Jim Bowie: Frontiersman and Fighter

Early Life and Legend

James Bowie was born around April 10 in 1796 near Terrapin Creek (present day Spring Creek), Kentucky. He, his brothers John J., Stephen, and Rezin P. Bowie,
and his parents, Reason and Elve Bowie, lived in Logan County, Kentucky. They operated a gristmill with the help of eight slaves. In February 1800, his family moved to Madrid, present-day Missouri, and on May 2, 1801, swore allegiance to Spain and its colonies. They settled on farms in present-day Catahoula Parish, where James and his brothers matured into adults.

The Bowies were active community people, and one of the brothers is said to have been the largest local slaveholder, supposedly having at least twenty slaves. Reason Bowie and his family moved again, this time to the Atakapa country in southeastern Louisiana. The plantation Reason developed on the 640 acres of land he bought near the mouth of Little Bayou would be his last resting place; he died there in 1821.

As a teenager, James Bowie floated lumber to market in the Avoyelles and Rapides parishes and invested in property on the Bayou Boeuf. A skillful hunter and fisherman, Bowie family tradition claims that he caught and rode on wild horses, alligators, and grizzly bears. As an adult, his brother John described him as "a stout…raw-boned man of six feet…weighed 180 pounds.” Jim Bowie was said to have a "open, frank disposition” but also a very short temper. It was during this period of his life that he would get his reputation as a brave yet reckless adventurer.

Adult Adventures

When the War of 1812 was being fought in the United States., Jim and his brother Rezin (whose name is a slightly altered version of “Reason”) joined one of the Divisions of the American military, and were going to join General Andrew Jackson’s army stationed at New Orleans when the war suddenly ended.

The Bowies then got involved in slave-dealing, buying slaves from the pirate Jean Lafitte, who would capture slave shipments in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico and sell them on Galveston Island. They quit the business after gaining $65,000 and started dabbling in land dealing and befriending wealthy planters.

Despite his friendly if ill-tempered nature, Jim made quite a few equally ill-tempered yet short-lived enemies. One such person was Norris Wright, a sheriff and local banker in the Rapides parish. Bowie needed him to pay off a loan that he desperately needed, but Norris refused. Jim personally met Wright in 1826, and they became so angry at each other that Norris shot his gun point blank at Bowie; fortunately, the bullet was deflected. To keep him safe, his brother Rezin gave him as a defensive weapon a massive ten inch long hunting knife resembling a small sword. Jim had a blacksmith forge a modified version of the knife from an old file that had a curved tip; he liked it better and kept it.

On September 19, 1827, near the town of Natchez, Bowie and six others got involved in the infamous Sandbar Fight. It started when two men got in a duel with each other and started shooting at each other to no effect. Two onlookers continued the fight, and eventually Bowie was suddenly involved. Although he was stabbed and shot in numerous places, including his thigh and even his chest, Jim won the fight by killing or severely injuring the other six men with his large knife. People who saw or heard of the fight labeled Bowie as the greatest knife fighter in the South, and his knife, eventually called the Bowie knife, was being constantly replicated and modified throughout North America, and is still being so to this very day.

Mission to Mexico

Bowie’s wild sense of adventure would lead him to the Mexican state of Texas. Jim and his friend Isaac Donoho left for Texas on New Year’s Day in 1830. Once he reached the town of San Felipe, Bowie gave a letter of introduction to the highly successful empresario Stephen F. Austin. On February 20, Bowie and Donoho swore allegiance to Mexico, then settled in San Antonio.

Although he was generally a kind and generous man, Jim Bowie was also an ambitious schemer. Bowie started posing as a man of wealth and got friendly with numerous wealthy and influential Mexican citizens such as Juan Martín de Veramendi, the mayor of San Antonio, and Juan N. Seguín, the son of Erasmo Seguín, an old partner of Austin‘s. Bowie lied about his age and property values so he could marry Ursula de Veramendi, Juan Martín's daughter. He had to borrow money from his father and grandmother-in-law to take his new wife on a honeymoon to New Orleans and Natchez.

Despite the fact that he had settled down with a new wife, Bowie still couldn’t stay still for long. He got permission in 1831 to look for the legendary Los Almagres Mine, supposedly near the ruins of the San Saba Mission. He took a party of ten others, including his brother Rezin, but returned to San Antonio after he lost a man and had several others wounded in a long, vicious battle with Native Americans. After searching a second time with a party of twenty-six men, he found nothing and stopped looking for the mines.

The Texas Revolution

While in Natchez in July, Bowie learned that the Mexican commander José de las Piedras had attempted to quiet down the disagreements between Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s new government and the Anglo settlers. The citizens of Anahuac and Velasco rejected Piedras’ order that all the citizens give up their weapons. Bowie went with James W. Bullock and three hundred men in a siege of the Nacogdoches garrison. Bullock’s men killed thirty three of Piedras’ men, and Piedras fled. In September, Bowie’s wife Ursula, her parents, and her two young children all died from cholera. Jim had yellow fever in Natchez at the time and was unaware of their deaths for a while.

