Bowie knife

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 08/22/2002 12:03:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jdhall at FACSTAFF.WISC.EDU writes:

> A correspondent asks whether anyone can antedate 1835 for "Bowie
>  knife."  Any takers?

"These formidable instruments, with their sheaths mounted in silver, are the
pride of an Arkansas blood, and got their name of Bowie knives from a
conspicuous person of this fiery climate."
George William Featherstonhaugh, Excursion Through the Slave States from
Washington on the Potomoc, to the Frontier of Mexico (New York, 1844)
cited at URL http://www.knifeart.com/arkniftradby.html

a different Web site, URL
http://peace.saumag.edu/swark/articles/ahq/arkansas/bearstate/bearstate103.htm

l, offered these excerpts from the same book:
Featherstonhaugh found few things in the state to compliment. He also
criticized Arkansas's passion for violence, complaining that in his
estimation Little Rock had fewer than twelve citizens who refrained from
wearing "two pistols and a hunting knife a foot long and an inch and a half
broad" which they called the "Bowie knife ."

Featherstonhaugh (according to one Web site, the name is pronounced
"Fanshaw") was an English geologist who kept a journal of his American
journeys, which included a visit to Arkansas in the fall of 1834.  Apparently
the book, published in 1844, has each entry dated.  Your judgment whether to
accept 1834.

James Bowie, also called Jim Bowie, born in 1795 or 1796, was a notorious
duelist of the ante-Bellum South.  He is remembered only for giving his name
to the type of knife, and for being the commander at the Alamo.  What appears
to be the most reliable account is that James Black, a knifesmith of Arkansas
who had a secret technique for hardening and tempering steel, made the knife
to a pattern of his own and sold it to Bowie in 1830 or 1831.  The price
Bowie paid Black was US $50 at a time when that was three or four months
salary for a workman.

Bowie never went into the knife business or gave permission for his name to
be used by knife makers, so "Bowie knife" was never a commercial term, but
was widely used by 1834 to refer to any knife of the pattern Black made for
Bowie.  Technically there was only one "Bowie knife", the blade made by Black
for Bowie, which Bowie carried to his death at the Alamo.  This particular
knife was then either destroyed in the funeral pyre the Mexicans made for the
Texan bodies, or more likely looted by some anonymous Mexican, in which case
there is a possibility that it still exists, with the present owner unaware
of the historical and auction value of this American Excalibur (and it might
be noted that according to one legend the Arthurian sword Excalibur is extant
and currently hidden somewhere in the United States.)

To complicate things, Bowie's brother Rezin Bowie was also a knifemaker,
although most sources agree that Black and not Rezin Bowie made the original
Bowie Knife.

            - James A. Landau