WEBVTT - Part Two: Jim Bowie: The Worst Texan 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:06.320 M. Knivess. This is the story of Jim Bowie of 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:10.120 the Bowie Knight, Part two. Behind the Bastards is Robert Evans, 0:00:10.200 --> 0:00:13.080 the podcast of Bad People Talk about him co host 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:19.119 Billy Wayne Diddy. Billy, I have learned that you don't 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.320 actually need to order words in any meaningful way if 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:24.800 you just make sure all of the important words are 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:27.040 kind of jumbled up into a salad. People tend to 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:29.440 get what you're saying. Are you saying with the right emotion? 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:34.159 Damn right, yep, yep, yep. So why even have grammar? 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.280 That's the question. And the answer is there's no reason 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:41.960 to have grammar, and it's it's cowardly. I love grammar 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:49.440 is up, so there are raisins. No, yes, probably so. 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.120 In our last episode we talked about the famous sandbar fight, 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:55.720 which it's really just a giant ship show. Uh and 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.000 probably would have been pretty funny to watch. It was 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.240 hilarious to listen about. Yeah, up until that guy got 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:04.200 his guts spelled all over the sand bar. It was 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.680 pretty funny. Um. Still, that was that part. I mean, 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.360 you know where you're getting into, you know, in some fairness, 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.000 Jim Booie's a monster because of the slaves stuff. In 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.520 that fight. He did say don't shoot at me, you rascal, 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.119 like he gave him proper warning, and that guy kept 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:25.920 shooting at him. He did, he did, And that is 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:28.520 the general rule. If somebody has a giant knife and 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.360 you're going to shoot at him, your best, your best 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:33.920 deal with them real fast with your gun, because if 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.440 you don't, they've got a real big knife and they'll 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.600 be angry at you. That is I had a My 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.920 middle school basketball coach told me he carried a twelve 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.080 gauge in Vietnam because an M six team just piste 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:47.800 him off. And I was like, okay, well that's we're 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:52.520 a basketball practice. But yeah, that's really not helpful in 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.720 any part of my life right now. But thank you 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:59.280 for scaring a child. Yeah, and that information has always 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:03.680 stuck with me. Yeah. I mean, in the days before 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.640 body armor was common in particular, stopping power was really 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:11.320 um anyway, let's just neither nor there wasn't not wrong. 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:13.400 If you want to stop a man, it doesn't get 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.040 much better than a twelve game shotgun unless you have 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:21.400 a gigantic knife like Jim Bowie have had that too. 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.680 He probably did. Now when we left our friend Jim. 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.720 He had just disemboweled a man during an argument and 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.440 been shot several times. And because the United States, he's 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.280 my friends, No he's not, because the United States has 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:38.799 not changed at all since those days. This made him 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.920 suddenly gigantically famous, and he became a living legend of 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.760 the Wild West, like Wyatt Earp or Davy Crockett or 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.600 I have to assume based on his name Grizzly Adams, 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:49.560 and I refused to look up who Grizzly Adams was, 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:53.440 so don't tell me if I'm wrong. I think he 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:55.960 I think he fought grizzly bears with his bare hands 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.160 because he had to defend orphanages. That's my head cannon 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:02.160 for Grizzly Adams. His brother was good at taking pictures, 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:08.760 probably Ansel yep Anzel and Grizzly. So once he'd healed 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:11.600 from the sandbar fight, Jim Bowie re entered polite society 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:14.200 as a celebrity. The eyes of the nation followed him 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.000 as he traveled through the Old West and gotten too 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.200 even more fights. Now, most of the fighting credited to 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:21.480 Jim Boweing never happened, and it's very possible that he 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.280 never killed another person with his knife again. But there, 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.400 of course numerous stories you can find about him getting 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:29.400 into fights and killing two or three armed men with 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.079 his gigantic knife. And almost all of these your tall tales, 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:35.400 you know. Um, yeah, once you're famous for stabbing a 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:37.160 guy to death, there's gonna be a lot of other 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.120 stories if you're stabbing guys to death, even if you 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:42.040 never stabbed another guy to death. That's just America. It's 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.920 Keith Richards. