Part Two: Jim Bowie: The Worst Texan

That's the question. And the answer is there's no reason to have grammar, and it's it's cowardly. I love grammar is up, so there are raisins. No, yes, probably so. In our last episode we talked about the famous sandbar fight, which it's really just a giant ship show. Uh and probably would have been pretty funny to watch. It was hilarious to listen about. Yeah, up until that guy got his guts spelled all over the sand bar. It was

pretty funny. Um. Still, that was that part. I mean, you know where you're getting into, you know, in some fairness, Jim Booie's a monster because of the slaves stuff. In that fight. He did say don't shoot at me, you rascal, like he gave him proper warning, and that guy kept shooting at him. He did, he did, And that is

the general rule. If somebody has a giant knife and you're going to shoot at him, your best, your best deal with them real fast with your gun, because if you don't, they've got a real big knife and they'll be angry at you. That is I had a My middle school basketball coach told me he carried a twelve gauge in Vietnam because an M six team just piste him off. And I was like, okay, well that's we're a basketball practice. But yeah, that's really not helpful in

any part of my life right now. But thank you for scaring a child. Yeah, and that information has always stuck with me. Yeah. I mean, in the days before body armor was common in particular, stopping power was really um anyway, let's just neither nor there wasn't not wrong. If you want to stop a man, it doesn't get much better than a twelve game shotgun unless you have a gigantic knife like Jim Bowie have had that too. He probably did. Now when we left our friend Jim.

He had just disemboweled a man during an argument and been shot several times. And because the United States, he's my friends, No he's not, because the United States has not changed at all since those days. This made him suddenly gigantically famous, and he became a living legend of the Wild West, like Wyatt Earp or Davy Crockett or I have to assume based on his name Grizzly Adams, and I refused to look up who Grizzly Adams was,

so don't tell me if I'm wrong. I think he I think he fought grizzly bears with his bare hands because he had to defend orphanages. That's my head cannon for Grizzly Adams. His brother was good at taking pictures, probably Ansel yep Anzel and Grizzly. So once he'd healed from the sandbar fight, Jim Bowie re entered polite society as a celebrity. The eyes of the nation followed him as he traveled through the Old West and gotten too

even more fights. Now, most of the fighting credited to Jim Boweing never happened, and it's very possible that he never killed another person with his knife again. But there, of course numerous stories you can find about him getting into fights and killing two or three armed men with his gigantic knife. And almost all of these your tall tales, you know. Um, yeah, once you're famous for stabbing a guy to death, there's gonna be a lot of other stories if you're stabbing guys to death, even if you

never stabbed another guy to death. That's just America. It's Keith Richards. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't do as many drugs you'd as you'd think, but he got the reputation and it's just stuck with him. Well, that's what in his book he said, Yeah, I just never corrected anyonere No, and why would you? Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh, it's all about personal branding, and Bowie knows how to brand himself. Well, so uh, yeah, he he didn't. Probably it's probable that

he never killed another human being with his knife. Um, but he continued to kill his shipload of people. Don't worry about that, billy, He kept yet he kept killing people. That did not stop. Um. His brother John later wrote that after recovering from the Sandbar fight quote, Jim felt as though he had not been well used or properly treated by some of his political friends, and this, John Bowie says, is why Jim went to Texas. Now, in writing this, he left out about a year or so

worth of crimes that he and Jim both committed. So like the kind of frontier story that his brother tells us, that like Jim got betrayed by some of his political friends, and so he went to Texas, and he leaves out like what actually happened, um, And what actually happened is that for the next year or so after the Sandbar fight,

he got back into conning people over land. So basically he would travel all across the frontier buy up tracts of land, or purchase options to buy up tracts of land, and then he would sell that land to the highest bidder, hopefully for a profit. Now this is called land speculation and it's not illegal, um, but it was kind of slower than Jim Booie was comfortable with. So we started

forging options and land deeds and selling those two. Now this is outright theft because he was just lying about land that he had no claim to, selling it to people and pocketing the money. But the Internet didn't exist

back then, and people usually weren't fast enough to catch him. Now, Jim went towards quite a lot of effort to affect these forgeries, even hiring actors to pretend to be landowners so he could then convince buyers that he was this person's representative, so he could sell them land that he had no right to. So these were pretty elaborate cons Yeah, well he had to have gotten caught. He got constantly, constantly. He wasn't good at hiding it. People were just dumber

back then, and there was no Internet. Yeah, And I was like, I'm gonna need an accomplice, yeah yeah, and the accompany he didn't need an accomplice, and his accomplices were usually congress Yeah. So he had friends in congress um who would help him basically by like pushing you know, the local banks and stuff to to to recognize these deeds and stuff that he was he was bringing forward um.

And eventually he decided the best way for him to continue his scams and make a bunch of money was to run for a local congressional seat in Louisiana to to basically get in power himself. And he worked at a deal with one of his friends who was already in Congress, to basically take up that guy's seat once

his term ended and run in the next election. But then his friend decided to run for re election again, and Bowie got angry at him, And this is what his brother referred to as him not being properly treated by political friends. So the congressional election that year actually went against his buddy and probably would have gone against Bowie, and he was left without any allies in Congress, and without any way of easily continuing to swindle Rubes into

buying land he didn't already own. Over the course of eighty eight, all of Jim's many schemes collapsed one after the other, leaving him at risk of becoming destitute um or at least if he'd actually bothered to pay any of the debts he'd accrued. The book Three Roads to the Alamo gives a good summary of the actual scale of the con Bowie was trying to work, and it's

it's enormous quote. He had made a stunning lee, bold play and exploitation and all laying fraudulent claim to eighty thousand acres in Arkansas and between seventy three thousand and

