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By Gordon Hutchinson
 It was a straight blade, one and one-half inches wide, and just over nine inches in length. It had a keen edge, and a crosspiece separated it from its handle.
It was hammered out on a plantation forge in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana by one brother, then given to another who made a leather sheath for it and carried it like a part of his person for the rest of his days.
Several months after the gift, it was used to kill a man in one of the most infamous duels in American history.
Despite the mythological proportions of the legends that have grown around Jim Bowie and his famous knife, history records only one incident in which that knife was used to kill--and it was used against the person who caused it to be given to Bowie by his brother, Rezin, in the first place.
If you are a Jeep owner and visited St. Francisville, Louisiana for the April, 2000 Jamboree, you were probably awed by the ageless homes and sites of historical significance that fill the small city like the moss that fills the thousands of centuries-old live oaks.
Situated on high bluffs next to the Mississippi River, St. Francisville has witnessed the birth of a nation, become the capitol of yet another (the Republic of West Florida-formed to overthrow Spanish rule, then disbanded to be assimilated into the young United States), watched that nation divide itself, and watched Union artillery bombard its churches and homes in battle over that division.
But less than an hour's drive north of this quaint, historical city, again on high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, lies an even larger town with an even more rich heritage--Natchez, Mississippi. It's an easy drive from St. Francisville, and one well worth the effort.
The antebellum homes and centuries-old buildings seem to stand on every corner in downtown Natchez. If you visit this town, history seems to drip from the buildings like dew weeps from the slave bricks from which many are constructed. To get a complete sense of what Natchez is, the one place you must visit is Natchez-Under-The-Hill.
Located on a lower, secondary bluff under the awe-inspiring Natchez bluffs, Natchez-Under-The-Hill is today a mere shadow of its former self in the early nineteenth century. Today, a small strip of buildings comprising gift shops, theme restaurants, and barrooms give lie to what was, in its early life, a raucous, bawdy, bloody, and thoroughly alive river port where the sternwheelers tied up, and the passengers debarked to visit Natchez proper, or just to slake a thirst, be it physical or sensual.
Natchez-Under-The-Hill was the necessary and unacknowledged partner with its more genteel relative up the bluff. The bluebloods and solid citizens stayed away from the low-class barrooms, gaming parlors, and houses of ill-repute that comprised a large portion of the business industry of the small port.
But the buildings still standing are originals, and it doesn't take much imagination to stand facing them, with one's back to the west, the big river flowing behind him, and see them as Jim Bowie might have seen them--with the sawdust-covered floors, barrooms against barrooms, practically sharing common walls, and sharing a common board sidewalk.
Across the river is the smaller city of Vidalia, Louisiana, and between the two river towns in the late 1820s was a wooded sandbar extending out into the river a few hundred yards above the town of Natchez. This incongruous patch of river silt, sand, and wooded greenery would be the scene, on September 19, 1827, of a duel and pitched battle between opponents that would rival the national notoriety of the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona--still some sixty years in the future.
And this battle would place the names of Natchez and Vidalia on the front pages of nearly every newspaper in the United States at the time, and would give rise to the legend of James Bowie and his knife.
The Bowie family name probably came from the ancient Mac Ghille-bhuidhe, eventually shortened to the pronunciation of "Bowy." They were Scots, and the clan and its blood-ties flowed strongly in their veins. Originating in a migration over to South Carolina in 1760, the family was driven by James' grandfather and father, both of whom had a love for the wild places. They would no more than get a strong farm and livestock operation going well when the next opening territory would beckon, and they would sell their land, load their growing families, and move on.
The family eventually made its way down the Mississippi River to Natchez, then applied to the French government in 1803 for a land grant in what was to soon be known as Rapides Parish, west of Natchez, across the Mississippi River in the central portion of the state. France had regained the territory from Spain on October 1, 1800 by the treaty of San Ildefonso. Again, the work ethic was strong, and the family holdings grew as the young men, James and Rezin, and their brothers grew.
