Proper Ponunciation of "Bowie"

When I began my research on the bowie knife, I learned that, like many people, I had been mispronouncing the name of this iconic American weapon most of my life. “Bowie” rhymes with Louie, not with Joey. I suspect the confusion began in the mid 1960s, when an up-and-coming pop singer named David Jones had to give himself a stage name so as not to be confused with the lead singer of the Monkees. He was a fan of Mick Jagger, and, having heard that a Jagger (or Jaeger) was a type of knife, he decided to name himself after a knife as well.  David Jones became David Bowie. He just didn't bother to find out how his new name should be pronounced.

The proper pronunciation of the name was not in doubt in the late 1950s, when the short-lived television series “The Adventures of Jim Bowie” had the theme song, “Jim Boo-ie, Jim Boo-ie, he was a bold adventurin' man. . . ”

(BTW, notice that the opening shot of a thrown knife hitting a door was obviously faked: the knife travels straight across the screen, not turning an iota. The shot must have been matted together as a special effect, with a photograph of the knife being slid across the background. )

The Bowie Knife in Africa

Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862-1900) was a British explorer who made two pioneering trips to West and Central Africa. She was the first European to enter remote parts of Gabon. In her book Travels in West Africa (1897) she had this to say about her choice of personal armament:

Always have your revolver ready loaded in good order, and have your hand on it when things are getting warm, and in addition have an exceedingly good bowie knife, not a hinge knife, because with a hinge knife you have got to get it open--hard work in a country where all things go rusty in the joints--and hinge knives are liable to close on your own fingers. The best form of knife is the bowie, with a shallow half moon cut out of the back at the point end, and this depression sharpened to a cutting edge. A knife is essential, because after wading neck deep in a swamp your revolver is neither use nor ornament until you have had time to clean it. But the chances are you may go across Africa, or live years in it, and require neither. It is just the case of the gentleman who asked if one required a revolver in Carolina and was answered, "You may be here one year, and you may be here two and never want it; but when you do want it you'll want it very bad."

Kingsley notes the problem with the folding knife, or "hinge knife" as she calls it: it's hard to open when you need it and it's prone to closing on your fingers. She mentions the importance of sharpening the false edge of the clip point of the bowie, but unfortunately doesn't give a reason. Among modern bowie knife aficionados, the sharpened false edge is considered to be a major feature, as it allows the knife-fighter to make a back cut. I have wondered whether people thought much about the back cut in the 19th century, and the accounts we have of fights are not sufficient detailed to determine this. Arms expert Norm Flayderman has examined hundreds--possibly thousands--of antique bowie knives, and recalls fewer than half having a sharpened false edge, so evidently its value was not obvious to everyone.

Madman With a Bowie Knife

In an article on the bowie knife in the Galveston Daily News (March 21, 1920), J. O. Dyer discounted the idea that James Bowie’s knife had some special property, writing: “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.”

To illustrate his point, we have the case of a Mr. Jenkins, of Cairo, Illinois, who “went postal” one day January 1853, demonstrating that a madman with a bowie knife in each hand is not to be taken lightly. The article, from the Dixon Telegraph (January 22, 1853) states:

Yesterday was “estimate day,” with the hands laboring on the Cairo levees—Mr. Ellis, contractor, commenced making settlements, but his office soon became so completely jammed with creditors that he found it impossible to proceed unless he could clear it. He therefore requested the crowd to leave remarking that he would call them in and settle singly. They did not go. A Mr. Jenkins now ordered them out, and not having his orders properly noticed, rushed among them with a bowie knife in each hand, cutting right and left in an earnest and indiscriminate manner. He had seriously wounded two persons, and still was at his murderous work when an axe was buried in his head up to the helve, cleaving open his brains. He died soon afterwards. It is well perhaps that Mr. Jenkins was killed so soon, for his early death, no doubt, prevented him from taking a half dozen lives, so fierce and determined was his onslaught on the crowd. One of the persons he wounded will probably die. Mr. Jenkins was in the employ of Ellis, Jenkins & Co., and professed to be a doctor.

Bowie Duel from "The Long Riders"

A cinematic depiction of a bowie-knife duel from "The Long Riders," with David Carradine as Cole Younger. This type of duel, in which men fought tethered with a sash, like here, or with their left wrists tied together, was referred to as a "Mexican" or a "Helena" duel (for Helena, Texas, where they supposedly were frequent). They are popular with writers of fiction and screenplays, but if they ever occurred in real life I have yet to find credible evidence.

