexicans whose ribs had been tickled by the knife. Among the relics in the Alamo itself at present is a not very formidable specimen of cutlery that some man by the name of Bowie donated a few years ago as the original Bowie knife. The Witte Museum, in San Antonio, has another knife that is supposed to have been owned by Bowie and presented by him to a friend. (Bowie seems to have been fond of making presents of the knife, very much as an author presents his own books.) One tradition is that Bowie gave the original knife to the great actor Forrest. No doubt Bowie admired actors. Another report has it that one of the Louisiana descendants of Rezin P. Bowie lost the original knife in a boggy river some forty years ago.

Old Cephas K. Ham, who went with the Bowie expedition in quest of the lost Spanish mine on the San Saba and was with the expedition in the astounding fight against a band of Indians that outnumbered them sixteen to one, used to tell how Bowie after having worn his precious knife for years finally left it on the ground, near the Goliad road, where he had butchered a deer. He was miles away before he missed it, but he rode back to get it, only to find it gone. "He supposed a wolf had found it and packed it off on account of the blood upon it."

Happily, Bowie died before the knife that bears his name was supplanted by the six-shooter. It is generally said that Captain Jack Hays of the Texas Rangers, at the battle of the Perdanales with Comanche Indians, about 1842, first fully demonstrated the superiority of the Colt's revolver over all other weapons in close combat. It was about this time that Robert M. Williamson, better known as "Three Legged Willie," a lawyer and one of the most singular characters among the highly individualized men of Austin's colonies, made a gesture that signified the waning dominance of the Bowie knife in the Southwest.

The President of the Republic of Texas commissioned Judge Williamson to go to a certain county and there hold a term of court. No court had been held in the county for years; the citizens were principally engaged in feuds and wanted no legal meddling. Just before court was to be convened, a mass meeting of the feudists adopted a resolution declaring that no court should be held. When "Three Legged Willie" took his seat on the bench, a lawyer who had been selected to set forth the resolution arose and read it aloud. The courtroom was crowded with armed men. After the lawyer had concluded and taken his seat, the judge asked him if he could cite any statute to warrant the adjournment of court for any such reasons as he had set forth.  Coolly enough, the lawyer again arose, pulled out his long Bowie knife, laid it on the table, and said: "This is the statute that governs in such cases."

At this the fiery Williamson leaped from his chair, drew one of the new Colt's revolvers, pointed it at the lawyer, and roared: "And this is the constitution that overrides the statute. Open court, Mr. Sheriff, and call the witnesses in the first case."

Whether they be literally true or largely the product of imagination--and many of them must be fabrications--the tales that have come down regarding the origin of the Bowie knife and of its use by Bowie and other frontiersmen reflect, in a phrase from Henry Adams, "what society liked to see enacted on its theater of life." Indeed, they reflect not only what society "liked to see enacted" but what was enacted. As truly as documented history, they reveal a time and a people.

There's an entry on J. Frank Dobie at Wikipedia. Interestingly, he identified himself as a liberal Democrat, which might not be apparent from his writing.

Bowie Knife Adopted for Trench Fighting

Here's another document dump. This was a full-page article on the use of the fighting knife published in the Fort Wayne Sentinel on December 30, 1916, a time when the war in Europe had been raging for over two years but the United States was not yet involved. The article contains much that is interesting, as well as much that is verbose, overly familiar, and/or inaccurate, but rather than edit it down I thought I'd toss it out in its entirety (at no extra charge!). The article was accompanied by its original illustrations, which combined photographs and line drawings to show the use of a knife against a bayonet.

The article refers to the French Model 1916 knife, which had a steel cross-guard and a 6.5-inch double-edged spear point blade.