Rezin and James Bowie, bonded by the powerful clannish beliefs in family, parlayed speculative land ventures based on falsified Spanish land grants into vast holdings throughout central Louisiana, and later Arkansas, where much of the family would eventually end up.
With the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase territory from France in 1803, Louisiana was thinly settled when it passed into American hands. France needed the quick sale to finance its war with England, and there was a certain inevitability about it all--the young United States was bursting and expanding into new territories constantly. France knew it was only a matter of time before the land was American by simple settlement, if not in proper transfer.
With the exception of one city, New Orleans, and a few small towns and villages like Opelousas and Alexandria in the central portion of the state, Louisiana had much unused land, and when it became a state in 1812, the government recognized as lawful all the valid existing land claims from Spanish grants. But as much as 90 percent of the state remained public domain. It would take decades for the government to survey all the land and sell it off at public auction.
James and Rezin Bowie, recognizing a golden opportunity, became adept at the creation of false documentation of Spanish grants, which they purportedly bought from the original owners and then registered the described lands in their names as owners. It was brazen, bold, and it worked, to a point. Except as in most forgeries, errors in dates, spelling, and names frequently gave rise to suspicions as to the activities of the Bowies.
Rezin, born in 1793, while equally in love with adventure and excitement, and bold enough to get involved in land grabs with his brothers, was said to be the more controlled, more accommodating of the two. His younger brother, James, born in 1796, was another matter altogether.
Described as six feet tall and a solid, muscular 180 pounds, James Bowie was said to be a likable sort with a glib tongue and winning ways. He also had a reputation for a pride and determination that, when slighted or pushed, had the very ring of steel about it. His demeanor when aroused has been described by friends from the era as approximating the personality of an enraged tiger. Absolutely fearless and with absolutely no regard for danger or his own life, James Bowie was not one to cross, and he would not abide an insult.
His brother, John Bowie, recalled: "The displays of his anger were terrible," he said, "And frequently terminated in some tragical scene."
But those were prideful times, when the slightest insult or remark on one's character could result in an invitation to meet on the field of honor and settle differences through the code duello.
James, Rezin, and John were aligned with one group in the politics of the area, while on the other side was Major Norris Wright, another land speculator, duelist, and former Sheriff of Rapides Parish whose election was said to have been due to some ballot boxes carrying more votes than the rolls allowed.
There was much animosity between Wright and Bowie, who according to brother John, "loved his friends with all the ardor of youth, and hated his enemies and their friends with all the rancor of the Indian."
Upon landing in Alexandria in December 1826, returning from Arkansas where he was setting up more fraudulent land grabs, he was met at the steamboat by a group of friends, and possibly his brother, Rezin.
The group related the slanderous comments being passed around in bars by Norris Wright, and Bowie, dressed still in his traveling clothes, grew instantly into a vengeful mood, and marched straight up the street to Bailey's Hotel where he confronted Wright and demanded to know if what he had heard was true.
It was a common confrontation on the frontier, and quite common in Rapides Parish. At the slightest hint of insult, men answered with deadly force. Certainly, Bowie's towering rages and violent proclivities were well known. Wright responded by not saying a word, drawing a pistol, cocking and pointing it at Bowie.
Bowie grabbed a chair and held it in front of himself to take the blast. But being Bowie, rather than back out of the encounter, with incredible disdain for the danger of a cocked pistol, he raised the chair to strike Wright, who shot him in the chest, on the left side.
Bowie leaped on Wright and carried him to the floor where he throttled him and pulled a clasp knife from his pocket. Holding Wright by the throat with one hand, he was in the act of pulling the knife open with his other hand and his teeth when Wright's friends overcame their shock at the sudden, violent encounter, and began pulling Bowie off Wright.
Dropping the knife, he bit down on Wright's hand so powerfully that when he was ripped away, he left one of his teeth in Wright's finger. Bowie's own friends arrived, and he was shielded from Wright's crowd and taken to a room to recover.