"SHOCKING ACCIDENT--TWO MEN KILLED"

By 1838, so great was the concern about the deadly bowie knife that it was banned in several Southern states. The hysteria surrounding the weapon amused more sober-minded people, as evidenced by the following satirical article published in the Vermont U.S. Gazette. Under the headline "SHOCKING ACCIDENT--TWO MEN KILLED"  it describes the tragic denouement of Mr. John Adams' attempt to cut open a wheel of cheese. His initial efforts to penetrate its hard wax rind having failed, he adopted a new strategy:

[Adams] therefore placed it edgeways on his breast, and taking a strong Bowy knife, on putting his right hand on the handle, and his left on the back near the point, he pulled with all his might; the knife slipped from the flinty surface of the cheese, cut John in halves, also his son, a lad of eighteen, who from fear got behind his father!

Bowie-Knife Fighter: Byron Potter

Byron Potter, 27, had been working as a guard at the Freight Depot of the Michigan Southern Railroad for 14 months when, on April 5, 1857, he became involved in a desperate fight.
   
That evening a woman approached Potter and asked him to direct her to a respectable lodging, and he recommended the Exchange Hotel. There were a number of  “hotel runners” present, men whose job it was to persuade travelers to got to the hotel they worked for, and then take them there with their baggage. Such work was fiercely competitive, and at the time was dominated by Irish immigrants. One of the runners, Morris Geary, who worked for the Limerick House, berated Potter for presuming to direct the woman to a competing hotel, using “the most vulgar and profane language.”
   
As Geary continued his abuse, threatening to knock Potter's brains out, Potter arrested him and started to take him to the watch house. Geary resisted and struck Potter in the face, and a crowd of Irish runners came to his assistance. Jerry Shiner, keeper of the Limerick House and “a notorious rowdy,” seized Potter by the arms as the mob rescued the prisoner.
   
Potter then headed towards the freight house, but had not gotten far when Geary came up to him, grabbed him by the whiskers, and attempted to hit him in the face. At the same time, another runner, Patrick Brown, struck at Potter with a stick, and another, William Galvin, punched him above the eye. Meanwhile, a crowd of runners surrounded Potter, shouting, “Kill him! Kill him!”

The Chicago Daily Tribune reported, “Finding it impossible to beat off his assailants, the officer drew a large heavy bowie knife, and stabbed the three men who were nearest him - inflicting frightful wounds. This prompt and efficient action on the part of the officer so frightened the Irish that they fell back for a moment, enabling Potter to get so far in advance of his assailants that he reached the Exchange Hotel ahead of them. They followed after him, shouting, 'Catch him! Kill him! Cut his heart out!' etc.” 
   
Potter went directly through the hotel and out the back door, and then went to the First District Station House for assistance. The rioters cursed and yelled in front of the hotel for a while, but finding that Potter was gone, they went back to the Limerick House. Accompanied by four or five policemen, Potter went up to the Limerick House to learn the condition of the wounded men and arrest some of the rioters, but the crowd would permit no arrests to be made, and again tried to kill Potter. It was with difficulty that the officers protected him from the crowd.
   
The wounds Potter had inflicted were reported as follows: “Patrick Brown received a stab upon the right side of his body, about three inches in length and two and a half to three inches in depth. This wound was between the false and true ribs, just below the breast bone, the knife wounding the lower lobe of the lung and liver. He died in about three minutes after reaching the house, some five or six minutes after receiving the wound. . . Morris Geary, who commenced the fracas, received a terrible gash just below and a little to the left of the navel, through which his intestines protruded, and also a severe cut upon the wrist which severed the arteries. It is probable he will die. . . . William Galvin is wounded in the right side between the fifth and sixth ribs, the cut being an inch and a half wide by two inches deep. He will probably recover.”  
   
As it happened, Geary as well as Galvin recovered from his wounds. Potter was not charged with Brown's death, as it was determined that he had acted entirely in self-defense.

Riverboat Knife Fight

In 1897 an account of a knife fight on a Mississippi riverboat was published in a New Zealand newspaper, the Grey River Argus. New Zealand newspapers often reprinted lurid stories from America, New Zealand apparently suffering a shortage of lurid news of its own. There is no indication of where the article originally appeared and no author is listed. It was published in the form of a letter to the editor.

The correspondent claimed to have witnessed it on his first trip South, years before, as the boat was taking on freight in Helena, Arkansas.

