Jim Bowie: Blades, Battles and the Alamo

Jim Bowie is known as a hero of the Alamo, but he made his name in a duel-gone-wrong: He came away with several wounds, but also with a reputation as fearsome knife-fighter. So how did he become a Texan legend? And what's the story behind the Bowie knife?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm sarah Daddy and I'm de bleating a chuck rewarding
to lead us back. I'm back. It's very exciting to
have you here. I know, I'm glad to be here.

(00:21):
It's good to see you against Sarah in the studio.
We saw each other, Yes, we've seen each other while
I was on leave, but it's good to see you
in the studio, not in this official capacity. Correct, So
tell everybody a little bit about your exciting news. Well,
I had a baby. It's a girl. Her name is Sarah,
and she is crazy but wonderful and we're just getting

(00:45):
to know her. I he that, Well, you can say that,
I guess. I mean, if I say it, no one
will believe it because you know, I'm kind of biased.
But yeah, we're just trying to learn how to be parents.
We have no idea what we're doing, but you know,
taking one step bit of time. You were prose when
I visited, So oh yeah, we did a lot of
holding and acting like we knew what we were doing.

(01:07):
I'm sure lots of lots of snoozing. While I was
there too. She was she was on her best behavior.
She was very sleepy at that time. You saw her
pretty early on. She's a little more awake now, well
much louder. Check in with her again then. But in
honor of Dablina's return, we do all know how much
he loved Western history, how much he liked talking about

(01:28):
the frontier. How many times you have discussed Indian territory
on the podcast. We thought that this would be a
really cool topic to to discuss. It's on Jim Booie,
and it's actually a suggestion from listener ron in l A.
But Jim Bowie is really the epitome of that sort
of frontier legend. He pretty much moved with the American

(01:50):
frontier from the day he was born, not too long
after at least. And of course he's best known too
as being a knife fighter, being a folk hero, being
an alum legend who died with guys like William B. Travis,
Davy Crockett, and really, even though he was living in
the in the early eighteen hundreds, it's the twentieth century

(02:10):
that kind of built on that legend. The fifties and
sixties just saw an explosion of Booie and pop culture,
just as they did with with Davy Crockett. You think
about kids in in that time running around in coonskin
Davy Crockett hats. But there's all sorts of things. John
Wayne's the Alamo. There's a movie called The Iron Mistress,
which I found a few clips were on YouTube. And

(02:32):
there is a nineteen fifties Western TV show called The
Adventures of Jim Booey. And if we only could always
play crazy theme songs like this, it would be pretty fun.
But we've we've got to go ahead and play it
for this episode. Let's let's listen to the Adventures of
Jim Booie. But the more recent scholarship on Bouie, well,

(03:18):
it doesn't exactly downplay the bold and adventurous man angle.
It does draw more attention to his hot temper, the
slave smuggling, and the more complicated situation in pre Alamo,
Texas between the Texians, the Teano's and the Mexican government.
So we'll be talking about both sides of Booie here,
the forger and the slave trader and the gator wrestling

(03:40):
knife fighter. And I do have to say before we
go further too this is the only subject that has
ever led me to Blade Magazine before research confession. It's
a pretty great one, I think. And and another point
to mention not related to Blade Magazine is the pronunciation
of Booie because some of or probably thinking booie because

(04:02):
before this I always said Bowie knife. And while Mary
and Webster does say both pronunciations are correct, the Booie
family themselves pronounced it that way Booie rhyming with louise,
so we'll go with that. Yeah. And and that's a
that's a good place to pick up because the first
Booie ancestor came to Maryland from Scotland back in seventeen

(04:23):
oh five, and they really did start moving right away
from there. Over the generations, they they wound their way
down to Georgia, and that's where Jim's father, Reason served
with Colonel Francis Marion, who is the Swamp Fox, another
former podcast subject, during the Revolutionary War, and while recuperating
from a saber slash, Reason met his Welsh bride, a nurse,