In May 1835, Santa Anna abolished the Coahuila y Texas government and ordered the arrest of all citizens doing business in Monclova, the capital of Texas at the time. Bowie started beating the drum of war by writing to a friend in Nacogdoches, claiming that communication between Texas and Mexico had been completely severed, that Mexican troops were sailing for the Texas coast, and that troops were marching toward the Rio Grande.

On September 1, Austin returned from a two and a half year long imprisonment in Mexico City and made a call to arms against Santa Anna. General Sam Houston was the leader of the regular army during the Texas Revolution, but because Bowie was a volunteer, he didn’t have to answer to Houston. Bowie was, as Noah Smithwick said, “…a born leader, never needlessly spending a bullet or imperiling a life.”

On November 26, James went with thirty horsemen who attacked a Mexican mule train that they believed was carrying silver to pay General Cos and his men at San Antonio. Because it was discovered that the train was just carrying grass, the incident became known as the “Grass Fight.” Bowie then went to check conditions at Goliad. While he was away, the Texans defeated the Mexican garrison at San Antonio and drove them out of Texas. Believing that the War was over for a while, volunteers started to go home.

The Alamo

On January 19, 1836, Bowie was sent to the Alamo in San Antonio by Houston in order to help the Texan garrison there. He was joined by Lieutenant Colonel William B. Travis, fellow frontier legend Davy Crockett, and 72 troops, making the total amount of troops about 180. On February 13, Travis was put in charge of the regular troops and Bowie the volunteers. Ten days later, they learned that about 1,800 Mexican troops personally led by Santa Anna were headed toward San Antonio. When they arrived, they demanded that the Texans surrender; the Texans refused. Santa Anna then hung the red flag of no mercy over his headquarters.

On the twenty-fourth, Bowie fell ill with an unknown disease that was either typhoid, pneumonia, or advanced tuberculosis. He was therefore confined to his cot for the last eleven days of his life.

From February 24 to March 5, the Mexicans bombarded the Alamo with many cannons and guns. The Mexicans used cannonballs that would explode soon after they hit the ground. Whenever the cannonballs didn’t detonate, the Texans would reuse them when their own cannonball supply got low. The Texan cannons included six-pounders near the main gate, eight-pounders in a ditch in the south half of the plaza, two cannon emplacements on the north and west walls, and a powerful eighteen-pounder placed in the southwest corner of the Alamo so that it could command movements in the town.

The Texans themselves carried Kentucky rifles that had a very long firing range. They also carried the now legendary Bowie knives in case they ran out of ammo and had to do close-up combat. One major weakness of the Alamo was that the southeast wall next to the old chapel was never completed by the Catholic monks who built the mission; a weak wall of wood and earth was erected to fill up the gap. Also, the mission was too big for the mere 180 Texans at the Alamo to maintain and defend.

The final attack on the Alamo was fought on March 6, 1836 at 5:30 in the morning. Three columns of troops attacked at three separate points of the walls. The Texans, being well prepared, decimated the first column. They also did the same to the second column. Although they fought fiercely, the third wave of attackers eventually started climbing over the walls.

The Texans fought so stubbornly that both the Texans and the Mexicans started running out of ammo and had to fight with clubs and knifes. At 7:00, the rising sun revealed the dead bodies of many Mexicans and all the Texans. Travis died next to the north wall, Crockett died in the square outside the hospital, and Bowie was found dead in his cot with two bullets in his head.  As Bowie's mother stated when informed of his death, "I'll wager no wounds were found in his back."

After the battle was over, all the bodies of the defenders were burned. Among those who survived were the women and children who stayed in the old chapel and Brigido Guerrero, a member of the actual garrison who convinced Santa Anna that he was a prisoner of the Texans and had been forced to fight against his will. At least 600 Mexicans were killed.

Even though it was a major defeat for the Texans, many historians believe that without the Battle of the Alamo, the fight for Texas independence would not have been won. Santa Anna lost many soldiers in the battle, some of them professional ones. Also, the siege and battle delayed the Mexicans from proceeding with their campaign to kill all the Anglo rebels for more than two weeks. This delay allowed Houston to gather up and train both the regular army and the volunteers. The courageous sacrifice of Bowie, Travis, Crockett, and the other Texans at the Alamo encouraged and inspired the Texas troops to win their independence and liberty so that their deaths would not have been in vain.

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At the age of forty years old, it might seem as if the death of James Bowie at the Alamo was too soon. But Bowie had made up for his short life by living his life to the fullest extent possible. His numerous adventures and exploits made him as famous a frontiersman as Crockett himself. And no matter how many times the design of his large knife has been modified and improved, the basic, original design can always be traced back to Bowie. James Bowie has become an immortal legend and hero in the history of both Texas and the entire United States. Death would probably just be another wild adventure for this frontier legend.