Speaker 1: M. Knivess. This is the story of Jim Bowie of
Speaker 1: the Bowie Knight, Part two. Behind the Bastards is Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: the podcast of Bad People Talk about him co host
Speaker 1: Billy Wayne Diddy. Billy, I have learned that you don't
Speaker 1: actually need to order words in any meaningful way if
Speaker 1: you just make sure all of the important words are
Speaker 1: kind of jumbled up into a salad. People tend to
Speaker 1: get what you're saying. Are you saying with the right emotion?
Speaker 1: Damn right, yep, yep, yep. So why even have grammar?
Speaker 1: That's the question. And the answer is there's no reason
Speaker 1: to have grammar, and it's it's cowardly. I love grammar
Speaker 1: is up, so there are raisins. No, yes, probably so.
Speaker 1: In our last episode we talked about the famous sandbar fight,
Speaker 1: which it's really just a giant ship show. Uh and
Speaker 1: probably would have been pretty funny to watch. It was
Speaker 1: hilarious to listen about. Yeah, up until that guy got
Speaker 1: his guts spelled all over the sand bar. It was
Speaker 1: pretty funny. Um. Still, that was that part. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know where you're getting into, you know, in some fairness,
Speaker 1: Jim Booie's a monster because of the slaves stuff. In
Speaker 1: that fight. He did say don't shoot at me, you rascal,
Speaker 1: like he gave him proper warning, and that guy kept
Speaker 1: shooting at him. He did, he did, And that is
Speaker 1: the general rule. If somebody has a giant knife and
Speaker 1: you're going to shoot at him, your best, your best
Speaker 1: deal with them real fast with your gun, because if
Speaker 1: you don't, they've got a real big knife and they'll
Speaker 1: be angry at you. That is I had a My
Speaker 1: middle school basketball coach told me he carried a twelve
Speaker 1: gauge in Vietnam because an M six team just piste
Speaker 1: him off. And I was like, okay, well that's we're
Speaker 1: a basketball practice. But yeah, that's really not helpful in
Speaker 1: any part of my life right now. But thank you
Speaker 1: for scaring a child. Yeah, and that information has always
Speaker 1: stuck with me. Yeah. I mean, in the days before
Speaker 1: body armor was common in particular, stopping power was really
Speaker 1: um anyway, let's just neither nor there wasn't not wrong.
Speaker 1: If you want to stop a man, it doesn't get
Speaker 1: much better than a twelve game shotgun unless you have
Speaker 1: a gigantic knife like Jim Bowie have had that too.
Speaker 1: He probably did. Now when we left our friend Jim.
Speaker 1: He had just disemboweled a man during an argument and
Speaker 1: been shot several times. And because the United States, he's
Speaker 1: my friends, No he's not, because the United States has
Speaker 1: not changed at all since those days. This made him
Speaker 1: suddenly gigantically famous, and he became a living legend of
Speaker 1: the Wild West, like Wyatt Earp or Davy Crockett or
Speaker 1: I have to assume based on his name Grizzly Adams,
Speaker 1: and I refused to look up who Grizzly Adams was,
Speaker 1: so don't tell me if I'm wrong. I think he
Speaker 1: I think he fought grizzly bears with his bare hands
Speaker 1: because he had to defend orphanages. That's my head cannon
Speaker 1: for Grizzly Adams. His brother was good at taking pictures,
Speaker 1: probably Ansel yep Anzel and Grizzly. So once he'd healed
Speaker 1: from the sandbar fight, Jim Bowie re entered polite society
Speaker 1: as a celebrity. The eyes of the nation followed him
Speaker 1: as he traveled through the Old West and gotten too
Speaker 1: even more fights. Now, most of the fighting credited to
Speaker 1: Jim Boweing never happened, and it's very possible that he
Speaker 1: never killed another person with his knife again. But there,
Speaker 1: of course numerous stories you can find about him getting
Speaker 1: into fights and killing two or three armed men with
Speaker 1: his gigantic knife. And almost all of these your tall tales,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, yeah, once you're famous for stabbing a
Speaker 1: guy to death, there's gonna be a lot of other
Speaker 1: stories if you're stabbing guys to death, even if you
Speaker 1: never stabbed another guy to death. That's just America. It's
Speaker 1: Keith Richards. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't do as many drugs
Speaker 1: you'd as you'd think, but he got the reputation and
Speaker 1: it's just stuck with him. Well, that's what in his
Speaker 1: book he said, Yeah, I just never corrected anyonere No,
Speaker 1: and why would you? Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: all about personal branding, and Bowie knows how to brand himself. Well,
Speaker 1: so uh, yeah, he he didn't. Probably it's probable that
Speaker 1: he never killed another human being with his knife. Um,
Speaker 1: but he continued to kill his shipload of people. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about that, billy, He kept yet he kept killing people.
Speaker 1: That did not stop. Um. His brother John later wrote
Speaker 1: that after recovering from the Sandbar fight quote, Jim felt
Speaker 1: as though he had not been well used or properly
Speaker 1: treated by some of his political friends, and this, John
Speaker 1: Bowie says, is why Jim went to Texas. Now, in
Speaker 1: writing this, he left out about a year or so
Speaker 1: worth of crimes that he and Jim both committed. So
Speaker 1: like the kind of frontier story that his brother tells us,
Speaker 1: that like Jim got betrayed by some of his political friends,
Speaker 1: and so he went to Texas, and he leaves out
Speaker 1: like what actually happened, um, And what actually happened is
Speaker 1: that for the next year or so after the Sandbar fight,
Speaker 1: he got back into conning people over land. So basically
Speaker 1: he would travel all across the frontier buy up tracts
Speaker 1: of land, or purchase options to buy up tracts of land,
Speaker 1: and then he would sell that land to the highest bidder,
Speaker 1: hopefully for a profit. Now this is called land speculation
Speaker 1: and it's not illegal, um, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: slower than Jim Booie was comfortable with. So we started
Speaker 1: forging options and land deeds and selling those two. Now
Speaker 1: this is outright theft because he was just lying about
Speaker 1: land that he had no claim to, selling it to
Speaker 1: people and pocketing the money. But the Internet didn't exist
Speaker 1: back then, and people usually weren't fast enough to catch him. Now,
Speaker 1: Jim went towards quite a lot of effort to affect
Speaker 1: these forgeries, even hiring actors to pretend to be landowners
Speaker 1: so he could then convince buyers that he was this
Speaker 1: person's representative, so he could sell them land that he
Speaker 1: had no right to. So these were pretty elaborate cons Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he had to have gotten caught. He got constantly, constantly.
Speaker 1: He wasn't good at hiding it. People were just dumber
Speaker 1: back then, and there was no Internet. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna need an accomplice, yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: the accompany he didn't need an accomplice, and his accomplices
Speaker 1: were usually congress Yeah. So he had friends in congress
Speaker 1: um who would help him basically by like pushing you know,
Speaker 1: the local banks and stuff to to to recognize these
Speaker 1: deeds and stuff that he was he was bringing forward um.
