While the noted Clay Allison “of the Washita,� one of the swiftest, boldest, most bizarre and humorous gunfighters of the Southwest, was in Texas along in the early 1870’s he became embroiled, so old-timers tell, with a neighboring ranchman. The two men agreed to fight it out, and the coolness and originality that Clay Allison displayed in planning the details of the fight would have delighted Jim Bowie.
“It was agreed,� Maurice G. Fulton relates the story, “that a grave should be prepared of the usual length and width, but to the exceptional depth of seven or eight feet. The two men were to strip themselves to the waist and then seat themselves inside the grave at the two ends, each grasping in his right hand a Bowie knife. At a given signal they were to rise and start fighting. This they were to keep up until one or the other was dead. A final stipulation required the survivor then and there to cover the dead one with the earth removed in digging the grave.�
Clay Allison, of the Washita, threw in the dirt.
Bowie still had his knife at the Alamo—at least a Bowie knife. Dallas T. Herndon, Arkansas historian, says that he died in the Alamo “with the knife made by James Black clasped in his hand.� Others have said that around Bowie’s cot—for he was ill—was a heap of Mexicans whose ribs had been tickled by the knife. Among the relics in the Alamo itself at present is a not very formidable specimen of cutlery that some man by the name of Bowie donated a few years ago as the original Bowie knife. The Witte Museum, in San Antonio, has another knife that is supposed to have been owned by Bowie and presented by him to a friend. (Bowie seems to have been fond of making presents of the knife, very much as an author presents his own books.) One tradition is that Bowie gave the original knife to the great actor, Forrest. No doubt Bowie admired actors. Another report has it that one of the Louisiana descendants of Rezin P. Bowie lost the original knife in a boggy river some forty years ago.
James Bowie died before the knife that bears his name was supplanted by the six-shooter. It is generally said that Captain Jack Hays, of the Texas Rangers, at the battle of the Pedernales with Comanche Indians, about 1842, first fully demonstrated the superiority of the Colt’s revolver over all other weapons in close combat. It was about this time that Robert M. Williamson, a lawyer and one of the most singular characters among the highly individualized men of Austin’s colonies, made a gesture that signified the waning dominance of the Bowie knife.
The President of the Republic of Texas commissioned Judge Williamson to go to a certain county and there hold a term of court. No court had been held in the county for years; the citizens were principally engaged in feuds and wanted no legal meddling. Just before court was to be convened, a mass meeting of the feudists adopted a resolution declaring that no court should be held. When Williamson took his seat on the bench, a lawyer who had been deputized to set forth the resolution arose and read it aloud. The courtroom was crowded with armed men. After the lawyer had concluded and taken his seat, the judge asked him if he could cite any statute to warrant the adjournment of court for any such reasons as he had set forth.
Coolly enough, the lawyer again rose, pulled out his long Bowie knife, laid it on the table, and said: “This is the statute that governs in such cases.�
At this the fiery Williamson leaped from his chair, drew one of the new Colt’s revolvers, pointed it at the lawyer, and roared: “And this is the constitution that overrides the statute. Open court, Mr. Sheriff, and call the witnesses in the first case.�
Whether they be literally true or largely the product of imagination—and many of them must be fabrications—the tales that have come down regarding the origin of the Bowie knife and of its use by Bowie and other frontiersmen reflect, in a phrase from Henry Adams, “what society liked to see enacted on its theater of life.� Indeed, they reflect not only what society “liked to see enacted� but what was enacted. As truly as documented history they reveal a time and a people.