(04:46):
and from then on the Booie started moving west and
they had plenty of kids along the way. James, who
was on the younger end of reasons brewed of ten total.
He was born in seventeen nine in Kentucky, after the
family had already passed through Tennessee and before they made
it to Missouri. They'd clear land to sell timber, or

(05:06):
to farm turnips or just still whiskey. So they did
a job. It was a mix. By the time the
family got to Louisiana, they were posing as Catholics to
meet the territories requirements, and they'd become modest planters. And
that's where Jim ended up growing up. He was especially
close to his brother's reason Junior and Stephen, and they
had plenty of adventures on the Bayou hunting and fishing.

(05:30):
Jim grew to be six ft tall and one d
eighty pounds, a manly, fine looking person according to his
brother John. That's pretty complimentary from a brother, uh. And
they would hunt bears and apparently wrestle and rope alligators
for fun. Well that was that was Jim's territory. Apparently
wrestling the alegro I thought John was into that as well.

(05:52):
I don't know how the how the other Buoie brothers
felt about gator wrestling. That Bullie's first real taste of
adventure away from home. I mean, all that sounds pretty adventurous.
Came a few years into the War of eighteen twelve,
and as New Orleans was repairing for a British attack,
James and Reason Junior enlisted as privates in the militia.

(06:13):
They were really gung ho to to go there and fight.
You know, these are these are sons of a revolutionary
war veteran. But unfortunately for them, they arrived after the
battle had already happened, after the British had been repelled, which, ironically,
and we discussed this on the Bombardment of Baltimore episode
happened after the British and Americans had already made peace.
Word just didn't get out quite yet. So the Booie

(06:35):
boys missed that opportunity. But they did get a chance
to to stay in New Orleans a little bit and
experience high society there, or at least whatever they could
afford at the time. Uh. And they ultimately returned to
the timber business, you know, clearing land, floating the timber
down the bayou. But New Orleans and that really exciting
kind of life probably made them ready to look for

(06:58):
some other form of enterprise. Some way to to rise
beyond their their father's modest planters status, some kind of
get rich quick scheme. Yeah, so just a little background here.
The African slave trade had been abolished in eighteen o eight,
but there was a high demand for slaves still in
Louisiana and Mississippi. They needed labor for all the new

(07:20):
plantations and what was at that time the West, So
slave smuggling became a big business since African slaves were
still arriving on ships that were bound for South America
and the Caribbean, and they could be smuggled into the US. Sometimes,
of course, the smugglers would be caught and the contraband
seized instead of sending the people back to Africa, though,

(07:41):
some states would then sell them at auction to fund
the treasury, and they would pay the person who turned
them in half of the purchase price as a reward. Yeah,
so there's there's a possible loophole there. Um and the
buoy boys decided that this loophole would be a good
way to essentially launder contraband slaves. I know that sounds
like a terrible word to apply to human beings, but

(08:03):
that's what they were doing. So they hooked up with
the pirate Jean Lafitte, who is another former podcast subject
on Galveston Island. And Lafitte he, you know, as as
a pirate seizing all sorts of contraband from from ships,
had all kinds of things on Galveston Island, but he
also did have this large slave population. He would sell

(08:25):
them at a dollar a pound, but he wouldn't himself
handle the transport or sales, you know, the process of
moving these people into the interior of Louisiana to the plantations,
because that's where things got really risky because for one thing,
you're you're conducting people. For another thing, the planters might
not be willing to buy because they would be buying

(08:46):
stolen property, which of course could be confiscated from them ultimately.
So this is where the Bowie brothers came in. They
would buy slaves from Lafitte, and Jim would trek groups
of them, groups of forty actually, into the Louisiana interior,
and then one of the brothers would turn them in
his contraband and then turn around and bid on them

