by H. W. Brands
This escalation alarmed the Mexican commander at Nacogdoches, who hurried south to prevent the rebellion from becoming a revolution. Appraising the strength of the insurgents, he acceded to their central demands. He persuaded Bradburn to release Travis and the others to the civil court system, and then got Bradburn to relinquish his command to a replacement who had yet to alienate the locals.
At the time of his arrest, Travis had been merely another lawyer and speculator, younger and greener than most; two months later he emerged from jail a hero among the Texas rebels. Exploiting his opportunity, he wrote up his ordeal for publication. “Mexicans have learned a lesson,” he declared. “Americans know their rights and will assert and protect them.” Virtue and honor had triumphed, and would continue to do so. “The Americans have gained every thing which they claimed. There is every prospect that this happy state of things will have a long and prosperous duration.”
James Bowie was never a lawyer, largely because his other occupations kept him busy, often breaking the law. Bowie was a fighter (who killed at least one man in close combat), a speculator (with a particular gift for land fraud), a slaver (who made a fortune buying and selling human flesh), a smuggler (of slaves, mostly), a consorter with pirates (including the Laffite brothers), and a spinner of tales (which often ended by separating listeners from their money). Not least on account of his skill at tale telling, Bowie won the heart and hand of one of Texas’s fairest maidens.
Bowie was born in Kentucky, in the bend of the Cumberland River, in 1776, two years before Moses Austin moved his family from Virginia to Spanish Louisiana. Rezin Bowie, James’s father, was a farmer rather than a miner, but before long he too discerned possibilities in expatriation, and he likewise transported his clan across the Mississippi. The Bowies spent a couple of years in what would become Missouri, downriver from the Austins, but Rezin then relocated them farther south, to the bayou country of Louisiana. Like the Austins, the Bowies were repatriated when Jefferson purchased Louisiana.
James Bowie was eighteen when the War of 1812 came to Louisiana, and with his elder brother Rezin he enlisted for service under Andrew Jackson. But their enlistment was too late to win them any glory, for they hadn’t found their way to the front by the time the British were beaten and the war ended. All the same, the militia stint got the Bowie boys off the farm and into the wider world, and the experience awakened in James a desire to be a man of his own. With twenty dollars in muster-out money, he set off to seek his fortune.
The first place he looked was along Bayou Boeuf, midway between New Orleans and Natchitoches. Without bothering to purchase the land or inform the owner, he took up residence on a parcel of property and commenced cutting cypress timber, which he floated to market. Between the proceeds from the wood sales and his willingness to live on venison and other game, he saved enough money to acquire the property honestly. He also bought a handful of slaves. With these he continued to work and buy, expanding his domain tract by tract.
But even as his industry was rewarded, Bowie felt the pull of something larger. “He was young, proud, poor, and ambitious,” recalled his brother John, who went on to describe James’s appearance and character.
After reaching the age of maturity he was a stout, rather raw-boned man, of six feet height, weight 180 pounds, and about as well made as any man I ever saw. His hair was light-colored, not quite red; his eyes were gray, rather deep-set in his head, very keen and penetrating in their glance; his complexion was fair, and his cheekbones rather high. Taken altogether, he was a manly, fine-looking person, and by many of the fair ones he was called handsome. He was possessed of an open, frank disposition, with rather a good temper, unless aroused by some insult, when the displays of his anger were terrible, and frequently terminated in some tragical scene. . . . He loved his friends with all the ardor of youth, and hated his enemies and their friends with all the rancor of the Indian.
He also exhibited a wild streak. “He was fond of fishing and hunting,” John said, “and often afforded rare sport to his neighbors by his daring exploits in roping and capturing wild deer in the woods, or catching and riding wild unmanageable horses. He has been even known to rope and ride alligators.”
