The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-08-09
THEY DIED I'm The ALAMO
HEROIC SOULS WILL RE HoyORED
By A FITTING MONUMENT.
Gave His Name 40 the Famous
Knife and Died with Others.
Washington star.

Washington Star.
The ladies of the State of Texas, headed
By those of San Antonio, are inaugurating
a movement which does equal credit to
their patriotism and appreciation of the
heroism of those who made the State out
of the former Republic of Texas by their
genius and dauntless courage, when men
like Houston furnished her chief magis-
trates and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston led
her gallant soldiers to victory. One hum
dred thousand dollars have been subscribed
for the erection of a monument TO the men
who fought and died at the Alamo-men
like Crockett, Harding and Bowie. These
are among the names that will be inscribed
on the granite monument, and of those who
won at Alamo immortal fame none is more
deserving than James Bowie. There at the
Alamo, sick and alone, he died at the end of
such a Beyserk rage, and a deed that has
handed his famous knife down to immortal
fame, for on that day Bowies performed
a feat fit to rank with the ~proudest deeds
OF the dead days OF romance and beauty.
1t has often been asked what manner OF
man was James Bowie. The only man
the writer ever knew who had an intimate
personal acquaintance with him was ex-
Governor James Madison Wells of the par
ish of Rapides. in louisiana, whose house
was Bowie 5 nome Wnen the latter Was III
Louisiana.
HIS BIRTHPLACE UNCERTAIN.
James Bowie he said, whose ending
was just such a one as he would have
c~hosen-for there were seven dead Next
cans lying around him, each of whom had
died from one stroke of Bowie's awful knife
was born i'm 1870, either in Maryland or
Tennessee. He was never quite sure which
of these States was his birthplace.
THE papers and family Bible, which
would nave settled this question for good,
were burned in 1910. when the residence of
the Bowies was burned, either by the
Cherokees or Shawnees, who were fighting
for their ancient homes and hunting
grounds in Kentucky and Tennessee, from
1880 to 1916. James Bowie's father was a
man very like his son. OF an ancient
Maryland family he came, and he owned a
fine homestead in his native State. But
Stephen Bowie came of that wild turkey
breed OF tameless wanderers-men VINO
were ever moving further South or West.
So when his three sons were well-grown
and handsome lads, each able amply to
take care of himself and his own any
where, Stephen Bowie sold his Maryland
estate and, taking ship at Baltimore, he
and his three sons sailed for Louisiana, the
land of promise. Rein found an estate in
Arkansas, of 1000 acres. that pleased him,
and there he and his twenty-five negro
slaves settled down and opened up a fine
plantation. Rein Bowie soon became a
fairly wealthy man and was regarded as a
model citizen. If he achieved no great
fame. he did no harm, but lived under his
own vine and fig tree the life Of the old-time
patriarchial saint, dying at a ripe'old age.
parish of Lafoundre, and OH the bayou of
that anne in Louisiana. and became a
sugar and rice planter of thrift. He died
in the ~'hfties," just before the war.
A FIRE IN HIS BLOOD.
but Jamesl There seemed to be a fire
in his blood, a fever in his veins that would
not allow him to be STILL" said Governor
Wells, his lifelong friend. James Bowie
never weighed more than $50 pounds in his
life, and was only about five feet seven and
a half inches in height. But he was like
tempered steel. He never drank liquor and
only at dinner most sparingly of red wine.
His eyes, in repose, were large. fine. well
opened, and Of a dark steely blue-gray. But
in anger! Then his eyes would glow and
burn, as does the eye of the hunted panther
or leopard. Then he was the most danger
Gus looking man L have ever seen. L never
saw the man who could gaze into the eyes
of James Bowie in anger and not nave a
sense of personal fear.
III was in Louisiana from about 1920 to
1880, trading in lands and importing negroes
from the West Indies, and sometimes he
would buy an entire cargo of negroes just
run in by some Spanish SLAYER from the
West Coast country OF Africa. a cargo"
in those days meant 400 or 500 slaves. The
newly imported negro when first taken
out of the hold of a slave ship is an awful
looking creature, just about one removed
from a wild beast. Two months after he
fell into the hands of a humane planter you
would never know him. He had become fat
and sleek, for he was eating better food
than he ever had known before. and was
made to wash himself in the ~bayousevery
night before he eat his abundant supper of
good, wholesome and well cooked foolish,
OF which all negroes are very fond, rice
we'll seasoned and corn bread. Three times
a week beef or pork, which ever they like
best.
when Bowie had got his 'cargoes' of
negroes into good condition and clean they
would sell for from $3.50 to $500 each for
men. Women about one-third less. These
Spanish Slayers were very brutal. In fact,
Bowie had TO kill one or two of them to
compel. as he said, the usual respect"
In those days. as later. there were many
men I'm the South who were opposed TO the
slave trade. The Rev. L. Newland Mofitt.
a most distinguished divine, preached a
very notable sermon against it, and had a
weighty argument on the subject at Gov
ernor Wells's table one day with James
Bowie. lis it not better" said Bowie in
conclusion, that these poor creatures shall
be decently clothed, kept Clearly and by
their labor add something to the wealth OF
the State and the individual citizen, as they
are now doing, than that they shall con-
tinue in their degraded and barbarous cor
dition, hardly a degree above the wild
beasts they live among, constantly at war
with one another, not adding one whit to
the worlds progresS?' Il had not received
the question in that light before" said the
Rev. Mr.. Moffitt, very gravely. Il don't
know but that you are right" he said in
conclusion to James Bowie.
KILLING OF COLONEL GRAIN.
After he killed Colonel Grain, of Shreve-
port. La, on Natchez Island, in 1929. Bowie