(09:09):
at auction, So they would end up getting back half
the purchase price as their reward. No matter how much
the auction price was, they were really only paying half
of it. So they got these these deals and then
they owned what we're considered legal slaves, you know, not
ones that we're pirate contraband anymore so. William C. Davis,

(09:29):
who wrote Three Roads to the Alamo, estimates that each
brother made about twenty one dollars apiece. Uh. And they
could have kept this game up a little longer too,
since Lafitte's operation did stay in business for a bit longer.
But they did decide to get out of it because
it was clearly risky smuggling. It was pretty unsavory even

(09:51):
at the time, and some of the brothers had political aspiration,
so they were kind of thinking of their future. That
doesn't mean they decided to to take the straight and
narrow from from there on out, though they still maintained
this very loosey goofy idea of the law. Yeah. Their
next scheme was in land fraud, though, so they kind
of got away from smuggling people around. Before becoming part

(10:14):
of the United States, Louisiana had been passed between Spain
and France. But if you bought Louisiana land back in
the Spanish days, your grant could still be honored. The
only problem was no one really knew how much had
been given away, where it was, who owned it, any
of those things. All you had to do was to
make a claim was come forward with two witnesses who

(10:35):
would swear that they had seen you buy it. Yeah,
And and the brothers figured this out the hard way.
They bought property, or Jim did, specifically under a bad title.
And in eight twenty, you know, after a period of
being furious about this, UH, they decided that that this
was going to be their game. They were going to
try this land speculation. And UH Congress had given grant holders,

(11:00):
Spanish grant holders until the end of eighteen twenty to
file all their claims because they were ready to to
stop having to deal with this antiquated paperwork. And so
Buoy and his brothers started faking Spanish documents. They would
make up the names of fake French Spanish settlers like
Jacques Dupuis or one de Lyon, and they would fake

(11:23):
documents from Spanish governors that granted these made up men
Bayou frontage. And then they'd also forged deeds of sale,
you know, so for instance, it would be Jim Booie
buying from de Leon or something. And all they really
needed to deal at that point with those two documents
in hand was bribe witnesses who would swear to have

(11:46):
seen Booye signed the deed. And it only took a
hundred dollars for each of these two witnesses. And once
the land was legally in a buoy's name, he could
of course sell it to to squatter. Sometimes he'd even
get the squatter us to be your witnesses, because you'd
make them a deal on land they had been working
and living on illegally. Once it's in my name, I'll

(12:07):
sell it to you at a reduced price. Over the years,
Booie expanded this enterprise to Arkansas to the brothers. They
weren't careful either. They used the same handwriting, they made
errors and spelling or logistics. Sometimes the officials would wise
up to this, as you would imagine that they would,
But the sheer number of claims that they made, which

(12:28):
incidentally came to be known as Booie claims false claim
made it hard for much to happen there. It really did,
and Davis believes that Booie participated in more of this
land fraud, which a lot of people were doing at
the time, but he participated in more of it than
anybody else. And it really is because of the the

(12:48):
extent of the surviving documents, it is unclear how how
much Booie did, how much was successful. It's one of
the one of the mysteries. But it's something that even
mine through the rest of the podcast too, because he
pretty much always has these deals going on through his life,
or until near the end, some some degree of land

(13:10):
fraud going on. But during this time, Bouie wasn't just
managing these land deals. He was doing all manner of
other activities, sometimes living with his brother at his bio
buff plantation, sometimes heading down to New Orleans and enjoying
high society there because even though he was this frontiersman,
he was by all accounts quite charming to in in

(13:31):
society and could really impress people. But in eighteen four
he officially moved near Alexandria, at the center of what's
now the state of Louisiana, and there he became friends
with two prominent families, the Wells and their cousins, the Cuney's,
even courting Aquney cousin Cecilia Wells, but the Wells and
a Quney's, most of whom had political offices or political aspirations,