I quote:

Tragic Affair in Arkansas

A man who has seen much of the rough life in America frontier settlements writes: -- “The first time I ever saw a man killed was killed was in a knife fight. I was standing on the upper deck of a Misissippi steamboat, some few years ago, on my first trip South. The boat had stopped at Helena, Ark., to take on freight, and I was watching the roustabouts bringing it aboard. It was a tremendously hot day in the late summer, and I, standing in the shade of an awning on the upper deck, looked down over the gangway and the lower deck in amazement to see how the poor devils could work as they did, for they ran to and fro like ants, while the mate of the boat stood shouting his orders and cursing them for their laziness. They didn’t seem to me to be lazy, but it is the fashion to call a roustabout so and to curse at him pretty steadily while he orks, just as a mule driver curses at his train on general principles.

            Most of the rousters were black, or partly negro, though there were a few who looked like white men, and probably were, and there was one fellow I thought had both Indian and negro blood in his veins. He was a strapping big man, and I noticed that while he carried as heavy a load each time as any of the others, he carried it without any perceptible effort and without the strain of muscle that the others showed. They were all stripped to the waist for the work, as ‘rousters’ generally are, or were then, in the hottest weather, and I noticed his physique with admiration. He looked the most powerful man in the gang.

            Suddenly he bumped against another man who was going off the boat for a fresh load as he was coming on with his. I could not see whose fault it was, or whether it was a pure accident, but in an instant he had thrown his load to the deck and struck at the other with his fist. The other man was a very black negro, and considerably smaller than the half-breed, but he was as quick as a cat and jumping backward he avoided the blow and stood on the defensive.

            He was very much on the defensive, too, for as he jumped he put his hand to his belt, and as he struck his attitude he held out a murderous knife with a blade almost if not quite ten inches long. It was a peculiar shaped knife, too, for a weapon, for I was straight and narrow, with a tapering point and only one edge, but the back was almost half an inch thick, and, of course, very heavy. It was almost like a chopping knife. I noticed, too, that he held it with the blade out from the thumb, as a man holds a sword. It is not the way a knife-fighter usually holds his weapon, and I understood, when I had time to think it over, why he wanted so heavy a knife, for some of his blows were delivered broadsword fashion, while others were thrusts.

            As I say, it was afterwards that I understood this. I had not time to reason it out until the affair was all over, for the half-breed whipped out his knife as quickly as the other, and jumped forward like a cat, in attack. His knife was a regular bowie, shorter of course, than the other man’s and much lighter, and he held it in the approved style, with the blade at the little finger side of the hand. They were together on the instant, and there was an instantaneous babel around them, for the other men yelled savagely as they crowded round, and the mate roared like a bull as he jumped toward them with the evident intention of separating them, or perhaps of knocking them down, lower deck fashion. Whatever his intention was, he abandoned it before getting between the two men, and I thought very wisely. From where I stood, just above them, I could see every motion, and I would as soon have jumped into the railroad collision as to have tried to interfere in that fight. It was very short, but while it lasted it was about the most exciting thing I ever saw.

            It was impossible for me, and I think it would have been for anyone, to follow all the motions of the two men, though I watched closely, for they were both skilful fighters, and their thrusts and parries were as quick as the finger of a prestidigitateur. It must have been less than a minute before it was all over, though it seemed a quarter of an hour as I watched. The half-breed made a feint at the other’s neck, as he jumped forward, but changed the direction of a blow as he delivered it, so that the thrust was really at his right side. The negro, however, parried it so well that the sparks flew as the two knives clashed. He parried with a downward stroke, and, swinging his arm round in a quick return, twisted his wrist over so as to bring his edge forward in a back-handed awkward-looking slash at the other’s jugular.

            Awkward as it looked, it was the wickedest blow I ever saw struck, and must have either been an inspiration or the result of long study and practice. His elbow was raised in bringing the knife back as he did, and the half-breed, unable to get his knife back quickly enough to parry after it had been struck downward, ducked just in time to save his neck, but got a glancing blow across the scalp that laid it open. Closing in, after this frightful beginning, they broke each other’s guard and stabbed and slashed till both fell. The half-breed’s knife was driven squarely into the negro’s heart, and his victim never moved after he fell. ‘Twas a victory, however, for the negro, as he got his death blow, avenged himself with a terrific slash across the throat and half beheaded his enemy, and after a few seconds and one or two convulsive shudders, he, too, was dead.

I'm not sure what to make of this story. The odd details give it an aura of authenticity--why would the author make up the “chopping knife” described, rather than make it a dagger or bowie, and why try to describe the awkward-looking backhand slash? On the other hand, there is that telltale Ned Buntline-ism, “sparks flew as the two knives clashed.” Also, why does the writer find it odd that the black man held his knife “as a man holds a sword”? He claims this “is not the way a knife-fighter usually holds his weapon,” while the one he calls the half-breed held his “in the approved style,” that is, in a reverse grip. This was the opposite of the conventional wisdom at the time.