Speaker 1: And eventually he decided the best way for him to
Speaker 1: continue his scams and make a bunch of money was
Speaker 1: to run for a local congressional seat in Louisiana to
Speaker 1: to basically get in power himself. And he worked at
Speaker 1: a deal with one of his friends who was already
Speaker 1: in Congress, to basically take up that guy's seat once
Speaker 1: his term ended and run in the next election. But
Speaker 1: then his friend decided to run for re election again,
Speaker 1: and Bowie got angry at him, And this is what
Speaker 1: his brother referred to as him not being properly treated
Speaker 1: by political friends. So the congressional election that year actually
Speaker 1: went against his buddy and probably would have gone against Bowie,
Speaker 1: and he was left without any allies in Congress, and
Speaker 1: without any way of easily continuing to swindle Rubes into
Speaker 1: buying land he didn't already own. Over the course of
Speaker 1: eighty eight, all of Jim's many schemes collapsed one after
Speaker 1: the other, leaving him at risk of becoming destitute um
Speaker 1: or at least if he'd actually bothered to pay any
Speaker 1: of the debts he'd accrued. The book Three Roads to
Speaker 1: the Alamo gives a good summary of the actual scale
Speaker 1: of the con Bowie was trying to work, and it's
Speaker 1: it's enormous quote. He had made a stunning lee, bold
Speaker 1: play and exploitation and all laying fraudulent claim to eighty
Speaker 1: thousand acres in Arkansas and between seventy three thousand and
Speaker 1: eighty thousand more in Louisiana. Yeah, my god. If he
Speaker 1: had succeeded, he would have been a Holer, part owner
Speaker 1: of two hundred fifty square miles of bayou and riverfront property,
Speaker 1: and possibly another two hundred square miles and a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty eight other Arkansas claims he had withdrawn, making
Speaker 1: him the largest landowner in the reasons in the region
Speaker 1: and in his time very possibly the largest private landholder
Speaker 1: in the United States. So he would have been a
Speaker 1: millionaire if he'd succeeded in this, but he failed, and
Speaker 1: now he was all but broke by the end of
Speaker 1: eighteen eight. So that's what leads him to Texas is
Speaker 1: he has ailed in a series of incredibly ambitious land
Speaker 1: cons he winds up broke, and Texas is the best
Speaker 1: shot he has at getting a bunch more free land. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was gonna be a peer of
Speaker 1: heart thing, No, no, so. And this is another part
Speaker 1: that's interesting to me. Mexico's government in my Texas history
Speaker 1: classes was always portrayed as cruel and oppressive um at
Speaker 1: worst and kind of like absentee at best. And I
Speaker 1: later learned that one of the many one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons why white colonists hated the Mexican government was
Speaker 1: that slavery was illegal in Mexico. Um. This was a
Speaker 1: part of it, um. But also the Mexican government didn't
Speaker 1: really stop a lot of these white people from bringing
Speaker 1: in their slaves. They wanted Americans to move in because
Speaker 1: they had a lot of empty land and they needed
Speaker 1: people to kind of like hold it down and cultivate
Speaker 1: it and provide a tax base and stuff, um. So
Speaker 1: a lot of them looked the other way at forced
Speaker 1: human bondage, um. But it was still more difficult to
Speaker 1: uh to keep slaves there. But this was kind of
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the fact that Mexico wanted settlers badly enough.
Speaker 1: They were willing to give huge amounts of land to
Speaker 1: anyone who was willing to pretend to be Catholic and
Speaker 1: agree to obey Mexican law. So for that small price,
Speaker 1: if you became a non citizen settler in Texas, you
Speaker 1: got a hundred and seventy seven acres to farm on
Speaker 1: and a whole league four thousand, four hundred acres to graze.
Speaker 1: Your Catalan even more land up to eleven leagues could
Speaker 1: be purchased for the dirt for a dirt cheap price
Speaker 1: if the buyer was willing to become a Mexican citizen.
Speaker 1: So Jim Bowie, I would well, no, I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: that for Texas land. I mean I know Texas too well,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, Yeah, I do that for part of Mexico
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. No, no, no, I do not want
Speaker 1: to Texas. No, no, no, no no. So Bowie packed
Speaker 1: up his unregional and reasonably large knife and he rolled
Speaker 1: in Mexico. His brother John unceremoniously noted that he quote
Speaker 1: disposed of his lands and negroes before set out, because
Speaker 1: buying and selling people was again nothing at all to
Speaker 1: the men of the Bowie family. So yeah, Jim was
Speaker 1: thirty two years old when he finally made it to Mexico,
Speaker 1: and the most entertaining description I've heard of him in
Speaker 1: this period of time comes from historian J. Frank dbe Quote.
Speaker 1: He found that reputation of his knife had preceded him.
Speaker 1: He stood six ft tall and was all muscle. He
Speaker 1: was pleasing and look speech men and manner to both
Speaker 1: men and women. THO would have said that he seldom smiled.
Speaker 1: Letters and other writing by him and Resent P. Bowie
Speaker 1: are in clear, sinewy English. After he had been in
Speaker 1: Texas a while, he spoke Spanish as well as French.
Speaker 1: He was not a Ruffian, although he could be rough.
Speaker 1: He comprehended the cutthroats and gamblers of Natchez. While he
Speaker 1: dined in patrician houses on the hill or sang in
Speaker 1: the theater. He was at home with bellowing alligators in
Speaker 1: the marches, with mustangs and mustangers on the prairies, and
Speaker 1: with lawyers who would circumvent God. In Texas, he fought
Speaker 1: Indians and Mexicans and Texas. Yeah. This is Adobe's article
Speaker 1: where he writes that is from nineteen fifty seven. And
Speaker 1: you can tell that the attitudes on colonialism were a
Speaker 1: lot different by the fact that he just dropped and
Speaker 1: he fought Indians and Mexicans. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: not inaccurate. Um, but it does leave out kind of
Speaker 1: the brutality of what exactly Jim Bowie got up to. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So here's how Jim's brother John describes this massacre of
Speaker 1: a bunch of Native Americans that Bowie commits not long
Speaker 1: after getting to Texas. Quote. Uh, during the few years
Speaker 1: he spent in Texas, he had many strange and hazardous adventures,
Speaker 1: probably the most notable of which was the following He
Speaker 1: and Resin Bowie with nine others went in search of
Speaker 1: a silver mine about two hundred miles northwest of San Antonio.
Speaker 1: While on this expedition, they were attacked by about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty Comanche Indians. James, being well acquainted with
Speaker 1: the habits and manners of these savages, soon perceived that
Speaker 1: they were on trail of him and his little party
Speaker 1: for the purpose of murdering or robbing them, So he
Speaker 1: availed himself of the first suitable place for defense. Now,
Speaker 1: John describes this as natives wanting to rob him, but
Speaker 1: he and Jim, But the reality is that he and
Speaker 1: like Jim and Rezin Bowie had moved into Native American
Speaker 1: territory and we're trying to steal their ship, and they
Speaker 1: were carrying weapons. Um. He also describes the natives as Comanche,
Speaker 1: but they were Tawakoni, Waco and Catto um And by
Speaker 1: any definition of the term I've ever heard during my
Speaker 1: youth in Texas, these natives were acting in self defense because,
Speaker 1: again Booie and his brothers were part of a posse
Speaker 1: of large armed men who would come unto their land
Speaker 1: to steal a bunch of silver. Yeah, we'll just judge
Speaker 1: on their recent past history and I'm gonna like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go with the natives on this one. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And what followed was probably might have been the bloodiest
Speaker 1: single fight of the period between white settlers and natives
Speaker 1: and at least in the history of Texas. Um. The natives,
Speaker 1: you know, a large group of them surround the little
Speaker 1: fort that they built in the rocks and opened fire.
Speaker 1: They kill one of Bowie's men, uh booie. The Bowie
Speaker 1: brothers and their other men fire back repeatedly, and this
Speaker 1: continues for literally days, Like there's multiple days of gunfire,
Speaker 1: and by the time it's all over, fifty to sixty
Speaker 1: Natives are dead, along with a lot of their horses. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to say if the death counts in
Speaker 1: this are anywhere near accurate um because like white settlers
Speaker 1: would lie a lot about how many people they killed
Speaker 1: in firefights, but also they had access to much better guns.
Speaker 1: That said, given what happened at the Sandbar fight, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much I trust the story of Jim
Speaker 1: Booie about his accuracy in a gunfight. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, but probably a lot of people
Speaker 1: did die because they were in like a three day
Speaker 1: gun battle. So whatever. Yeah, he murders a bunch of people. Well,
Speaker 1: and he could have had like it could have been
Speaker 1: like a like a regulator situation where he picks up
Speaker 1: some people that are handy with the steel because he is.
