0:00

M. Knivess.

0:03

This is the story of Jim Bowie

0:06

of the Bowie Knight, Part two. Behind

0:08

the Bastards is Robert Evans, the podcast

0:10

of Bad People Talk about him co host

0:13

Billy Wayne Diddy. Billy,

0:17

I have learned that you don't actually need

0:19

to order words in any meaningful

0:21

way if you just make sure all of the important

0:24

words are kind of jumbled up into a salad.

0:26

People tend to get what you're saying. Are you saying

0:28

with the right emotion? Damn right, yep,

0:31

yep, yep. So why

0:33

even have grammar? That's the question.

0:35

And the answer is there's no reason to have

0:37

grammar, and

0:39

it's it's cowardly. I love grammar

0:42

is up, so

0:44

there are raisins. No,

0:47

yes, probably so. In our last

0:50

episode we talked about the famous sandbar fight,

0:52

which it's really just a giant

0:54

ship show. Uh and probably would have been

0:56

pretty funny to watch. It

0:58

was hilarious to listen about. Yeah,

1:01

up until that guy got his guts spelled all over

1:03

the sand bar. It was pretty funny. Um.

1:06

Still, that was that part. I mean, you

1:08

know where you're getting into, you know, in some

1:10

fairness, Jim Booie's a monster because of the slaves

1:13

stuff. In that fight. He did say

1:15

don't shoot at me, you rascal, like he

1:18

gave him proper warning, and that guy kept

1:20

shooting at him.

1:22

He did, he

1:24

did, And that is the general

1:26

rule. If somebody has a giant knife and

1:28

you're going to shoot at him, your best,

1:30

your best deal with them real fast

1:32

with your gun, because if you don't, they've got

1:35

a real big knife and they'll be angry at

1:37

you. That is I had a My middle school

1:39

basketball coach told me he carried

1:41

a twelve gauge in Vietnam because

1:43

an M six team just piste him off. And

1:45

I was like, okay, well that's we're a

1:47

basketball practice. But yeah,

1:51

that's really not helpful in any part of my life

1:53

right now. But thank you for scaring

1:56

a child. Yeah, and that information

1:58

has always stuck with me. Yeah.

2:02

I mean, in the days before body armor was common

2:04

in particular, stopping power was really um

2:07

anyway, let's just neither nor there

2:10

wasn't not wrong. If you want to stop a man,

2:12

it doesn't get much better than a twelve game shotgun

2:16

unless you have a gigantic knife

2:19

like Jim Bowie have had that

2:21

too. He probably did. Now

2:24

when we left our friend Jim. He had just disemboweled

2:27

a man during an argument and been shot

2:29

several times. And because the United States,

2:32

he's my friends, No he's not, because

2:35

the United States has not changed at all since

2:37

those days. This made him suddenly gigantically

2:40

famous, and he became a living legend of the Wild

2:42

West, like Wyatt Earp or Davy Crockett

2:44

or I have to assume based on his name Grizzly

2:47

Adams, and I refused to look up who Grizzly Adams

2:49

was, so don't tell me if I'm wrong. I

2:53

think he I think he fought grizzly bears

2:55

with his bare hands because he had to defend

2:57

orphanages. That's my head cannon for Grizzly

2:59

Adams. His brother was good at taking

3:01

pictures, probably Ansel

3:04

yep Anzel and Grizzly. So

3:08

once he'd healed from the sandbar fight, Jim Bowie

3:10

re entered polite society as a celebrity.

3:12

The eyes of the nation followed him as he traveled through

3:14

the Old West and gotten too even more fights.

3:17

Now, most of the fighting credited to Jim

3:19

Boweing never happened, and it's very possible that he

3:21

never killed another person with his knife again.

3:23

But there, of course numerous stories

3:26

you can find about him getting into fights and killing

3:28

two or three armed men with his gigantic knife.

3:30

And almost all of these your tall tales, you know. Um,

3:33

yeah, once you're famous for stabbing a guy to

3:35

death, there's gonna be a lot of other stories if you're stabbing

3:38

guys to death, even if you never stabbed another guy

3:40

to death. That's just America. It's Keith

3:42

Richards. Yeah. Yeah,

3:44

he doesn't do as many drugs you'd as you'd

3:46

think, but he got the reputation and it's

3:49

just stuck with him. Well, that's what in his book

3:51

he said, Yeah, I just never corrected anyonere

3:54

No, and why would you? Yeah,

3:57

yeah, it's it's uh,

4:00

it's all about personal branding, and Bowie knows

4:02

how to brand himself. Well, so

4:05

uh, yeah, he he didn't. Probably

4:08

it's probable that he never killed another

4:10

human being with his knife. Um,

4:12

but he continued to kill his shipload of people.

4:14

Don't worry about that, billy, He kept yet

4:16

he kept killing people. That did not stop.

4:19

Um. His brother John later wrote that after

4:21

recovering from the Sandbar fight quote, Jim

4:24

felt as though he had not been well used

4:26

or properly treated by some of his political friends,

4:28

and this, John Bowie says, is why Jim went

4:31

to Texas. Now, in

4:33

writing this, he left out about a year

4:35

or so worth of crimes that he and Jim both committed.

4:37

So like the kind

4:40

of frontier story that his brother tells us,

4:42

that like Jim got betrayed by some of his political

4:44

friends, and so he went to Texas, and he leaves out like what

4:46

actually happened, um, And

4:49

what actually happened is that for the next year

4:51

or so after the Sandbar fight, he

4:53

got back into conning people over

4:56

land. So basically he

4:58

would travel all across the frontier

5:00

buy up tracts of land, or purchase options

5:02

to buy up tracts of land, and then

5:04

he would sell that land to the highest bidder, hopefully

5:07

for a profit. Now this is called land

5:09

speculation and it's not illegal, um,

5:12

but it was kind of slower than Jim Booie was

5:14

comfortable with. So we started forging

5:16

options and land deeds and selling

5:18

those two. Now this is outright theft

5:20

because he was just lying about land that he had

5:22

no claim to, selling it to people and pocketing

5:25

the money. But the Internet didn't exist

5:27

back then, and people usually weren't fast enough

5:29

to catch him. Now, Jim went towards

5:31

quite a lot of effort to affect these forgeries,

5:33

even hiring actors to pretend to be landowners

5:36

so he could then convince buyers that he was this person's

5:38

representative, so he could sell them land that he had no

5:40

right to. So these were pretty elaborate

5:42

cons Yeah,

5:45

well he had to have gotten caught. He

5:47

got constantly, constantly. He wasn't

5:49

good at hiding it. People were just dumber

5:51

back then, and there was no Internet. Yeah,

5:54

And I was like, I'm gonna need an accomplice, yeah

5:56

yeah, and the accompany he

5:58

didn't need an accomplice, and his accomplices

6:00

were usually congress Yeah.

6:05

So he had friends in congress um

6:07

who would help him basically by like pushing

6:10

you know, the local banks and stuff to

6:12

to to recognize these deeds and stuff

6:15

that he was he was bringing forward um.

6:17

And eventually he decided the best way for him

6:19

to continue his scams and make a bunch of money

6:22

was to run for a local congressional seat in Louisiana

6:24

to to basically get in power himself.

6:27

And he worked at a deal with one of his friends who was

6:29

already in Congress, to basically take up that guy's

6:31

seat once his term ended and run in the next

6:33

election. But then his friend decided to

6:36

run for re election again, and Bowie

6:38

got angry at him, And this is what his brother referred

6:40

to as him not being properly treated

6:42

by political friends. So the

6:45

congressional election that year actually went

6:47

against his buddy and probably would have

6:49

gone against Bowie, and he was left without any

6:51

allies in Congress, and without any way of easily

6:53

continuing to swindle Rubes into buying land

6:56

he didn't already own. Over the course of

6:58

eighty eight, all of Jim's many schemes

7:00

collapsed one after the other, leaving him

7:02

at risk of becoming destitute um

7:04

or at least if he'd actually bothered to pay any of the debts

7:07

he'd accrued. The book Three Roads

7:09

to the Alamo gives a good summary of the actual

7:11

scale of the con Bowie was trying to work,

7:13

and it's it's enormous quote.

