Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  Bowie stood in the willows no more than one hundred yards from the sandy beach where he saw Wells and Maddox look over the ground. He could see but not hear some urgent conversation as Drs. Denny and Crain tried to persuade the principals to settle the matter amicably. Then the antagonists took their places and exchanged a shot, neither taking effect. Once again Denny tried to get them to stop, arguing that honor was now satisfied, but Wells and Maddox insisted on a second round. Bowie kept to his place with his friends, while Wright and his party moved closer, though still in the woods, to get a better view of the next exchange. After the puffs of smoke and the reports, Bowie saw that again both men remained standing, and then Denny stepped between them, said a few words, and Wells and Maddox approached each other to shake hands. It was over, mercifully, without either suffering a scratch.

  In a few moments the principals and their associates turned and as a group looked toward Bowie, Thomas J. Wells, and General Cuny, but then they started to walk toward Wright and his party. Bowie heard someone yell that they were all going to take a glass of wine together with Maddox's friends to celebrate the happy conclusion of the affair, and he and those with him started walking at a brisk pace toward them, Cuny ahead of him, catching up to them when they were about halfway to Wright's party at the edge of the woods. Then it happened.

  He heard Cuny ask Wells how it had gone, and Wells replied that he and Maddox were friends again. Fired no doubt by the rumors that Crain intended to shoot him on sight, Cuny then turned to Crain and suggested that they go back to the beach to settle their own differences. He may have reached for his pistol. Seeing this, behind him Bowie did the same. Wells and Cuny's brother immediately stepped between the two and told the general that this was neither the time nor the place. Behind them, and without their seeing it, Crain also drew a pistol. Then Cuny agreed to back down, and Wells and Dr. Cuny stepped aside and began to walk on. Bowie and Crain still had guns in their hands, however, and within a second Crain fired his. Taking Bowie for the “Major General” of the group, as he put it, Crain aimed at him. He missed Bowie, and Bowie's answering bullet just clipped Crain's cravat. Instantly Crain drew another and fired, this time hitting Cuny in the thigh, severing an artery. Bowie saw the general fall, and as Crain turned to run back toward his friends in the willows, Bowie drew his other pistol and fired but missed. Then he reached to his belt and that new scabbard, drawing out the long knife Rezin had given him.

  This was the sort of moment for which James Bowie was made. “If there ever lived a man who never felt the sensation of fear, it was James Bowie,” said his friend Sparks. Rezin would always avoid violence if he could do so with honor, but his brother was quicker. “It was his habit to settle all difficulties without regard to time or place, and it was the same whether he met one or many.” Caiaphas Ham averred simply that “he was a foe no one dared to undervalue, and many feared. When unexcited there was a calm seriousness shadowing his countenance which gave assurrance of great will power, unbending firmness of purpose, and unflinching courage.” However, said Ham, “when fired by anger his face bore the semblance of an enraged tiger.”

  In a transport of primal rage, the “tiger” followed Crain some small distance, yelling out, “Crain you have shot at me; and I will kill you if I can.” Suddenly he found himself isolated and without a loaded weapon. Crain turned and seeing what he called “his savage fury,” threw his own empty pistol at him, catching Bowie on the side of the head with a force that almost sent him to his knees. Maddox rushed up to grab Bowie but was thrown off; then Wright and the rest rushed down from the woods to assist Crain. Bowie staggered over to a twelve-inch driftwood tree trunk about five feet high, standing buried by one end in the sand, and gripped it for support, when Denny and McWhorter came up. Seeing Wright draw a pistol, Bowie yelled out: “You damned rascal, don't you shoot.” Wright yelled something back at him, and just then McWhorter handed Bowie a pistol. He fired at the approaching Wright just as Wright fired at him. Again both missed, but then Wright drew a second pistol. Unable to answer his fire, Bowie yelled at him to shoot and be damned.

  By now McWhorter held a drawn pistol, and he and Wright fired at the same time. McWhorter's ball just barely penetrated Wright's left side, and he yelled: “The damned rascal has killed me,” but the wound was hardly mortal. Denny came up to Bowie now, grasping him by the coat lapel and urging that “this must be stopped, sir, this must be stopped.” When Wright fired, however, his bullet struck Bowie full in the breast just where Denny had his left hand. The ball carried away Denny's middle finger, then passed through one of Bowie's lungs, staggering him. Freeing himself from Denny, Bowie lunged toward Wright, who had turned to flee. Bowie got about fifteen paces and was just in the act of grabbing his quarry when the Blanchard brothers opened fire on him. One bullet struck him in the thigh and brought him down. Seeing that, Wright turned around and drew his sword cane, as did Alfred Blanchard, and the two of them set upon the stricken man. They stabbed at him repeatedly, though neither got in a good strong thrust as Bowie flailed about, deflecting their blows with his free arm and his knife, giving them each some small cuts in the process and hitting Wright in the arm twice. Wright leaned forward and his sword pierced Bowie's left hand, and when he then turned the hand to fend off another blow, the blade tore through the flesh. One of the sword blows actually bent the blade as it hit Bowie's breastbone and then slid along one of his ribs.