eighty thousand more in Louisiana. Yeah, my god. If he had succeeded, he would have been a Holer, part owner of two hundred fifty square miles of bayou and riverfront property, and possibly another two hundred square miles and a hundred and eighty eight other Arkansas claims he had withdrawn, making him the largest landowner in the reasons in the region and in his time very possibly the largest private landholder

in the United States. So he would have been a millionaire if he'd succeeded in this, but he failed, and now he was all but broke by the end of eighteen eight. So that's what leads him to Texas is he has ailed in a series of incredibly ambitious land cons he winds up broke, and Texas is the best shot he has at getting a bunch more free land. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't think it was gonna be a peer of heart thing, No, no, so. And this is another part

that's interesting to me. Mexico's government in my Texas history classes was always portrayed as cruel and oppressive um at worst and kind of like absentee at best. And I later learned that one of the many one of the main reasons why white colonists hated the Mexican government was that slavery was illegal in Mexico. Um. This was a part of it, um. But also the Mexican government didn't really stop a lot of these white people from bringing

in their slaves. They wanted Americans to move in because they had a lot of empty land and they needed people to kind of like hold it down and cultivate it and provide a tax base and stuff, um. So a lot of them looked the other way at forced human bondage, um. But it was still more difficult to uh to keep slaves there. But this was kind of overwhelmed by the fact that Mexico wanted settlers badly enough.

They were willing to give huge amounts of land to anyone who was willing to pretend to be Catholic and agree to obey Mexican law. So for that small price, if you became a non citizen settler in Texas, you got a hundred and seventy seven acres to farm on and a whole league four thousand, four hundred acres to graze. Your Catalan even more land up to eleven leagues could be purchased for the dirt for a dirt cheap price if the buyer was willing to become a Mexican citizen.

So Jim Bowie, I would well, no, I wouldn't do that for Texas land. I mean I know Texas too well, Yeah exactly, Yeah, I do that for part of Mexico for sure. Yeah. No, no, no, I do not want to Texas. No, no, no, no no. So Bowie packed up his unregional and reasonably large knife and he rolled in Mexico. His brother John unceremoniously noted that he quote disposed of his lands and negroes before set out, because buying and selling people was again nothing at all to

the men of the Bowie family. So yeah, Jim was thirty two years old when he finally made it to Mexico, and the most entertaining description I've heard of him in this period of time comes from historian J. Frank dbe Quote. He found that reputation of his knife had preceded him. He stood six ft tall and was all muscle. He was pleasing and look speech men and manner to both men and women. THO would have said that he seldom smiled. Letters and other writing by him and Resent P. Bowie

are in clear, sinewy English. After he had been in Texas a while, he spoke Spanish as well as French. He was not a Ruffian, although he could be rough. He comprehended the cutthroats and gamblers of Natchez. While he dined in patrician houses on the hill or sang in the theater. He was at home with bellowing alligators in the marches, with mustangs and mustangers on the prairies, and with lawyers who would circumvent God. In Texas, he fought

Indians and Mexicans and Texas. Yeah. This is Adobe's article where he writes that is from nineteen fifty seven. And you can tell that the attitudes on colonialism were a lot different by the fact that he just dropped and he fought Indians and Mexicans. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is not inaccurate. Um, but it does leave out kind of the brutality of what exactly Jim Bowie got up to. Um. Yeah.

So here's how Jim's brother John describes this massacre of a bunch of Native Americans that Bowie commits not long after getting to Texas. Quote. Uh, during the few years he spent in Texas, he had many strange and hazardous adventures, probably the most notable of which was the following He and Resin Bowie with nine others went in search of a silver mine about two hundred miles northwest of San Antonio. While on this expedition, they were attacked by about a

hundred and fifty Comanche Indians. James, being well acquainted with the habits and manners of these savages, soon perceived that they were on trail of him and his little party for the purpose of murdering or robbing them, So he

availed himself of the first suitable place for defense. Now, John describes this as natives wanting to rob him, but he and Jim, But the reality is that he and like Jim and Rezin Bowie had moved into Native American territory and we're trying to steal their ship, and they

were carrying weapons. Um. He also describes the natives as Comanche, but they were Tawakoni, Waco and Catto um And by any definition of the term I've ever heard during my youth in Texas, these natives were acting in self defense because, again Booie and his brothers were part of a posse of large armed men who would come unto their land to steal a bunch of silver. Yeah, we'll just judge on their recent past history and I'm gonna like, I'm gonna go with the natives on this one. Yeah yeah.

And what followed was probably might have been the bloodiest single fight of the period between white settlers and natives and at least in the history of Texas. Um. The natives, you know, a large group of them surround the little fort that they built in the rocks and opened fire.

They kill one of Bowie's men, uh booie. The Bowie brothers and their other men fire back repeatedly, and this continues for literally days, Like there's multiple days of gunfire, and by the time it's all over, fifty to sixty Natives are dead, along with a lot of their horses. Um. And it's hard to say if the death counts in this are anywhere near accurate um because like white settlers would lie a lot about how many people they killed in firefights, but also they had access to much better guns.

That said, given what happened at the Sandbar fight, I don't know how much I trust the story of Jim Booie about his accuracy in a gunfight. I don't know. It's hard to say, but probably a lot of people did die because they were in like a three day gun battle. So whatever. Yeah, he murders a bunch of people. Well, and he could have had like it could have been like a like a regulator situation where he picks up some people that are handy with the steel because he is.

He's not, and they're using rifles, you know, they're these guys are like wielding like, you know, more accurate guns in this the gunfight, they're using handguns and like in this they're kind of shooting with like hunting rifles which are more accurate and have rifled barrels and stuff. Most people will say fifty to sixty dead in the total fight.

