The pair that reared James were equal to holding their own in a wilderness where turbulent men were made more turbulent by the confusion of land claims following the Louisiana Purchase. On one occasion Rezin Bowie, Sr., father of James, in defending his land against a gang of squatters, killed one of them. He was arrested, charged with manslaughter, and put in jail to await trial. Mrs. Bowie, accompanied by a slave, rode on horseback to the jail, demanded entrance, and entered. In a few minutes she and her husband reappeared, each armed with a brace of pistols. While the jailer retreated, they mounted the horses in waiting and rode away. It is not recorded that Rezin Bowie, Sr., was again molested. Years later when this wife and mother was told how her son had been killed by Mexicans in the Alamo, she calmly remarked, “I’ll wager no wounds were found in his back.” In time, James Bowie and his brother Rezin came to own and operate a great sugar plantation on Bayou Lafourche, called Arcadia. Meantime, John J., a third brother, had moved to Arkansas and established a large plantation. [Illustration] Jim Bowie was a man of surpassing vigor, of headlong energy, and of great ambition to lead. He was six feet tall and all muscle. He roped and rode giant alligators for fun. Generally polite and courteous, in anger he appeared “like an enraged tiger.” He was somehow connected with Dr. Long’s filibustering schemes against Mexico, and with one or more of his brothers he seems to have carried on an extensive business in slave smuggling. The Bowies are said to have bought blacks from the pirate Lafitte on Galveston Island at a dollar a pound. On one occasion, says the historian Thrall, Jim Bowie, while driving ninety of his purchases through the swamps of Louisiana, lost the entire band. Thereafter he prepared himself against a similar disaster by wearing “three or four knives,” so that he could transfix any Negro that tried to run away. Jerking a knife was quicker by far than reloading a horse pistol at the muzzle. “Big Jim,” as they called him, showed the “knife men” among Lafitte’s crew several things in the art of knife throwing. And this brings us to our theme--a theme concerning which history must stand abashed before the riot of legend. Who made the first Bowie knife? How did it originate? [Illustration]