Speaker 1: He's not, and they're using rifles, you know, they're these
Speaker 1: guys are like wielding like, you know, more accurate guns
Speaker 1: in this the gunfight, they're using handguns and like in
Speaker 1: this they're kind of shooting with like hunting rifles which
Speaker 1: are more accurate and have rifled barrels and stuff. Most
Speaker 1: people will say fifty to sixty dead in the total fight.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to know for sure. But yeah, So after
Speaker 1: the natives back off, Jim and his men flee back
Speaker 1: to San Antonio, UH and he immediately petitions the local
Speaker 1: government for petition to raise an expedition against the Tawakoni
Speaker 1: tribe because you know, during this little invasion, he estimated
Speaker 1: they had two thousand horses and he was basically like,
Speaker 1: I just got into a gunfight with these guys, and
Speaker 1: I think if you give me enough men, I can
Speaker 1: steal all of their horses to sell them. So he's
Speaker 1: a He's a good dude, That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't actually know if this expedition ever happened. Um,
Speaker 1: it may well have. Uh. And Bowie is noted as
Speaker 1: having numerous other conflicts with Native Americans during this period,
Speaker 1: all of which kind of involved around him rolling into
Speaker 1: their houses and stealing shit. Um, But they're usually called
Speaker 1: expeditions by like the historians, even in the twenty century.
Speaker 1: A lot of historians will call it like he he
Speaker 1: raised an expedition, and you're like, what was the expedition for? Well,
Speaker 1: he wanted to steal things from these people, valuables. I'm
Speaker 1: looking for valuables that It's like even you know, there's
Speaker 1: at least with like the Lewis and Clark expedition, there's
Speaker 1: like this they were making maps and ship right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's criticisms to make of it, but they were they
Speaker 1: did write some maps. Booie is just taking things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Jim applied for and eventually received Mexican citizenship, which
Speaker 1: allowed him to buy eleven leagues of land. He also
Speaker 1: succeeded in convincing a number of Mexican citizens to sign
Speaker 1: over their options for purchasing land to him as well,
Speaker 1: and throughout this period, Jim Bowie continued to make the
Speaker 1: bulk of his money through an even mix of legitimate
Speaker 1: and fraudulent land sales. So again, at any given point
Speaker 1: in time, if you're wondering how is Jim making a living,
Speaker 1: He's he's pretending. He's he's selling fake land to people.
Speaker 1: He's a and he's a real estate con artist. That
Speaker 1: is Jim Booie's like secret to wealth. How very modern
Speaker 1: of him. Yeah, he has a lot in common with
Speaker 1: our president, aside from the fact that he was clearly
Speaker 1: willing to get into a fight. Oh he'll get his
Speaker 1: hands dirty for sure. Yeah, Yeah, he's He's definitely a
Speaker 1: better person than the president. He's also very good at spin,
Speaker 1: like calling stuff an expedition, where like, now, man, you're
Speaker 1: raiding villages that you're you're just raiding people, you're stealing
Speaker 1: their horses, not expedition. Although this this does make me
Speaker 1: think if I could get fifty to a hundred people
Speaker 1: together and robbed the Toyota dealership near me. We could
Speaker 1: just call it an expedition to get free land cruisers.
Speaker 1: That's actually not AIP. You can call it an expedition
Speaker 1: to get expeditions. Yeah, yeah, but I feel like we'd
Speaker 1: be doing four to favor by taking expeditions away. Someone
Speaker 1: got him, someone came and took them. You guys know,
Speaker 1: I I really want to get down to an expedition.
Speaker 1: That's what we ought to do. Just just just rebrand
Speaker 1: shoplifting as an expedition. So during this time, Jim Billie
Speaker 1: became friends with the Mexican governor of Texas, a guy
Speaker 1: named Veramindy, and he worked at a deal with Aramindy
Speaker 1: by which he could marry the governor's daughter. So he
Speaker 1: signed a dowry with a Veramindy family, promising to pay
Speaker 1: his wife more than fifteen thousand dollars in money and
Speaker 1: property that he absolutely did not have. He listed as
Speaker 1: collateral the fraudulent properties in Louisiana and Arkansas that he'd
Speaker 1: never actually owned in the first place. Um, but he
Speaker 1: basically conned to this governor and let him marry his daughter.
Speaker 1: And then he immediately borrows seven fifty dollars from his
Speaker 1: new family in law to take his new wife on
Speaker 1: a vacation to New Orleans. All right, I want to
Speaker 1: give you some money. Yeah, I have some Can I
Speaker 1: have some money and your daughter? I could so. Jim
Speaker 1: and his new wife were married on April thirty one.
Speaker 1: She was nineteen years old and he was thirty five
Speaker 1: years old, although he listed his age is thirty on
Speaker 1: the marriage certificate. Weird, very weird, just a little vain.
Speaker 1: Just lie about your age on when it's technically legal.
Speaker 1: I mean, that makes me think if he's lying about
Speaker 1: his age, maybe she her age was not. Actually, I
Speaker 1: don't know, this is a different time. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: he actually thought he was thirty. Again, not a lot
Speaker 1: of official governments documents about when you came into the
Speaker 1: world at this point. And he's taking several guns to
Speaker 1: the head at this point. Yes, he's been hitting the
Speaker 1: head a number of times. And remember his mom only
Speaker 1: taught him the alphabet, so numbers probably not Jim Bowie
Speaker 1: strong suit. So um. Yeah, And a big part of
Speaker 1: why you got married seemed to be that getting hitched
Speaker 1: h to a Mexican, or getting hitched to anyone at all,
Speaker 1: entitled him to another four thousand acres from the government,
Speaker 1: and since his wife was a rich girl, he was
Speaker 1: also entitled now to live at the Veramindy House, which
Speaker 1: was basically a palace because he's you know, he's the
Speaker 1: governor of Texas. UM. Now, the sources I have read
Speaker 1: all tend to agree that he like was legitimately in
Speaker 1: love with his wife and that the Veramendy family treated
Speaker 1: him as a son. I have found no evidence to
Speaker 1: discount this, so I kind of have to assume that
Speaker 1: this was in fact the case, even though given all
Speaker 1: of the scams he got up to, in the fact
Speaker 1: that he lied about the money he had to get
Speaker 1: a dowry, I'm very hesitant to give Bowie credit for anything,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I I have no evidence that
Speaker 1: he didn't truly care for this woman or for his
Speaker 1: adopted family, so I gotta say that. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: definitely evidence that the Veramendy family really cared about Jim Uh.
Speaker 1: He was quote furnished with money and supplies without limit,
Speaker 1: and was basically got to live as a rich boy
Speaker 1: for a while. UM. Since he no longer needed to work,
Speaker 1: he gave up his land conning and spent several bliss
Speaker 1: for years, living in a palace and occasionally going out
Speaker 1: on expeditions to steal gold and silver from Native people,
Speaker 1: mainly just for fun. I was gonna say, that's just
Speaker 1: like it sounds like he just likes to go Yeah,
Speaker 1: just l Ron Hubbard's style gold hunting expeditions, but with
Speaker 1: a higher body count. So that we know of, he
Speaker 1: was on one of these trips getting into gunfights with
Speaker 1: Native Americans when his wife, their two children, and his
Speaker 1: father and mother in law all died horrifically during a
Speaker 1: cholera outbreak. Um, so he's just like out camping and
Speaker 1: his whole family is wiped out by cholera in the
Speaker 1: space of a few days. Uh, which focks him up
Speaker 1: right that that that's hard to deal with your whole
Speaker 1: family dying at the same time, feel like most people
Speaker 1: would would would have a little bit of trouble with that.