It's impossible to know for sure. But yeah, So after the natives back off, Jim and his men flee back to San Antonio, UH and he immediately petitions the local government for petition to raise an expedition against the Tawakoni tribe because you know, during this little invasion, he estimated they had two thousand horses and he was basically like, I just got into a gunfight with these guys, and I think if you give me enough men, I can steal all of their horses to sell them. So he's

a He's a good dude, That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, um, yeah, we don't actually know if this expedition ever happened. Um, it may well have. Uh. And Bowie is noted as having numerous other conflicts with Native Americans during this period, all of which kind of involved around him rolling into their houses and stealing shit. Um, But they're usually called expeditions by like the historians, even in the twenty century. A lot of historians will call it like he he

raised an expedition, and you're like, what was the expedition for? Well, he wanted to steal things from these people, valuables. I'm looking for valuables that It's like even you know, there's at least with like the Lewis and Clark expedition, there's like this they were making maps and ship right, Like, there's criticisms to make of it, but they were they did write some maps. Booie is just taking things. Yeah. So Jim applied for and eventually received Mexican citizenship, which

allowed him to buy eleven leagues of land. He also succeeded in convincing a number of Mexican citizens to sign over their options for purchasing land to him as well, and throughout this period, Jim Bowie continued to make the bulk of his money through an even mix of legitimate and fraudulent land sales. So again, at any given point in time, if you're wondering how is Jim making a living, He's he's pretending. He's he's selling fake land to people. He's a and he's a real estate con artist. That

is Jim Booie's like secret to wealth. How very modern of him. Yeah, he has a lot in common with our president, aside from the fact that he was clearly willing to get into a fight. Oh he'll get his hands dirty for sure. Yeah, Yeah, he's He's definitely a better person than the president. He's also very good at spin, like calling stuff an expedition, where like, now, man, you're raiding villages that you're you're just raiding people, you're stealing

their horses, not expedition. Although this this does make me think if I could get fifty to a hundred people together and robbed the Toyota dealership near me. We could just call it an expedition to get free land cruisers. That's actually not AIP. You can call it an expedition to get expeditions. Yeah, yeah, but I feel like we'd be doing four to favor by taking expeditions away. Someone got him, someone came and took them. You guys know, I I really want to get down to an expedition.

That's what we ought to do. Just just just rebrand shoplifting as an expedition. So during this time, Jim Billie became friends with the Mexican governor of Texas, a guy named Veramindy, and he worked at a deal with Aramindy by which he could marry the governor's daughter. So he signed a dowry with a Veramindy family, promising to pay his wife more than fifteen thousand dollars in money and

property that he absolutely did not have. He listed as collateral the fraudulent properties in Louisiana and Arkansas that he'd never actually owned in the first place. Um, but he basically conned to this governor and let him marry his daughter. And then he immediately borrows seven fifty dollars from his new family in law to take his new wife on a vacation to New Orleans. All right, I want to give you some money. Yeah, I have some Can I

have some money and your daughter? I could so. Jim and his new wife were married on April thirty one. She was nineteen years old and he was thirty five years old, although he listed his age is thirty on the marriage certificate. Weird, very weird, just a little vain. Just lie about your age on when it's technically legal. I mean, that makes me think if he's lying about his age, maybe she her age was not. Actually, I don't know, this is a different time. It's entirely possible

he actually thought he was thirty. Again, not a lot of official governments documents about when you came into the world at this point. And he's taking several guns to the head at this point. Yes, he's been hitting the head a number of times. And remember his mom only taught him the alphabet, so numbers probably not Jim Bowie

strong suit. So um. Yeah, And a big part of why you got married seemed to be that getting hitched h to a Mexican, or getting hitched to anyone at all, entitled him to another four thousand acres from the government, and since his wife was a rich girl, he was also entitled now to live at the Veramindy House, which was basically a palace because he's you know, he's the

governor of Texas. UM. Now, the sources I have read all tend to agree that he like was legitimately in love with his wife and that the Veramendy family treated him as a son. I have found no evidence to discount this, so I kind of have to assume that this was in fact the case, even though given all of the scams he got up to, in the fact that he lied about the money he had to get a dowry, I'm very hesitant to give Bowie credit for anything,

but I don't know. I I have no evidence that he didn't truly care for this woman or for his adopted family, so I gotta say that. Um. And there's definitely evidence that the Veramendy family really cared about Jim Uh. He was quote furnished with money and supplies without limit, and was basically got to live as a rich boy

for a while. UM. Since he no longer needed to work, he gave up his land conning and spent several bliss for years, living in a palace and occasionally going out on expeditions to steal gold and silver from Native people, mainly just for fun. I was gonna say, that's just like it sounds like he just likes to go Yeah, just l Ron Hubbard's style gold hunting expeditions, but with

a higher body count. So that we know of, he was on one of these trips getting into gunfights with Native Americans when his wife, their two children, and his father and mother in law all died horrifically during a cholera outbreak. Um, so he's just like out camping and his whole family is wiped out by cholera in the

space of a few days. Uh, which focks him up right that that that's hard to deal with your whole family dying at the same time, feel like most people would would would have a little bit of trouble with that. And a lot of sources will claim that this is when Jim began to drink heavily. You know, he'd always had a tendency to party a little hard sometimes, but kind of after this point you see him increasingly sort of sinking into straight up alcoholism. Changed the way, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

that seems fair to say. If you want to protect your family from cholera, the f d A guarantees that all of these products and services will render them immune. So you can drink any kind of ditch water you want. Just get out there, buy some products and go suck it up. Ditch water. Here's a product. We're back. I hope you're all enjoying all this ditch water. It's good stuff. Keep buying the products. I don't know. Sometimes this is where we go. This, this is the joke that I made.

