J. Frank Dobie

“ It is a benediction of nature that generally we remember more vividly and oftener what has given us happiness rather than what has given us pain. Christmas in particular is the time for recollecting, and now I am recollecting Christmases even more remote in character from modern Christmases than they are in time.
We lived on a ranch twenty-seven horse miles from our “shopping center.” That was Beeville, Texas, which later became the family home. Three or four times a year a wagon went to town and hauled out supplies, but the biggest haul was just before Christmas. ”

“ Rezin P. Bowie flatly affirmed that the knife never was used more than the once for [56] other than hunting purposes. Maybe Bowie used at other times an improved model, though, as we shall see, he was passionately devoted to “Old Bowie.” Estimates of the number of men he stabbed—exclusive of his work in the Alamo—vary from sixteen to nineteen. It is significant that Rezin was careful to make a distinction between a “difficulty” and a “duel”; consequently his flat assertion that neither he nor James “ever had a duel with any person whatsoever” is to be taken technically. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ After this, whenever anyone ordered a knife from Black he ordered it made ‘like Bowie’s’ which finally was shortened into ‘Make me a Bowie knife.’ Thus this famous weapon acquired its name.
“Other men made knives in those days, and they are still being made, but no one has ever made ‘the Bowie knife’ except James Black. Its chiefest value was in its temper. Black undoubtedly possessed the Damascus secret. It came to him mysteriously and it died with him in the same way. He often told men that no one had [51] taught him the secret and that it was impossible for him to tell how he acquired it.” ”

“ For dozens of purposes the Bowie knife was “as handy as a shirt pocket.” Its hard bone or horn handle was often used as a kind of pestle to grind coffee beans. The blade, sometimes as heavy as a Mexican machete, served to hack limbs from trees and to cut underbrush, as well as to dress and skin game. Tradition has it that in the battle of San Jacinto the Texans killed more Mexicans with the Bowie knife than with bullets. ”

“ The Bowie knife was the best possible knife to use, and knife throwing and thrusting were arts to be excelled in, as well as shooting and wrestling. Indeed, many frontiersmen regarded any other weapon than the knife, for work in close quarters, as “fit only for the weakly.” ”

“ 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 [46] their knives and pistols and repair to a grove hard by, there to practice throwing and shooting at the trees. ”

“ Black made the knife [50] according to Bowie’s pattern. He knew Bowie well and had a high regard for him as a man of good taste as well as of unflinching courage. He had never made a knife that suited his own taste in point of shape, and he concluded that this would be a good opportunity to make one. Consequently, after completing the knife ordered by Bowie, he made another. When Bowie returned he showed both the knives to him, giving him his choice at the same price. Bowie promptly selected Black’s pattern. ”

“ On one occasion, says the historian Thrall, Jim Bowie, while driving ninety of his purchases through the swamps of Louisiana, lost the entire band. Thereafter he prepared himself against a similar disaster by wearing “three or four knives,” so that he could transfix any Negro that tried to run away. Jerking a knife was quicker by far than reloading a horse pistol at the muzzle. “Big Jim,” as they called him, showed the “knife men” among Lafitte’s crew several things in the art of knife throwing. ”

“ After having his hand dressed, Rezin called the plantation blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe, and told [44] 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. ”

“ As an added fillip, his colorful story of the Bowie knife is included.
Warren Hunter, one of Texas’ outstanding artists, has provided striking illustrations that catch the spirit of the stories and recall days quite remote from the modern scene, yet separated from us by only a few decades.
Thus, with a glance backward, The Steck Company brings you warm greetings for the 1953 season. In the words of Dobie, “Generous feelings and cheering words are never trite. Merry Christmas!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ We may have had colored balloons at some Christmas, but I recollect only the ones made from bladders. Hog-killing time is cold weather. The chief prize for us from every hog and every calf, cow, or steer butchered was the bladder. A human mouth was the only air-pump for blowing up this home-contrived balloon. ”

“ While the noted Clay Allison “of the Washita,” one of the swiftest, boldest, most bizarre and [59] 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. ”

“ Many a man and boy, and many a woman and girl too, had a strong affection for oxen reliabilities bearing such names as Old North and Crump, Tom and Jerry, Bigfoot Wallace and Jim Bowie, Bully and Blackie. ”

“ The stranger had moved around so that he was very near the wheel oxen, which he faced, instead of the driver and his wife. His hand was on Brindle’s head, between the long rough horns, and the old ox, whose countenance was the same whether in a bog hole or a patch of spring tallow weed, licked out his tongue.
[28] “I believe I can make these old boys haul the wagon out,” the man said.
“They wouldn’t do any better for a stranger than for their master,” Mr. Cude answered.
“There’s only one person who could get them to pull,” added Mrs. Cude. “That’s our boy who went to the war.” ”

“ The baby of the family, Martha, was still in school and so was Henry, the youngest son, eighteen years old. My mother was thinking how she would have him for a time at least, as a stay while she cared for a sick husband and her own aged mother.
During World War I, millions of youths who joined the army volunteered. One day Henry came to my mother and said, “Mama, I wish you wouldn’t feel as you do about my enlisting. I want to go. I feel like a slacker staying at home.” ”

“ The classic Arkansas story comes from Dan W. Jones, governor of Arkansas from 1897 to 1901. According to Governor Jones, the James Black, who alone made the only “genuine” Bowie knife, also designed it. Black was born in New Jersey and, after having served as apprentice to a Philadelphia silver-plate manufacturer, came South in 1818, settling that year at Washington, Hempstead County, Arkansas. ”

“ Christmas was the time for new pocket knives, and very useful they were. My father taught us to whittle water-wheels, which could be run only when an occasional rain made Long Hollow run. The axle for the wheel might be a piece of wood or a section of dried cornstalk, less durable but much more easily fitted with paddles than hard wood. ”

“ Some drivers of oxen were more noted than the most noted oxen. Not long after Texas joined the Confederacy, a youngster named Tim Cude went from Live Oak County to enlist in the Army. Although he was only sixteen years old, his way with oxen was a community wonder—especially the power of his voice over them. It was a voice young and lush, but strong, without the gosling quality. He did not charm the [23] oxen by whispering—horse-charmer style—in their ears. ”

“ The more canned goods we consumed and the more old bullets we could find, the higher the rate of coinage. The two principal [9] uses the dollars had were for pitching—into holes in the ground—and for buying cattle, horses, sheep, and goats from each other.
Each of us had a play ranch enclosed by miniature fences—twine (our barbed wire) strung on sticks stuck into the ground like posts. Our cattle were tips of horns that had been sawed off cattle at the chute in the big picket cowpens about a hundred yards from the house. ”

“ 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. ”