7:16

He had made a stunning lee, bold play and exploitation

7:18

and all laying fraudulent claim to eighty

7:20

thousand acres in Arkansas and between

7:23

seventy three thousand and eighty thousand

7:25

more in Louisiana. Yeah,

7:28

my god. If he had succeeded,

7:30

he would have been a Holer, part owner of two hundred

7:33

fifty square miles of bayou and riverfront

7:35

property, and possibly another two hundred square

7:37

miles and a hundred and eighty eight other Arkansas

7:39

claims he had withdrawn, making him the largest landowner

7:41

in the reasons in the region and in

7:43

his time very possibly the largest private

7:45

landholder in the United States.

7:48

So he would have been a millionaire if he'd

7:50

succeeded in this, but he failed, and

7:52

now he was all but broke by the end of eighteen eight.

7:55

So that's what leads him to Texas

7:58

is he has ailed in

8:00

a series of incredibly ambitious

8:02

land cons he winds up broke,

8:04

and Texas is the best shot he

8:07

has at getting a bunch more free

8:09

land. Yeah.

8:12

Yeah, I didn't think it was gonna be

8:14

a peer of heart thing, No,

8:17

no, so. And this

8:19

is another part that's interesting to me. Mexico's government

8:21

in my Texas history classes was always

8:24

portrayed as cruel and oppressive um

8:26

at worst and kind of like absentee

8:28

at best. And I later learned

8:30

that one of the many one of the main reasons

8:32

why white colonists hated the Mexican

8:34

government was that slavery was illegal in Mexico.

8:37

Um. This was a part of it, um. But also

8:39

the Mexican government didn't really stop a lot of these

8:42

white people from bringing in their slaves. They

8:44

wanted Americans to move in because they

8:46

had a lot of empty land and they needed people

8:48

to kind of like hold it down and cultivate

8:50

it and provide a tax base and stuff, um.

8:53

So a lot of them looked the other way at forced

8:55

human bondage, um. But

8:57

it was still more difficult to

9:00

uh to keep slaves there. But this was kind

9:02

of overwhelmed by the fact that Mexico wanted

9:05

settlers badly enough. They were willing to give

9:07

huge amounts of land to anyone who was willing

9:09

to pretend to be Catholic and agree to obey

9:11

Mexican law. So for

9:13

that small price, if you became a non citizen

9:16

settler in Texas, you got a hundred and

9:18

seventy seven acres to farm on and a

9:20

whole league four thousand, four hundred acres

9:23

to graze. Your Catalan even more

9:25

land up to eleven leagues could be purchased

9:27

for the dirt for a dirt cheap price if the

9:29

buyer was willing to become a Mexican citizen.

9:32

So Jim Bowie, I

9:35

would well, no, I wouldn't do that for Texas land.

9:37

I mean I know Texas too well,

9:39

Yeah exactly,

9:43

Yeah, I do that for part of Mexico for sure. Yeah.

9:45

No, no, no, I do not want to Texas.

9:48

No, no, no, no no. So Bowie

9:51

packed up his unregional and reasonably large

9:53

knife and he rolled in Mexico. His brother

9:55

John unceremoniously noted that he quote

9:57

disposed of his lands and negroes before

10:00

set out, because buying and selling people was

10:02

again nothing at all to the men of the Bowie

10:04

family. So yeah,

10:07

Jim was thirty two years old when

10:10

he finally made it to Mexico, and the most

10:12

entertaining description I've heard of him in this period of

10:14

time comes from historian J. Frank dbe Quote.

10:17

He found that reputation of his knife had preceded

10:19

him. He stood six ft tall and was all muscle. He

10:21

was pleasing and look speech men and manner to both

10:24

men and women. THO would have said that he seldom smiled.

10:26

Letters and other writing by him and Resent P. Bowie

10:29

are in clear, sinewy English. After

10:31

he had been in Texas a while, he spoke Spanish as

10:33

well as French. He was not a Ruffian, although

10:35

he could be rough. He comprehended the cutthroats

10:37

and gamblers of Natchez. While he dined in patrician

10:39

houses on the hill or sang in the theater. He

10:42

was at home with bellowing alligators in the marches,

10:44

with mustangs and mustangers on the prairies, and with

10:46

lawyers who would circumvent God. In

10:48

Texas, he fought Indians and Mexicans

10:51

and Texas. Yeah.

10:56

This is Adobe's article where he writes

10:58

that is from nineteen fifty seven. And

11:00

you can tell that the attitudes on colonialism

11:02

were a lot different by the fact that he just dropped and

11:05

he fought Indians and Mexicans. Yeah.

11:07

Yeah, yeah,

11:10

this is not inaccurate. Um, but it does

11:12

leave out kind of the brutality of what

11:15

exactly Jim Bowie got up to. Um.

11:19

Yeah. So here's how Jim's brother John

11:22

describes this massacre of a

11:24

bunch of Native Americans that Bowie commits not long

11:26

after getting to Texas. Quote. Uh,

11:29

during the few years he spent in Texas, he had many

11:31

strange and hazardous adventures, probably the most

11:33

notable of which was the following He and Resin Bowie

11:36

with nine others went in search of a silver mine

11:38

about two hundred miles northwest of San Antonio.

11:40

While on this expedition, they were attacked by about

11:42

a hundred and fifty Comanche Indians. James,

11:45

being well acquainted with the habits and manners of these

11:47

savages, soon perceived that they were on trail of

11:49

him and his little party for the purpose of murdering or robbing

11:51

them, So he availed himself of the first suitable

11:53

place for defense. Now, John

11:56

describes this as natives wanting to rob him,

11:59

but he and Jim, But the reality is that

12:01

he and like Jim and Rezin Bowie had

12:03

moved into Native American territory and

12:05

we're trying to steal their ship, and they were

12:07

carrying weapons. Um. He also

12:10

describes the natives as Comanche, but they

12:12

were Tawakoni, Waco and Catto

12:14

um And by any definition of the term I've

12:16

ever heard during my youth in Texas, these natives

12:19

were acting in self defense because, again Booie

12:21

and his brothers were part of a posse

12:23

of large armed men who would come unto their land to

12:25

steal a bunch of silver. Yeah, we'll just

12:28

judge on their recent past

12:30

history and I'm gonna like, I'm gonna go with the natives

12:32

on this one. Yeah

12:35

yeah. And what followed was probably might

12:37

have been the bloodiest single fight of

12:39

the period between white settlers and natives

12:42

and at least in the history of Texas. Um.

12:45

The natives, you know, a large group of them

12:47

surround the little fort that they built in the rocks

12:49

and opened fire. They kill one of Bowie's

12:51

men, uh booie. The Bowie

12:54

brothers and their other men fire back repeatedly,

12:56

and this continues for literally days,

12:59

Like there's multiple days of gunfire,

13:01

and by the time it's all over, fifty

13:04

to sixty Natives are dead, along

13:06

with a lot of their horses. Um.

13:08

And it's hard to say if the death counts in this

13:10

are anywhere near accurate um

13:12

because like white settlers

13:14

would lie a lot about how many people they killed in firefights,

13:17

but also they had access to much better guns. That

13:19

said, given what happened at the

13:21

Sandbar fight, I don't know how much I trust

13:24

the story of Jim Booie about his accuracy

13:26

in a gunfight. I don't know. It's hard to say,

13:29

but probably a lot of people did die because they

13:31

were in like a three day gun battle. So whatever.