And now we're returned, and it's time to talk about Jim Bowie some more. I'm so sorry. So it's debated by historians just how much the depths of Jim's family influenced his drinking. Um, and it's also debated how much of a drunk he was. A lot of very pro Texas types will argue that there's no real evidence that he had a problematic history with alcohol. Um. I don't

think this is true. Uh, And it seems like most of the good historians, even the ones who are kind of see him as a little bit of a hero, disagree with this. Historian William C. Davis notes that after his family's death quote. For the first half of eighteen thirty four, Bowie largely wandered and may have surrendered to drink more than he should as he tried to regain his personal and financial balance. His old temper flared again

and there were fights. After one supposed brawl in San Antonio, he asked a friend why he had not come into help in the scuffle. The man answered that, so far as he could tell, Bowie had been in the wrong in the encounter. Don't you suppose I know that as well as you do, replied Bowie. That's just why I needed a friend. If I had been in the right, I would have had plenty of them. He's not wrong, No, he's not. I love that though he's not right either.

That is some good frontier logic. Um. Yeah, So he spent most of the next year engaged in a series of land speculation schemes because again, like he's rich, a rich boy for a while, but when his rich family dies, he doesn't inherit their money, right because he's like the son in law. So now he's back on his own again. Um. And unfortunately for him, the Mexican government had grown increasingly concerned about the fact that it had been giving away

huge chunks of Texas to Americans. Uh these men often flouted the laws of Mexico by, for example, bringing in slaves, and in general, it became very clear that they had no real interest in being part of Mexico. So Mexico began to crack down and restrict the kind of speculation

and sale of land that Bowie engaged in. Now Luckily for Jim, right at about this period of time, a fella named Santa Anna succeeded in becoming the dictator of Mexico in all but name, and like any good authoritarian, he's set right to work clamping down on opposition to his regime, largely by shutting down local militias and ordering them to send him their guns. Zec Tecas, which was one of the states in Mexico, rebelled and it was

brutally crushed. The whole situation resulted in a huge amount of unrest in other Mexican states, and we're not gonna be able to detail all of it here. The short of it is that the capital of the Mexican state that Texas was in, a city called mont Clova, decided that they needed to raise money to get up militia in their own defense from Santa Anna, and they did this by opening up a huge amount of land for purchase.

Since Bowie had been the governor's son in law, he was given the job of disbursing and selling all of this land. And since he was corrupt as all hell, he basically took a bunch of bribes for this, and he also got a huge chunk of that land himself. And by the time all of the chips had landed and all the land was so sold, he owned more than a million acres. Now, this is a lot of land,

so much even in Texas. Yeah, And basically, once Santa Anna heard that like the capital of one of his own states had given away this land, much land to a bunch of white people to raise a militia to defend themselves from him, he was like, fuck this ship. Uh. He declared the whole sale null and void, which effectively

wiped out Jim's entire fortune. Um. So, Santa Anna sent an army up to Mount Clovi to crack down on all of this blatantly criminal land speculation, and Jim Bowie and his friends like showed up to like protest and They were immediately arrested and jailed, but they succeeded in escaping and fleeing back to Texas. Booie made his way to Nacodoches and became one of the loudest voices in the War Party, the men who increasingly advocated the taking

up of arms against Santa Anna's government. Well, I mean that that the War Party is pretty clear. Yeah, yeah, I think we should have one of those now where we know what you guys want. They're not framing themselves as Texas independence advocates at this point. They're framing themselves as against Santa Anna's dictatorship. Like they're saying they want to return to the original Mexican constitution before Santa Anna

took power. Like that's kind of where they are right now. Uh. And a lot of people for because like there's a lot of Mexicans and white people who are like kind of all on the same side of this, and it's because a lot of those Mexicans like don't like Santa Anna. Um. And then there's folks like Booie who kind of he doesn't really care politically about what's happened. He cares that Santa Anna's screwed him out of his chance at becoming

a millionaire. Um. So yeah, on July five hundred citizens of Nakodocha has declared themselves a militia and they vote Jim Bowie to be their colonel. Um. Now, he immediately his first act as colonel is to rob a Mexican government storehouse of muskets uh and the government considered this to be him inciting violence, which is pretty fair way. That's a good that's a good way to call it. Yeah, it's very different from me stealing, for example, Toyota land cruisers.

That's an expedition. You know, that's not inciting violence. So Booie had to flee to the United States to raise money and men uh to to you know, continue to make this revolution possible. And he returned to Texas just in time for the first shots of the Texas Revolution to be fired on October two, eighteen thirty five. Um. Now, there are a lot of other guys involved, and I'm not going to like for one thing, Texas revolutionary history is and my favorite kind of history, so I'm not

going to go into wild detail about this. But yeah, there's a bunch of people and at the beginning, they just kind of want to go back to the way things were before Santa Ana. And it gradually evolves into an independence movement for Texas to become an independent nation, right, but it doesn't really start that way. Um. And it's a very democratic sort of movement that that that's that spot like pops up. So these guys are all voting, like it's all guys. Women can't vote, obviously, neither can

enslaved people. Um. But these the men, all the white men, all vote for their leaders. And a guy named Stephen F. Austin is elected the commander of the Texas New Army. Um. So, by the time Booie got back into Texas from his little sojourn in the United States, that army was about five men in size. Uh. It continued to grow over the course of days, and Bowie was named a colonel once again and given command of a column of about

ninety men. Uh. And he was a pretty good military leader, which you might guess from the fact that he was just generally good at shooting people, well killing people that I was gonna say, he knew how to kill animals and people. And like a lot of killing animals is the same it's the same. I started really reading a lot of military strategy. I was like, this is this is what this is. Yeah, and especially like these are not gigantic Napoleonic battles like again the armies like five

hundred dudes. Like these are often confrontations between a few dozen people in the middle of nowhere, Texas who like shoot at each other and like twenty people die and one side backs off first, and it's a great victory, you know. Yeah, yeah, so and Bolli was a pretty good military commander. Several weeks later, he led his men into battle against a Mexican army force at a place called Conception, Uh. And the force that he winds up fighting is like double the size of his own army.