(13:55):
were feuding with some of the other men in town.
The Blanchard brother is Dr Thomas Maddox, Colonel Robert Alexander Crane,
and Major Norris Right, so several people. Booye got wrapped
up in his friend's political and personal disputes and soon
heard Major Right was slandering him around town. A confrontation

(14:15):
between the two in a hotel ended with Right shooting
Buoy in the chest and an injured Buoy pummeling Right
to the ground, Which is just amazing to me when
you hear stories like that, people get shot and then
still somehow have the wherewithal to pick themselves up and
attack back. He sounded furious. I mean, that's how I

(14:36):
read it, and and he he really did seem like
he was in the process of beating Right to death
and in the process of trying to unclasp his knife.
By the time Rights friends finally pulled Bullie off of him,
they it took so much force though, to pull Bully
off of Right that he left behind a tooth in

(14:57):
Right's hand that could like rose comfortable to this episode,
or at least I hope so that could not have
been comfortable for either. Now well that they did. Um,
there was so much blood coming from Booie because of
that lost tooth, not from the gun shot, that rights
Camp assumed he was going to go die. Fortunately for
Booie the shot was not serious that it might have

(15:18):
not even penetrated the skin. It was just a bruise,
and he might have had a broken rib um. But
it did shake him up, I mean, as you can imagine.
And one of the reasons was he had been too
slow on the drawid had to fumble with his knife,
which was clasped to his belt, and so according to
the legend, this is the point where his brother gave

(15:38):
him this long butcher type knife that he could just
wear in a leather sheath instead of some kind of
clasped device, something he could really quickly take out and
do some serious damage with. So clearly Booie and Wright
would have to meet again, but it took a while,
and plenty of other Alexandria then found time to schedule

(16:00):
their duels with him in the meantime. But by summer
of eight seven, after a few failed or canceled duels
between various parties. One was finally set for September ninety
seven near Natchez, Mississippi, on a sand bar in the river.
The combatants for this particular duel would be Booie's friend
Samuel Wells and Dr Tallumas Mattox. But each guy, in

(16:23):
addition to bringing his second and his doctor, brought along
a bunch of friends who were relegated to watch all
this go down from because they knew there was going
to be trouble. They knew they were essentially bringing two
gangs to this isolated sandbar, and they didn't want the
honorable duel to be interfered with. So after two rounds

(16:45):
and no hits on either side, the former friends we
were satisfied with the outcome of the duel. They shook hands,
they made up. They were actually in the process of
suggesting everybody go out and celebrate their renewed friendship with
a glass of mine, when Sam Cuney, who was one
of Booie's friends, challenged Colonel Robert Crane to duel then

(17:07):
and there. They had had a pre existing feud. Crane
had said he would kill Kenney on site so Kenney
was just trying to get that over with, I guess.
But most of the guys realized that this was not
the It was neither the time nor the place, you know,
to be challenging yet another duel. But it was too
late because most of these guys already had guns out.

(17:29):
Even though Quney quickly lowered his own gun after the challenge,
after realizing no, this is a bad idea, Booie had
already raised his gun and when Crane saw Booie's gun
pointed at him, he shot and that just kicked off
this gang war essentially on a sandbar. Yeah, there was
another shot from Crane hit Keuney and he bled to death.

(17:53):
Booie began chasing Crane and clawbort him on the head
with an empty pistol. By this point, Booie's arch and
me right also got in on the action and he
shot Bouie through the lung. And this is where it
gets kind of crazy, because that's where it gets crazy.
I think it takes it up a notch at this
point because the Blanchard brothers join in too, and they

(18:13):
start aiming at Buie and they hit him in the thigh,
which it's not the gunshot wound to the to the
chest that knocks him down, it's this one to the thigh.
And once he's on the ground, one of the Blanchard
brothers and right pull out their sword canes which I
had to google sword canes too, but it is a
sword disguised in a cane. They start stabbing him and