13:34

Yeah, he murders a bunch of people. Well,

13:36

and he could have had like it could have

13:38

been like a like a regulator

13:41

situation where he picks up some people

13:43

that are handy with the steel because he

13:46

is. He's not, and they're using

13:48

rifles, you know, they're these guys are like wielding

13:50

like, you know, more accurate guns in this the

13:53

gunfight, they're using handguns and like in

13:55

this they're kind of shooting with like hunting rifles

13:57

which are more accurate and have rifled barrels

13:59

and stuff. Most

14:01

people will say fifty to sixty dead in the

14:03

total fight. It's impossible to know for sure.

14:05

But yeah, So after

14:09

the natives back off, Jim and his

14:11

men flee back to San Antonio,

14:14

UH and he immediately petitions the local

14:16

government for petition to raise an expedition

14:18

against the Tawakoni tribe because

14:21

you know, during this little invasion, he estimated

14:23

they had two thousand horses and he was basically

14:25

like, I just got into a gunfight with these guys,

14:28

and I think if you give me enough men, I can

14:30

steal all of their horses to sell them. So

14:34

he's a He's a good dude, That's what I'm

14:37

saying. Yeah.

14:40

So, um, yeah, we don't actually know if

14:42

this expedition ever happened. Um,

14:44

it may well have. Uh. And Bowie

14:46

is noted as having numerous other conflicts with Native

14:49

Americans during this period, all of

14:51

which kind of involved around him

14:53

rolling into their houses and stealing shit. Um,

14:56

But they're usually called expeditions by

14:58

like the historians, even in the twenty century.

15:00

A lot of historians will call it like he he raised

15:02

an expedition, and you're like, what was the expedition

15:04

for? Well, he wanted to steal things from these people,

15:09

valuables. I'm looking

15:11

for valuables that It's

15:14

like even you know, there's at least with like the Lewis

15:17

and Clark expedition, there's like this they

15:19

were making maps and ship

15:21

right, Like, there's criticisms to make of it,

15:23

but they were they did write some maps.

15:26

Booie is just taking things. Yeah.

15:31

So Jim applied for and eventually

15:34

received Mexican citizenship, which allowed

15:36

him to buy eleven leagues of land. He also

15:39

succeeded in convincing a number of Mexican citizens

15:41

to sign over their options for purchasing land

15:43

to him as well, and throughout this period, Jim

15:45

Bowie continued to make the bulk of his money

15:47

through an even mix of legitimate and fraudulent

15:50

land sales. So again, at

15:52

any given point in time, if you're wondering how is Jim

15:54

making a living, He's he's pretending.

15:57

He's he's selling fake land to people. He's

15:59

a and he's a real estate con artist.

16:02

That is Jim Booie's like secret

16:04

to wealth. How very modern of

16:07

him. Yeah, he has a lot in common with

16:09

our president, aside from the fact that he

16:11

was clearly willing to get into a fight. Oh

16:14

he'll get his hands dirty for sure. Yeah, Yeah,

16:17

he's He's definitely a better person than the

16:19

president. He's also very good

16:21

at spin, like calling

16:24

stuff an expedition, where like,

16:26

now, man, you're raiding villages that

16:28

you're you're just raiding people, you're

16:31

stealing their horses, not expedition.

16:34

Although this this does make me

16:37

think if I could get fifty to a hundred

16:39

people together and robbed the Toyota

16:41

dealership near me. We could just call it an

16:43

expedition to get free land

16:45

cruisers. That's actually not

16:47

AIP. You can call it an

16:49

expedition to get expeditions.

16:53

Yeah, yeah, but I feel like we'd be doing four

16:55

to favor by taking expeditions away.

17:00

Someone got him, someone came and took them. You guys

17:03

know, I I really want to get down to

17:05

an expedition. That's what we ought to do. Just

17:07

just just rebrand shoplifting

17:10

as an expedition. So

17:14

during this time, Jim Billie became friends with the

17:16

Mexican governor of Texas, a guy named

17:18

Veramindy, and he worked at a deal

17:20

with Aramindy by which he could marry

17:22

the governor's daughter. So he signed

17:25

a dowry with a Veramindy family, promising

17:27

to pay his wife more than fifteen thousand dollars

17:29

in money and property that he absolutely

17:31

did not have. He listed as collateral

17:34

the fraudulent properties in Louisiana and Arkansas

17:37

that he'd never actually owned in the first place.

17:39

Um, but he basically conned

17:41

to this governor and let him marry his daughter. And then

17:43

he immediately borrows seven fifty dollars

17:46

from his new family in law to take his new wife

17:48

on a vacation to New Orleans. All

17:53

right, I want to give you some money. Yeah,

17:55

I have some Can I have some money and

17:57

your daughter? I could

18:00

so. Jim and his new wife were married on April

18:04

thirty one. She was nineteen years old

18:06

and he was thirty five years old, although

18:08

he listed his age is thirty on the marriage

18:10

certificate. Weird,

18:13

very weird, just a little vain.

18:16

Just lie about your age

18:18

on when it's technically legal.

18:21

I mean, that makes me think if he's lying about

18:23

his age, maybe she her age was not. Actually,

18:26

I don't know,

18:28

this is a different time. It's entirely

18:30

possible he actually thought he was thirty.

18:33

Again, not a

18:35

lot of official governments documents

18:37

about when you came into the world at this point.

18:39

And he's taking several guns

18:42

to the head at this point. Yes, he's

18:44

been hitting the head a number of times. And

18:46

remember his mom only taught him

18:48

the alphabet, so numbers probably

18:51

not Jim Bowie strong suit. So

18:55

um. Yeah, And a big part of why

18:57

you got married seemed to be that getting hitched

19:00

h to a Mexican, or getting hitched

19:02

to anyone at all, entitled him to another four

19:04

thousand acres from the government, and since

19:06

his wife was a rich girl, he was also entitled

19:09

now to live at the Veramindy House, which was

19:11

basically a palace because he's you know, he's the

19:13

governor of Texas. UM.

19:16

Now, the sources I have read all

19:19

tend to agree that he like was legitimately

19:21

in love with his wife and that the Veramendy

19:23

family treated him as a son. I have

19:25

found no evidence to discount this, so

19:27

I kind of have to assume that this was in fact

19:29

the case, even though given all of the scams

19:31

he got up to, in the fact that he lied about

19:34

the money he had to get a dowry, I'm very

19:37

hesitant to give Bowie credit for anything,

19:39

but I don't know. I I have no evidence

19:41

that he didn't truly care for this woman

19:44

or for his adopted family, so

19:46

I gotta say that. Um.

19:48

And there's definitely evidence that the Veramendy family

19:51

really cared about Jim Uh. He was

19:53

quote furnished with money and supplies without limit,

19:55

and was basically got to live as

19:58

a rich boy for a while. UM. Since he

20:00

no longer needed to work, he gave

20:02

up his land conning and spent several

20:04

bliss for years, living in a palace and

20:06

occasionally going out on expeditions to

20:08

steal gold and silver from Native people,

20:11

mainly just for fun. I was gonna say,

20:13

that's just like it sounds like he just likes to go

20:16

Yeah, just l Ron

20:19

Hubbard's style gold hunting expeditions,

20:21

but with a higher body count. So

20:25

that we know of, he was on one of these

20:27

trips getting into gunfights with Native Americans

20:30

when his wife, their two children, and his father

20:32

and mother in law all died horrifically

20:34

during a cholera outbreak. Um,

20:37

so he's just like out camping and his whole

20:39

family is wiped out by cholera in the space

20:41

of a few days. Uh, which

20:43

focks him up right that that that's

20:45

hard to deal with your whole family

20:48

dying at the same time, feel like most

20:50

people would would would have a little

20:52

bit of trouble with that. And a lot of sources

20:54

will claim that this is when Jim began to drink heavily.