But he and his men win, and this is like the first great rebel victory of the war. UM. Now, Unfortunately, Steve N. F. Austin was not a very good commander, and the Army of Texas was not a particularly orderly army, and a series of organizational and leadership failures stopped them from taking advantage of Bowie's victory. UH. And soon enough

they wound up in a kind of clusterfux situation. UM. So what's important to understand is that men kept deserting and kept stepping down, and eventually the army found itself having to hold another election to determine its commander. There are so many fucking votes with the Texas uh like Revolutionary Army over like who should be in charge? Like they hold them all of the goddamn time. Every time something goes wrong, they're like, all right, who do we want to be in charge now? Um? Yeah, But I

think they got the Libertarian Party. There's a big aspect of that to this, and like the Libertarians, they can't make up their mind about a goddamn thing. That's what it sounds like. That's that's the exact metaphor I was used. It was like, it just sounds like it's just like the Libertarian Party. We're like, hey, I don't like, hey, he's doing stuff changing. So Bowie campaigns hard to be the commander of this army, and they hold a vote and he receives five votes. Um. And this is generally

because people didn't really like him. He was considered to be like a pretty good combat commander, so individual people willing to follow him in the bat follow him in the battle. But he was also like known to be he was a guy with like a gigantic temper who

was drunk a lot of the time, tough hang. So he gets angry that he loses this vote, and he resigns his commission and like announces that he's becoming a private again as kind of a fuck you to Stephen F. Austin, and then he just leaves the army entirely and he travels to San Felipe, where he meets with Sam Houston.

Now another election had been held recently in human Houston had been made the major general in charge of all of texas Is armed forces, so Austin was reassigned and the army now had no actual field commander, so it had Houston in charge of it, but like nobody had

been voted actually lead it into battle. Um and Booie like basically tries to ingratiate himself into Houston's that he can hopefully get appointed to be in charge of the army, but he can't really get a handle on his drinking, and by the time he and Houston actually meet for the first time in sam Pelipe, he is, in the words of one attendee, dead drunk. Um and Houston is kind of like carefully, like, well, I'm not gonna just

a point you in charge of the army. Why don't you go back and the whole army will hold another vote, and now that Austin's out, I'm sure they will elect you to be in charge of the army. So still wasted, Jimbowie drunkenly rides back to the army and he keeps right on drinking throughout the election. He actually gets blackout hammered on the night of the vote. Um, and for some reason his fellow soldiers decided to give the job

to another guy. Reading historians talk about this, it's really funny because they'll often be like, it's peculiar that they didn't vote for Bowie despite his good combat performance. And I was like, well, because they saw he was wasted every time he wasn't in a gunfight. I mean, you gotta be a pretty bad drunk for other people, for other soldiers to be like, yeah, yeah, these guys are

like patient zero for libertarianism. There's literally no law because they're revolting against legal authority, and they all have guns in the middle of nowhere, and they're like, this guy is too much of a drunken ruin for us. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So uh yeah, he just he didn't doesn't do well in elections. So he is, however, given command of another unit of several dozen men, and they perform well in a number of skirmishes against the Mexican Army.

And again, as a rule, when he actually gets into combat, Jim Bowie does a really good job. He's good at leading men in battle. You gotta give him credit for that he does. Yeah, if you want someone to help other people kill a group of strangers, Jim Booie is your fucking man. He's a good stranger killer. Any anything other than that, he's gonna be drunk. Yeah, he's He's not even good at land speculation. He just does it all the time. Yeah. Yeah, And I don't think he

knows he's doing. We think he had the blackout the hole. He's just wasted the whole time. Yeah. So, at one point during the war, along the San Antonio River, Bowie and his men heard a rumor that the general of the Mexican Army was grazing his horses nearby. And this wasn't Santa Ana yet, This is like the Mexican army

before Santa Anna comes up. So they set out to like figure out where these horses are so they can either steal the horses or disperse the horde because you know that the herd, because that would do a lot of damage to the army get rid of all of

their horses. So while they're scouting around to try to find these horses, Bowie and his men capture a random Mexican dude who claims to know the guy who was tending the herd, and he told Bowie that if they found that guy, they would be able to find the horses. But Bowie isn't willing to listen to this. He thinks this guy is lying and knows where the horses are, so he arrests the man instead. And I'm gonna quote

from William C. Davis here he writes quote. One of the volunteers, Placido Benavidez, suggested that they tie them in, put a rope around his neck and raised him by a tree branch, strangling him until he agreed to talk. There was nothing surprising in that for Benavidez. He was one of the ricos, the wealthy landed local aristocracy like the Vara Mendez, the family that Buoy married into, who felt an ancestral cultural contempt or at best disdain for

the pabres the poor. Thus, for Benavidez, there was no dishonor in torturing a peon for information, especially if he was working for the enemy. Bowie, who came from an entirely different culture that generally frowned upon such brutality, agreed to the suggestion perhaps his marriage into the Vara Mendes had brought him not just family affluence, but also family attitudes. The brutality, once commenced, almost got out of hand, almost

got out of hand. Bowie ordered a fire started near the tree, and then some of his men hauled the unfortunate man up over at adding the double torture of burning, or at least extremely uncomfortable proximity to the blaze, to the strangulation that's almost out of hand. It was almost this is almost too much. Yeah. At the same time, eight of his company stood with cocked rifles besides the fire,

pointing them at the poor man. When the victims stopped kicking and appeared near unconsciousness, they let him down and threatened to shoot him. He refused to talk. And the whole business was repeated twice more, even though one of Bowie's men rebelled at the cruelty and refused to participate further.