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't do as many drugs 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:48.680 you'd as you'd think, but he got the reputation and 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:50.880 it's just stuck with him. Well, that's what in his 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.560 book he said, Yeah, I just never corrected anyonere No, 0:03:54.720 --> 0:04:00.520 and why would you? Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh, it's 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.840 all about personal branding, and Bowie knows how to brand himself. Well, 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:09.000 so uh, yeah, he he didn't. Probably it's probable that 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.320 he never killed another human being with his knife. Um, 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:14.800 but he continued to kill his shipload of people. Don't 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:17.880 worry about that, billy, He kept yet he kept killing people. 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.479 That did not stop. Um. His brother John later wrote 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.359 that after recovering from the Sandbar fight quote, Jim felt 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:26.719 as though he had not been well used or properly 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:29.599 treated by some of his political friends, and this, John 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.240 Bowie says, is why Jim went to Texas. Now, in 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:35.599 writing this, he left out about a year or so 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:37.920 worth of crimes that he and Jim both committed. So 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:42.240 like the kind of frontier story that his brother tells us, 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.640 that like Jim got betrayed by some of his political friends, 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:46.159 and so he went to Texas, and he leaves out 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:50.280 like what actually happened, um, And what actually happened is 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.880 that for the next year or so after the Sandbar fight, 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:57.720 he got back into conning people over land. So basically 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:01.200 he would travel all across the frontier buy up tracts 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.640 of land, or purchase options to buy up tracts of land, 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:06.880 and then he would sell that land to the highest bidder, 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:10.240 hopefully for a profit. Now this is called land speculation 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.919 and it's not illegal, um, but it was kind of 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.799 slower than Jim Booie was comfortable with. So we started 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:19.520 forging options and land deeds and selling those two. Now 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:21.839 this is outright theft because he was just lying about 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:23.960 land that he had no claim to, selling it to 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.000 people and pocketing the money. But the Internet didn't exist 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:30.520 back then, and people usually weren't fast enough to catch him. Now, 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:32.840 Jim went towards quite a lot of effort to affect 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.040 these forgeries, even hiring actors to pretend to be landowners 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:37.839 so he could then convince buyers that he was this 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.040 person's representative, so he could sell them land that he 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:45.200 had no right to. So these were pretty elaborate cons Yeah, 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.120 well he had to have gotten caught. He got constantly, constantly. 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:51.920 He wasn't good at hiding it. People were just dumber 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:54.200 back then, and there was no Internet. Yeah, And I 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.839 was like, I'm gonna need an accomplice, yeah yeah, and 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.800 the accompany he didn't need an accomplice, and his accomplices 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:07.520 were usually congress Yeah. So he had friends in congress 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.160 um who would help him basically by like pushing you know, 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:14.360 the local banks and stuff to to to recognize these 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.520 deeds and stuff that he was he was bringing forward um. 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:19.800 And eventually he decided the best way for him to 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:22.159 continue his scams and make a bunch of money was 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.239 to run for a local congressional seat in Louisiana to 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.080 to basically get in power himself. And he worked at 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:29.880 a deal with one of his friends who was already 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:32.320 in Congress, to basically take up that guy's seat once 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:34.880 his term ended and run in the next election. But 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:37.320 then his friend decided to run for re election again, 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:39.359 and Bowie got angry at him, And this is what 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.320 his brother referred to as him not being properly treated 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:47.080 by political friends. So the congressional election that year actually 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.320 went against his buddy and probably would have gone against Bowie, 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:52.599 and he was left without any allies in Congress, and 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.599 without any way of easily continuing to swindle Rubes into 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.200 buying land he didn't already own. Over the course of 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.600 eighty eight, all of Jim's many schemes collapsed one after 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:04.760 the other, leaving him at risk of becoming destitute um 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:06.640 or at least if he'd