Notes |
- There are lots of myths about Jim Bowie and lots of biographies that propel them. It was very probably his brother Rezin who invented The Knife, for instance (see pp. 581-82, and 745 in the book by Davis, cited below). Whether it was or not almost doesn't matter, though, since it was Jim Bowie's life and death around whom the mythology developed, and he is a fascinating figure of his time.
By March 6, during the second week of the Alamo siege, he had been sick with typhoid fever for weeks. He was probably so weak that he couldn't even get out of bed, where he was killed with a shot to the head.
One biography which works to get at the person behind the myth is William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and Willam Barrett Travis (New York: Harper Collins, 1998). It has lots of detail. Davis also includes a discussion in his "Bibliography" at the end (751-753) of various biographies of all three figures, which is a great place to start to look for for further reading.
|