In the bayou country Bowie met Jean Laffite. The pirate and smuggler was working from bases along the Louisiana and Texas coast, and had developed a large trade in slaves. Although slavery remained perfectly legal in the southern United States, and with it the domestic slave trade, the import of slaves from outside the country had been banned since 1808. In the East this presented no serious problem, as American slaves reproduced fast enough to meet demand. But in the Gulf states, where planters were rapidly expanding their cotton fields, the demand for slaves outstripped the local supply. Many slaves came legally (but unhappily, given the hard life that awaited them) down the Mississippi (hence the melancholy phrase “sold down the river”); others came illegally up from the Gulf. Jean and Pierre Laffite were procurers. Acquiring slaves from the flush markets of the Caribbean, they sold them to brokers who transported the unfortunate Africans to the Mississippi and unloaded them to planters there.
As with all contraband commerce, there were profits to be made by those willing to take risks. Both the profits and the risks appealed to Bowie, who entered the business with brothers Rezin and John. The partners devised an ingenious scheme for evading the laws designed to prevent slave smuggling. Those laws allowed that anyone who tipped the authorities regarding smuggled slaves would earn half the proceeds at auction of the slaves so seized. The Bowies simply turned informers against themselves—or, rather, they claimed to have found the slaves they actually purchased from the Laffites, and delivered them to the authorities. As the price they (illegally) paid the Laffites on the coast for the slaves was typically far less than the price the slaves commanded (legally) at sheriff’s auction in the interior, even at a half share they came out well ahead. In some cases they bid on the slaves themselves; since half their bid price went to themselves, they had an advantage over other buyers. Either way the trade was very lucrative. “We continued to follow this business until we made $65,000, when we quit and soon spent all our earnings,” John recalled.
James Bowie thereupon turned to land speculation. Like most westerners at one time or another, Bowie reckoned that there was a fortune to be made in land: that the same kind of folks Moses Austin had encountered in Tennessee in 1796 would pay for choice parcels. Louisiana in the early 1820s provided a particular opportunity for land speculation, especially if the speculator didn’t mind forging a signature here and perjuring a witness there. Because Louisiana had changed hands three times in recent memory, land titles were tangled in three languages, three legal systems, three conceptions of ownership, and heaven knew how many bureaus, offices, and agents. Hoping to untangle the mess—or at least to cut the knot that bound up titles in the state—Congress decreed that land claimants under the previous regimes had until December 31, 1820, to register their claims. The General Land Office in Washington would then rule on the validity of the claims and determine ownership.
It occurred to Bowie that during the last weeks before the deadline the land office would be swamped with claims and would, therefore, be unable to check each individual claim. With an audacity that became his trademark, he forged Spanish claims to more than sixty thousand acres of Louisiana land. He made up names of sellers, fabricated sales prices, and purchased affidavits from “witnesses” to the transactions.
Meanwhile he divided his time between New Orleans and the bayou parishes Avoyelles and Rapides. In the bayou country, feuding was as common as the Spanish moss on the live oaks; where young men lived on the labor of others (slaves) or on the gamble of speculation (including fraud), they had plenty of leisure to take offense at real and imagined slights. Rivals in business and politics drew partners and allies into their disputes; towns split into feuding factions. Norris Wright, the sheriff of Rapides, took particular offense at Bowie’s speculations and at his support
of one of Wright’s enemies, and cast public aspersions on Bowie’s character. Bowie confronted Wright and demanded an apology; instead he got a bullet from point-blank range, which amazingly missed his heart. Bleeding profusely, Bowie set upon Wright bare-handed. “Had Wright not been rescued by his friends, James would have killed him with his fists,” brother John asserted.
Wright’s rescue merely delayed the reckoning. A disputatious sort, Wright got into a duel with another man, whom Bowie agreed to second. The duel took place on a sandbar by the Mississippi and drew spectators from the whole district. The formal gunplay was disappointing: the shooters both missed, twice. But the aftermath was everything the gawkers had hoped for. One of the seconds, believing honor yet to be satisfied, pulled a pistol, causing several other guns to appear as if by magic. Someone fired at Bowie, who fired back, missing the shooter but rearranging his cravat. More bullets flew, including one from Bowie’s other pistol, which did even less damage than the ball from his first.
