2. Bowie to Músquiz, December 10, 1831, Músquiz to José Letona, December 18, 1831, Antonio Elozua to Músquiz, January 5, 1832, Músquiz to Bowie, December 19, 1831, Letona to músquiz, January 20, 1832, José Antonio de la Garza to Bowie, February 6, 1832, Béxar Archives, UT.
3. Hayward to Jackson, January 16, 1832, Entry 404, Record Group 49, NA. Caiaphas Ham is the only authority for Bowie making this December 1831 trip to Louisiana, but since Rezin, and Stephen (if he actually came to Texas) would need to return home, and because of other stories placing Bowie in Arkansas in 1831, it seems reasonable to accept Ham on this. However, it is also possible that Ham was confused, and really was thinking of Bowie's probable December 1832 trip to Louisiana.
4. They probably went by way of Arkansas, traveling first to Nacogdoches, and then north on Trammel's Trace to the Red River, and beyond a few miles to Washington, in Hempstead Country. It gave James a chance to look into the land sales there, as well as to take a reading on what had happened with the Bowie claims in the courts. On the way across the wild country he had lost the knife that Rezin gave him, and while in Washington he may also have called on local blacksmith James Black to have another one made. Then it was a hasty trip on down the Red to Natchitoches, and so on to Rezin's home once more, only to find that he would have to wait to collect the money due him, an unfortunate circumstance that delayed not only his own land speculations in Texas, but apparently some plans of Austin's as well.
The seemingly innumerable devotees of the Bowie knife would rise in rebellion if some acknowledgment were not made here of the pretensions of James Black to being the make of one of Bowie's knives. According to the Washington, Ark., Telegraph, December 8, 1841, Black claimed at that time that he had made knife for Bowie. The article says that it was James Bowie whom he made it for, but does not actually quote Black. The article states no more detail than that, Black does not claim to have made the original Bowie knife, nor does he claim that the knife he says he made was his own design or Bowie's He supposedly elaborated on this considerably in later years when, while blind, he lived with the Jones family in Little Rock. According to Augustus Garland to William F. Pope, April 28, 1895, in the Little Rock, Ark., Gazette, June 11, 1908, the old and infirm Black told him that James Bowie brought him the pattern for a knife that the had whittled in soft wood and asked him to forge the blade. Pope used this information in his Early Days in Arkansas (Little Rock, 1895), 44-46, but then said that it was Rezin Bowie of Walnut Hills, in neighboring Lafayette County, who actually called on Black to have the knife made. This was not James's brother Rezin, but a much younger cousin, the son of John J. Bowie. No date for the event appears in any of the succeeding accounts until the March 14, 1920, Galveston, Tex., Daily News, in a story titled “True story of the Bowie knife,” which says it happened in 1831. An undated typescript of an article by Dan Jones, son of the Family with which Black lived, is in the Lucy Bowie Papers at DRT, and it states that Black made the knife for James. Thorp, Bowie Knife, 16-23, concludes that it happened in 1830. Virtually all subsequent accounts of the Black-Bowie connection are based on these sources.
There are many problems with the Black story. For a start, by 1841 James Black had been battling insanity and delusion at least since May 1836, and that was only when his father-in-law actually made that matter public in seeking to have Black declared incompetent, a judgment with which the court agreed, making him Black's legal guardian (Hopewell, Bowie, 53, citing Hempstead Country Circuit Court records). Consequently, stories of Black's connection with any of the Bowies or of making a knife for any of them may have been pure lunatic fantasy. Then there is the problem of identity. James's brother Rezin Bowie never lived in Arkansas. Their cousin Rezin, mentioned above, did, though he live in phillips Country, near Helena, on the other side of the state, and 150 miles from Lafayette Country or Hempstead. It stretches credulity to think that he would have to travel that far to fine a blacksmith to make him a knife. Everything that Garland and Dan Jones said, of course, was purely what Black told them. They knew nothing firsthand.