20:57

You know, he'd always had a tendency to party

20:59

a little hard sometimes, but kind of

21:01

after this point you see him increasingly

21:03

sort of sinking into straight up alcoholism.

21:06

Changed the way, Yeah,

21:09

yeah, yeah, that seems fair

21:11

to say. If you want to protect your

21:13

family from cholera, the f d A guarantees

21:16

that all of these products and services will

21:18

render them immune. So you can drink any kind

21:20

of ditch water you want. Just get out there,

21:22

buy some products and go suck it up. Ditch

21:24

water. Here's a product. We're

21:31

back. I hope you're all enjoying all

21:34

this ditch water. It's good stuff.

21:37

Keep buying the products. I

21:40

don't know. Sometimes this is

21:42

where we go. This, this is

21:44

the joke that I made. And now we're

21:46

returned, and it's time to talk about Jim Bowie some more.

21:49

I'm so sorry. So it's

21:51

debated by historians just how much the depths

21:54

of Jim's family influenced his

21:56

drinking. Um, and it's also debated how much of a

21:58

drunk he was. A lot of very pro Texas

22:00

types will argue that there's no real evidence that

22:02

he had a problematic history with alcohol. Um.

22:06

I don't think this is true. Uh, And it seems

22:09

like most of the good historians,

22:11

even the ones who are kind of see him as

22:13

a little bit of a hero, disagree with this. Historian

22:16

William C. Davis notes that after his family's

22:19

death quote. For the first half of eighteen thirty

22:21

four, Bowie largely wandered and may have

22:23

surrendered to drink more than he should as he tried

22:25

to regain his personal and financial balance.

22:27

His old temper flared again and there were fights.

22:30

After one supposed brawl in San Antonio,

22:32

he asked a friend why he had not come into help in

22:34

the scuffle. The man answered that, so far

22:36

as he could tell, Bowie had been in the wrong

22:38

in the encounter. Don't you suppose

22:40

I know that as well as you do, replied

22:42

Bowie. That's just why I needed a friend.

22:44

If I had been in the right, I would have had plenty of

22:47

them. He's

22:50

not wrong, No, he's not. I

22:52

love that though he's not right either.

22:54

That is some good frontier logic.

22:57

Um. Yeah,

22:59

So he spent most of the next year engaged

23:01

in a series of land speculation schemes

23:04

because again, like he's rich, a rich boy for

23:06

a while, but when his rich family dies, he doesn't

23:08

inherit their money, right because he's like the

23:10

son in law. So now he's back on his

23:12

own again. Um. And unfortunately

23:15

for him, the Mexican government had grown

23:17

increasingly concerned about the fact that it had

23:19

been giving away huge chunks of Texas to Americans.

23:22

Uh these men often flouted the laws of Mexico

23:24

by, for example, bringing in slaves, and

23:26

in general, it became very clear that they had

23:29

no real interest in being part of Mexico.

23:31

So Mexico began to crack down and restrict

23:33

the kind of speculation and sale of land that Bowie

23:36

engaged in. Now Luckily

23:38

for Jim, right at about this period

23:40

of time, a fella named Santa Anna

23:43

succeeded in becoming the dictator of Mexico

23:45

in all but name, and like any

23:47

good authoritarian, he's set right to work clamping

23:49

down on opposition to his regime, largely

23:52

by shutting down local militias and ordering

23:54

them to send him their guns. Zec

23:56

Tecas, which was one of the states in Mexico, rebelled

23:58

and it was brutally crushed. The whole

24:00

situation resulted in a huge amount of unrest

24:03

in other Mexican states, and we're not gonna

24:05

be able to detail all of it here. The short

24:07

of it is that the capital of the Mexican state

24:09

that Texas was in, a city called mont

24:11

Clova, decided that they needed to raise

24:13

money to get up militia in their own

24:16

defense from Santa Anna, and they did

24:18

this by opening up a huge amount of land

24:20

for purchase. Since Bowie had been

24:22

the governor's son in law, he was given the job

24:24

of disbursing and selling all of this land.

24:26

And since he was corrupt as all hell, he basically

24:28

took a bunch of bribes for this, and he also got

24:31

a huge chunk of that land himself. And

24:33

by the time all of the chips had landed and all

24:35

the land was so sold, he owned

24:37

more than a million acres. Now,

24:40

this is a lot of land, so

24:44

much even in Texas.

24:47

Yeah, And basically, once Santa

24:49

Anna heard that like the capital of

24:51

one of his own states had given away this land,

24:53

much land to a bunch of white people to raise a militia

24:55

to defend themselves from him, he was like, fuck

24:58

this ship. Uh. He declared the

25:00

whole sale null and void, which effectively

25:03

wiped out Jim's entire fortune. Um.

25:06

So, Santa Anna sent an army up to Mount

25:08

Clovi to crack down on all of this blatantly criminal

25:10

land speculation, and Jim Bowie and his friends

25:12

like showed up to like protest and They

25:14

were immediately arrested and jailed, but

25:16

they succeeded in escaping and fleeing back

25:19

to Texas. Booie made his way to Nacodoches

25:21

and became one of the loudest voices in the War

25:24

Party, the men who increasingly advocated

25:26

the taking up of arms against Santa Anna's government.

25:29

Well, I mean that that the War Party is pretty

25:31

clear. Yeah, yeah,

25:33

I think we should have one of those now where we

25:36

know what you guys want. They're not framing

25:38

themselves as Texas independence

25:41

advocates at this point. They're framing themselves as against

25:43

Santa Anna's dictatorship. Like they're saying they

25:45

want to return to the original Mexican constitution

25:48

before Santa Anna took power. Like that's

25:50

kind of where they are right now. Uh.

25:52

And a lot of people for because like there's a lot

25:54

of Mexicans and white people who are like kind

25:56

of all on the same side of this, and it's because

25:58

a lot of those Mexicans like don't like Santa Anna.

26:01

Um. And then there's folks like Booie

26:03

who kind of he doesn't really care politically

26:06

about what's happened. He cares that Santa Anna's

26:08

screwed him out of his chance at becoming a millionaire.

26:11

Um. So yeah, on July

26:14

five hundred citizens of Nakodocha has declared

26:17

themselves a militia and they vote Jim Bowie to be

26:19

their colonel. Um. Now,

26:21

he immediately his first act as colonel is

26:23

to rob a Mexican government storehouse of muskets

26:26

uh and the government considered this to be him

26:28

inciting violence, which is pretty fair

26:31

way. That's a good that's

26:33

a good way to call it. Yeah,

26:35

it's very different from me stealing, for

26:37

example, Toyota land cruisers. That's

26:39

an expedition. You know, that's not inciting

26:42

violence. So Booie

26:44

had to flee to the United States to raise

26:46

money and men uh to to you

26:49

know, continue to make this revolution possible.

26:51

And he returned to Texas just in time

26:53

for the first shots of the Texas Revolution

26:55

to be fired on October two, eighteen thirty

26:58

five. Um. Now, there

27:00

are a lot of other guys involved, and I'm not going to like

27:03

for one thing, Texas revolutionary

27:05

history is and my favorite kind of history, so I'm not going to go into

27:07

wild detail about this. But yeah,

27:09

there's a bunch of people and at the beginning,

27:12

they just kind of want to go back to the way

27:14

things were before Santa Ana. And it gradually

27:16

evolves into an independence

27:18

movement for Texas to become an independent

27:20

nation, right, but it doesn't really start that way. Um.

27:23

And it's a very democratic sort of

27:25

movement that that that's that spot

27:28

like pops up. So these guys are all voting,

27:30

like it's all guys. Women can't vote, obviously,

27:33

neither can enslaved people. Um.

27:35

But these the men, all the white men,

27:37

all vote for their leaders. And a guy named

27:39

Stephen F. Austin is elected the commander

27:42

of the Texas New Army. Um.