Bowie Knife Adopted for Trench Fighting
Recently the French soldiers in the trenches were supplied with a short knife as being a better weapon for close hand-to-hand work in the trenches, when  the bayonet would be too long, and the darkness, which covers many bayonet attacks, too dense to allow the soldier be able to do vigorous work against the body of his equally aggressive enemy. The long-range mortars may do wonderful service in reducing forts, the high-powered rifles and machine guns may produce a terrible sheaf of flying bullets sweeping over the trenches, and compelling the enemy to keep under cover; the bayonet, too, has its moral effect when presented to the sight of the enemy by an oncoming host; and to a certain extent it is undeniably a splendid weapon for driving the enemy when at close quarters; but when the opposing forces are face to face in the trench, where two men can hardly pass, all these weapons fail in effectiveness, and "body-to-body" fighting requires another sort of weapon.

Such a weapon the French army has in the knife, which is shorter than the bayonet, and while capable of being applied to several more peaceful uses, is designed for the vigorous use at close quarters, when man struggles with man in a death grapple, to be ended only when the knife finds the vital spot and turns the terrible enemy into a bit of useless flesh. 

Again, in this introduction of the short knife, has the fighting of the twentieth century reverted in detail to that of the earliest times.

The ingenious contrivances of the most scientific of military minds are abandoned for the weapons of archaic principles, and as the man in the trenches in Belgium or the borders of France is much the same in body and spirit as the man of the bronze age, so he reverts to the weapons that were most serviceable in the days when men strove together, and body-to-body and hand-to-hand grappled and struggled for an opportunity to kill with the knife or short word. The human equation is always to be considered where humans are concerned, and no matter what the time or the man or his breeding, when the struggle for life is on, whether in the water, on land, for food or for life, the caveman comes out, and all mankind the equal. So it is not remarkable that in these war times, when men have become more troglodytes than representatives of the highest civilization, they should find that the simple weapons of the past are better fitted to the conditions of their fighting, and that when body-to-body only the short arm is of real use.

All races and nations of the world have found the short sword a common weapon, and whether it be the Oriental or Occidental, and no matter what the origin of the race, the short knife has been the one arm that could be depended on, in the last decision of the fight.

The weapons of the earliest peoples were short as might be expected when material was scarce and costly, and implements for fashioning the knife were crude, but remarkable were the results that were obtained under those disadvantages; results highly creditable to the artisan of the times and their ability as designers and smiths.

Those races which have resisted the advancements of civilization have clung with considerable tenacity to the short form of weapon, and we have a recent illustration, impressed on the American soldier with too frequent terrible results, in the bolo and barong of the Philippine Islands; weapons which, wielded by the strong hands of the fanatical tribesmen, have shown how absolutely defenseless is the soldier at close quarters when armed only with the rifle and bayonet. The majority of the bayonets of the modern rifles are of the "sword" type, intended to serve as a side arm when needed, but the soldier has so rarely found it of use in that capacity and so frequently used it to make the place to set his shelter-tent pole, that the military bayonet can hardly be considered in any other capacity than as the spear point for the rifle.

All the instruction in the use of the bayonet is with it affixed to the muzzle. The soldier has not been taught to use it in close quarters, as a weapon of defense or even offense; and it was not till this great war upset all military theories and developed a number of obsolete forms of weapons and ways of using them that it was found necessary to provide for an hitherto unknown emergency.

It has been said "the nation which shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries," and nations accustomed to modern rules of warfare, interpreted by the Hague conferences, are now learning that the adage is perfectly true, and if France has proved the truth of it, it is for the United States to take advantage of the experiences and adopt similar weapons and learn how to fight "body to body."

Probably no weapon is more peculiar to America than that known as the "Bowie knife," which was a popular weapon of offense and defense for many years on the border, during the gold mining in California; was used in the Civil War and for several years afterward, becoming at last the hunter's knife for dressing his game or cutting fuel. It exists now in a modified form as a hunting knife, but as a weapon of murderous intent it is obsolete.