The Arkansas Territorial Restoration Museum at Little Rock has a photo purporting to be of Black and Jacob Buzzard, each holding pistols and knives. On August 18, 1966, Louise King appended a caption to the photo saying that Black is the man seated on the right and that Buzzard is seated on the left, and that in 1831 Black made a knife for James Bowie. She cites no authority either for the identification of Black himself, or for the dating of the purported forging of the knife. Joseph Musso, “A Bowie Knife,” Alamo Journal 84 (December 1992): n.p., accepts the photo as genuine, identifies the pistols as 1840 and 1842 models, and cites the Washington, Ark., Telegraph, September 7, 1842, as saying that a daguerreotype photographer had recently visited Washington, and that thus the photo was probably made “circa 1842.”
This is all wishful thinking, unfortunately. In the first place, while the photograph has not been examined in the original, it bears in reproduction none of the hallmarks of an 1840s daguerreotype, and looks much more like an ambrotype, a process not in use until 1855. Furthermore, the clothing on the two men pictured is not that of the 1840s, but that of the mid-1850s and later, and was still being worn well into the 1860s, for that matter. Then there is the problem of Black himself. He was born in 1800, and the 1841 Telegraph article about him said that as of that date he had been blind for several years. Those like Garland and Jones, Who knew him when he was forty-one, referred to him then as “the old man,” the inescapable inference being that he looked older than his years. However, the man identified as Black in the photograph is so fresh-faced and boyish that he can scarcely be more than twenty-four or twenty-five, if that, whereas Black would have to have been at least in his early forties when the photo was made, and more likely in his fifties. And the man in the photo has clear, unclouded eyes quite definitely focused on the camera taking his picture. In short, this is a photograph taken in the 1850s of a young man in his twenties or even late teens, and who apparently had perfectly normal eyesight. No amount of imagination can turn him into James Black. In all probability, the photo really shows two young Arkansans repeating a ritual taking place all over the South when, in 1861, their state seceded and they sat for a warlike pose with knives and guns before going off to war.
In the end, there is no direct contemporary evidence to establish that James Black made a knife for James Bowie, or that he did it in 1830 or 1831, or indeed at any time. The story rests solely on Black's claims made well after he had been adjudged mentally incompetent and, significantly, well after James Bowie had become a cultural hero and the knife whose origin was erroneously associated with him a cultural icon in its own right. Having been a blacksmith, James Black undoubtedly made many knives, and probably many to one of the Bowie patterns. He may even have seen or encountered James or John or one of the two Rezin Bowies. While it is possible that he did in fact fashion a blade for James, it is equally possible that his disoriented mind simply invented the story out of these elements in exactly the same way that the insane and the senile quite often confuse events and place themselves in proximity to the famous in their imaginings.
Nevertheless, on the assumption that it was possible for Black to have encountered James Bowie on one of his few trips through Washington during the Arkansas land fraud days, it seems worthwhile to include such an episode in the text, though no more than in passing. There is no way to date it, however, and placing it here at the end of 1831 simply seems slightly more likely than on other long journeys James is known to have made. And again, so far as the life of James Bowie is concerned, who designed or forged any knife for him is of monumental unimportance. As stated earlier, the only time he verifiably used a knife in a personal encounter was on the Sandbar in 1827, and Rezin gives a perfectly acceptable accounting for that one.
5. This is only supposition, based on the fact that a sea voyage would get him back to Texas much faster than an overland trip from Louisiana, and that in order for Bowie to have
and announcement in the January 10, 1832 issue of the Brazoria Texas Gazette, he had to be in that town at least a day or two earlier. Brazoria would not be on the normal overland route from Louisiana, but it would be on the customary route for someone who came by ship to Galveston, and was on the way to San Felipe or San Antonio.
6. Manuel Jiménez to political Chief, January 17, 1832, Béxar Archives, UT.
7. Bowie to Músquiz, April 23, 1832, Secretary of State, Domestic Correspondence, Record Group 307, TXSL.
8. This involves a lot of surmise, based on the frustratingly brief statement in Nathaniel Cox to Austin, March 22, 1832, Barker, Austin Papers, vol. 2, 761, from New Orleans that Carbajal had “failed in making any collection from Mr. Bowie as contemplated” This says nothing about which Bowie, or how much money, or what it was for. Since James had been expecting a large sum from Natchez in 1830 and it did not arrive, and since installment payments from the Walkers and Wilkins on their notes were due each year, it seems probable that this is the money Carbajal hoped to collect. This would also explain James's quick trip to Louisiana in late 1831, in hopes of collecting it himself. Just how Austin was mixed up with money due to Bowie is a mystery.