actually bothered to pay any 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.160 of the debts he'd accrued. The book Three Roads to 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.920 the Alamo gives a good summary of the actual scale 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.120 of the con Bowie was trying to work, and it's 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.680 it's enormous quote. He had made a stunning lee, bold 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.920 play and exploitation and all laying fraudulent claim to eighty 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.720 thousand acres in Arkansas and between seventy three thousand and 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:30.240 eighty thousand more in Louisiana. Yeah, my god. If he 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.400 had succeeded, he would have been a Holer, part owner 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.440 of two hundred fifty square miles of bayou and riverfront property, 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.000 and possibly another two hundred square miles and a hundred 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.360 and eighty eight other Arkansas claims he had withdrawn, making 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.160 him the largest landowner in the reasons in the region 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.480 and in his time very possibly the largest private landholder 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:49.800 in the United States. So he would have been a 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:52.600 millionaire if he'd succeeded in this, but he failed, and 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:54.200 now he was all but broke by the end of 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.480 eighteen eight. So that's what leads him to Texas is 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.800 he has ailed in a series of incredibly ambitious land 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.360 cons he winds up broke, and Texas is the best 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:12.520 shot he has at getting a bunch more free land. Yeah. Yeah, 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:14.840 I didn't think it was gonna be a peer of 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:19.760 heart thing, No, no, so. And this is another part 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.840 that's interesting to me. Mexico's government in my Texas history 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.440 classes was always portrayed as cruel and oppressive um at 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:29.720 worst and kind of like absentee at best. And I 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:32.040 later learned that one of the many one of the 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:35.120 main reasons why white colonists hated the Mexican government was 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.480 that slavery was illegal in Mexico. Um. This was a 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:41.000 part of it, um. But also the Mexican government didn't 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:43.120 really stop a lot of these white people from bringing 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.280 in their slaves. They wanted Americans to move in because 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:48.280 they had a lot of empty land and they needed 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:50.679 people to kind of like hold it down and cultivate 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.480 it and provide a tax base and stuff, um. So 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:55.480 a lot of them looked the other way at forced 0:08:55.559 --> 0:09:00.320 human bondage, um. But it was still more difficult to 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:02.760 uh to keep slaves there. But this was kind of 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.360 overwhelmed by the fact that Mexico wanted settlers badly enough. 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:08.480 They were willing to give huge amounts of land to 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:10.640 anyone who was willing to pretend to be Catholic and 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:14.720 agree to obey Mexican law. So for that small price, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.400 if you became a non citizen settler in Texas, you 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:19.920 got a hundred and seventy seven acres to farm on 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:23.520 and a whole league four thousand, four hundred acres to graze. 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:27.040 Your Catalan even more land up to eleven leagues could 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.520 be purchased for the dirt for a dirt cheap price 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:31.840 if the buyer was willing to become a Mexican citizen. 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:36.480 So Jim Bowie, I would well, no, I wouldn't do 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.559 that for Texas land. I mean I know Texas too well, 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:44.560 Yeah exactly, Yeah, I do that for part of Mexico 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.360 for sure. Yeah. No, no, no, I do not want 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:51.480 to Texas. No, no, no, no no. So Bowie packed 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:54.200 up his unregional and reasonably large knife and he rolled 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.640 in Mexico. His brother John unceremoniously noted that he quote 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:00.920 disposed of his lands and negroes before set out, because 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.600 buying and selling people was again nothing at all to 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:08.200 the men of the Bowie family. So yeah, Jim was 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.600 thirty two years old when he finally made it to Mexico, 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:13.720 and the most entertaining description I've heard of him in 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.880 this period of time comes from historian J. Frank dbe Quote. 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:19.760 He found that reputation of his knife had preceded him. 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:21.680 He stood six ft tall and was all muscle. He 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.000 was pleasing and look speech men and manner to both 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.400 men and women. THO would have said that he seldom smiled. 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:29.000 Letters and other writing by him and Resent P. Bowie 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.440 are in clear, sinewy English. After he had been in 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:33.760 Texas a while, he spoke Spanish as well as French. 