The Bowie knife was the result of necessity. Danger came suddenly in those days, and the hand firearms were pistols of doubtful reliability. Flintlock weapons were slow of execution, inaccurate and, being capable of but one shot, were soon as valueless as so much old iron. In the emergency following the single discharge, or two at best if a brace of pistols was carried, the only reliance was a knife. A sword was too long, a dagger or poinard was too short and not a natural weapon to the hand of the burly and ferocious American; he needed something more substantial and better suited to his way of fighting.

James Bowie, to whom the credit of the invention of the knife bearing his name is given, was born in Tennessee, where his parents settled after leaving Maryland at the close of the revolutionary war. In 1803 the advantages of the newly acquired territory of Louisiana attracted the Bowie family, which included the two sons, Rezin P. and James.

Tradition has it that the design of the famous knife was originated by James Bowie while convalescing from a wound received in one of the brawls into which he had been drawn, and the pattern was whittled from wood, along the lines which he thought would make a knife suitable for his personal use in his affairs.

Who made the original weapon from this pattern is a matter of some question. It is said that Bowie sent the pattern to two brothers named Blackman, at Natchez, and told them to spare no expense in producing the knife in steel. Another story is that it was made for Bowie by the local blacksmith at Shreveport, La., but it is also understood that the original Bowie knife was made by a negro blacksmith named Manuel, on the plantation of Rezin P. Bowie, from a large rasp. The blade was 10 inches long, and with the handle, the knife was 15 inches long over all.

When James received the knife from his brother. It was with the statement that it was "strong and of admirable temper. It is more trustworthy in the hands of a strong man than a pistol, for it will not snap. Keep the knife always with you. It will be your friend in a last resort, and in a last resort may save your life.”

James Bowie carried this knife for several years, and about 1830 he heard of a New Orleans cutler, a Spaniard named Pedro, who was making some knives of a wonderful kind and temper. They could be driven through a silver dollar without injuring the point or the edge. Bowie went to this cutler with his knife, and he made him one according to the general design, which was a marvel of temper and beauty. The blade was 9 inches long, and blade and handle together measured 16 inches. This weapon was used by Bowie in nineteen fights, and was the one with him at the time of his death in the Alamo.

The first blade, the one made from the rasp, had a slight carve to the edge, but the back was thick and strong. On one occasion, Bowie was obliged to use it to advantage in a duel to the death with a Spaniard who was constantly annoying him with his insults. At last his conduct became so unbearable that Bowie challenged him. The Spaniard being the challenged party, named the weapons, knives; he also stipulated that the combatants were to be seated face to face astride a timber trestle.

Each combatant could use the knife of his choice. The Spaniard had his long hunting knife, while Bowie used his own pet weapon.

Both men, naked to the waist, took their seats astride the trestle, and at the signal the Spaniard drew back his arm to make a lunge. Bowie instantly thrust his knife forward into his adversary’s body, killing him at once.

The new knife was the type from which the later Bowie knives were made, and had a keen edge on one side of the blade, which was drawn to a sharp point, and the back of the blade clipped oft, in a slight inward curve; the back of the blade was straight and strong, the edge curving gently from the hilt to the point.

It is said that Bowie's method of using this knife was peculiar to the style of weapon, and  was originated by himself. He did not hold the knife in his hand with the long point downward, as a poinard or dagger is held, but he grasped the knife as a swordsman would grasp the grip of his sword. He always struck at the neck of his adversary, aiming to slash the jugular vein, and he seldom missed his mark. In one of his famous battles he cut the heads of  two men almost off by his peculiar sweeping, slashing blow.

This circumstance happened in what was probably the most spectacular of Bowie's battles, which occurred September 19, 1827, on a sandbar in the river at Natchez, and was the result of a feud which had existed for several years between two parties of the parish of Rapides, on Red River. The principals in the parties were Dr. Maddox, Maj. Wright and members of the Blanchard family on one side, and on the other the Cuneys, Wellses and Bowies.