Upon self-examination, Bowie discovered just how lucky he was. Wright's pistol was either too small, or underloaded, to the point it would have inflicted only a painful wound. Further, the bullet may have been deflected by coins in his vest pocket.
It was while recovering from this wound and battle that Bowie decided pistols to be utterly unreliable, and remained outraged at Wright for his cowardly attack on an apparently unarmed man. Wright wisely made himself scarce around town while Bowie was healing, and in fact, public opinion had turned mostly against him for his deadly attempt against a basically unarmed man.
Bowie decided he would make himself a sheath and get a knife he did not have to open, and would carry it on his person from that moment on. Never again would he be unprepared in another life-threatening situation. He told his brothers he would "wear it as long as he lived."
It was at this point Rezin brought him the knife he had formed on his forge at his plantation in Avoyelles parish. Bowie put it in the sheath he had built, and began carrying it.
It would take far more space than is possible here to describe the political climate of Rapides Parish and Alexandria at that time. Suffice it to say that some observers of the day declared Rapides had become a "scene of constant warfare." Political factions coalesced into two loose sides that had participants challenging enemies to duels, and side battles breaking out on the scenes of the duels amongst the seconds of the participants, and the observers.
It came to a head in September of 1827 when members of the two opposing factions decided to meet in Vidalia and Natchez for a planned duel in the area. There was much talk and discussion of this upcoming duel as two previously planned ones had not occurred as organized, but had basically deteriorated into vicious verbal brawls, and later assassination attempts on the streets of Alexandria.
No firm date had been set for the duel, but all the parties involved began drifting toward Natchez, and by September 16, nearly everyone with an interest in the outcome was in place in either Natchez, or Vidalia.
A meeting in Natchez resulted in the decision being made that the duel would be fought on a partially wooded sandbar on the Natchez side of the river, just upstream from the town. Because of the fear the meeting would turn into a free-for-all, it was agreed that only the duelists, their seconds, and their surgeons would meet the following morning. But the crowds for each side kept growing as men kept arriving, and the mix was a volatile and highly explosive one.
The actual two principals were Samuel Wells, a friend of Bowie's, and Dr. Thomas Maddox, a member of the Wright camp. It should be remembered here that animosities ran so high between the two factions that if not for these two, any number of other pairs of individuals were ready to issue challenges and settle differences with a brace of dueling pistols.
And because of this high level of vitriol and hatred, a large crowd from both sides showed up on the sandbar in spite of the insistence that only three members from each side, including the principals, be present for the duel.
Bowie himself and several friends arrived on the sandbar on the morning of September 19 when they took a skiff and rowed themselves across the river and stepped onto the sandbar to watch the duel.
They remained uninvolved, some hundred yards distant from the activity, and watched as Maddox and Wells reviewed the ground, rejected the pleas of their seconds to settle the dispute amicably, and took their positions.
They exchanged shots, neither taking effect. If the pistols were true dueling pieces, they were smoothbore, and fired lead balls--a notoriously inaccurate combination that saved the hide of more than one duelist. Each principal could claim honor had been served by the firing of the shot, leaving the field with their honor and egos unscathed, their bodies intact.
The seconds attempted here to take this tack, trying to convince Maddox and Wells that the honor of both had been served, and each should quit the field.
But both men insisted on a second round, paced off, and fired again. When the smoke had cleared, both were still standing. The seconds prevailed upon them to end the action, and this time the two agreed, approaching each other to shake hands.
The issue had been settled, mercifully, with neither of the two being injured.
The group then began walking off together, toward a group of men that included Wright, across the sandbar from the several men with Bowie.
It was decided that all would have a drink to celebrate the ending of the animosity between Maddox and Wells, who had in fact been close friends at one time before the alignment of the factions had split them apart.