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.000 He was not a Ruffian, although he could be rough. 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.040 He comprehended the cutthroats and gamblers of Natchez. While he 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.240 dined in patrician houses on the hill or sang in 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.920 the theater. He was at home with bellowing alligators in 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.360 the marches, with mustangs and mustangers on the prairies, and 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:49.679 with lawyers who would circumvent God. In Texas, he fought 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:57.560 Indians and Mexicans and Texas. Yeah. This is Adobe's article 0:10:57.559 --> 0:11:00.280 where he writes that is from nineteen fifty seven. And 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.120 you can tell that the attitudes on colonialism were a 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:04.960 lot different by the fact that he just dropped and 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:11.040 he fought Indians and Mexicans. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.640 not inaccurate. Um, but it does leave out kind of 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:19.520 the brutality of what exactly Jim Bowie got up to. Um. Yeah. 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.920 So here's how Jim's brother John describes this massacre of 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:26.400 a bunch of Native Americans that Bowie commits not long 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:30.520 after getting to Texas. Quote. Uh, during the few years 0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.280 he spent in Texas, he had many strange and hazardous adventures, 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.400 probably the most notable of which was the following He 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:37.520 and Resin Bowie with nine others went in search of 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.559 a silver mine about two hundred miles northwest of San Antonio. 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:42.920 While on this expedition, they were attacked by about a 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.079 hundred and fifty Comanche Indians. James, being well acquainted with 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.480 the habits and manners of these savages, soon perceived that 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:50.200 they were on trail of him and his little party 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:52.200 for the purpose of murdering or robbing them, So he 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:55.840 availed himself of the first suitable place for defense. Now, 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.439 John describes this as natives wanting to rob him, but 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:01.720 he and Jim, But the reality is that he and 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:05.000 like Jim and Rezin Bowie had moved into Native American 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.720 territory and we're trying to steal their ship, and they 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:11.800 were carrying weapons. Um. He also describes the natives as Comanche, 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.240 but they were Tawakoni, Waco and Catto um And by 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:17.360 any definition of the term I've ever heard during my 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.600 youth in Texas, these natives were acting in self defense because, 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.640 again Booie and his brothers were part of a posse 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:25.720 of large armed men who would come unto their land 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:28.480 to steal a bunch of silver. Yeah, we'll just judge 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:31.600 on their recent past history and I'm gonna like, I'm 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:35.280 gonna go with the natives on this one. Yeah yeah. 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.800 And what followed was probably might have been the bloodiest 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.240 single fight of the period between white settlers and natives 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.760 and at least in the history of Texas. Um. The natives, 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.400 you know, a large group of them surround the little 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.640 fort that they built in the rocks and opened fire. 0:12:50.720 --> 0:12:54.080 They kill one of Bowie's men, uh booie. The Bowie 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:57.200 brothers and their other men fire back repeatedly, and this 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:01.520 continues for literally days, Like there's multiple days of gunfire, 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.760 and by the time it's all over, fifty to sixty 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.240 Natives are dead, along with a lot of their horses. Um. 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.120 And it's hard to say if the death counts in 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:14.920 this are anywhere near accurate um because like white settlers 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:16.600 would lie a lot about how many people they killed 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.120 in firefights, but also they had access to much better guns. 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.760 That said, given what happened at the Sandbar fight, I 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.120 don't know how much I trust the story of Jim 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.120 Booie about his accuracy in a gunfight. I don't know. 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:30.600 It's hard to say, but probably a lot of people 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:32.400 did die because they were in like a three day 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:36.720 gun battle. So whatever. Yeah, he murders a bunch of people. Well, 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.079 and he could have had like it could have been 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.120 like a like a regulator situation where he picks up 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.319 some people that are handy with the steel because he is. 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.719 He's not, and they're using rifles, you know, they're these 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:52.600 guys are like wielding like, you know, more accurate guns 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:55.360 in this the gunfight, they're using handguns and like in 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:57.600 this they're kind of shooting with like hunting rifles which 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:01.480 are more accurate and have rifled barrels and stuff. Most 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.200 people will say fifty to sixty dead in the total fight. 