One day while Rezin P. was thrusting his knife into a ferocious bull, the animal lunged in such a way as to draw the blade through the hunter’s hand, making a severe wound.
After having his hand dressed, Rezin called the plantation blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe, and told him that he must make a knife that would not slip from a man’s grasp. Using a pencil in his left hand, he awkwardly traced on paper a blade some ten inches long and two inches broad at its widest part, the handle to be strong and well protected from the blade by guards. The model having been settled upon, Rezin gave the smith a large file of the best quality of steel and told him to make the knife out of that. With fire and hammer the smith wrought the weapon—just one. It proved to be so serviceable in hunting, and Rezin came to prize it so highly that for a long time he kept it, when he was not wearing it, locked in his desk.
Then one day Jim Bowie told his brother how his life had been jeopardized by the snapping of a pistol while it was pointed at a man firing on him. After hearing the story and learning how the final reckoning between the enemies was yet to be made, Rezin unlocked the desk, took out his prized personal possession, and handed it to his brother with these words: “Here, Jim, take ‘Old Bowie.’ She never misses fire.�
Another story has it that in preparation for the “Sandbar Duel� Jim Bowie himself took a fourteen-inch file to a cutler in New Orleans, known as Pedro. Pedro had learned his trade in Toledo, where the finest swords in all Spain were forged; and all his skill went into the making of a blade which was to be, in Bowie’s words, “fit to fight for a man’s life with.�
When in doubt, go to the encyclopedia. This is what the Encyclopedia Americana (1928) sets forth: “Colonel James Bowie is said to have had his sword broken down to within about twenty inches of the hilt in a fight with some Mexicans, but he found that he did such good execution with his broken blade that he equipped all his followers with a similar weapon�—the Bowie knife.
But let us not be too rash in drawing conclusions. Arkansas is yet to be heard from, and Arkansas has better right to speak on the subject than any encyclopedia. The Bowie knife used to be commonly known as the “Arkansas toothpick,� and Arkansas is sometimes referred to as “the Toothpick State.� Arkansians certainly knew their toothpicks. The very spring that Bowie died in the Alamo, Arkansas became a state, and fittingly enough history records that the members of the first Legislature used, after adjournment in the cool of the evening, to take their knives and pistols and repair to a grove hard by, there to practice throwing and shooting at the trees.
Some members of the Legislature were in fine practice. The Speaker of the House was John Wilson, sometimes known as “Horse Ears� from the fact that when he was excited—whether by love, humor, or anger—his ears worked up and down like those of an aroused horse. One of his political enemies in the House was Major J. J. Anthony. When a bill relating to bounties on wolf scalps came up Anthony arose and, in the course of his remarks, made a cutting allusion to Speaker Wilson.
With ears working and quivering “in a horrific manner,� Wilson leaped from his chair, drew a Bowie knife, and started toward his antagonist. Anthony was waiting for “Horse Ears� with his own knife drawn. A legislator thrust a chair between them. Each seized a rung in his left hand and went to slashing with his right. Anthony cut one of Wilson’s hands severely and in the scuffle lost his knife. Wilson, thereupon, made short work of his enemy. In court Wilson was triumphantly cleared of the charge of murder, and at a meeting of the Legislature a few years later drew his Bowie knife on another member. Those were the days when the Bowie knife governed in Arkansas.
So it is not without reason and just basis for pride that Arkansas insists on having originated the Bowie knife. It has already been said that John J. Bowie established a plantation in that state. A former Arkansas judge, William F. Pope, maintains that Rezin P. Bowie once came to Washington, Arkansas, and engaged an expert smith named Black to make a hunting knife after a pattern that he, Bowie, had whittled out of the top of a cigar box. “He told the smith he wanted a knife that would disjoint the bones of a bear or deer without gapping or turning the edge of the blade. Black undertook the job and turned out the implement afterward known as the Bowie knife. The hilt was elaborately ornamented with silver designs. Black’s charge for the work was $10, but Bowie was so pleased with it that he gave the maker $10 more.
“I do not hesitate to make the statement,� concludes Judge Pope, “that no genuine Bowie knives have ever been made outside the State of Arkansas.... Many imitations have been attempted, but they are not Bowie knives.