By the way, it may be significant that Cox speaks only of one Bowie in Louisiana. This could mean that Stephen was dead by March 1832.
9. Austin to Williams, March 21, 1832, Barker, Austin Papers, vol. 2, 759.
10. Ibid. The conclusion that the Austin-Bowie problem in this case was land is based on Austin' later clear break with Bowie over land policy, and on Austin's own concern in March 1832 with his own eleven-league grants.
11. Mary Austin Holley to William Brand, January 6, 1832, Mary Austin Holley Papers, UT.
12. Paul D. Lack, “In the Long Shadow of Eugene C. Barker: The Revolution and the Republic,” Robert Calvert and Walter Buenger, eds., Texas Through Time (College Station, 1991), 138-39.
13. Ham,“Recollection,” UT.
14. Williams, “Critical Study, III,” 96n, cities an interview with Francis Gelhorne in the San Antonio Express, of May 21, 1905. Unfortunately, this must be a miscitation, because that issue contains no such interview, and so the original has not been examined. Hopewell, Bowie, 139n, cites the article in the paper of that date, but obviously never really saw it, since it is not in that issue.
15. John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and pioneers of Texas (Austin, 1896), 137. Hunt gave this recollection around the 1880s, half a century after the fact, placing his encounter with James and Ursula at a party on Christmas Day in 1831 on the Colorado River, presumably at either Bastrop or Columbus. On the basis of this, some have stated that Bowie took Ursula to New Orleans in December 1831, but this is impossible, since he was certainly back in Brazoria by January 9 at the latest, and the mere fifteen days in between would not have been sufficient time for them to get to New Orleans, spend any appreciable time, and then return to Brazoria, even by sea.
16. Last Will and Testament of James Bowie, October 31, 1833, in Heirs of James Bowie V. Houston & Texas Central Railway Company, Documents Pertaining to James Bowie, UT.
17. John J. Linn, Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas (New York, 1883), 302-4.
18. Menchaca, Memoirs, 21.
19. Margaret Swett Henson, Samuel May Williams Early Texas Entrepreneur (College Station, 1976), 39.
20. Menchaca, Memoirs, 21 is the only source for Austin's summoning Bowie, and gives few other details, but the context and timing suggest that it can only have been in response to these events, and Bowie's appearance at Nacogdoches on August 2 makes it evident that this was the mission Austin had given him.
21. Sibley to Johnston, August 13, 1832, Johnston Papers, HSP.
22. Menchaca, Memoirs, 21.
23. Mims, Trail, 53, states that Bowie was made “a captain of troops and sent to Nacogdoches to crush a rebellion that was led by Colonel Piedras,” whereas, of course, it was Texians rebelling against Piedras. This is par for Mims, and again there is no authority for stating that Bowie was a captain or any other rank.
24. No contemporary source is specific about when Bowie arrived, but it is apparent from several that it must have been during the night, since he was present the next day. Brown, Indian Wars, 136, does state that he came during the night of August 2, but without indicating on what authority the statement is based.
25. Wooten, Texas, vol. 1, 145-46; Niles, South America, 262-263; Mirabeau B. Lamer, “Expulsion of Pedres from Nacogdoches,” 1832, Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., and Katherine Elliott, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, vol. 3 (Austin 1923), 269-71.
26. Lamar, “Expulsion of Pedres,” 1832, in Gulick and Elliott, Papers, vol. 3, 271.
27. Yoakum, Texas, vol. 1, 298-99.
28. Sibley to Johnston, August 13. 1832, Johnston Papers, HSP; Wooten, Texas, vol. 1, 145-46.
29. Lamar, “Expulsion of Pedres,” Gulick and Elliott, Papers, vol. 3, 271.
30. Bowie to Austin, August 8, 1832, Barker, Austin Papers, vol. 2, 832-33.
31. Receipt, November 16. 1832, Barker, Austin Papers, vol. 2, 1142.
32. Bowie to Antonio Etonia, September 17, 1832, Medina to Bowie, September 18, 1832, receipt, September 18, 1832, Béxar Archives, UT.