After the third time, the Mexican revealed the whereabouts of a herd of horses, although Booie's one rebel suspected they may have belonged to the man himself instead of the enemy army, and he gave them up simply to save his life. Even then, it seems Booie was not done, announcing that he intended to continue the torture the next morning, although what there was left to gain as a mystery. Now. Thankfully he doesn't go through with continuing the torture this

poor son of a bitch. But he doesn't make the guy who'd refused to torture the prisoner guard him that night. This is like a punishment because he's a dick. Yeah, almost out of hand, Billy, Almost almost out of hand. Do you think like some of his friends like the next day, See, dude, this is what we're talking about. This is why we can't let you. This is you keep doing this ship Jim. Nobody wants this guy in charge. Like, we're all pretty racist, but come on, man, come on.

So the Texas Revolution had, as I said, started at against the revolution against Santa Anna, and a number of the early revolutionaries were in fact loyal to the Mexican Constitution. Bowie himself professed a loyalty to it initially, but as the fighting went on, the cause of total independence took off primarily among the white residents of the area, and

Bowie got on board with this train. William see Davis clearly believes that he did so out of a mix of patriotism and a healthy desire to get back all the land he'd stolen and then had stolen back from him. Um I personally see Jim and his bartaceous participation is an even mix of land grab and an addiction to violence.

But whatever honest men can disagree. In any case, Boway's passed through the war eventually led him to the Alamo and modern day San Antonio now the town around it was then called Beijar, and the fourth of the Alamo contained a large number of field guns, which is actually the vast bulk of the artillery available to the Texan rebels. As Santa Anna marched Fourth because the army he had first sent in they do eventually beat that army, so Santa Ana has to march up with a larger Mexican army,

thousands and thousands of soldiers. And at first they think he's just going to send a few men to attack the Alamo, and they have plenty of guns to hold it. But then he sends like the bulk of his army there um and they don't abandon it because all of the guns that has means that it's kind of critical

to the war effort. And to make a long and pretty boring story short, eventually Santa Anna's whole big gass army winds up marching on the Alamo, and the two men in charge of its defense where a guy named Colonel William Travis and Jim Booie. By the way, Austin is in Travis County. Like I was, I was gonna say, I know how all that comes together? Yet Yeah, so joke,

I usually do what I'm in Austin. It's like it's just two of the widest names you've ever heard of, Just like it's just somebody from around rock yelling at their kids. Austen, Travis, Gideon here Travis, Jim Bowie, you get in here, now Gideon here, Yeah, get you all on in there. Yeah, it's it's it's good old home state of Texas. So Bowie's went rank of colonel had never really been real. He'd been elected by militia and then sort of voted into or appointed into a couple

of different command positions. But his troops were like irregulars. They were what was called volunteers, while Colonel Travis was a man with an actual military experience and his troops were like regular trained troops with like like they couldn't just leave if they wanted to. Like Bowie's men were kind of there as volunteers, they could funk off at

any point. Travis's troops were like normal soldiers. So yeah, once they arrive, you've got the military at the Alamo divided into like regular soldiers under Travis and irregulars under Bowie. And Travis is ostensibly supposed to be in charge of the whole operation. But Bowie's men aren't willing to listen to this guy. They trust the dude that they've been fighting with more than some like fancy colonel with a fucking army degree. So the whole army holds yet another

fucking election and the two. The result of it leaves the two men sharing power. Bowie stays in charge of the volunteers and Travis is in charge of the regular army. And this is not a good state of affairs, having the army divided into two chunks who don't listen to each other or each other's commander. Turns out that's actually not like an ideal way to army. No, no, yeah, as Davis writes, quote, no one was completely in charge.

Bowie would not obey Travis, and Travis certainly would not yield a Bowie, so that garrison divided into somewhat unfriendly camps. On February twelfth, Adjutant J. J. Boss saw that Bowie, availing himself of his popularity among the volunteers, seemed anxious to arrogate to himself the entire control. So he's trying

to like he wants to take control. But the next day the situation become intolerable, precipitated mainly by Bowie unfortunately choosing his election as an event worth celebrating with a two day drunk. So they have this vote that splits them into and Bowie just spent the next couple of days wrecked out of his fucking head, Robert. What else celebrates a two day drunk me? Yeah? Who else? Yeah?

That's I mean Quip the toothbrush people probably probably probably, That's why I like them so much, and also the other products and services that support this podcast all big fans of being drunk for two straight days, we're back. Oh what a day, What a day it is? Yeah, So, Jim Bowie, they've just held this election, they've split the control of the army into and Jim Bowie is just

fucking celebrates this by getting ship house wasted. Like he's never succeeded in being elected to command of the army, but he's gotten elected to command of half of an army, and that's that's worth celebrating. So drunk Bowie pretty much immediately let this new state of as little be happy

about it, yet might as well be for a good reason. So, uh, he's wasted in celebrating his control of half of an army when he sees a group of local bahernos like citizens of the nearby town trying to flee the town with their property to avoid the fact that a battle is about to happen, and he arrests these people for no real reason. Now, at the same time, he also started randomly de arresting people that the local judge had

already sentenced for crimes. There seems to have been no real rhyme or reason for any of this, because he actually sat on like the judge panel that had convicted some of these friends these men when he was sober, and then just decided to free them from jail at random. Uh. When the judge complained about this, Bowie had his volunteers marched through the main square of the town of Behard to intimidate him. Unfortunately, Bowie and all of his men

were wasted, as one volunteer. One volunteer described the marching and quote a tumultuously and disorder and disorderly manner. Bowie himself and many of his men being drunk, which has been the case ever since he has been in command. So like he randomly decides to free a bunch of prisoners, the judge complains, and he has a drunken mob gather in the middle of town to yell at the judge. All this sounds like a right fun Bowie. Now, yeah, I do think, yeah, he's got all his killing done.