Yet Bowie’s temper was up, and the depletion of his firepower didn’t diminish it. His earlier run-in with Wright had prompted him to carry a large knife borrowed from his brother Rezin, sharpened near the tip on both sides for hand-to-hand combat and fitted into a scabbard laced to his belt. Now he drew the knife and began chasing his assailant. Wright entered the fray, firing at Bowie and putting a bullet through one of his lungs. Bowie took at least two more bullets, one to the chest, the other to a thigh, before going down. Wright then attacked Bowie with a sword-cane, inflicting several slashing wounds.
But as Wright closed in for the kill, Bowie grabbed his collar. Wright tried to pull away; Bowie, hanging on for life, was hoisted to his feet. With the better leverage thus afforded, Bowie thrust his fearsome blade into Wright’s chest and “twisted it to cut his heart strings,” as he explained later. Wright slumped to the ground, dead. The shock of this sudden reversal, and the sight of Bowie brandishing his bloody knife, brought the shooting and stabbing to an end. The spectators returned to their homes, marveling at Bowie’s strength and will, and wondering where they could get a knife like his.
Bowie required several months to recuperate from the wounds he received in the Sandbar Fight (which became a proper noun almost before the Mississippi washed the blood from the fatal beach). For all his fighting prowess, Bowie recognized that he had been lucky to survive the scrape, and, while mending, he contemplated moving to a more placid neighborhood. Some of his Louisiana land claims had been disallowed, but a surprising number came through, demonstrating the value-for-money of purchased perjury. Encouraged, Bowie looked for new fields for speculation. He had heard good things about Austin’s Texas colony, and he decided to explore the opportunities there.
He journeyed west via Natchitoches and Nacogdoches, then southwest to San Felipe. Austin was traveling, and rather than await his return, Bowie proceeded to San Antonio de Béxar. There he met Juan Martín de Veramendi, a former alcalde of San Antonio and the father of a charming daughter named Ursula. Bowie struck up a friendship with Veramendi, who was pleased to encourage the immigration of Bowie’s money to Texas, if not necessarily of Bowie himself. For her part, Ursula found the rugged American intriguing.
Bowie returned to Louisiana to tend to certain business affairs. He converted some of his land claims to cash while dodging investigators who were questioning some of his others. He was back in Béxar in the spring of 1829, to pay court to Ursula and learn more about Texas. On this visit he met José Antonio Menchaca, a friend of Veramendi and a man who told fascinating tales of silver mines in the Comanchería northwest of San Antonio. Many decades earlier, Spanish traders had carried silver to Louisiana, prompting questions about where the precious metal came from. Menchaca thought he knew the answer: a lost mine near the San Sabá River. Bowie couldn’t resist the combination of danger (from the Comanches) and potential wealth, and he devoted weeks that summer to seeking the abandoned shaft. He was discouraged at discovering nothing, but not so discouraged as to preclude future visits to the area.
Returning again to Louisiana, Bowie learned that the federal investigators were getting closer. Not only did rejection of most of his remaining claims seem likely, but so, increasingly, did jail. To make matters worse, various Bowie creditors, sensing weakness, sued for nonpayment. If he somehow evaded the marshals on the fraud charges, he might still wind up in jail for debt. Under the circumstances, permanent relocation to Texas appeared more attractive than ever, and in the spring of 1830 he made the move.
He reached Texas amid the uproar surrounding the April 6 law—a state of affairs that pleased him, as he had always fished well in troubled waters. He presented himself as a rich man, one whom Mexican leaders would want for an immigrant, despite the ban on Americans generally, and one whom Juan Veramendi would wish for a son-in-law. That Veramendi was one of the leading figures in San Antonio, and thus that Bowie could pursue both goals at once, testified either to Bowie’s luck in love or to his shrewdness.
Bowie explained to Veramendi that he hoped to build a cotton mill in Texas, which would significantly enhance the local economy. Veramendi, thinking of Texas, enthusiastically endorsed the plan. Bowie’s mill would also make a nice profit; Veramendi, thinking of Ursula, found it doubly attractive. Veramendi recommended the Bowie plan to Erasmo Seguín, currently the alcalde of Béxar. Seguín soon began speaking favorably of Bowie to all who would listen.