Speaker 1: And a lot of sources will claim that this is
Speaker 1: when Jim began to drink heavily. You know, he'd always
Speaker 1: had a tendency to party a little hard sometimes, but
Speaker 1: kind of after this point you see him increasingly sort
Speaker 1: of sinking into straight up alcoholism. Changed the way, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems fair to say. If you want to protect
Speaker 1: your family from cholera, the f d A guarantees that
Speaker 1: all of these products and services will render them immune.
Speaker 1: So you can drink any kind of ditch water you want.
Speaker 1: Just get out there, buy some products and go suck
Speaker 1: it up. Ditch water. Here's a product. We're back. I
Speaker 1: hope you're all enjoying all this ditch water. It's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Keep buying the products. I don't know. Sometimes this is
Speaker 1: where we go. This, this is the joke that I made.
Speaker 1: And now we're returned, and it's time to talk about
Speaker 1: Jim Bowie some more. I'm so sorry. So it's debated
Speaker 1: by historians just how much the depths of Jim's family
Speaker 1: influenced his drinking. Um, and it's also debated how much
Speaker 1: of a drunk he was. A lot of very pro
Speaker 1: Texas types will argue that there's no real evidence that
Speaker 1: he had a problematic history with alcohol. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: think this is true. Uh, And it seems like most
Speaker 1: of the good historians, even the ones who are kind
Speaker 1: of see him as a little bit of a hero,
Speaker 1: disagree with this. Historian William C. Davis notes that after
Speaker 1: his family's death quote. For the first half of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, Bowie largely wandered and may have surrendered to
Speaker 1: drink more than he should as he tried to regain
Speaker 1: his personal and financial balance. His old temper flared again
Speaker 1: and there were fights. After one supposed brawl in San Antonio,
Speaker 1: he asked a friend why he had not come into
Speaker 1: help in the scuffle. The man answered that, so far
Speaker 1: as he could tell, Bowie had been in the wrong
Speaker 1: in the encounter. Don't you suppose I know that as
Speaker 1: well as you do, replied Bowie. That's just why I
Speaker 1: needed a friend. If I had been in the right,
Speaker 1: I would have had plenty of them. He's not wrong, No,
Speaker 1: he's not. I love that though he's not right either.
Speaker 1: That is some good frontier logic. Um. Yeah, So he
Speaker 1: spent most of the next year engaged in a series
Speaker 1: of land speculation schemes because again, like he's rich, a
Speaker 1: rich boy for a while, but when his rich family dies,
Speaker 1: he doesn't inherit their money, right because he's like the
Speaker 1: son in law. So now he's back on his own again. Um.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately for him, the Mexican government had grown increasingly
Speaker 1: concerned about the fact that it had been giving away
Speaker 1: huge chunks of Texas to Americans. Uh these men often
Speaker 1: flouted the laws of Mexico by, for example, bringing in slaves,
Speaker 1: and in general, it became very clear that they had
Speaker 1: no real interest in being part of Mexico. So Mexico
Speaker 1: began to crack down and restrict the kind of speculation
Speaker 1: and sale of land that Bowie engaged in. Now Luckily
Speaker 1: for Jim, right at about this period of time, a
Speaker 1: fella named Santa Anna succeeded in becoming the dictator of
Speaker 1: Mexico in all but name, and like any good authoritarian,
Speaker 1: he's set right to work clamping down on opposition to
Speaker 1: his regime, largely by shutting down local militias and ordering
Speaker 1: them to send him their guns. Zec Tecas, which was
Speaker 1: one of the states in Mexico, rebelled and it was
Speaker 1: brutally crushed. The whole situation resulted in a huge amount
Speaker 1: of unrest in other Mexican states, and we're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to detail all of it here. The short
Speaker 1: of it is that the capital of the Mexican state
Speaker 1: that Texas was in, a city called mont Clova, decided
Speaker 1: that they needed to raise money to get up militia
Speaker 1: in their own defense from Santa Anna, and they did
Speaker 1: this by opening up a huge amount of land for purchase.
Speaker 1: Since Bowie had been the governor's son in law, he
Speaker 1: was given the job of disbursing and selling all of
Speaker 1: this land. And since he was corrupt as all hell,
Speaker 1: he basically took a bunch of bribes for this, and
Speaker 1: he also got a huge chunk of that land himself.
Speaker 1: And by the time all of the chips had landed
Speaker 1: and all the land was so sold, he owned more
Speaker 1: than a million acres. Now, this is a lot of land,
Speaker 1: so much even in Texas. Yeah, And basically, once Santa
Speaker 1: Anna heard that like the capital of one of his
Speaker 1: own states had given away this land, much land to
Speaker 1: a bunch of white people to raise a militia to
Speaker 1: defend themselves from him, he was like, fuck this ship. Uh.
Speaker 1: He declared the whole sale null and void, which effectively
Speaker 1: wiped out Jim's entire fortune. Um. So, Santa Anna sent
Speaker 1: an army up to Mount Clovi to crack down on
Speaker 1: all of this blatantly criminal land speculation, and Jim Bowie
Speaker 1: and his friends like showed up to like protest and
Speaker 1: They were immediately arrested and jailed, but they succeeded in
Speaker 1: escaping and fleeing back to Texas. Booie made his way
Speaker 1: to Nacodoches and became one of the loudest voices in
Speaker 1: the War Party, the men who increasingly advocated the taking
Speaker 1: up of arms against Santa Anna's government. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that that the War Party is pretty clear. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we should have one of those now where
Speaker 1: we know what you guys want. They're not framing themselves
Speaker 1: as Texas independence advocates at this point. They're framing themselves
Speaker 1: as against Santa Anna's dictatorship. Like they're saying they want
Speaker 1: to return to the original Mexican constitution before Santa Anna
Speaker 1: took power. Like that's kind of where they are right now. Uh.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people for because like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Mexicans and white people who are like kind
Speaker 1: of all on the same side of this, and it's
Speaker 1: because a lot of those Mexicans like don't like Santa Anna. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's folks like Booie who kind of he
Speaker 1: doesn't really care politically about what's happened. He cares that
Speaker 1: Santa Anna's screwed him out of his chance at becoming
Speaker 1: a millionaire. Um. So yeah, on July five hundred citizens
Speaker 1: of Nakodocha has declared themselves a militia and they vote
Speaker 1: Jim Bowie to be their colonel. Um. Now, he immediately
Speaker 1: his first act as colonel is to rob a Mexican
Speaker 1: government storehouse of muskets uh and the government considered this
Speaker 1: to be him inciting violence, which is pretty fair way.
Speaker 1: That's a good that's a good way to call it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very different from me stealing, for example, Toyota land cruisers.
Speaker 1: That's an expedition. You know, that's not inciting violence. So
Speaker 1: Booie had to flee to the United States to raise
Speaker 1: money and men uh to to you know, continue to
Speaker 1: make this revolution possible. And he returned to Texas just
Speaker 1: in time for the first shots of the Texas Revolution
Speaker 1: to be fired on October two, eighteen thirty five. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other guys involved, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to like for one thing, Texas revolutionary history
Speaker 1: is and my favorite kind of history, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into wild detail about this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of people and at the beginning, they
Speaker 1: just kind of want to go back to the way
Speaker 1: things were before Santa Ana. And it gradually evolves into
Speaker 1: an independence movement for Texas to become an independent nation, right,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really start that way. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: a very democratic sort of movement that that that's that
Speaker 1: spot like pops up. So these guys are all voting,
Speaker 1: like it's all guys. Women can't vote, obviously, neither can
Speaker 1: enslaved people. Um. But these the men, all the white men,
Speaker 1: all vote for their leaders. And a guy named Stephen F.
