Of all the characters connected with pioneer history in the Southwest, James Bowie comes nearer being unadulterated legend than any other. He did nothing really great or constructive; yet his name has probably been more widely popularized than that of the truly great and constructive founder of the Texas Republic, Stephen F. Austin. He affected little, if at all, the destiny of a nation, and merely a scrap of his paper survives; yet the stories that sprang up about him are second in number only to those about the voluble and spectacular Sam Houston. He is remembered popularly for three things: first, his brave death in the Alamo, fighting for Texas independence; second, his supposed connection with a lost Spanish mine on the San Saba River, which came to bear Bowie’s name, and which today, after thousands of men over a period close to a hundred years have vainly sought to find it, is yet the object of ardent search; third, the knife which bears his name--and which, to many people, symbolizes his character. All three of these claims to remembrance are wrapped in legend. The traditional tales, some of them truly extraordinary, centering around the Lost Bowie Mine, would, if compiled, fill a volume. History is clear as to Bowie’s part in the Alamo, but the best stories about him there do not get into documented histories. Nor do the tales of how he succored abused slaves, took the part of bullied preachers, and rescued wronged women. But our subject is the Bowie knife. The known facts about James Bowie’s early life are that he was born in Tennessee in 1795, two years later than his distinguished brother Rezin P. Bowie, and that in 1802 he came with his parents and their numerous progeny to Louisiana. The name Bowie at that time was already more than a century old in Maryland and had been known for two generations in Virginia and South Carolina, the several branches of the family having shot out from a stout clan of Scottish Highlanders. The male members of it--hard riding, hard-headed, well propertied, decently educated, contentious in politics, and ready to die in adherence to the code of the Cavaliers--generally deserved the epithet given to them, “the fighting Bowies.”