It was at this point two other warring members challenged each other to step back to the dueling field and settle their differences once and for all. What occurred here is not completely clear, but it is generally accepted that Bowie pulled a pistol in response to another being pointed at one of his friends, General Samuel Cuny, the challenging party. Cuny's brother, a physician, and others stepped between him and Robert Crain, a friend of Wright's, and convinced them to forego violence. General Cuny agreed to drop his challenge to Crain for the present, and turned away, but Crain still had his pistol in his hand, and he and Bowie were in a standoff.
Crain fired his gun at Bowie, considering him to be the most dangerous in the group. He missed, and Bowie fired back, clipping Crain's cravat. Crain drew another pistol and fired again, this time hitting Cuny in the thigh, severing an artery.
Seeing the general fall, and Crain turning to run toward his friends in the willows, Bowie drew his other pistol, fired, and missed. He then drew his long knife Rezin had given him several months before.
Taking off at a run after Crain, he yelled, "Crain, you have shot at me; and I will kill you if I can."
Bowie, in his rage, ran away from his friends and support, toward the Wright crowd, his mortal enemies. Crain turned and threw his pistol at Bowie, hitting him in the head, and staggering him.
Bowie stumbled to an upright piece of driftwood and grasped it to keep himself upright while Wright and the others rushed down from the woods to Crain's aid.
Seeing Wright draw a pistol, Bowie yelled at him just as some of his supporters got to him, and one handed him a pistol. He and Wright fired at the same time, and both missed, but Wright drew a second pistol. With no other pistol, Bowie yelled at Wright to shoot and be damned.
George McWhorter, who had handed Bowie the pistol, drew another pistol and fired at Wright just as he fired at Bowie. McWhorter's pistol ball caught Wright in the side with a superficial wound. Wright's bullet, however, was aimed true. Dr. James Denny, one of the seconds in the original duel, had grabbed Bowie by the lapels, shaking him, saying the fighting had to be stopped.
Wright's bullet struck Bowie full in the chest, taking off Dr. Denny's middle finger, and passing through one of Bowie's lungs, nearly dropping him.
Bowie tore free from Dr. Denny and lunged at Wright, who turned to flee. Bowie caught up with him and was grabbing him when two more of Wright's party opened fire on Bowie, one of their bullets striking him in the thigh and bringing him down.
Seeing Bowie go down, Wright turned and drew his sword cane, and with Alfred Blanchard doing the same, they began stabbing at Bowie who was flailing about on the ground. Bowie deflected many of their blows, giving each some cuts with his knife.
Wright's sword pierced Bowie's hand, and another of the blows actually bent the blade as it hit Bowie's breastbone and slid along his ribs.
Through superhuman effort, probably an adrenaline burst brought on by his rage, Bowie managed to fight into an upright position, and then reached up and grabbed Wright by the shirt collar.
As Wright attempted to pull free, he unwittingly pulled Bowie up to a near standing position.
As Bowie later told the story to Rezin and another friend, he pulled himself almost into an embrace with Wright and then said into his ear: "Now Major, you die!"
With a single thrust, he stabbed Wright in the chest, boasting later he "twisted it to cut his heart strings."
Wright pitched forward, dead, on top of Bowie.
Blanchard continued to stand over Bowie, attempting to stab him with his sword cane. Two more friends, Samuel and Thomas Wells, had been at the side of the dying General Cuny. They now ran up and Thomas shot Blanchard in the arm just as Bowie flung the corpse of Wright off, reaching up and giving Blanchard a bad cut in the side with Rezin's knife.
It was over. The entire episode taking little more than ninety seconds. A physician from Natchez, there to witness the incident, pronounced Wright dead. Bowie called out to Crain, standing nearby: "For God's sake; Crain assist me, give me some water, and help me to the shade."
The bloodletting had seemingly removed all hostilities. Crain rushed to Bowie's side to assist him, and in fact, up until the incident, there had been no antipathy between them. Bowie told Crain he should not have shot at him, and Crain replied Bowie had drawn a gun on him. Bowie stated he had drawn his gun to protect his friend, General Cuny, in response to Crain pulling his gun.
Wright and General Cuny were dead. Blanchard and Dr. Denny wounded seriously, and Bowie was expected to die before crossing the river.