Speaker 1: Austin is elected the commander of the Texas New Army. Um. So,
Speaker 1: by the time Booie got back into Texas from his
Speaker 1: little sojourn in the United States, that army was about
Speaker 1: five men in size. Uh. It continued to grow over
Speaker 1: the course of days, and Bowie was named a colonel
Speaker 1: once again and given command of a column of about
Speaker 1: ninety men. Uh. And he was a pretty good military leader,
Speaker 1: which you might guess from the fact that he was
Speaker 1: just generally good at shooting people, well killing people that
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, he knew how to kill animals
Speaker 1: and people. And like a lot of killing animals is
Speaker 1: the same it's the same. I started really reading a
Speaker 1: lot of military strategy. I was like, this is this
Speaker 1: is what this is. Yeah, and especially like these are
Speaker 1: not gigantic Napoleonic battles like again the armies like five
Speaker 1: hundred dudes. Like these are often confrontations between a few
Speaker 1: dozen people in the middle of nowhere, Texas who like
Speaker 1: shoot at each other and like twenty people die and
Speaker 1: one side backs off first, and it's a great victory,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, so and Bolli was a pretty
Speaker 1: good military commander. Several weeks later, he led his men
Speaker 1: into battle against a Mexican army force at a place
Speaker 1: called Conception, Uh. And the force that he winds up
Speaker 1: fighting is like double the size of his own army.
Speaker 1: But he and his men win, and this is like
Speaker 1: the first great rebel victory of the war. UM. Now, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Steve N. F. Austin was not a very good commander,
Speaker 1: and the Army of Texas was not a particularly orderly army,
Speaker 1: and a series of organizational and leadership failures stopped them
Speaker 1: from taking advantage of Bowie's victory. UH. And soon enough
Speaker 1: they wound up in a kind of clusterfux situation. UM.
Speaker 1: So what's important to understand is that men kept deserting
Speaker 1: and kept stepping down, and eventually the army found itself
Speaker 1: having to hold another election to determine its commander. There
Speaker 1: are so many fucking votes with the Texas uh like
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Army over like who should be in charge? Like
Speaker 1: they hold them all of the goddamn time. Every time
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, they're like, all right, who do we
Speaker 1: want to be in charge now? Um? Yeah, But I
Speaker 1: think they got the Libertarian Party. There's a big aspect
Speaker 1: of that to this, and like the Libertarians, they can't
Speaker 1: make up their mind about a goddamn thing. That's what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. That's that's the exact metaphor I was used.
Speaker 1: It was like, it just sounds like it's just like
Speaker 1: the Libertarian Party. We're like, hey, I don't like, hey,
Speaker 1: he's doing stuff changing. So Bowie campaigns hard to be
Speaker 1: the commander of this army, and they hold a vote
Speaker 1: and he receives five votes. Um. And this is generally
Speaker 1: because people didn't really like him. He was considered to
Speaker 1: be like a pretty good combat commander, so individual people
Speaker 1: willing to follow him in the bat follow him in
Speaker 1: the battle. But he was also like known to be
Speaker 1: he was a guy with like a gigantic temper who
Speaker 1: was drunk a lot of the time, tough hang. So
Speaker 1: he gets angry that he loses this vote, and he
Speaker 1: resigns his commission and like announces that he's becoming a
Speaker 1: private again as kind of a fuck you to Stephen F. Austin,
Speaker 1: and then he just leaves the army entirely and he
Speaker 1: travels to San Felipe, where he meets with Sam Houston.
Speaker 1: Now another election had been held recently in human Houston
Speaker 1: had been made the major general in charge of all
Speaker 1: of texas Is armed forces, so Austin was reassigned and
Speaker 1: the army now had no actual field commander, so it
Speaker 1: had Houston in charge of it, but like nobody had
Speaker 1: been voted actually lead it into battle. Um and Booie
Speaker 1: like basically tries to ingratiate himself into Houston's that he
Speaker 1: can hopefully get appointed to be in charge of the army,
Speaker 1: but he can't really get a handle on his drinking,
Speaker 1: and by the time he and Houston actually meet for
Speaker 1: the first time in sam Pelipe, he is, in the
Speaker 1: words of one attendee, dead drunk. Um and Houston is
Speaker 1: kind of like carefully, like, well, I'm not gonna just
Speaker 1: a point you in charge of the army. Why don't
Speaker 1: you go back and the whole army will hold another vote,
Speaker 1: and now that Austin's out, I'm sure they will elect
Speaker 1: you to be in charge of the army. So still wasted,
Speaker 1: Jimbowie drunkenly rides back to the army and he keeps
Speaker 1: right on drinking throughout the election. He actually gets blackout
Speaker 1: hammered on the night of the vote. Um, and for
Speaker 1: some reason his fellow soldiers decided to give the job
Speaker 1: to another guy. Reading historians talk about this, it's really
Speaker 1: funny because they'll often be like, it's peculiar that they
Speaker 1: didn't vote for Bowie despite his good combat performance. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, because they saw he was wasted
Speaker 1: every time he wasn't in a gunfight. I mean, you
Speaker 1: gotta be a pretty bad drunk for other people, for
Speaker 1: other soldiers to be like, yeah, yeah, these guys are
Speaker 1: like patient zero for libertarianism. There's literally no law because
Speaker 1: they're revolting against legal authority, and they all have guns
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, and they're like, this guy
Speaker 1: is too much of a drunken ruin for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. So uh yeah, he just he didn't
Speaker 1: doesn't do well in elections. So he is, however, given
Speaker 1: command of another unit of several dozen men, and they
Speaker 1: perform well in a number of skirmishes against the Mexican Army.
Speaker 1: And again, as a rule, when he actually gets into combat,
Speaker 1: Jim Bowie does a really good job. He's good at
Speaker 1: leading men in battle. You gotta give him credit for
Speaker 1: that he does. Yeah, if you want someone to help
Speaker 1: other people kill a group of strangers, Jim Booie is
Speaker 1: your fucking man. He's a good stranger killer. Any anything
Speaker 1: other than that, he's gonna be drunk. Yeah, he's He's
Speaker 1: not even good at land speculation. He just does it
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah. Yeah, And I don't think he
Speaker 1: knows he's doing. We think he had the blackout the hole.
Speaker 1: He's just wasted the whole time. Yeah. So, at one
Speaker 1: point during the war, along the San Antonio River, Bowie
Speaker 1: and his men heard a rumor that the general of
Speaker 1: the Mexican Army was grazing his horses nearby. And this
Speaker 1: wasn't Santa Ana yet, This is like the Mexican army
Speaker 1: before Santa Anna comes up. So they set out to
Speaker 1: like figure out where these horses are so they can
Speaker 1: either steal the horses or disperse the horde because you
Speaker 1: know that the herd, because that would do a lot
Speaker 1: of damage to the army get rid of all of
Speaker 1: their horses. So while they're scouting around to try to
Speaker 1: find these horses, Bowie and his men capture a random
Speaker 1: Mexican dude who claims to know the guy who was
Speaker 1: tending the herd, and he told Bowie that if they
Speaker 1: found that guy, they would be able to find the horses.
Speaker 1: But Bowie isn't willing to listen to this. He thinks
Speaker 1: this guy is lying and knows where the horses are,
Speaker 1: so he arrests the man instead. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from William C. Davis here he writes quote. One of
Speaker 1: the volunteers, Placido Benavidez, suggested that they tie them in,
Speaker 1: put a rope around his neck and raised him by
Speaker 1: a tree branch, strangling him until he agreed to talk.
Speaker 1: There was nothing surprising in that for Benavidez. He was
Speaker 1: one of the ricos, the wealthy landed local aristocracy like
Speaker 1: the Vara Mendez, the family that Buoy married into, who
Speaker 1: felt an ancestral cultural contempt or at best disdain for
Speaker 1: the pabres the poor. Thus, for Benavidez, there was no
Speaker 1: dishonor in torturing a peon for information, especially if he
Speaker 1: was working for the enemy. Bowie, who came from an
Speaker 1: entirely different culture that generally frowned upon such brutality, agreed
Speaker 1: to the suggestion perhaps his marriage into the Vara Mendes
Speaker 1: had brought him not just family affluence, but also family attitudes.