27:45

So, by the time Booie got back into

27:47

Texas from his little sojourn in the United States,

27:49

that army was about five men in size.

27:52

Uh. It continued to grow over the course of days,

27:54

and Bowie was named a colonel once again and

27:56

given command of a column of about ninety men.

27:59

Uh. And he was a pretty good military leader,

28:01

which you might guess from the fact that he was just generally

28:03

good at shooting people, well killing people

28:06

that I was gonna say, he knew how

28:08

to kill animals

28:10

and people. And like a lot of killing animals

28:13

is the same it's the

28:16

same. I started really reading a

28:18

lot of military strategy. I was like, this is this

28:20

is what this is. Yeah, and

28:23

especially like these are not gigantic Napoleonic

28:25

battles like again the armies like five hundred dudes.

28:28

Like these are often confrontations between

28:30

a few dozen people in the middle of nowhere,

28:32

Texas who like shoot at each other and like twenty

28:35

people die and one side backs

28:37

off first, and it's a great victory, you know.

28:40

Yeah, yeah, so and

28:42

Bolli was a pretty good military commander. Several

28:44

weeks later, he led his men into battle against a Mexican

28:47

army force at a place called Conception,

28:49

Uh. And the force that he winds up fighting

28:52

is like double the size of his own army. But he

28:54

and his men win, and this is like the first great

28:56

rebel victory of the war. UM.

28:58

Now, Unfortunately, Steve N. F. Austin was not a

29:01

very good commander, and the Army of Texas

29:03

was not a particularly orderly army, and

29:05

a series of organizational and leadership failures

29:07

stopped them from taking advantage of Bowie's victory.

29:10

UH. And soon enough they wound up in a kind of clusterfux

29:13

situation. UM.

29:15

So what's important to understand is that men kept

29:17

deserting and kept stepping down, and eventually the

29:19

army found itself having to hold another election

29:21

to determine its commander. There are so many

29:23

fucking votes with the Texas uh

29:26

like Revolutionary Army over like who should

29:28

be in charge? Like they hold them all of the goddamn

29:30

time. Every time something goes wrong, they're like, all right, who do

29:32

we want to be in charge now? Um?

29:35

Yeah, But I think they got the Libertarian

29:37

Party. There's a big aspect

29:40

of that to this, and like the Libertarians, they can't

29:42

make up their mind about a goddamn thing. That's what it

29:44

sounds like. That's that's the exact

29:47

metaphor I was used. It was like, it just sounds like it's

29:49

just like the Libertarian Party. We're like, hey,

29:51

I don't like, hey, he's doing stuff changing.

29:54

So Bowie campaigns hard to be

29:56

the commander of this army, and they hold a vote

29:58

and he receives five votes. Um.

30:02

And this is generally because people didn't really

30:04

like him. He was considered to be like a pretty good

30:06

combat commander, so individual people willing

30:08

to follow him in the bat follow him in the battle. But

30:11

he was also like known to

30:13

be he was a guy with like a gigantic

30:15

temper who was drunk a lot of the time, tough

30:19

hang. So he gets angry that

30:21

he loses this vote, and he resigns his

30:23

commission and like announces

30:25

that he's becoming a private again as kind

30:27

of a fuck you to Stephen F. Austin, and

30:30

then he just leaves the army entirely and he travels

30:32

to San Felipe, where he meets with Sam Houston.

30:34

Now another election had been held recently

30:37

in human Houston had been made the major general

30:40

in charge of all of texas Is armed forces,

30:42

so Austin was reassigned and the army

30:45

now had no actual field commander, so

30:47

it had Houston in charge of it, but

30:49

like nobody had been voted actually lead it into battle.

30:52

Um and Booie like basically

30:54

tries to ingratiate himself into Houston's

30:56

that he can hopefully get appointed to be in charge

30:58

of the army, but he can't really get

31:00

a handle on his drinking, and by the time he and Houston

31:03

actually meet for the first time in sam Pelipe,

31:05

he is, in the words of one attendee, dead

31:08

drunk. Um and Houston

31:10

is kind of like carefully, like, well, I'm

31:12

not gonna just a point you in charge of the army.

31:15

Why don't you go back and the whole army will hold

31:17

another vote, and now that Austin's out, I'm

31:19

sure they will elect you to be in charge of the

31:21

army. So still wasted,

31:23

Jimbowie drunkenly rides back to the

31:26

army and he keeps right on drinking

31:28

throughout the election. He actually gets blackout

31:30

hammered on the night of the vote. Um,

31:33

and for some reason his fellow soldiers

31:35

decided to give the job to another guy.

31:41

Reading historians talk about this, it's really

31:43

funny because they'll often be like, it's peculiar

31:46

that they didn't vote for Bowie despite his good combat

31:48

performance. And I was like, well, because they saw he was wasted

31:50

every time he wasn't in a gunfight. I

31:55

mean, you gotta be a pretty bad

31:57

drunk for other people, for other

31:59

soldiers to be like, yeah,

32:03

yeah, these guys are like patient zero

32:05

for libertarianism. There's literally

32:07

no law because they're revolting against legal

32:10

authority, and they all have guns in the middle of

32:12

nowhere, and they're like, this guy is too

32:14

much of a drunken ruin for us. Yeah,

32:20

it's pretty cool. So uh

32:23

yeah, he just he didn't doesn't

32:25

do well in elections. So he is,

32:27

however, given command of another unit of

32:29

several dozen men, and they perform well in

32:31

a number of skirmishes against the Mexican Army.

32:33

And again, as a rule, when he actually gets into

32:35

combat, Jim Bowie does a really good job. He's good at

32:37

leading men in battle. You gotta give him credit for that

32:40

he does. Yeah,

32:43

if you want someone to help other people

32:45

kill a group of strangers, Jim Booie is

32:47

your fucking man. He's a good

32:49

stranger killer. Any anything

32:52

other than that, he's gonna be drunk. Yeah,

32:55

he's He's not even good at land

32:57

speculation. He just does it all the time. Yeah.

33:00

Yeah, And I don't think he knows he's doing.

33:03

We think he had the blackout the hole. He's

33:05

just wasted the whole time. Yeah.

33:08

So, at one point during the war, along

33:10

the San Antonio River, Bowie and his men heard

33:12

a rumor that the general of the Mexican Army

33:15

was grazing his horses nearby. And this wasn't Santa

33:17

Ana yet, This is like the Mexican army before Santa

33:20

Anna comes up. So they

33:22

set out to like figure out where these horses

33:24

are so they can either steal the horses or disperse

33:26

the horde because you know that the herd, because that would do

33:28

a lot of damage to the army get rid of all of their

33:30

horses. So while they're scouting around

33:32

to try to find these horses, Bowie and his

33:34

men capture a random Mexican dude

33:36

who claims to know the guy

33:39

who was tending the herd, and he told

33:41

Bowie that if they found that guy, they would be

33:43

able to find the horses. But Bowie isn't willing

33:45

to listen to this. He thinks this guy is lying and knows

33:47

where the horses are, so he arrests the man

33:49

instead. And I'm gonna quote from William

33:52

C. Davis here he writes quote.

33:54

One of the volunteers, Placido

33:57

Benavidez, suggested that they tie them

33:59

in, put a rope around his neck and raised him by a tree

34:01

branch, strangling him until he agreed to talk.

34:03

There was nothing surprising in that for Benavidez.