(18:34):
beating him with their sword canes, and so somehow Booie
managed to force himself up grab right. He's gotten out
his knife by this point, and stabbed right through the
heart with his knife, saying now major, you die. And
even then, after such a horrifying conclusion to this fight,

(18:58):
Booie was still being dabbed by one of the Blanchard's
before everybody just realizes chaos had happened calms down a
little bit. It took only nineties seconds for all of
this to go down too, but it left cuney and
right dead. Boy was shot through the lungs and the thigh.
He had been stabbed in seven places and was not

(19:19):
expected to survive, but the story became national news. So
it wasn't long before the guy who was best known
as a shady land speculator is a frontier legend with
a reputation as a skilled knife fighter. So everyone wants
a blade like Bullie's at this point, and I think
we know where that's headed. We do, although we should

(19:41):
say too. There is a lot of controversy over what
Bouie's knife actually looked like. Um, you know, if you
if you look up a Booie knife today, it is
a distinctive shape with a distinctive handle. But according to
James L. Batson, who is the past president of the
American Bladesmith Society, quote no, but he knows who the
hell made it and what it looked like. There's all

(20:03):
sorts of legends tied up around this this knife. Apparently,
use your imagination. I guess what do you think it
looks like? It's it's a long butcher knife essentially, but
but traditionally they have a little hooked tip that makes
it look extra scary. But clearly it did some damage.
And and after a fight like that, and after all

(20:25):
of the the shadiness of these land dealings, it seemed
like Jim Booie needed some new opportunities. Yeah, so at
this point, Texas is beckoning Booie, and it's no wonder
because there was land to be had there, and we
know how he was land. Mexico, which had gained its
independence from Spain nearly two decades before this, had installed

(20:47):
a constitution in four which gave Mexican states a lot
of independent power over things like immigration policies. So unsurprisingly,
the more frontier ish combined states of Texas and ko
Ohila were really welcoming to settlers from the US. You
just had to accept Catholicism and the laws of Mexico

(21:08):
which did forbid slavery, and you could be granted large
amounts of grazing and farming land. Marry a Mexican woman
and your share was even larger. And they had things
like deferred taxes, lower prices with the frontiersman's dream essentially,
and and uh yeah, Booie was interested. It sounded like
the perfect opportunity for him, and and on his first trip,

(21:31):
most of which was spent in San Antonio, the charming side,
that New Orleans side of Booie really came out. He
played up all his business interests at home, made him
self out to to seem like kind of a grand man,
and befriended some of the towns leading Mexican families to
including the very wealthy Mexican Vice governor of the area,

(21:53):
Juan Martin de Vera Mendi. He did still have all
of those business interests in Louisiana, though, so he had
to head home for a little bit. But he left
for Texas for real in January eighteen thirty with his
friend kay off as Ham, and by late summer he
had pretty much insinuated himself into into San Antonio society

(22:14):
had really charmed everybody. Yeah, he was granted Mexican citizenship,
which was conditional on him building a mill, and he
also became engaged to Vera Mendy's beautiful daughter, Ursula. But
before allowing his daughter to marry Bouie, Vera Mendy made
his future son in law compile a document of his
property and assets. Booie apparently lied outrageously here made himself

(22:38):
younger and richer than he actually was. So maybe in
interests of living up to this supposed wealth, or maybe
it was just Bouie's get rich quick obsession, and he
started to settle on a new scheme just a few
months after his April eighteen thirty one marriage to Ursula.
He wanted to find the lost legendary silver Minds of

(22:58):
San Saba. Okay, so this really does sound like the
craziest of his his get rich quick schemes, but also uh,
maybe the most romantic. It's not quite forging Spanish documents,
but uh, we gotta fill people in on the legend
a little bit. So Supposedly, nearly a century before this,

(23:20):
Spanish missionaries had found silver or in this area, and
they'd mind it. They had hidden it in caves all
before the Commanche destroyed the mission in the seventeen fifties,
and it was supposed to all still be there waiting
for for somebody like Booie to come and find it. Essentially,
but the supposed minds were in very dangerous territory, so