Speaker 1: The brutality, once commenced, almost got out of hand, almost
Speaker 1: got out of hand. Bowie ordered a fire started near
Speaker 1: the tree, and then some of his men hauled the
Speaker 1: unfortunate man up over at adding the double torture of burning,
Speaker 1: or at least extremely uncomfortable proximity to the blaze, to
Speaker 1: the strangulation that's almost out of hand. It was almost
Speaker 1: this is almost too much. Yeah. At the same time,
Speaker 1: eight of his company stood with cocked rifles besides the fire,
Speaker 1: pointing them at the poor man. When the victims stopped
Speaker 1: kicking and appeared near unconsciousness, they let him down and
Speaker 1: threatened to shoot him. He refused to talk. And the
Speaker 1: whole business was repeated twice more, even though one of
Speaker 1: Bowie's men rebelled at the cruelty and refused to participate further.
Speaker 1: After the third time, the Mexican revealed the whereabouts of
Speaker 1: a herd of horses, although Booie's one rebel suspected they
Speaker 1: may have belonged to the man himself instead of the
Speaker 1: enemy army, and he gave them up simply to save
Speaker 1: his life. Even then, it seems Booie was not done,
Speaker 1: announcing that he intended to continue the torture the next morning,
Speaker 1: although what there was left to gain as a mystery. Now.
Speaker 1: Thankfully he doesn't go through with continuing the torture this
Speaker 1: poor son of a bitch. But he doesn't make the
Speaker 1: guy who'd refused to torture the prisoner guard him that night.
Speaker 1: This is like a punishment because he's a dick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: almost out of hand, Billy, Almost almost out of hand.
Speaker 1: Do you think like some of his friends like the
Speaker 1: next day, See, dude, this is what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: This is why we can't let you. This is you
Speaker 1: keep doing this ship Jim. Nobody wants this guy in charge. Like,
Speaker 1: we're all pretty racist, but come on, man, come on.
Speaker 1: So the Texas Revolution had, as I said, started at
Speaker 1: against the revolution against Santa Anna, and a number of
Speaker 1: the early revolutionaries were in fact loyal to the Mexican Constitution.
Speaker 1: Bowie himself professed a loyalty to it initially, but as
Speaker 1: the fighting went on, the cause of total independence took
Speaker 1: off primarily among the white residents of the area, and
Speaker 1: Bowie got on board with this train. William see Davis
Speaker 1: clearly believes that he did so out of a mix
Speaker 1: of patriotism and a healthy desire to get back all
Speaker 1: the land he'd stolen and then had stolen back from him.
Speaker 1: Um I personally see Jim and his bartaceous participation is
Speaker 1: an even mix of land grab and an addiction to violence.
Speaker 1: But whatever honest men can disagree. In any case, Boway's
Speaker 1: passed through the war eventually led him to the Alamo
Speaker 1: and modern day San Antonio now the town around it
Speaker 1: was then called Beijar, and the fourth of the Alamo
Speaker 1: contained a large number of field guns, which is actually
Speaker 1: the vast bulk of the artillery available to the Texan rebels.
Speaker 1: As Santa Anna marched Fourth because the army he had
Speaker 1: first sent in they do eventually beat that army, so
Speaker 1: Santa Ana has to march up with a larger Mexican army,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of soldiers. And at first they think
Speaker 1: he's just going to send a few men to attack
Speaker 1: the Alamo, and they have plenty of guns to hold it.
Speaker 1: But then he sends like the bulk of his army
Speaker 1: there um and they don't abandon it because all of
Speaker 1: the guns that has means that it's kind of critical
Speaker 1: to the war effort. And to make a long and
Speaker 1: pretty boring story short, eventually Santa Anna's whole big gass
Speaker 1: army winds up marching on the Alamo, and the two
Speaker 1: men in charge of its defense where a guy named
Speaker 1: Colonel William Travis and Jim Booie. By the way, Austin
Speaker 1: is in Travis County. Like I was, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I know how all that comes together? Yet Yeah, so joke,
Speaker 1: I usually do what I'm in Austin. It's like it's
Speaker 1: just two of the widest names you've ever heard of,
Speaker 1: Just like it's just somebody from around rock yelling at
Speaker 1: their kids. Austen, Travis, Gideon here Travis, Jim Bowie, you
Speaker 1: get in here, now Gideon here, Yeah, get you all
Speaker 1: on in there. Yeah, it's it's it's good old home
Speaker 1: state of Texas. So Bowie's went rank of colonel had
Speaker 1: never really been real. He'd been elected by militia and
Speaker 1: then sort of voted into or appointed into a couple
Speaker 1: of different command positions. But his troops were like irregulars.
Speaker 1: They were what was called volunteers, while Colonel Travis was
Speaker 1: a man with an actual military experience and his troops
Speaker 1: were like regular trained troops with like like they couldn't
Speaker 1: just leave if they wanted to. Like Bowie's men were
Speaker 1: kind of there as volunteers, they could funk off at
Speaker 1: any point. Travis's troops were like normal soldiers. So yeah,
Speaker 1: once they arrive, you've got the military at the Alamo
Speaker 1: divided into like regular soldiers under Travis and irregulars under Bowie.
Speaker 1: And Travis is ostensibly supposed to be in charge of
Speaker 1: the whole operation. But Bowie's men aren't willing to listen
Speaker 1: to this guy. They trust the dude that they've been
Speaker 1: fighting with more than some like fancy colonel with a
Speaker 1: fucking army degree. So the whole army holds yet another
Speaker 1: fucking election and the two. The result of it leaves
Speaker 1: the two men sharing power. Bowie stays in charge of
Speaker 1: the volunteers and Travis is in charge of the regular army.
Speaker 1: And this is not a good state of affairs, having
Speaker 1: the army divided into two chunks who don't listen to
Speaker 1: each other or each other's commander. Turns out that's actually
Speaker 1: not like an ideal way to army. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: as Davis writes, quote, no one was completely in charge.
Speaker 1: Bowie would not obey Travis, and Travis certainly would not
Speaker 1: yield a Bowie, so that garrison divided into somewhat unfriendly camps.
Speaker 1: On February twelfth, Adjutant J. J. Boss saw that Bowie,
Speaker 1: availing himself of his popularity among the volunteers, seemed anxious
Speaker 1: to arrogate to himself the entire control. So he's trying
Speaker 1: to like he wants to take control. But the next
Speaker 1: day the situation become intolerable, precipitated mainly by Bowie unfortunately
Speaker 1: choosing his election as an event worth celebrating with a
Speaker 1: two day drunk. So they have this vote that splits
Speaker 1: them into and Bowie just spent the next couple of
Speaker 1: days wrecked out of his fucking head, Robert. What else
Speaker 1: celebrates a two day drunk me? Yeah? Who else? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That's I mean Quip the toothbrush people probably probably probably,
Speaker 1: That's why I like them so much, and also the
Speaker 1: other products and services that support this podcast all big
Speaker 1: fans of being drunk for two straight days, we're back.