34:05

He was one of the ricos, the wealthy landed local

34:07

aristocracy like the Vara Mendez, the family

34:10

that Buoy married into, who felt an ancestral

34:12

cultural contempt or at best disdain for

34:14

the pabres the poor. Thus,

34:16

for Benavidez, there was no dishonor in torturing

34:19

a peon for information, especially if he was working

34:21

for the enemy. Bowie, who

34:23

came from an entirely different culture that generally

34:25

frowned upon such brutality, agreed to

34:27

the suggestion perhaps his marriage into

34:29

the Vara Mendes had brought him not just family affluence,

34:32

but also family attitudes. The brutality,

34:34

once commenced, almost got out of hand, almost

34:37

got out of hand. Bowie ordered a

34:39

fire started near the tree, and then some of his

34:41

men hauled the unfortunate man up over

34:43

at adding the double torture of burning, or

34:46

at least extremely uncomfortable proximity

34:49

to the blaze, to the strangulation that's

34:51

almost out of hand. It

34:55

was almost this is almost

34:57

too much. Yeah. At the same time,

35:00

eight of his company stood with cocked rifles

35:02

besides the fire, pointing them at the poor man.

35:04

When the victims stopped kicking and appeared near unconsciousness,

35:07

they let him down and threatened to shoot him. He

35:09

refused to talk. And the whole business was repeated

35:11

twice more, even though one of Bowie's men rebelled

35:13

at the cruelty and refused to participate

35:15

further. After the third time, the Mexican

35:18

revealed the whereabouts of a herd of horses, although

35:20

Booie's one rebel suspected they may have belonged

35:22

to the man himself instead of the enemy army,

35:25

and he gave them up simply to save his life.

35:27

Even then, it seems Booie was not done, announcing

35:29

that he intended to continue the torture the next

35:31

morning, although what there was left to gain

35:33

as a mystery. Now. Thankfully

35:36

he doesn't go through with continuing the torture

35:38

this poor son of a bitch. But he doesn't make the

35:40

guy who'd refused to torture the prisoner

35:42

guard him that night. This is like a punishment

35:44

because he's a dick. Yeah,

35:49

almost out of hand, Billy, Almost

35:52

almost out of hand. Do you think like some

35:54

of his friends like the next day, See, dude,

35:56

this is what we're talking about. This is why we can't

35:58

let you. This

36:01

is you keep doing this ship

36:03

Jim. Nobody wants this guy in charge.

36:05

Like, we're all pretty racist,

36:07

but come on, man,

36:09

come on. So

36:13

the Texas Revolution had, as I said, started

36:15

at against the revolution against Santa Anna, and

36:17

a number of the early revolutionaries were in fact

36:19

loyal to the Mexican Constitution. Bowie himself

36:22

professed a loyalty to it initially, but as

36:24

the fighting went on, the cause of total independence

36:26

took off primarily among the white residents of

36:28

the area, and Bowie got on board with this

36:30

train. William see Davis clearly believes

36:32

that he did so out of a mix of patriotism and

36:34

a healthy desire to get back all the land he'd stolen

36:37

and then had stolen back from him. Um

36:39

I personally see Jim and

36:41

his bartaceous participation is an even mix of

36:43

land grab and an addiction to violence. But whatever

36:47

honest men can disagree. In any case,

36:49

Boway's passed through the war eventually led him

36:51

to the Alamo and modern day San Antonio

36:54

now the town around it was then called Beijar, and

36:56

the fourth of the Alamo contained a large number

36:59

of field guns, which is actually the vast bulk

37:01

of the artillery available to the Texan rebels.

37:04

As Santa Anna marched Fourth because the army

37:06

he had first sent in they do eventually beat that army,

37:08

so Santa Ana has to march up with a larger Mexican

37:11

army, thousands and thousands of soldiers. And

37:13

at first they think he's just going to send a few men to attack

37:15

the Alamo, and they have plenty of guns to hold it. But then

37:17

he sends like the bulk of his army there um

37:20

and they don't abandon it because all of the guns

37:22

that has means that it's kind of critical to the war effort.

37:25

And to make a long and pretty boring story

37:27

short, eventually Santa Anna's whole big gass

37:29

army winds up marching on the Alamo, and the two

37:31

men in charge of its defense where a guy named

37:34

Colonel William Travis and Jim Booie.

37:36

By the way, Austin is in Travis County.

37:38

Like I was, I was gonna say, I

37:40

know how all that comes together? Yet Yeah,

37:43

so joke, I usually do what I'm in Austin.

37:45

It's like it's just two of the widest

37:48

names you've ever heard of, Just like it's

37:50

just somebody from around rock yelling at

37:52

their kids. Austen, Travis, Gideon here

37:56

Travis, Jim Bowie, you get in here,

37:58

now Gideon here, Yeah,

38:01

get you all on in there. Yeah, it's it's

38:03

it's good

38:05

old home state of Texas.

38:08

So Bowie's went rank of colonel had

38:10

never really been real. He'd been elected

38:12

by militia and then sort of voted into

38:14

or appointed into a couple of different command positions.

38:17

But his troops were like irregulars. They were what

38:19

was called volunteers, while

38:21

Colonel Travis was a man with an actual military

38:24

experience and his troops were like regular

38:26

trained troops with like like

38:28

they couldn't just leave if they wanted to. Like Bowie's

38:30

men were kind of there as volunteers, they

38:32

could funk off at any point. Travis's

38:35

troops were like normal soldiers. So

38:38

yeah, once they arrive,

38:41

you've got the military at the Alamo divided

38:43

into like regular soldiers under Travis

38:45

and irregulars under Bowie. And

38:48

Travis is ostensibly supposed to be in

38:50

charge of the whole operation. But Bowie's

38:52

men aren't willing to listen to this guy. They trust the dude

38:54

that they've been fighting with more than some like fancy

38:56

colonel with a fucking army degree. So

38:59

the whole army holds yet another fucking

39:01

election and the two. The result of

39:03

it leaves the two men sharing power.

39:05

Bowie stays in charge of the volunteers and

39:08

Travis is in charge of the regular army.

39:10

And this is not a good state of affairs,

39:13

having the army divided into two chunks who

39:15

don't listen to each other or each other's commander.

39:17

Turns out that's actually not like an

39:20

ideal way to army. No, no,

39:23

yeah, as Davis

39:25

writes, quote, no one was completely in charge.

39:27

Bowie would not obey Travis, and Travis certainly

39:30

would not yield a Bowie, so that garrison divided

39:32

into somewhat unfriendly camps. On February

39:34

twelfth, Adjutant J. J. Boss

39:37

saw that Bowie, availing himself of his popularity

39:39

among the volunteers, seemed anxious to arrogate

39:41

to himself the entire control. So

39:43

he's trying to like he wants to take control. But

39:46

the next day the situation become intolerable, precipitated

39:49

mainly by Bowie unfortunately choosing his election

39:51

as an event worth celebrating with a two day drunk.

39:54

So they have this vote that splits them into and Bowie

39:56

just spent the next couple of days wrecked out of his

39:58

fucking head, Robert. What else

40:00

celebrates a two day drunk me?

40:03

Yeah? Who else? Yeah?

40:05

That's I mean Quip the toothbrush

40:08

people probably probably probably, That's

40:11

why I like them so much, and also

40:13

the other products and services that support this

40:16

podcast all big fans of being drunk

40:18

for two straight days, we're

40:25

back. Oh what a day,

40:27

What a day it is? Yeah, So, Jim Bowie,

40:30

they've just held this election, they've split the control of the

40:32

army into and Jim Bowie is just fucking

40:35

celebrates this by getting ship house wasted.

40:38

Like he's never succeeded in being elected to command

40:40

of the army, but he's gotten elected to command

40:42

of half of an army, and that's that's

40:44

worth celebrating. So drunk

40:46

Bowie pretty much immediately let this new state

40:49

of as

40:51

little be happy about it, yet might as well

40:53

be for a good reason. So,

40:55

uh, he's wasted in celebrating

40:58

his control of half of an army when he sees a

41:00

group of local bahernos like citizens

41:02

of the nearby town trying to flee the town

41:04

with their property to avoid the fact that a battle

41:07

is about to happen, and he arrests these

41:09

people for no real reason. Now,

41:11

at the same time, he also started randomly

41:14

de arresting people that the local judge

41:16

had already sentenced for crimes. There

41:18

seems to have been no real rhyme or reason for any

41:20

of this, because he actually sat on

41:23

like the judge panel that had convicted

41:25

some of these friends these men when he was

41:27

sober, and then just decided to free them

41:29

from jail at random. Uh.