(23:43):
not too many people were interested in in venturing out
that way, but Buoy organized a small group of men
to to locate the treasure in November eighteen thirty one.
On the way there, though, Buoy's group, which included his
brother Reason and his friend, ham met up with this
small party of Comanche and their Mexican captive. And one

(24:05):
of the Commanche men knew him and they were friendly,
and so the two parties stopped and talked for a
little bit before parting ways. Seemed normal enough. The next morning,
at dawn, though, the Mexican captive came racing up to
the Buoy camp all all in a fuss, telling them
that the previous day, after the two parties had had

(24:26):
parted ways, the Comanche group had run into a party
of Teliconi, Waco and Catto who said they were stalking
Booye's men and planned on killing them and stealing their
horses and supplies. So the Commanche couldn't do much about this,
but they did send their captive out to Warren Buoy

(24:47):
about this group stalking him, but also to advise him
to take cover immediately. Now even gives some advice about
where a good place to go would be. Booie, though,
decided he wasn't going to do that. He he was
close enough to feel that silver, you know, and he
was going to push ahead to San Salva instead. It
ended up being a really, really bad move. So the

(25:10):
next morning, the large party of Native Americans approached and reason.
At this point attempts to parlay in their own language
before the Catto began shooting, and the Catto, we're hoping
to kill the small group of men, and they probably
would have succeeded. They probably would have quickly swarmed them
had Booie not spotted a chief by noticing his buffalo horns.

(25:31):
So ham shot at the chief and unhorsed him. The
chief fell to the ground and was soon shot dead there,
and this unnerved and disturbed the war party enough to
give the Booey party time to dig in. There was
heavy fighting that went on for hours, and by late afternoon,
the Native Americans had set fire to burnout Booey's men,

(25:51):
but they only used it to collect their own dead
and wounded. Ultimately, about fifty of the Native American warriors
had been killed. Only one man of Buie's party had
been shot dead, even though every single guy had been
hit either by an arrow or by a bullet, and
only six of them were well enough to care for
the other, so it still looked pretty bleak for them,

(26:12):
even though they had survived this attack, partly because their
animals were wounded too, and they were stuck far from
far from home and uh I didn't know where to go,
so it took a whole week for for them to recover,
for the animals to recover enough to head back to
San Antonio, where, of course word from the Comanche about

(26:33):
this war party had also gotten back. Everybody in San Antonio,
including Bowie's wife Ursula, had given them up for dead.
So meanwhile, while Booie had been establishing himself and nearly
getting killed in the process, in Texas, the situation and
the rest of Mexico was changing. The same year that
Booie had moved to Mexico's president closed the borders of

(26:55):
Texas to U S citizens, but not to Europeans. He
was a free aid that Americans were flooding the state.
He was also trying to start collecting customs. Many Texans
were not okay with these new rules and limitations, nor
were some Tano's or Hispanic Texans. During this time, there
was also conflict between federalists and centralists in Mexico. Federalists

(27:19):
who wanted a state sort of government state and national government,
and centralists who wanted more of a dictatorship for the
Mexican government. So this had been spreading across Mexico gradually,
and it finally reached Texas by eighteen thirty two of
one of the outer provinces and most of the Texians
supported General Antonio Lopez to Santa Anna, who led the

(27:41):
federalists in this revolution and buoy This man of action
of course backed up his support and action too. He
was able to bluff with just a very small group
of men, a Mexican colonel and his army who had
been sent into disarm the region. You know, boy had
had good practice by this point with with bluffing a
larger group of men. And he also helped his father

(28:01):
in law, governor of Vera Mendy, relocated the Texas and
Coheela capital away from centralist territory. But Booie's relationship with
the Vera Mendy's was unfortunately about to end tragically. It's
probably the saddest part of Booie's story. While he was
away on business and Natchez, he caught malaria, he almost died,