He's like let's just mix it up a little bit. Let's just get wasted, buddy. So next Bowie de arrested a private in the regular Army, a man that Colonel Travis had convicted of mutiny for. Again no real reasonable man. Yeah, this pissed Travis off. Anyway, he wound up writing a letter to their governor, and Davy Crockett also wrote a letter because Davy Crockett was there at this point, and

he's really pissed a Jim Bowie's bullshit now. In his lever letter, Travis complained that the situation was quote truly awkward and delicate due to the fact that his co commander had been roaring drunk all the time and was turning everything topsy turvy. He ended the letter by stating he would remain at the album over the sake of honor, but quote I am unwilling to be responsible for the drunken irregularities of any man. I mean, that's gonna cost

him his life. That's what's going to happen. They're all gonna die. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so. The situation continued to deteriorate, and Bowie's drunkenness grew even more extreme. His volunteer army turned into a multi day long keg party, and some of his men actually sold their rifles to buy liquor. Yeah, I'm not gonna need this this fucking thing, so one observer at the time reported most of the

garrison was drunk. Travis kept on complaining about this, and the fights between the two men soon degenerated into an utterly untenable situation. Travis eventually had to leave the Alamo with his regular soldiers because he was afraid the two groups would start shooting at each other if they stayed together any longer. But then on Valentine's Day, Jim Bowie

sobered up. And we don't really know why. He might have come to his senses, or he might have just trade out of ran out of liquor and guns to trade for liquor. But as Davis writes, as quickly as it arose, the problem seemed to evaporate, and that was

probably due to Bowie. It is well known that he sometimes drank too much, recalled William W. Fontaine, who was one of the little children at Montville with Charles Travis, but it is not so generally known how quickly he hastened to make the amends honorably, so that he soon came under the influence of as soon as he came out from under the influence of liquor on February fourteenth, but he sobered and apparently went on to see Travis and gave an apology for Immediately, Travis and his command

returned to San Antonio, and all signs of friction between the two disappeared for good. Wow. Yeah, he's a charming guy, I guess. I mean that's real charming when you have to move an army because you're so drunk and then you go tonight. Hey, Hey, hey, s got wild, didn't it. I apologize for diet. Are you star in retrospect? I was drunker than you should be while commanding an army. I see that now, I see that as clear to me. Now. Also, can I borrow some money? We need to get our

guns back. Yeah. Now. Other sources I've read suggests that the reason Bowie chilled out maybe the he got sick with yellow fever right around this time. He definitely got sick with yellow fever. It's just kind of as a debate what that had an impact on, and his illness was probably due to a combination of poor sanitary conditions at the Alamo and the fact that he'd been on a multi week alcohol bender, which is bad for your

immune system. Whatever the truth, by the time the Battle of the Alamos started on February twenty third, Colonel Travis was back in the fort and Jim Bowie was confined to a sick bed, unable to command or fight. Uh And I'm not going to detail out the battle for the Alamo. Everyone listening this knows the broad strokes the

Texans got wiped out. They killed a lot of the besieging Mexican army, and that provided the Texan revolutionaries with a powerful rally and cry, YadA YadA, remember the Alamo. All that bullshit. The actual reality of the battle is less glorious than what I was raised to believe in school. You know, we were told that thousands upon thousands of Mexicans had been killed by the defenders. That's almost certainly bullshit. It is probably to say that they on balance fought

competently and acquitted for themselves pretty well. But there it was never a close fight. You know, they were horribly outnumbered and outclassed. Uh. Now, for some amount of time it was de rigor for Patrick patriotic retellings of the story of the battle to invent a heroic end for all of like the main figures you've got, You've got William Travis, You've got Bowie, Crockett, you've got Jim Bowie.

All these famous guys are at this fight, and they all have to die heroic deaths if you're doing like the the propaganda retelling of this right, yeah, the myths. The most famous painting of Jim Bowie at all is him at the Alamo leaping out of his sick bed and shooting a pair of Mexican soldiers with a brace

of pistols that he's concealed under his bed um. And that's kind of the like the picture that a lot of people like to portray him, like how he went out as I found a passage from nineteen fifty seven's Jim Booie James Bowie Big Dealer, which is an article about the man's life that kind of gives you an idea of how his last days are portrayed by the the pro Booie crowd. For Bowie not to have his

knife at the end would be unthinkable. David Crockett had arrived before Bowie became critically ill, and Colonel Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas a farrago of undetermined authorship that rings true to Crockett only in spots. Is this passage. I found Colonel Bowie and the Fortress, a man celebrated for having been in a more desperate personal conflicts than any other in the country. He gave me a friendly welcome and appeared to be mightily pleased that I had

arrived safe. While we were conversing, he had occasion to draw his famous knife to cut a strap, and I wish I may be shot at the bare side of it. Wasn't enough to give a man of squeamish stomach the colic, especially before breakfast. He saw I was admiring it and said, Colonel, you might tickle a fellow's ribs a long time with this little instrument before you'd make him laugh. Now this

story never happened. David Crockett never wrote this. Uh. Crockett actually probably hated Bowie because we know he wrote a letter complaining about his behavior. Um and the book that this is being quoted from was written by somebody else, just in Crockett's name to capitalize on his legend, and there is no evidence whatsoever that his famous knife was ever used even as like a camp tool in the battle, especially since Bowie was too sick to get out of bed.