Veramendi and Seguín encouraged Bowie to take his case to Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila y Texas, to receive the blessing of the state government there. Saltillo appealed to Bowie for a second reason: he wanted to resume his speculations in land. Although the April 6 law foreclosed the creation by Americans of new colonies in Texas, it didn’t forbid the purchase of land from Mexican landholders. Bowie devised a scheme by which Mexican citizens would receive land from the government and then sell it to him.
He traveled to Saltillo in the summer of 1830 and remained there till fall. Through persistence and persuasiveness—aided by the timely arrival of Veramendi, who had just been named lieutenant governor of Coahuila y Texas—he won over the appropriate state officials, who in turn convinced the Mexican congress to award him a charter for his cotton mill (and grant him Mexican citizenship, effective upon completion of the mill). He also arranged for the purchase and transfer of more than a dozen eleven-league parcels of land. Assuming all the deals went through, Bowie would control three-quarters of a million acres. To complete his successful summer, Bowie persuaded Veramendi to betroth his daughter to him. Ursula was delighted, and the three returned to San Antonio together, discussing the wedding, the couple’s prospects, and the future of Texas.
After a last trip to Louisiana—which confirmed the prudence of placing an international boundary between himself and American law—Bowie provided an accounting of his net worth to Veramendi, as stipulated in their prenuptial agreement. His balance sheet was impressive, showing $162,800 in his favor. What Bowie didn’t tell Veramendi—or Ursula—was that most of his assets were either grossly inflated or simply spun of air, starting with land he didn’t own and concluding with notes he could never collect. Veramendi probably didn’t believe everything Bowie told him, but even allowing for exaggeration, Bowie still cut an imposing financial figure. In any case, Veramendi had grown to like this engaging American. Ursula had, too, and the father didn’t want to disappoint his daughter.
The wedding took place in April 1831 in a small church near the plaza of San Antonio. For several months Bowie and Ursula lived genteelly among her family and friends. He dabbled in trade, doing just enough business to alert the Mexican tax collectors that he wasn’t paying certain required duties. Veramendi, who had been Mexico’s collector of foreign revenues at Béxar, was embarrassed, but not so much as to disown his son-in-law. Bowie talked about the cotton mill but made no visible progress toward building it.
Instead he dreamed about the silver mines he hadn’t been able to locate earlier. And the more he dreamed about them
, the more convinced he became that someone of his brass and cleverness ought to be able to find them. His confidence was infectious, and by the autumn of 1831 he had enlisted several partners, including Rezin, in the treasure hunt. Veramendi underwrote the expedition, which set out for the San Sabá in November.
Before Bowie and the others had a fair chance to find the lost mine, they learned why so few others had preceded them. Most of the Comanches at this time were at peace with the Mexicans, but certain of the Comanches’ allies were not. During the expedition’s third week out from San Antonio, it encountered a couple of Comanches who warned of a large party of Wacos, Caddos, and Tawakonis in the neighborhood. Some of Bowie’s group wanted to seek shelter against a possible attack, but Bowie was determined to press on. For several days they examined the ground for traces of a mine—for wagon tracks that veered off into the brush, for telltale streaks of detritus—while scanning the horizon for hostile Indians. At night they chose campsites that afforded protection from ambush, and took turns keeping watch and listening for footfalls in the dark.
They had nearly reached the abandoned mission at San Sabá when they detected a Tawakoni scout on their trail. Behind the scout they spied the main body of Indians, numbering more than a hundred. Bowie and the silver-hunters dismounted from their horses, unloaded their pack animals, and arrayed the packs so as to provide protection against Indian arrows and bullets.
The Indians, apparently hoping to strip the interlopers of their possessions and animals without a fight, sent forward one of their own to parley. Rezin Bowie went out to meet him. The negotiation failed when Rezin made clear that there would be no surrender of property, despite the large disparity of numbers between the attackers and the besieged. Even before the parley ended, the Indians opened fire, hitting one of the whites and shattering his leg bone.