(28:24):
worked on his will all of that. He didn't get
word though, until November eighteen thirty two, that while he
had been sick, his wife, child, mother in law, and
father in law had all died of cholera two months earlier.
So he was devastated by this late news rushed back
to San Antonio, but um no real family ties anymore

(28:46):
in Texas. Meanwhile, Mexico's political situation was getting even crazier.
Santa Anna led an insurrection against the president and switched
government ideals from federalists to centralist. The situation in Texas
became even more unsettled, with some Texians still wanting to
be a part of Mexico but fighting to restore some

(29:07):
of the old, more liberal ways. Others wanted Texas to
become its own republic with its own laws, including legalized slavery.
Booie was in the latter camp. So it's all of
these different goals, different people trying to accomplish different things.
A skirmish between Mexican troops sent into Texas and some

(29:29):
of these rebels finally kicked off the Texas Revolution on
October eight thirty five. That fall, the Texians also laid
siege to San Antonio, and after this and after the
success there, a lot of the revolutionaries thought that maybe
the fight was over and one they went home to
their their farms, their ranches. But Santa Anna, back in

(29:51):
Mexico proper was busy building up a massive army to
fight both the Texians and the opposing Tanno's also lee
the small Texians garrison uh that included Booie, Colonel William Travis,
and folk hero Davy Crockett, plus some Tahano slaves, women
and children wound up at this old mission settlement and

(30:15):
fort called the Alamo, and Candath and Jane did an
earlier episode on the Battle at the Alamo. They went
into a lot more details, both about the political situation
leading up to it and the fight. But from Buoye's perspective,
it was kind of a bust. You know, he was
this renowned fighter. He was somebody who, as I mentioned
a minute ago, a minute ago, had really thrived in

(30:37):
underdog situations. He was really sick of like deathbed sick
almost maybe with typhoid, maybe pneumonia or tuberculosis. So this
was not his moment to to fight, even though he
was with these men who were willing to take a
stand here. So by the time Santa Anna and his
vastly superior forces laid siege to the Alamo, Booie was

(30:59):
in bed after thirteen days. The Mexican storm the Old
Church slash fourth on March six, eighteen thirty six, and
the fighting inside was particularly gruesome. It was very close quarters.
Bowie was killed inside along with the rest of the garrison,
and this defeat inspired other Texas forces. However, and when

(31:19):
General Sam Houston met with Santa Ana's larger forces six
weeks later, the Texians called quote, remember the Alamo, that's
why people today, and apparently brought their bowie knives to
battle with them, ready to to fight again in close quarters. Um.
Of course, victory at that battle eventually led to Texas independent,

(31:42):
and of course the Alamo legacy has shifted a lot
in the intervening years too. I saw so many articles
on this just trying to look at the Alamo from
different angles. And one of the biggest shifts came in
the nineteen fifties when all of this Davy Crockett, Jim
Booie sort of pop culture was really picking up u.

(32:02):
Instead of presenting the story of the Alamo as a
complete last stand by Anglo Texians only, the narrative really
shifted to include more the role of the Tehanas too
in the defense. Uh that started to be emphasized more,
although some people also say it might be a little
over emphasized. People were trying to play it up too
much since there were also as many black Americans present,

(32:24):
as there were Teanos. But also while the the battle
and while the discussion about it continued to be about
freedom and liberties, there were new elements that came into
land grab, racial elements, that sort of thing. It became
a more complicated, uh complicated story really. Meanwhile, the heroes

(32:45):
of the Alamo became these pop culture sensations. A Wild
West article by Paul Andrew Hutton called Davy Crockett the
first baby boomer fad and I mean, I can see that.
I guess if it's the fifties. We we started the
episode by talking about kids in a and and Jim
Bowie plays into that too. I imagine probably a lot
of kids during that time pretended to be these frontiers men.

