Talkin’, the other day, about the Cash shootin’ affair and other bloody feuds which every now and then come to the surface in the South and West, I was reminded by a theatrical friend of the fact that among the effects of the late Edwin Forrest was the pet knife of James Bowie, which the inventor had given to Forrest as a keepsake. The blade of this knife was twelve inches long and more than an inch wide, and was a formidable weapon. It had been prized by Bowie as the instrument of one of the most terrible tragedies that had ever taken place, even in this country of terrible tragedies.
James Bowie had been a planter up the Red River, and had been so annoyed by the Indians that he invented the knife which bears his name, in sheer self-defense. The knife soon became popular in that section of the country, where personal encounters of all kinds were so numerous, and Bowie himself became famous.
Among his neighbors on the Red River there was a Spanish planter, with whom Bowie was not on good terms.
He was an ugly, malicious devil, this Spaniard, and was infamous alike for his immoralities and his cruelties. He was a great slave beater, and beat his slaves with some whips of a peculiar fashion, invented by himself which tore the flesh and cut into it, every time.
He had lived with a beautiful quadroon woman for several years, and had had several children by her. Then he had tired of her, and left her to starve, almost. She naturally complained of this and made it unpleasant for a while for him. And then to end this annoyance he one day fastened the woman to some stakes driven in the ground, had her stripped, and then beat her to death himself.
As the law went in those days it wasn’t legal murder for a man to kill his own slave, but public opinion got down on him, and he was given the cold shoulder by the community, specially by Bowie, who “cut” the rascal outright, refused to speak or to shake hands with him, never visited him, and ignored him altogether.
This made the Spaniard wild with rage, but he didn’t dare say anythin’. Bowie was a dead shot, and the Spaniard, like most bullies, was a live coward. But he tried to take a coward’s revenge. On three different occasions Bowie was secretly shot at, and once seriously wounded. He never was able to trace his would-be assassin, but he was morally certain, as everybody else around there was, that the brutal Spaniard was the man who had thrice attempted his life. No man can afford to let himself be shot at any length of time. This is one of those sorts of things you have got to put a stop to and at once or it will put a stop to you.
So Bowie took the first chance to pick a direct quarrel with the Spaniard, and then challenged him to fight a duel. Knowin’ well beforehand that the Spaniard would not fight him with pistols, he professed his readiness to fight any way the Spaniard wished, with any weapon “under heaven or in hell” was the way Bowie phrased it.
For some time the Spaniard paid no attention to Bowie’s challenge, and tried to live on as if it had never been sent him. But this little game wouldn’t work, and he found himself more detested and avoided than ever. Everywhere he went he found black looks and sharp words directed against him. He was made a butt and a jeer of, was branded as a coward, and treated like a jackal or a jackass.
So at last, coward as he was, he was worked up to the pitch of acceptin’ Bowie’s challenge. But even then, still thinkin’ to make bravado and bluster pass for pluck, he sent word to Bowie that he would fight him with one of his new-fangled Bowie knives. He took it for granted that Bowie would refuse such a duel, and to make more sure of Bowie’s refusal, the Spaniard insisted that each man should fight naked and strapped down with thongs to a trestle. Such conditions as these he assumed would be at once indignantly rejected.
But they were not. They were accepted as soon as proposed.
So the Spaniard made his arrangements, as did Bowie, for the strange duel. And the day appointed came.
Twelve men had been chosen, as friends of each party, to witness this duel, and one man, a thirteenth, had been added on each side to superintend the arrangements. The Spaniard couldn’t find twelve men, all told, who were willin’ in any way to represent him, so, at Bowie’s request, some of his friends were transferred to the Spaniard’s side.
The arrangements for the murderous duel were simple but sufficient. Two strong trestles had been procured, and each man was stripped stark naked, furnished with a Bowie knife, and then tied firmly to the trestle, leavin’ only the arms free.
It was a wonderful spectacle then and there presented! more strikin’ly startlin’ than any possible description of it. The planters gathered around, with eyes strained to catch every movement of the two naked men, glarin’ at each other, tied to the two trestles, and with the two gleamin’ Bowie knives in their hands.
It had been determined by Bowie to frighten the Spaniard out of his wits, slightly wound him, and then, at the last minute, if he would agree to leave the country forthwith, to let up on him. It would have been a fine thing for Bowie if he had only carried out this resolve. But seein’ his chance, the Spaniard made a quick lunch at Bowie with his knife, hopin,’ in his desperation, to kill Bowie at once and escape. The knife missed a vital part, but went right through the fleshy part of Bowie’s right arm. The pain inflicted by the wound was intense, but the strength of the sufferer was so great that spite of his agony he, by a determined and desperate clutch of his fist, held his antagonist’s weapon fast between the sinews and bones of the arm, and then, forgettin’ in his rage all his previous good intentions, Bowie grasped his own knife and struck to take the Spaniards life. Wounded and bound, yet by an almost miracle of strength he plunged his knife into the Spaniard’s body, literally disembowelin’ his opponent, who died, writhin’ in his tracks, in unutterable agony.
As for Bowie, while the Spaniard was shriekin’ and dyin’, he, with the dying man’s knife still stickin’ in his arm, turned to his friends and said coolly, “Now, gentlemen, unthong me.”
Bowie’s knife had avenged the murdered, beaten-to-death quadroon. It was a deserved retribution on the Spaniard’s part, but it was nevertheless murder on Bowie’s. And he felt this himself towards the latter part of his life, and would have given worlds if he had not hacked to death that wretched Spaniard.
But he gave the knife he used in this tremendous duel to Forrest, when he was playin’ an engagement in Savannah, and Forrest one night, while playin’ his farewell engagement in New York, told Charley Rosenberg the story of the duel as Bowie had told it to him, actin’ the scene out himself in a most vivid and dramatic manner.
I don’t know what has now become of that Bowie knife; but what an addition it would make to the museum of criminals’ weapons at Police Headquarters.
[Editor’s notes: This anecdote about the naked knife duel appears to be a total fabrication, found in the above column’s source material: Alger, William Rounseville. Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1877. Alger evidently heard the story from Alfred Bunn, who wrote it down in the 1850s. The artifact of the knife has been passed down through the decades, with uncertain provenance. It is entirely possible that Bowie presented the knife to Forrest; but Charlotte Cushman, an actress who worked with Forrest, was said to possess a knife found with Bowie’s effects at the Alamo. Forrest was telling the anecdote to others in 1871.]