Speaker 1: Oh what a day, What a day it is? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: Jim Bowie, they've just held this election, they've split the
Speaker 1: control of the army into and Jim Bowie is just
Speaker 1: fucking celebrates this by getting ship house wasted. Like he's
Speaker 1: never succeeded in being elected to command of the army,
Speaker 1: but he's gotten elected to command of half of an army,
Speaker 1: and that's that's worth celebrating. So drunk Bowie pretty much
Speaker 1: immediately let this new state of as little be happy
Speaker 1: about it, yet might as well be for a good reason. So, uh,
Speaker 1: he's wasted in celebrating his control of half of an
Speaker 1: army when he sees a group of local bahernos like
Speaker 1: citizens of the nearby town trying to flee the town
Speaker 1: with their property to avoid the fact that a battle
Speaker 1: is about to happen, and he arrests these people for
Speaker 1: no real reason. Now, at the same time, he also
Speaker 1: started randomly de arresting people that the local judge had
Speaker 1: already sentenced for crimes. There seems to have been no
Speaker 1: real rhyme or reason for any of this, because he
Speaker 1: actually sat on like the judge panel that had convicted
Speaker 1: some of these friends these men when he was sober,
Speaker 1: and then just decided to free them from jail at random. Uh.
Speaker 1: When the judge complained about this, Bowie had his volunteers
Speaker 1: marched through the main square of the town of Behard
Speaker 1: to intimidate him. Unfortunately, Bowie and all of his men
Speaker 1: were wasted, as one volunteer. One volunteer described the marching
Speaker 1: and quote a tumultuously and disorder and disorderly manner. Bowie
Speaker 1: himself and many of his men being drunk, which has
Speaker 1: been the case ever since he has been in command.
Speaker 1: So like he randomly decides to free a bunch of prisoners,
Speaker 1: the judge complains, and he has a drunken mob gather
Speaker 1: in the middle of town to yell at the judge.
Speaker 1: All this sounds like a right fun Bowie. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think, yeah, he's got all his killing done.
Speaker 1: He's like let's just mix it up a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's just get wasted, buddy. So next Bowie de arrested
Speaker 1: a private in the regular Army, a man that Colonel
Speaker 1: Travis had convicted of mutiny for. Again no real reasonable man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this pissed Travis off. Anyway, he wound up writing a
Speaker 1: letter to their governor, and Davy Crockett also wrote a
Speaker 1: letter because Davy Crockett was there at this point, and
Speaker 1: he's really pissed a Jim Bowie's bullshit now. In his
Speaker 1: lever letter, Travis complained that the situation was quote truly
Speaker 1: awkward and delicate due to the fact that his co
Speaker 1: commander had been roaring drunk all the time and was
Speaker 1: turning everything topsy turvy. He ended the letter by stating
Speaker 1: he would remain at the album over the sake of honor,
Speaker 1: but quote I am unwilling to be responsible for the
Speaker 1: drunken irregularities of any man. I mean, that's gonna cost
Speaker 1: him his life. That's what's going to happen. They're all
Speaker 1: gonna die. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so. The situation continued
Speaker 1: to deteriorate, and Bowie's drunkenness grew even more extreme. His
Speaker 1: volunteer army turned into a multi day long keg party,
Speaker 1: and some of his men actually sold their rifles to
Speaker 1: buy liquor. Yeah, I'm not gonna need this this fucking thing,
Speaker 1: so one observer at the time reported most of the
Speaker 1: garrison was drunk. Travis kept on complaining about this, and
Speaker 1: the fights between the two men soon degenerated into an
Speaker 1: utterly untenable situation. Travis eventually had to leave the Alamo
Speaker 1: with his regular soldiers because he was afraid the two
Speaker 1: groups would start shooting at each other if they stayed
Speaker 1: together any longer. But then on Valentine's Day, Jim Bowie
Speaker 1: sobered up. And we don't really know why. He might
Speaker 1: have come to his senses, or he might have just
Speaker 1: trade out of ran out of liquor and guns to
Speaker 1: trade for liquor. But as Davis writes, as quickly as
Speaker 1: it arose, the problem seemed to evaporate, and that was
Speaker 1: probably due to Bowie. It is well known that he
Speaker 1: sometimes drank too much, recalled William W. Fontaine, who was
Speaker 1: one of the little children at Montville with Charles Travis,
Speaker 1: but it is not so generally known how quickly he
Speaker 1: hastened to make the amends honorably, so that he soon
Speaker 1: came under the influence of as soon as he came
Speaker 1: out from under the influence of liquor on February fourteenth,
Speaker 1: but he sobered and apparently went on to see Travis
Speaker 1: and gave an apology for Immediately, Travis and his command
Speaker 1: returned to San Antonio, and all signs of friction between
Speaker 1: the two disappeared for good. Wow. Yeah, he's a charming guy,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean that's real charming when you have
Speaker 1: to move an army because you're so drunk and then
Speaker 1: you go tonight. Hey, Hey, hey, s got wild, didn't it.
Speaker 1: I apologize for diet. Are you star in retrospect? I
Speaker 1: was drunker than you should be while commanding an army.
Speaker 1: I see that now, I see that as clear to me. Now. Also,
Speaker 1: can I borrow some money? We need to get our
Speaker 1: guns back. Yeah. Now. Other sources I've read suggests that
Speaker 1: the reason Bowie chilled out maybe the he got sick
Speaker 1: with yellow fever right around this time. He definitely got
Speaker 1: sick with yellow fever. It's just kind of as a
Speaker 1: debate what that had an impact on, and his illness
Speaker 1: was probably due to a combination of poor sanitary conditions
Speaker 1: at the Alamo and the fact that he'd been on
Speaker 1: a multi week alcohol bender, which is bad for your
Speaker 1: immune system. Whatever the truth, by the time the Battle
Speaker 1: of the Alamos started on February twenty third, Colonel Travis
Speaker 1: was back in the fort and Jim Bowie was confined
Speaker 1: to a sick bed, unable to command or fight. Uh
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to detail out the battle for
Speaker 1: the Alamo. Everyone listening this knows the broad strokes the
Speaker 1: Texans got wiped out. They killed a lot of the
Speaker 1: besieging Mexican army, and that provided the Texan revolutionaries with
Speaker 1: a powerful rally and cry, YadA YadA, remember the Alamo.
Speaker 1: All that bullshit. The actual reality of the battle is
Speaker 1: less glorious than what I was raised to believe in school.
Speaker 1: You know, we were told that thousands upon thousands of
Speaker 1: Mexicans had been killed by the defenders. That's almost certainly bullshit.
Speaker 1: It is probably to say that they on balance fought
Speaker 1: competently and acquitted for themselves pretty well. But there it
Speaker 1: was never a close fight. You know, they were horribly
Speaker 1: outnumbered and outclassed. Uh. Now, for some amount of time
Speaker 1: it was de rigor for Patrick patriotic retellings of the
Speaker 1: story of the battle to invent a heroic end for
Speaker 1: all of like the main figures you've got, You've got
Speaker 1: William Travis, You've got Bowie, Crockett, you've got Jim Bowie.
Speaker 1: All these famous guys are at this fight, and they
Speaker 1: all have to die heroic deaths if you're doing like
Speaker 1: the the propaganda retelling of this right, yeah, the myths.
Speaker 1: The most famous painting of Jim Bowie at all is
Speaker 1: him at the Alamo leaping out of his sick bed
Speaker 1: and shooting a pair of Mexican soldiers with a brace
Speaker 1: of pistols that he's concealed under his bed um. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the like the picture that a lot
Speaker 1: of people like to portray him, like how he went
Speaker 1: out as I found a passage from nineteen fifty seven's
Speaker 1: Jim Booie James Bowie Big Dealer, which is an article
Speaker 1: about the man's life that kind of gives you an
Speaker 1: idea of how his last days are portrayed by the
Speaker 1: the pro Booie crowd. For Bowie not to have his
Speaker 1: knife at the end would be unthinkable. David Crockett had
Speaker 1: arrived before Bowie became critically ill, and Colonel Crockett's Exploits
Speaker 1: and Adventures in Texas a farrago of undetermined authorship that
Speaker 1: rings true to Crockett only in spots. Is this passage.
