The Bowie Knife - A Short History

The whereabouts of the knife James Bowie had with him in the Alamo, and which he would have used to defend himself during the last moments of his life, is unknown - and forever lost to posterity even in the literal sense. We'll never know if it was taken by a Mexican soldier, or if it was destroyed with Bowie's remains in the funeral pyre in which the bodies of the Alamo defenders were ordered burned. Among other historical fields, this one has been plowed so often, each furrow being turned so many times, that expecting "the" Bowie knife to turn up now might be comparable to finding an ancient Greek ceremonial dagger lying loose somewhere in the Parthenon today. Still, there are some who believe a certain unusual, distinctive knife may have been one of those made for and owned by James Bowie himself.

Jim Bowie flashes his knife to announce his presence in the 2004 Disney film, The Alamo.

J.R. Edmondson's article, "The Brass-Backed Bowie," appeared in two successive issues (January & February, 1993) of Knife World Magazine. Reading almost like a Stephen King thriller, the article is positively riveting and assumes edge-of-your-chair "Twilight Zone" characteristics with nearly cinematic, Hitchcock-like overtones. It discusses the extraordinarily shaped and massive Bowie knife owned by California artist, blade collector and fellow Bowie historian Joseph Musso. The weapon is pictured in the article with the studio prop knife used in the Alan Ladd film, The Iron Mistress, based on the book by Paul Wellman. Though the handsome prop knife is unusually large, Musso's brass-backed Bowie is even larger: the blade itself is almost 14 inches long, making the weapon effectively a small sword - which is how Bowie's knife has been described.

The Knife World article offers some very convincing evidence that the knife was made ca. 1830 - interestingly, just when Bowie was in the prime of his life - very possibly by James Black in Washington, Arkansas. The initials JB appear on part of the quillon. While the letters could represent the maker's initials, some believe that the knife may have been made for and owned by James Bowie himself. Conjecture may be fruitless but it's still fascinating.

Though we'll never know for certain if Musso's weapon is literally a Bowie knife, there are those who share a common view about it - a common feeling. Rather singular and historically almost unique of shape, positively frightening of configuration and monstrous in its size, there is an undefinable mood about it which is, in a word, unsettling, as though it has some hidden story to tell, if only it could speak. Inanimate, the weapon has no life of its own - but it seems to have a very distinctive and almost palpable presence, which can be sensed even in its photographs. This cannot be "explained." It can only be felt.

This Musso knife matter is problematic - but the fact remains that if it was Bowie's own blade, it represents its own cumulative past. Do those who conclude it was James Bowie's knife believe it because they wish to? It may be so, but that it might have belonged to and been used by James Bowie is a possibility - unprovable, but there - with which we're still faced, and it must be if not "accepted" then certainly considered.

It's also worth noting that even in person the nearly-full-size reproductions of this piece (from Atlanta Cutlery's Museum Replicas in Conyers, Georgia) don't prompt the same kind of intensity of personal reaction as does even a photo of the actual Musso knife. We react differently when we see George Washington portraits by contemporary artists (including Gilbert Stuart, whose rendering of our first president graces countless schoolrooms and all of our dollar bills), and then visit New York's Pierpoint Morgan Library to gaze upon the 1785 life-mask by Jean Antoine Houdon: predating the photographic era by more than half a century, the mask is the most accurate, realistic rendering we have of Washington's physical features and represents him effectively as he actually looked at age 53. Since history doesn't exist solely on the basis of written documents and official decisions, these are not merely anecdotal comments but distinct possibilities: in essence, even in its photo we may be looking at the blade of James Bowie.

THE BOWIE MYSTIQUE

An illustration of the Bowie Knife made by James Black.

Some people, like Melville, van Gogh, and Alamo commander William Barret Travis became legends posthumously. Others, like Beethoven, Brahms, and Bowie had already reached nearly iconic status even during their own lifetimes. Bowie lived so long ago that the distance of time renders the contradictions and confusion about him almost impenetrable, and his reputation, evidently even in his own day, precipitated the creation of a historical petri dish in which the culture of The Adventurer grew and flourished. He became a legend so early in American history that the records are congealed with invention, fiction and fantasy, creating nearly insurmountable obstacles to the human features behind the mystique, if not clogging access to the man altogether. The results of his existence have become so profound they're almost intangible, though today towns bearing his name exist in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Texas (which also has a Bowie County); San Antonio itself has its own Bowie Street, and there is Bowie Creek in Mississippi.