Within fifteen minutes of the firing of the first shot, they loaded Bowie into a skiff and began rowing him back across the river to his room in the Vidalia House. He had two severe bullet wounds, at least seven stab wounds to his body, and a serious wound to his head caused by Crain's thrown pistol.
This violent, bloody brawl was reported extensively by the Natchez newspaper, and the story was picked up by the east coast newspapers where it received much national attention.
Bowie recovered, in spite of all the dire predictions of his demise. He frequently joked about the results of the brawl, and thanked his opponents for overloading their pistols, thus causing the balls to pass completely through rather than remain in his body, creating further problems.
Bowie became a local celebrity, if for no other reason than his sheer cussedness kept him alive when lesser men would have died on the sandbar. But his natural garrulousness, and his pleasant manner with one and all, made him a popular character as he recuperated. He was adamantly unapologetic for the killing of Wright, stating he intended to strike for the heart.
According to Professor William C. Davis, author of the definitive history of Bowie, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis in his book, Three Roads to the Alamo, the duel was not a duel, but a small, spontaneous riot--common on the frontier landscape of the times.
And the common thread throughout any of these was that individual fighters risked themselves only when they had the advantage of greater numbers, and would readily run for cover when that advantage dissipated.
But according to Davis, Bowie was impelled by a rage that blinded him to fear or self-protection: "He stood his ground and simply kept fighting. That was the sort of thing that turned brutal, pointless brawling into legend."
In Bowie's case, that is exactly what happened. He survived the sandbar battle and recuperated, although problems with his lung would plague him the rest of his life.
In spite of the myths that have grown up around his legend, Norris Wright was the only person ever recorded to have been killed by Bowie and his knife. But his personal life and adventurous nature would lead him up and down the Mississippi River through St. Francisville, into Baton Rouge, down to New Orleans, that city with European flavor, and back up into Arkansas, all the way to Helena.
In fact, it was land speculation that led him to San Antonio, Texas where he married into a socially prominent Mexican family, believing that when Texas was annexed by the United States as everyone was sure would eventually happen, those there first would reap the benefits.
And it was his nature that led him to ally with his fellow Texicans in 1836 in the Alamo. Some 136 brave souls, including Davy Crockett and William Barret Travis, would give up the opportunity to depart peacefully, knowing full well the fate they faced with 5,000 Mexican regulars under the command of Generalissimo Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico surrounding the old Spanish mission outside the town of San Antonio.
Once it was overrun, Santa Anna executed all the survivors, wanting no live heroes, and thus creating dead martyrs. For it was their deaths that bought Sam Houston the time to gather an army and attack Santa Anna at Goliad, under the cry "Remember the Alamo."
Santa Anna was destroyed, and Texas was free to sue the United States for annexation.
Bowie and his contemporaries were flawed, certainly. But all men are flawed. It is when the defects in their character are overcome and overshadowed by the strengths and power of their own integrity that they become great and historically significant. In this case, in the end, James Bowie proved himself to be far more a man destined for greatness than all the legends and myths that swirled about him could have ever foretold since that bloody, violent day in 1827 on the sandbar at Natchez.
How to get there:
Natchez is located approximately fifty miles north of St. Francisville on U.S. Hwy. 61. Driving into the city from St. Francisville, when you pass in front of the Jefferson Davis Hospital complex on your left, the highway splits.
Take the left segment for approximately two miles, and you will reach the Mississippi River, and the Natchez/Vidalia, La. Bridge. At the riverside on the north of the bridge is the Isle of Capri casino riverboat. Immediately north of the casino is the remaining buildings of Natchez-Under-The-Hill, a small portion of what was originally there. But these are originals, and retain the flavor of the old river port that was there. Natchez proper, of course, is renowned for its hospitality, and hundreds of antebellum homes and buildings, perhaps best showcased each spring by the world-famous Natchez Pilgrimage, when many homes are open to the public, and visitors are greeted by locals in period dress and demeanor.
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