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:08.680 It's impossible to know for sure. But yeah, So after 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.320 the natives back off, Jim and his men flee back 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:16.400 to San Antonio, UH and he immediately petitions the local 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.880 government for petition to raise an expedition against the Tawakoni 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.640 tribe because you know, during this little invasion, he estimated 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.000 they had two thousand horses and he was basically like, 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:28.080 I just got into a gunfight with these guys, and 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:30.080 I think if you give me enough men, I can 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:35.120 steal all of their horses to sell them. So he's 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:41.640 a He's a good dude, That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, um, yeah, 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:44.520 we don't actually know if this expedition ever happened. Um, 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:47.440 it may well have. Uh. And Bowie is noted as 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.480 having numerous other conflicts with Native Americans during this period, 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.040 all of which kind of involved around him rolling into 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:57.680 their houses and stealing shit. Um, But they're usually called 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.680 expeditions by like the historians, even in the twenty century. 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:02.320 A lot of historians will call it like he he 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.480 raised an expedition, and you're like, what was the expedition for? Well, 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:10.920 he wanted to steal things from these people, valuables. I'm 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:15.880 looking for valuables that It's like even you know, there's 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.440 at least with like the Lewis and Clark expedition, there's 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:22.120 like this they were making maps and ship right, Like, 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.000 there's criticisms to make of it, but they were they 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:29.560 did write some maps. Booie is just taking things. Yeah. 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.960 So Jim applied for and eventually received Mexican citizenship, which 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.520 allowed him to buy eleven leagues of land. He also 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.800 succeeded in convincing a number of Mexican citizens to sign 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:44.400 over their options for purchasing land to him as well, 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:46.960 and throughout this period, Jim Bowie continued to make the 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:49.280 bulk of his money through an even mix of legitimate 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:53.400 and fraudulent land sales. So again, at any given point 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:55.600 in time, if you're wondering how is Jim making a living, 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:59.560 He's he's pretending. He's he's selling fake land to people. 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.200 He's a and he's a real estate con artist. That 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:06.840 is Jim Booie's like secret to wealth. How very modern 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:09.200 of him. Yeah, he has a lot in common with 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.160 our president, aside from the fact that he was clearly 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:15.160 willing to get into a fight. Oh he'll get his 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:18.040 hands dirty for sure. Yeah, Yeah, he's He's definitely a 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:22.160 better person than the president. He's also very good at spin, 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:27.000 like calling stuff an expedition, where like, now, man, you're 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:31.520 raiding villages that you're you're just raiding people, you're stealing 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:37.000 their horses, not expedition. Although this this does make me 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.360 think if I could get fifty to a hundred people 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.680 together and robbed the Toyota dealership near me. We could 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:47.160 just call it an expedition to get free land cruisers. 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.640 That's actually not AIP. You can call it an expedition 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.520 to get expeditions. Yeah, yeah, but I feel like we'd 0:16:54.520 --> 0:17:01.200 be doing four to favor by taking expeditions away. Someone 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:03.720 got him, someone came and took them. You guys know, 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.439 I I really want to get down to an expedition. 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.520 That's what we ought to do. Just just just rebrand 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:15.359 shoplifting as an expedition. So during this time, Jim Billie 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:18.080 became friends with the Mexican governor of Texas, a guy 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.200 named Veramindy, and he worked at a deal with Aramindy 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.760 by which he could marry the governor's daughter. So he 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.720 signed a dowry with a Veramindy family, promising to pay 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.199 his wife more than fifteen thousand dollars in money and 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.639 property that he absolutely did not have. He listed as 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.400 collateral the fraudulent properties in Louisiana and Arkansas that he'd 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.560 never actually owned in the first place. Um, but he 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:43.640 basically conned to this governor and let him marry his daughter. 