Um Yeah and it. The task of trying to unravel exactly how Bowie died is difficult, both because of the hero worship around him and because of the network of grifters that arose around the Battle of Alamo. The most famous of them was mad Madame Candelaria, a woman who in her old age claimed to have been Bowie's nurse during the battle. She made a sizeable living and secured a pension from the state of Texas by providing patriotic Texans with heroic stories about how Travis, Bowie, and Crockett

all died because she claimed she'd been there. There's no evidence that this is true, and her stories about what happened at the Alamo changed repeatedly over the years of her life. Um I found a good article though, in True West magazine that's you Know, attempted to co collate all the different rumors of of Bowie's end quote. According to story spread after the battle, Bowie died either as a murder victim, a suicide, a battle casualty, or a

victim of sadistic torture. He may have died fighting from his sick bed, helplessly in a sick bed, or of an illness before sickon soldiers did the job. He may have been killed by swords, bayonets, gunfire, or fire. He may have died heroically or as a coward. One of the first reports to Sam Houston after the battle reported that Bowie was killed while lying sick in bed. Houston others passed on this information, interpreting it to mean he

had been murdered while sick in bed. However, Houston changed the story two days later, writing, our friend Bowie, as now was understood, unable to get out of bed, shot himself as the soldiers approached it. And unidentified Mexican soldier expressed a different opinion in the April fift eighteen thirty six edition of El Mosquito Mexicano uh he stated the perverse in Braggert Santiago, Bowie died like a woman almost

hidden under a mattress. Alamos survivor Susannah Dickinson Hannig waited on the subject thirty eight years later, she stated that Bowie was sick in bed, and when Mexican soldiers entered his room, he killed two of them with his pistols before they pierced him with their sabers. Nothing in Hannig's

statement indicates she actually witnessed this. Perhaps the most horrifying Taylor Bowie's death came in eighteen eighty two when William P. Zuber, who popularized the Alamo's famous line in the Sands Story, told the tale of a young Mexican fifer at Polinaro Salda Naga Poland Zuber claims witnessed Bowie brought out alive on a cot and placed before at a Mexican captain.

Bowie delivered a short patriotic speech to the captain, who became so outraged that he ordered his soldiers to cut Bowie's tongue out and hurl the still living man onto the Texas uh Texan dead's burning funeral pyre. So these are the different stories. We will never know which of these is true. Um we do know pretty well that he had yellow fever. So one thing we can all safely assume is that, however, James Bowie went out He died with the symptoms of advanced yellow fever, which are

uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting. So that's that's that's the story. Wow, fitting into a frontier hero. I mean, I just I mean, I'm not super shocked because I assume everyone starting about a hundred and fifty years ago back just had constant diarrhea. Yeah, yeah, it was he was sick and yeah yeah, yeah, but he was consistent that he wasn't bad like both definitely in bed. Seemed to say he was in bed. Some say like he's being real pussy about it on other side,

but no, he kind of thought that he wasn't laying down. Yeah, it would have been hard for him to um have done much fighting with the yellow fever. It's pretty crippling. So yeah, that's the story of old Jim Booie. That's I mean, I'll be honest, I never thought if you if you have a weapon named after you, your life was probably rough. Yeah yeah, not a lot of not a lot of peaceful lives wind up with weapons named

after them. He was just a great diplomat, huh. Yeah, he didn't want to argue, Yeah, we probably should have a weapon named after Henry Kissinger. But I don't think there's any in system that's killed as many people as Henry Kissinger. So yeah, I guess so war crimes, isn't that what it is? Yeah? Yeah, we could just name the concept of bombing people the Kissinger. Yeah yeah, so that is the motherfucking story of James Bowie. How are you feeling about old Jimbo? There was there was more

Louisiana then than I had anticipated. A lot of that, which makes more sense about like who and how he gets that name? I mean, but I like, I think my favorite part is just how everyone in his family capitalize on his fame. Yeah. Yeah, they would continue doing that well after his death because it was easy and made him a lot of money. Such an American thing too.

Yeah yeah, they're the first Duck dynasty. Is the Buoy family? Well, and I can't I keep thinking of I've been to Buffalo Bill's grave site in several different locations, so I keep thinking of that kind of stuff too, where it's like, oh it is it's like Jesse James hit out and never made you mean a wild Bill Hickock. Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, you gotcha. Yeah, No, not Buffalo did I say the guy like, yeah, yeah, while Bill sorry, but yeah, I've been to his several of his uh graves, which always

makes me laugh. That's like that kind of meat those that happens. Yeah, that's kind of what you get. So this has been the episode Billy you got any plug doubles you wanna wanna throw down? I just find me on Twitter at Billy Wayne Davis or on Instagram at Billy wyn Davis. Uh. And I have a podcast out called Growing Local that is about the people in the communities that make up just who where your cannabis comes from,

and the first season is about Eugene or again. Check out Billy Wayne's Cannabis podcast, pick Up a Bowie Knife, um and uh follow us on behind the Bastard's dot com and at Bastard's pot on Twitter and Instagram, and check out my new podcast, The Women's War, which is about people who aren't a piece of ships like James Bowie uh and are cool. So that's the episode Motherfucker's Wash your hands Goodbye. Yeah h