A challenge was passed between Dr. Maddox and Samuel Wells, and it was arranged to meet near Natchez, and principals and seconds met as arranged. The place selected was a sandbar immediately under the upper bluff, near the city. The principals used pistols, and when the preliminaries were arranged, took their positions, and exchanged two shots without effect, and, having satisfied the demands of the code, were ready to settle the difficulty without further resort to weapons.

But the bad feeling had extended to the seconding parties, and as the principals started to leave the battleground, Bowie, who was in company with Wells and Cuney, started to meet them. Between Bowie and Crane a feud had existed for some time, and, knowing it, the friends of Maddox and Crane started to meet Bowie. The two groups were soon in contact. Cuney immediately advanced upon Col. Crane, remarking, "Col. Crane, this is a good time to settle our difficulty," at the same time beginning to draw his pistol.

Bowie drew his pistol. Crane, armed with a brace of dueling pistols, stood awaiting the attack. Cuney was seized by his brother, who begged him to desist Bowie and Crane fired at each other, the bullet of Crane wounding Bowie in the hip. Bowie drew his knife and started to close with Crane, who was turning his attention to Cuney, and fired at him, wounding him fatally. He then struck Bowie over the head with his pistol butt, felling him to the ground, where Maj. Wright approached him.

Bowie pulled himself to his feet, holding to a snag in the sand, where he was attacked by Wright, who had drawn his sword from his cane. He lunged at Bowie, and Bowie parried the attack with his knife, so that the point of  the sword struck his breast bone and, bending, went around the rib. Bowie seized Wright and, pulling him to the ground, said, "Now, major, you die," and plunged his knife into his heart, killing him instantly.

Bowie was a man of quiet, mild manners. He did not drink nor was he in any way dissipated. Although a man of slender physique, he was possessed of enormous physical strength for his size and was as quick as a cat. He was a terror to evil-doers and his name was a warning. In illustration of this the incident is told that at one time the Methodists about Church Hill, Miss., were holding their annual meeting.

They had been disturbed by the gangs of flatboat men who were in the place. Bowie, hearing of the disturbances, said to a number of  the men in the congregation, who were trying to find some means of stopping the disturbances: "I will attend the services tonight, gentlemen, and will help you to settle any difficulty that may occur."

The evening service had begun, and presently a big flatboat man staggered up in front ot  the pulpit and let out a war-whoop. In an instant Bowie had him by the collar with his left hand and with his knife in his right hand held the point against the boatman's throat. "If you say another word," said he, "or make  the slightest noise, I'll drive this knife through your neck from ear to ear." The boatman was awed to a trembling silence, and the meeting proceeded without any further disturbances from the boating contingent.

Martin Price of San Francisco is credited with having manufactured some of the finest types of the weapon. His first attempt was in 1858, and it was exhibited at the first mechanic’s fair in that city. After the fair the knife was raffled for $150, and, commanding such a price, it was necessary that it should be tested against the knives of Billy Allison of Yolo, which were considered excellent knives.

Surveyer General Higley, having an Allison knife, backed it against the Price knife, then in the hands of Ward Eaton. Higley laid a silver half dollar on the counter and drove the knife through it without turning the point. Ward duplicated the feat. Higley then tried  to raise the limit by stabbing two half dollars, but the point of the knife turned. Eaton went his opponent one better by placing three coins atop each other and impaled the three on the Price knife without turning the point.

Such a feat gave the Price knives a prestige and the flush miners ordered them from him at  fabulous prices. Marlon Moore ordered one, the "best knife Price could make." He was a noted miner and sporting man, so he stood at nothing. He gave Price a gold ingot and a piece of gold quartz to be worked into the weapon. This "toothpick" cost $175.

To a certain extent the latest type of bayonet for the United States magazine rifle is a descendant of the Bowie, but it is longer, the blade being 16 inches, and with 5 inches of edge on the back—a trace of the Bowie point--but it is too long for a hand weapon at close quarters, for when men are closed in a “body-to-body" grapple, there is not sufficient room to use a stabbing knife which has so long a blade. The situation has been recognized by the French, hence the return to the more original weapon.