41:31

When the judge complained about this, Bowie had

41:33

his volunteers marched through the main square

41:35

of the town of Behard to intimidate him.

41:37

Unfortunately, Bowie and all of his men

41:39

were wasted, as one volunteer. One volunteer

41:42

described the marching and quote a tumultuously

41:44

and disorder and disorderly manner. Bowie himself

41:46

and many of his men being drunk, which has been the case

41:48

ever since he has been in command. So

41:51

like he randomly decides to free a bunch of prisoners,

41:53

the judge complains, and he has a drunken

41:55

mob gather in the middle of town to yell at

41:57

the judge. All this sounds like a

42:01

right fun Bowie. Now, yeah, I do think,

42:03

yeah, he's got all his killing done. He's like let's

42:05

just mix it up a little bit. Let's just get wasted,

42:08

buddy. So next Bowie de arrested

42:10

a private in the regular Army, a man that Colonel

42:12

Travis had convicted of mutiny for. Again

42:15

no real reasonable man. Yeah,

42:18

this pissed Travis off. Anyway,

42:23

he wound up writing a letter to their governor, and

42:25

Davy Crockett also wrote a letter because

42:27

Davy Crockett was there at this point, and he's really pissed

42:29

a Jim Bowie's bullshit now. In his lever

42:31

letter, Travis complained that the situation was quote

42:34

truly awkward and delicate due to

42:36

the fact that his co commander had been roaring

42:38

drunk all the time and was turning

42:40

everything topsy turvy. He

42:42

ended the letter by stating he would remain at the album

42:45

over the sake of honor, but quote I am unwilling

42:47

to be responsible for the drunken irregularities

42:49

of any man. I mean, that's gonna

42:51

cost him his life. That's what's

42:54

going to happen. They're all gonna die. Yeah,

42:56

yeah, yeah,

43:00

that's so.

43:02

The situation continued to deteriorate, and Bowie's

43:05

drunkenness grew even more extreme. His volunteer

43:07

army turned into a multi day long keg party,

43:10

and some of his men actually sold their rifles

43:12

to buy liquor. Yeah, I'm

43:16

not gonna need this

43:20

this fucking

43:22

thing, so one

43:24

observer at the time reported most of the garrison

43:27

was drunk. Travis kept on complaining

43:29

about this, and the fights between the two men soon

43:31

degenerated into an utterly untenable situation.

43:34

Travis eventually had to leave the Alamo

43:36

with his regular soldiers because he was afraid the

43:38

two groups would start shooting at each other if they

43:40

stayed together any longer. But

43:42

then on Valentine's Day, Jim Bowie sobered

43:45

up. And we don't really know why. He

43:47

might have come to his senses, or he might have just

43:49

trade out of ran out of liquor and guns

43:51

to trade for liquor. But as Davis

43:53

writes, as quickly as it arose, the problem

43:55

seemed to evaporate, and that was probably due to Bowie.

43:58

It is well known that he sometimes drank too much,

44:00

recalled William W. Fontaine, who was one

44:02

of the little children at Montville with Charles Travis,

44:05

but it is not so generally known how quickly he

44:07

hastened to make the amends honorably, so

44:09

that he soon came under the influence of as soon

44:11

as he came out from under the influence

44:13

of liquor on February fourteenth, but he sobered

44:15

and apparently went on to see Travis and gave an apology

44:18

for Immediately, Travis and his command returned to San

44:20

Antonio, and all signs of friction between

44:22

the two disappeared for good. Wow.

44:25

Yeah, he's a charming guy,

44:27

I guess. I mean that's real charming

44:30

when you have to move an army because

44:32

you're so drunk and then you go tonight. Hey,

44:34

Hey, hey, s got

44:37

wild, didn't it. I apologize

44:39

for diet. Are you star

44:42

in retrospect? I was drunker than

44:45

you should be while commanding an army.

44:47

I see that now, I see that as clear

44:49

to me. Now. Also, can I

44:52

borrow some money? We need to get our guns back.

44:54

Yeah. Now. Other

44:57

sources I've read suggests that the reason Bowie

44:59

chilled out maybe the he got sick with yellow fever

45:01

right around this time. He definitely

45:03

got sick with yellow fever. It's just kind of as a debate

45:06

what that had an impact on, and his illness

45:08

was probably due to a combination of poor sanitary

45:10

conditions at the Alamo and the fact that

45:12

he'd been on a multi week alcohol bender,

45:14

which is bad for your immune system.

45:17

Whatever the truth, by the time the Battle of the

45:19

Alamos started on February twenty third,

45:21

Colonel Travis was back in the fort and Jim Bowie

45:23

was confined to a sick bed, unable

45:25

to command or fight. Uh

45:28

And I'm not going to detail out the battle for the Alamo.

45:30

Everyone listening this knows the broad strokes the Texans

45:32

got wiped out. They killed a lot of the besieging

45:34

Mexican army, and that provided the Texan revolutionaries

45:37

with a powerful rally and cry, YadA YadA, remember

45:39

the Alamo. All that bullshit. The actual

45:41

reality of the battle is less glorious than what I

45:43

was raised to believe in school. You know, we were

45:46

told that thousands upon thousands of Mexicans

45:48

had been killed by the defenders. That's

45:50

almost certainly bullshit. It is

45:52

probably to say that they on balance

45:55

fought competently and acquitted for

45:57

themselves pretty well. But there it was never a

45:59

close fight. You know, they were

46:01

horribly outnumbered and outclassed. Uh.

46:04

Now, for some amount of time it was de

46:06

rigor for Patrick patriotic retellings

46:08

of the story of the battle to invent a heroic

46:10

end for all of like the main figures you've got,

46:13

You've got William Travis, You've got Bowie, Crockett,

46:15

you've got Jim Bowie. All these famous guys are at this

46:17

fight, and they all have to die heroic deaths if

46:19

you're doing like the the propaganda

46:22

retelling of this right, yeah,

46:25

the myths. The most famous painting

46:27

of Jim Bowie at all is him at the

46:29

Alamo leaping out of his sick

46:31

bed and shooting a pair of Mexican soldiers

46:33

with a brace of pistols that he's concealed under

46:35

his bed um. And that's kind of

46:37

the like the picture that a lot of people

46:40

like to portray him, like how he went

46:42

out as I found a passage from nineteen

46:44

fifty seven's Jim Booie James Bowie

46:46

Big Dealer, which is an article about the man's life

46:49

that kind of gives you an idea of how his

46:51

last days are portrayed by the the pro

46:53

Booie crowd. For Bowie

46:55

not to have his knife at the end would be unthinkable.

46:58

David Crockett had arrived before Bowie became

47:00

critically ill, and Colonel Crockett's Exploits and

47:02

Adventures in Texas a farrago of

47:04

undetermined authorship that rings true to Crockett

47:07

only in spots. Is this passage.

47:09

I found Colonel Bowie and the Fortress, a man celebrated

47:12

for having been in a more desperate personal conflicts

47:14

than any other in the country. He gave me a friendly

47:16

welcome and appeared to be mightily pleased that I had arrived

47:19

safe. While we were conversing, he had occasion

47:21

to draw his famous knife to cut a strap, and

47:23

I wish I may be shot at the bare side of it. Wasn't

47:25

enough to give a man of squeamish stomach the colic,

47:27

especially before breakfast. He saw I was

47:30

admiring it and said, Colonel, you might

47:32

tickle a fellow's ribs a long time with this little

47:34

instrument before you'd make him laugh. Now

47:37

this story never happened. David

47:40

Crockett never wrote this. Uh. Crockett

47:42

actually probably hated Bowie because

47:44

we know he wrote a letter complaining about his behavior.