(33:09):
But a fun fat to close all of this out
on this episode that has included gruesome knife fights and
the tooth stuck in the hand and the bloody Battle
of the Alamo, David Bowie actually chose his name for
both the knife and the man um throws in our
pronunciation wrench against. Certainly David Bowie isn't it, But it

(33:32):
does make sense to David Bowie would have been a
child of the fifties. Um and I could have. I
could see the the appeal, especially for um. I don't
know somebody who's trying to to make a career too
in the United States to choose this all Americans sort
of frontiersman for for his stage name. That's true. I

(33:53):
wonder what he would think of some of the shadier
sides of it. Just sort of adds to the cache
on this. So okay, So now that we've gotten this
full circle from Bowie to Bowie, Okay, Glen, are you
ready to get to some real male listener mail? Yes? Man,

(34:16):
all right, so you ready to do some listener mail
to Blena. I am. It's my first listener mail since returning.
We've gotten such a stack of postcards and and I
did one with Kristin recently. It was from a listener
who had sent us postcards from all over her family's
trip to South Dakota. That would have been one that
would maybe kind of make sense with this, But we've

(34:37):
gotten a few other series and we should just give
a shout out to those people. Christina, the Traveling One,
has sent us postcards from all over the world from
the spring and summer she's been really she's the traveling One.
It's a good name, Christina. Also Kyle. Listener Kyle has
sent us these really pretty postcards. A lot of them
have been illustrations of places in Berlin or Austria. It

(35:02):
seems like he's had a great trip there and seen
a lot of sights, and especially like this one of
Berlin from it's more historic looking than or historical looking
than a lot of the postcards we get. It's pretty cool.
But one special one to mention in this episode is
not just a postcard, it's a three D model. So

(35:25):
I don't know, Deeplina, maybe we should get out our
scissors after this. It's from listener Colleen and it is
of c KS Memorial Hall, which is in Taiwan. And uh,
I don't know if I have the motor skills, and
I don't think we should attempt this. It is small.
Maybe we should just leave it in tact. Question will
ruin the note? That's true. We don't want to lose

(35:47):
the message and the cool scamp in the back, so um,
maybe I'll take a picture of it and put it
on Facebook instead. That seems like the better plan, so
you can have lots of fun, I guess pouring over
some of these these postcards. I have a lot to
catch up on both with I just sort of skimmed
through the Listener male emails, but I have to go
back and sort of read through those, especially the suggestions

(36:08):
because I saw there were some great Listeners suggestions while
I was gone. And the postcards. Yeah, postcards and letters.
I have a lot of catching and you got a
lot of stuffed animal too. We also need to thank
Sarah in Northern Ireland. Yes, she sent me a cool
beanie baby sort of a memento from the London Olympics. Yeah,
so Aara can make friends with this little it's a

(36:31):
London Guard slash beanie baby slash Hello Kitty. Yes, and
it is currently in her room along with the elephant
that you gave her. Oh yeah, I did give her
room and I thought it was it was kind of
history appropriate, right I think? So you also gave her
the three Bears right, yes for my book choice um

(36:54):
so gives the bound it seems. And lots of fun
postcards and will be definitely getting back to Listener mail
too now that Debolina has return. I felt funny including
emails and things on on some of my guest host episodes,
but now that you're back, we will be reading you
guys's messages again on the show. So write us. We're

(37:15):
at History Podcast at Discovery dot Com. We're also on Twitter,
We're at missed in History. Uh, let us know if
you had your own I don't know, I almost said,
David Bowie, Jim Bowie, Uh, costume as a kid or
Davy Crockett or I don't know, David Bowie. Sure, why not?
Let us know and we'll we'd love to see pictures

(37:36):
of that too. And if you want to learn a
little bit more about some of the topics we talked
about on today's podcast, we have an article called why
do we Remember the Alamo on our website and you
can look that up by visiting our homepage at www
dot how stuff works dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Because at how stuff works

(37:57):
dot com they had happen named the name has named
the name be