Speaker 1: I found Colonel Bowie and the Fortress, a man celebrated
Speaker 1: for having been in a more desperate personal conflicts than
Speaker 1: any other in the country. He gave me a friendly
Speaker 1: welcome and appeared to be mightily pleased that I had
Speaker 1: arrived safe. While we were conversing, he had occasion to
Speaker 1: draw his famous knife to cut a strap, and I
Speaker 1: wish I may be shot at the bare side of it.
Speaker 1: Wasn't enough to give a man of squeamish stomach the colic,
Speaker 1: especially before breakfast. He saw I was admiring it and said, Colonel,
Speaker 1: you might tickle a fellow's ribs a long time with
Speaker 1: this little instrument before you'd make him laugh. Now this
Speaker 1: story never happened. David Crockett never wrote this. Uh. Crockett
Speaker 1: actually probably hated Bowie because we know he wrote a
Speaker 1: letter complaining about his behavior. Um and the book that
Speaker 1: this is being quoted from was written by somebody else,
Speaker 1: just in Crockett's name to capitalize on his legend, and
Speaker 1: there is no evidence whatsoever that his famous knife was
Speaker 1: ever used even as like a camp tool in the battle,
Speaker 1: especially since Bowie was too sick to get out of bed.
Speaker 1: Um Yeah and it. The task of trying to unravel
Speaker 1: exactly how Bowie died is difficult, both because of the
Speaker 1: hero worship around him and because of the network of
Speaker 1: grifters that arose around the Battle of Alamo. The most
Speaker 1: famous of them was mad Madame Candelaria, a woman who
Speaker 1: in her old age claimed to have been Bowie's nurse
Speaker 1: during the battle. She made a sizeable living and secured
Speaker 1: a pension from the state of Texas by providing patriotic
Speaker 1: Texans with heroic stories about how Travis, Bowie, and Crockett
Speaker 1: all died because she claimed she'd been there. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence that this is true, and her stories about what
Speaker 1: happened at the Alamo changed repeatedly over the years of
Speaker 1: her life. Um I found a good article though, in
Speaker 1: True West magazine that's you Know, attempted to co collate
Speaker 1: all the different rumors of of Bowie's end quote. According
Speaker 1: to story spread after the battle, Bowie died either as
Speaker 1: a murder victim, a suicide, a battle casualty, or a
Speaker 1: victim of sadistic torture. He may have died fighting from
Speaker 1: his sick bed, helplessly in a sick bed, or of
Speaker 1: an illness before sickon soldiers did the job. He may
Speaker 1: have been killed by swords, bayonets, gunfire, or fire. He
Speaker 1: may have died heroically or as a coward. One of
Speaker 1: the first reports to Sam Houston after the battle reported
Speaker 1: that Bowie was killed while lying sick in bed. Houston
Speaker 1: others passed on this information, interpreting it to mean he
Speaker 1: had been murdered while sick in bed. However, Houston changed
Speaker 1: the story two days later, writing, our friend Bowie, as
Speaker 1: now was understood, unable to get out of bed, shot
Speaker 1: himself as the soldiers approached it. And unidentified Mexican soldier
Speaker 1: expressed a different opinion in the April fift eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: six edition of El Mosquito Mexicano uh he stated the
Speaker 1: perverse in Braggert Santiago, Bowie died like a woman almost
Speaker 1: hidden under a mattress. Alamos survivor Susannah Dickinson Hannig waited
Speaker 1: on the subject thirty eight years later, she stated that
Speaker 1: Bowie was sick in bed, and when Mexican soldiers entered
Speaker 1: his room, he killed two of them with his pistols
Speaker 1: before they pierced him with their sabers. Nothing in Hannig's
Speaker 1: statement indicates she actually witnessed this. Perhaps the most horrifying
Speaker 1: Taylor Bowie's death came in eighteen eighty two when William P. Zuber,
Speaker 1: who popularized the Alamo's famous line in the Sands Story,
Speaker 1: told the tale of a young Mexican fifer at Polinaro
Speaker 1: Salda Naga Poland Zuber claims witnessed Bowie brought out alive
Speaker 1: on a cot and placed before at a Mexican captain.
Speaker 1: Bowie delivered a short patriotic speech to the captain, who
Speaker 1: became so outraged that he ordered his soldiers to cut
Speaker 1: Bowie's tongue out and hurl the still living man onto
Speaker 1: the Texas uh Texan dead's burning funeral pyre. So these
Speaker 1: are the different stories. We will never know which of
Speaker 1: these is true. Um we do know pretty well that
Speaker 1: he had yellow fever. So one thing we can all
Speaker 1: safely assume is that, however, James Bowie went out He
Speaker 1: died with the symptoms of advanced yellow fever, which are
Speaker 1: uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting. So that's that's that's the story. Wow,
Speaker 1: fitting into a frontier hero. I mean, I just I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not super shocked because I assume everyone starting about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years ago back just had constant diarrhea. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was he was sick and yeah yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: he was consistent that he wasn't bad like both definitely
Speaker 1: in bed. Seemed to say he was in bed. Some
Speaker 1: say like he's being real pussy about it on other side,
Speaker 1: but no, he kind of thought that he wasn't laying down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have been hard for him to um have
Speaker 1: done much fighting with the yellow fever. It's pretty crippling.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the story of old Jim Booie. That's
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll be honest, I never thought if you
Speaker 1: if you have a weapon named after you, your life
Speaker 1: was probably rough. Yeah yeah, not a lot of not
Speaker 1: a lot of peaceful lives wind up with weapons named
Speaker 1: after them. He was just a great diplomat, huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to argue, Yeah, we probably should have
Speaker 1: a weapon named after Henry Kissinger. But I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any in system that's killed as many people as
Speaker 1: Henry Kissinger. So yeah, I guess so war crimes, isn't
Speaker 1: that what it is? Yeah? Yeah, we could just name
Speaker 1: the concept of bombing people the Kissinger. Yeah yeah, so
Speaker 1: that is the motherfucking story of James Bowie. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling about old Jimbo? There was there was more
Speaker 1: Louisiana then than I had anticipated. A lot of that,
Speaker 1: which makes more sense about like who and how he
Speaker 1: gets that name? I mean, but I like, I think
Speaker 1: my favorite part is just how everyone in his family
Speaker 1: capitalize on his fame. Yeah. Yeah, they would continue doing
Speaker 1: that well after his death because it was easy and
Speaker 1: made him a lot of money. Such an American thing too.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, they're the first Duck dynasty. Is the Buoy family? Well,
Speaker 1: and I can't I keep thinking of I've been to
Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill's grave site in several different locations, so I
Speaker 1: keep thinking of that kind of stuff too, where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh it is it's like Jesse James hit out and
Speaker 1: never made you mean a wild Bill Hickock. Yeah yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotcha. Yeah, No, not Buffalo did I say the
Speaker 1: guy like, yeah, yeah, while Bill sorry, but yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been to his several of his uh graves, which always
Speaker 1: makes me laugh. That's like that kind of meat those
Speaker 1: that happens. Yeah, that's kind of what you get. So
Speaker 1: this has been the episode Billy you got any plug
Speaker 1: doubles you wanna wanna throw down? I just find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Billy Wayne Davis or on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Billy wyn Davis. Uh. And I have a podcast out
Speaker 1: called Growing Local that is about the people in the
Speaker 1: communities that make up just who where your cannabis comes from,
Speaker 1: and the first season is about Eugene or again. Check
Speaker 1: out Billy Wayne's Cannabis podcast, pick Up a Bowie Knife,
Speaker 1: um and uh follow us on behind the Bastard's dot
Speaker 1: com and at Bastard's pot on Twitter and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: check out my new podcast, The Women's War, which is
Speaker 1: about people who aren't a piece of ships like James
Speaker 1: Bowie uh and are cool. So that's the episode Motherfucker's
Speaker 1: Wash your hands Goodbye. Yeah h