33. Ham, “Recollections,” UT.
34. Austin to David Burnet, January 27, 1833, Jacqueline Beretta Tomerlin, com, Fugitive Letters, 1829-1836: Stephen F. Austin to David G. Burnet (San Antonio, 1981), 27.
35. Benjamin Lundy, The War in Texas (Philadelphia, 1837), 20.
36. Ibid.; William C. Binkley, The Texas Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1952), 8-9.
37. James Bowie power of attorney, December 27, 1832, Gary Hendershott Catalog no. 87 (September 1995): 3.
38. William Preston Johnston to Rosa Johnston, May 22, 1862, Albert Sidney Johnston and William Preston Johnston Collection, Special Collections, Tulane University, New Orleans.
39. As noted previously, there is absolutely no contemporary or even after-the-fact evidence for any meeting between Houston and Bowie earlier than this. Ham, “Recollections,” UT, is the source in this case, and though written fifty years after the fact, its timing and circumstances are perfectly correct, since both Bowie and Houston can be placed in San Felipe in December 1832. Wooten, Texas, vol. 1, 152, writing in 1898, also has them meet here and now, basing his statement on Yoakum's 1856 history. The assertion in James, The Raven, 90, that the two first met in Helena is almost certainly nonsense, as is Long, Duel of Eagles, 31, wherein it is Bowie who actually suggests Texas to Houston as a place to settle in 1829.
40. Ham, “Recollection,” UT.
41. Conveyance Book F, 399-400, Conveyance Book G, 144, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.
42. Ethan A. Brown to Woodbury, September 18, 1835, Volume 2, 235-37, Entry 200, Record Group 49, NA.
43. Conveyance Book G, 42-43, Terrebonne Parish Courthouse.
44. Menchaca, Memoirs, 21.
45. Ham, “Recollections,” UT.
46. Bowie's mode of dress in Saltillo is assumed from his known taste for fine clothing, and also from the fact that a blue suit was found among his effects in San Antonio after his death.
47. Anonymous letter to “Brothers of My Heart,” March 7, 1836, Mexico City El Mosquito Mexicano, April 5, 1836.
48. Juan Seguín to W. W. Fontaine, April 10, 1874, Fontaine Papers, UT.
49. Menchaca, Memoirs, 21, states that Bowie brought about the shift of capital. This is certainly an exaggeration, but Menchaca is so accurate in so many things, and had been in such a perfect position with the Veramendis and Bowie to be uniquely well informed, that his statement must at least be taken to establish that Bowie exerted a lot of influence.
50. Statement of Archibald Hotchkiss in Speer and Brown, Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 436.
51. Niles, History of South America, 262-63.
52. Lundy, War in Texas, 20.
53. Statement of James Bowie, April 17, 1833, Barker, Austin Papers, vol. 2, 951.
54. Statement of Archibald H
otchkiss in Speer and Brown, Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 436. The Little Rock Arkansas Advocate, June 12, 1835, confirms Hotchkiss's involvement in this trip to negotiate the land deal.
55. Samuel Williams statement, June 5, 1849, Williams Papers, Rosenberg Library; Samuel Williams statement, 1840, Journal of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texes, Fifth Congress, 1840-184, 369.
56. Miller, Public Lands, 17; Elgin Williams, “The Animating Pursuits of Speculation.” Land Traffic in the Annexation of Texas (New York, 1949), 50-51.
57. Austin to Williams, May 31, 1833, Barker, Austin Papers, vol. 2, 984.
58. Johnson, Texas, vol. 1, 186; Barker, “Land Speculation,” 77.
59. Menchaca, Memoirs, 21. This source does not say that Bowie took the money to New Orleans for Veramendi, but since this information is contained in a passage chiefly dealing with Bowie, such can be inferred, especially since Bowie definitely went to Louisiana at this time.
60. Ham, “Recollection,” UT.
61. Sampeyrac and Stewart v. United States, Peters, Reports of Cases Argued, 222ff.
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