The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 60, July 1956 - April, 1957 Page: 339
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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James Bowie, Big Dealer
made more turbulent by the confusion of land claims immediately
following the Louisiana Purchase. In defending his land against
a gang of squatters, Rezin Bowie killed one of them. He was
arrested, charged with manslaughter, and jailed. Mrs. Bowie, ac-
companied by a slave, rode on horseback to the jail, demanded
entrance, entered, and in a few minutes came out with her hus-
band, each armed with a brace of pistols. While the jailer re-
treated, they rode away. Years later when Mrs. Bowie was told
that her son had been killed by Mexicans in the Alamo, she calmly
remarked, "I'll wager no wounds were found in his back."3
At eighteen Jim Bowie cleared a small tract of land for him-
self on Bayou Boeuf, in Rapides Parish. He may have farmed a
little, but his chief income was from lumber that he sawed and
barged down to New Orleans. At this time he was making a name
for himself as a roper and tamer of wild horses, as a rider of alli-
gators,4 and as a hunter of wild cattle and other game. Land was
going up. He sold his and was briefly associated with James Long's
filibustering expedition into Texas.5
About this time, 1819, Jim Bowie and his brothers Rezin P. and
John J. went to buying Africans from the pirate Jean Lafitte on
Galveston Island at a dollar a pound, $140 per head on the aver-
age, and smuggling them into Louisiana. On one drive through
the woods of East Texas thirty blacks escaped. Jim Bowie trailed
them to the Colorado River without recovering them. The
sWalter Worthington Bowie, The Bowies and Their Kindred, 261-262.
4In August, 1936, the writer asked E. A. McIlhenny, of Avery Island, Louisiana,
who wrote an excellent book on alligators, conserved birds, and manufactured
tabasco sauce, what he thought of the claim that Jim Bowie rode alligators. He
replied: "I don't see why he shouldn't have ridden them. I used to ride them. The
trick was to get on one's back, at the same time grasping his upper jaw firmly
while gouging thumbs into his eyes. He couldn't see to do much and the leverage
on his jaw would keep him from ducking under the water with the rider."
According to a footnote by De Quincey-prince of footnote-makers-in The
English Mail-Coach, Charles Waterton (1782-1865), naturalist and author of
Wanderings in South America, "publicly mounted and rode in top-boots a savage
old crocodile, that was restive and very impertinent, but all to no purpose. The
crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, but vainly. He was no more able to throw the
squire than Sinbad was to throw the old scoundrel who used his back without
paying for it."
5There are no details pertaining to Bowie's part in Long's Expedition. Among
early writers who say that he was with it, is William Bollaert ("W. B."), "Life
of Jean Lafitte." Littell's Living Age, XXXII, 441. See also Kilpatrick, "Early Life
in the Southwest-The Bowies," De Bow's Review, October, 1852, pp. 378-382.339
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 60, July 1956 - April, 1957, periodical, 1957; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101163/m1/368/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.