47:47

Um and the book that this is being quoted from

47:49

was written by somebody else, just in Crockett's

47:52

name to capitalize on his legend, and there

47:54

is no evidence whatsoever that his famous knife

47:56

was ever used even as like a camp tool

47:58

in the battle, especially since Bowie was too

48:01

sick to get out of bed. Um

48:03

Yeah and it. The

48:07

task of trying to unravel exactly how Bowie

48:09

died is difficult, both because of the hero worship

48:11

around him and because of the network of grifters

48:14

that arose around the Battle of Alamo. The

48:16

most famous of them was mad Madame Candelaria,

48:19

a woman who in her old age claimed to have been Bowie's

48:22

nurse during the battle. She made a sizeable

48:24

living and secured a pension from the state of Texas

48:26

by providing patriotic Texans with heroic stories

48:29

about how Travis, Bowie, and Crockett all died

48:31

because she claimed she'd been there. There's no

48:33

evidence that this is true, and her stories about what happened

48:35

at the Alamo changed repeatedly over the years

48:38

of her life. Um I found

48:40

a good article though, in True West magazine

48:42

that's you Know, attempted to co collate all the

48:44

different rumors of of Bowie's

48:46

end quote. According

48:49

to story spread after the battle, Bowie died either

48:51

as a murder victim, a suicide, a battle

48:53

casualty, or a victim of sadistic torture.

48:55

He may have died fighting from his sick bed, helplessly

48:58

in a sick bed, or of an illness before sickon

49:00

soldiers did the job. He may have been killed

49:02

by swords, bayonets, gunfire, or fire.

49:04

He may have died heroically or as a coward.

49:07

One of the first reports to Sam Houston after the battle

49:09

reported that Bowie was killed while lying sick in

49:11

bed. Houston others passed on this information,

49:13

interpreting it to mean he had been murdered while sick

49:15

in bed. However, Houston changed the story

49:18

two days later, writing, our friend Bowie,

49:20

as now was understood, unable to get out

49:22

of bed, shot himself as the soldiers

49:24

approached it. And unidentified Mexican

49:26

soldier expressed a different opinion in the April fift

49:29

eighteen thirty six edition of El

49:31

Mosquito Mexicano uh

49:33

he stated the perverse in Braggert Santiago,

49:35

Bowie died like a woman almost hidden under

49:37

a mattress. Alamos survivor Susannah

49:40

Dickinson Hannig waited on the subject thirty eight

49:42

years later, she stated that Bowie was sick in

49:44

bed, and when Mexican soldiers entered his room,

49:46

he killed two of them with his pistols before they pierced

49:48

him with their sabers. Nothing in Hannig's

49:50

statement indicates she actually witnessed this. Perhaps

49:53

the most horrifying Taylor Bowie's death came in eighteen

49:55

eighty two when William P. Zuber, who

49:57

popularized the Alamo's famous line in the Sands

50:00

Story, told the tale of a young Mexican fifer

50:02

at Polinaro Salda Naga Poland

50:05

Zuber claims witnessed Bowie brought out alive

50:07

on a cot and placed before at a Mexican captain.

50:10

Bowie delivered a short patriotic speech to the captain,

50:12

who became so outraged that he ordered his soldiers

50:14

to cut Bowie's tongue out and hurl the still living

50:16

man onto the Texas uh Texan

50:18

dead's burning funeral pyre. So

50:21

these are the different stories. We will never

50:23

know which of these is true. Um

50:26

we do know pretty well that he had

50:28

yellow fever. So one thing we can all safely

50:30

assume is that, however, James Bowie went

50:33

out He died with the symptoms

50:35

of advanced yellow fever, which are uncontrollable

50:37

diarrhea and vomiting. So that's

50:40

that's that's the story.

50:43

Wow, fitting into

50:46

a frontier hero. I mean, I

50:49

just I mean, I'm not super

50:51

shocked because I assume everyone starting

50:55

about a hundred and fifty years ago back just

50:57

had constant diarrhea. Yeah,

51:00

yeah, it was he was sick and yeah

51:03

yeah, yeah, but he was consistent

51:06

that he wasn't bad like both definitely

51:09

in bed. Seemed to say he was in bed.

51:11

Some say like he's being real pussy

51:13

about it on other side, but no, he kind of thought

51:15

that he wasn't laying down. Yeah,

51:18

it would have been hard for him to um

51:21

have done much fighting with the yellow

51:23

fever. It's pretty crippling. So yeah,

51:25

that's the story of old Jim Booie. That's

51:29

I mean, I'll

51:31

be honest, I never thought if you if you have

51:34

a weapon named after you,

51:37

your life was probably

51:39

rough. Yeah yeah, not

51:41

a lot of not a lot of peaceful lives

51:44

wind up with weapons named after them.

51:47

He was just a great diplomat,

51:49

huh. Yeah,

51:53

he didn't want to argue, Yeah,

51:55

we probably should have a weapon named after

51:57

Henry Kissinger. But I don't think there's any

52:00

in system that's killed as many people as Henry

52:02

Kissinger. So yeah, I guess so war

52:04

crimes, isn't that what it is? Yeah?

52:07

Yeah, we could just name the concept of bombing

52:10

people the Kissinger.

52:13

Yeah yeah,

52:16

so that is the motherfucking

52:18

story of James Bowie. How are you feeling

52:20

about old Jimbo?

52:23

There was there was more Louisiana

52:26

then than I had anticipated. A

52:29

lot of that, which makes

52:31

more sense about like who and how

52:33

he gets that name? I mean, but

52:36

I like, I think my favorite part is just

52:38

how everyone in his family capitalize

52:41

on his fame. Yeah.

52:43

Yeah, they would continue doing that well after

52:45

his death because it was

52:48

easy and made him a lot of money.

52:51

Such an American thing too.

52:53

Yeah yeah, they're the first Duck

52:55

dynasty. Is the Buoy family? Well,

52:58

and I can't I keep thinking of I've been to

53:00

Buffalo Bill's grave site in

53:03

several different locations, so

53:06

I keep thinking of that kind of stuff too, where

53:08

it's like, oh it is it's like Jesse

53:10

James hit out and never made you mean a wild

53:12

Bill Hickock. Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, you gotcha.

53:15

Yeah, No, not Buffalo did I say the guy like,

53:19

yeah, yeah, while Bill sorry, but

53:21

yeah, I've been to his several

53:24

of his uh graves,

53:26

which always makes me laugh. That's like

53:28

that kind of meat those that happens. Yeah,

53:31

that's kind of what you get. So

53:34

this has been the episode Billy you got any plug doubles

53:37

you wanna wanna throw down?

53:39

I just find me on Twitter at

53:42

Billy Wayne Davis or on Instagram

53:44

at Billy wyn Davis. Uh.

53:46

And I have a podcast out called Growing

53:49

Local that is about the

53:51

people in the communities that make up

53:53

just who where your cannabis comes

53:56

from, and the first season is about Eugene

53:58

or again. Check out Billy

54:00

Wayne's Cannabis podcast, pick

54:02

Up a Bowie Knife, um

54:05

and uh follow us on behind

54:07

the Bastard's dot com and at Bastard's pot on Twitter

54:09

and Instagram, and check out my new podcast,

54:12

The Women's War, which is about

54:14

people who aren't a piece of ships like

54:17

James Bowie uh and are cool.

54:20

So that's

54:23

the episode Motherfucker's Wash

54:25

your hands Goodbye.

54:27

Yeah h