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.320 And then he immediately borrows seven fifty dollars from his 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:48.359 new family in law to take his new wife on 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:53.520 a vacation to New Orleans. All right, I want to 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.040 give you some money. Yeah, I have some Can I 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:01.600 have some money and your daughter? I could so. Jim 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.680 and his new wife were married on April thirty one. 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.400 She was nineteen years old and he was thirty five 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:09.840 years old, although he listed his age is thirty on 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:15.880 the marriage certificate. Weird, very weird, just a little vain. 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:20.919 Just lie about your age on when it's technically legal. 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:23.480 I mean, that makes me think if he's lying about 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.080 his age, maybe she her age was not. Actually, I 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:31.400 don't know, this is a different time. It's entirely possible 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.360 he actually thought he was thirty. Again, not a lot 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:38.600 of official governments documents about when you came into the 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:42.159 world at this point. And he's taking several guns to 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.919 the head at this point. Yes, he's been hitting the 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.440 head a number of times. And remember his mom only 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.720 taught him the alphabet, so numbers probably not Jim Bowie 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:57.480 strong suit. So um. Yeah, And a big part of 0:18:57.520 --> 0:18:59.719 why you got married seemed to be that getting hitched 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.040 h to a Mexican, or getting hitched to anyone at all, 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.000 entitled him to another four thousand acres from the government, 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:08.240 and since his wife was a rich girl, he was 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:10.960 also entitled now to live at the Veramindy House, which 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.159 was basically a palace because he's you know, he's the 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:18.440 governor of Texas. UM. Now, the sources I have read 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.320 all tend to agree that he like was legitimately in 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.080 love with his wife and that the Veramendy family treated 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:26.520 him as a son. I have found no evidence to 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:28.879 discount this, so I kind of have to assume that 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.120 this was in fact the case, even though given all 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:32.840 of the scams he got up to, in the fact 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:34.920 that he lied about the money he had to get 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:39.320 a dowry, I'm very hesitant to give Bowie credit for anything, 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:41.679 but I don't know. I I have no evidence that 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.480 he didn't truly care for this woman or for his 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:49.399 adopted family, so I gotta say that. Um. And there's 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:53.119 definitely evidence that the Veramendy family really cared about Jim Uh. 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.840 He was quote furnished with money and supplies without limit, 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:58.560 and was basically got to live as a rich boy 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.560 for a while. UM. Since he no longer needed to work, 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.879 he gave up his land conning and spent several bliss 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.680 for years, living in a palace and occasionally going out 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.800 on expeditions to steal gold and silver from Native people, 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:13.560 mainly just for fun. I was gonna say, that's just 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.160 like it sounds like he just likes to go Yeah, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.959 just l Ron Hubbard's style gold hunting expeditions, but with 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:27.080 a higher body count. So that we know of, he 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:29.240 was on one of these trips getting into gunfights with 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.159 Native Americans when his wife, their two children, and his 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.199 father and mother in law all died horrifically during a 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:38.960 cholera outbreak. Um, so he's just like out camping and 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.359 his whole family is wiped out by cholera in the 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.320 space of a few days. Uh, which focks him up 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:47.640 right that that that's hard to deal with your whole 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:50.960 family dying at the same time, feel like most people 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.399 would would would have a little bit of trouble with that. 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:55.639 And a lot of sources will claim that this is 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.120 when Jim began to drink heavily. You know, he'd always 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:01.000 had a tendency to party a little hard sometimes, but 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.080 kind of after this point you see him increasingly sort 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:10.399 of sinking into straight up alcoholism. Changed the way, Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.320 that seems fair to say. If you want to protect 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.560 your family from cholera, the f d A guarantees that 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.600 all of these products and services will render them immune. 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:21.720 So you can drink any kind of ditch water you want. 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:24.359 Just get out there, buy some products and go suck 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:32.159 it up. Ditch water. Here's a product. We're back. I 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:36.840 hope you're all enjoying all this ditch water. It's good stuff. 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:42.240