Bowie's impact corresponds to the then-new and unprecedented early 19th-century views characterized by the Romantic era's perceptions of historic greatness. It could apply to almost every significant person who attained fame in life or after, but it seems to apply especially to Bowie as an American legend. He foreshadowed by decades the wild west and its own individual and collective legends, still in our consciousness today as the subject of countless books, and with the western film having been a Hollywood staple for decades. (It was precursored as early as 1903 by the 10-minute-long film, "The Great Train Robbery," made not in Wyoming but in New Jersey, and the plot of which was suggested by an actual train holdup - in Wyoming - on August 29, 1900, in which members of Butch Cassidy's group were involved).

Romantic notions of history evolved during Bowie's era; the image of the independent and self-sufficient man was then respected and in some cases even enhaloed, with The Adventurer and the aura that surrounded him an object of reverence, and his persona being seen by some as something bordering on divinity. (It's even more profound in the case of the composers, whose handwritten manuscripts, inert but still very much alive, can now bring a veritable fortune at auction). This was the Romantic view - "romanticized" now but quite real then. James Bowie was one of those responsible for the fostering and impetus of the 19th-century Romantic sentiment in the United States.

We tend to admire those we can't emulate but would like to. We also tend to invest martyrs with heroism and heroes with martyrdom. Those who left life prematurely, at whatever age, prompt the most intriguing conjectures. Bowie's adventurous life and martyr's death at the Alamo exemplify this. As the knife bearing his name has become emblematic of him, his name and the very concept of the Alamo have become indelibly linked, if not altogether fused. His 40-year existence contributed as much to 19th-century legend as to the depiction or representation of historical fact. Like most in his era, locale and circumstances, Bowie was a man of action more than of words, yet whatever written records he left reveal if not literary gems then certainly an enviable degree of awareness, observation, and clarity of mind.

We live in an era where some amazing things are often taken for granted. The Whitehead Memorial Museum in Del Rio, Texas, displays an unusual and very telling artifact: a large, sealed jar of earth from the Alamo grounds in San Antonio. That the soil was rescued and preserved soon after the final siege in 1836 bespeaks a revealing degree of reverence for what occurred at dawn on that Sunday, March 6th, and is a clear indication of the momentous significance with which the event was seen even then, certainly by the unnamed person who salvaged and saved that soil.

The sense of the Alamo's historical standing was perceived also by another, not so anonymous man. "... If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope posterity and our country will do our memory justice.. ." Thus wrote William Barret Travis from the Alamo itself on February 25, 1836, when the siege had already been underway for two days. That he used the word "shrine" in his dispatch, long before the Alamo became so known as a national symbol, seems very noteworthy - the more so, as his letter predates the realization that the defenders were to fight literally a losing battle. Indeed, "Remember the Alamo!" became a rallying cry even at San Jacinto, a mere six weeks after the Alamo fell.

One man who paradoxically did not grasp the Alamo's importance to posterity was none other than Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna y Peréz de Lebrón. In his memoirs, written late in his life, he made only passing reference to that Bexar incident - but even a comment he made soon after the siege was very revealing: "It was but a small affair" (to which one of his officers responded, "Another such 'victory' and we are ruined"). Santa Anna's statement not only shows us his own view but reminds us of a similar situation in antiquity: the paucity of information in ancient Egyptian writings about the Israelites leads scholars in that field to deduce that the Exodus was then perceived by the Egyptians merely as a nuisance border incident. The historical consequences of what happened there thirty three centuries ago, and more recently in Texas, are now matters of historical record.

Had photography appeared only twenty years earlier, we might have had a photographic image of Beethoven. Though we do have one Bowie portrait that was painted from life (by George Peter Alexander Healy) and which gives him a rather fierce look, had the camera been around even ten years sooner, we might have an actual photo of the already-famous Bowie or even of former congressman Crockett. Most of us are just passing through history. James Bowie and the knife that bears his name ARE history.

What's most obvious, by its nature, often escapes our attention, so it may be worth noting that James Bowie and the other Alamo defenders were as alive then as we are today.

JEFFREY DANE is a historian, researcher and essayist whose writing on various subjects appears in the USA and abroad in several languages, and in both print and online publications. He's a contributor to several volumes by various authors. He's seen by some as being overly confrontational and therefore a real idealist, and by others as being insufficiently engaged and thusly an ideal realist. Both views have merit. He favors those who can see something for its own intrinsic worth and gauge it on its own merits, viewing it (and hopefully accepting it) for what it is. He dislikes those of the "know-it-all" mentality, whose personal dissatisfaction and venting masquerades as "constructive criticism." As a historian, if he had a choice of experiencing any single event in the recent history of the world, it would be the siege and fall of the Alamo ( but, he freely acknowledges, "Only as an observer, not as a participant").