  By what Samuel Wells called “wonderful exertion,” Bowie got himself up to a sitting position. Then in one lunge he reached up to grab Wright by the collar, and as Wright tried to straighten himself he inadvertently helped raise Bowie to a near standing position. As Bowie later told the story to Rezin and their friend Sparks, he said in Wright's ear: “Now, Major, you die!” With a single savage thrust, he drove the knife through Wright's chest, boasting afterward that he “twisted it to cut his heart strings.” Wright pitched forward, dead instantly, falling on Bowie and pinning him to the ground. By this time the Wells brothers—Samuel and Thomas—who had been at the dying General Cuny's side, ran up to where Blanchard still stabbed at Bowie, now trapped on the ground with wright's body above him. Thomas Jefferson Wells shot Blanchard in the arm, and at the same time Bowie finally threw off Wright's corpse and gave Blanchard a bad cut in his side with the knife.

  With that last thrust of the blade, the brawl ended. Crain had already stepped away, as had Carey Blanchard, soon joined by his wounded brother. Maddox never participated, nor had any of the physicians or the other spectators who came with his party. As quickly as the fight began it was done, the whole explosion of violence taking scarcely more than ninety seconds. Dr. William Provan of Natchez, watching from the woods, came out to Wright, opening his vest to reveal the gaping wound, and pronounced him dead. While the physicians bandaged the several other wounds, Bowie called out to Crain nearby: “For God sake; Crain assist me, give me some water, and help me to the shade.” There had never been antipathy between the two prior to the encounter this morning, and the bloodletting of the last few minutes seemed to take any hostility out of all of them. Crain quickly went to Bowie's side, and aided by McWhorter and others, carried him to the willows. On the way Bowie said: “Col Crain you ought not to have shot at me.” Crain replied that Bowie should not have drawn his pistol on him, but Bowie protested that “I did not draw for you; it was to protect my friend.” They laid Bowie in the shade beside Samuel Cuny, who died within a few minutes. Turning their attention to Bowie, the doctors found that one bullet had passed through his lung and another through his thigh. There were at least seven stab wounds on his body and a severe wound on his head from Crain's thrown pistol. If Bowie was still conscious at this point, and if they conferred within his hearing, then he heard all but Dr. Cuny conclude that he would not survive. Quickly they loaded Cuny and Wright into the boat, and Crain and Provan helped to carry Bowie, and within fifteen minutes from the firing of the first shots they were rowing back to Vidalia, there to bury the dead
and nurse the wounded.17

  Bowie's friends carried him to a room in the Vidalia House, and while the doctors tried their best to close his wounds, the story of the battle spread rapidly. The next day the Natchez papers first reported the affair. Town gossip and the papers said that Bowie was not expected to live. Bowie himself had other ideas, but confessed to his friends that after being hit by several bullets and multiple sword thrusts, he felt he was “d—d badly wounded.” He asserted that Crain's bullet never really hit him, which prompted Crain, who stayed in the area for several days and apparently called on Bowie, to accuse him of lying, but Bowie did jokingly express gratitude that his foes had heavily charged their pistols with powder, for the bullets passed completely through his body rather than lodging inside to do added mischief. He expressed not a bit of remorse at the death of Wright, and asserted frankly that when he plunged his knife into him, he meant to kill.18 The next day Wright was buried temporarily in Vidalia.

  Bowie spent almost two months recuperating to the point at which he could move about and leave the Natchez area to return to Alexandria, and for fully half a year after the fight he was not himself. Indeed, those wounds, especially the puncture of his lung, troubled him for the rest of his life.19 While in Vidalia, and in Natchez once he could move, Bowie found himself something of a curiosity as the much wounded survivor of the brawl. After all, once Cuny went down, Bowie became almost exclusively the object of attention of Crain, Wright, and the Blanchards, all of whom he equaled or bested practically single-handed. Men came to meet him as he lay in his sickbed, one finding him “cool and powerful, but generous and kind hearted.” The violence over, Bowie quickly reverted to his normal cordial and winning manner, though obviously strained by the pain of his multiple wounds. New friends found him intelligent, suave, and deceptively gentle mannered. “He exhibited so much kindness of heart and mildness of manners that a stranger would have selected almost any other man in a crowd of strangers, if the eye and powerful frame were disregarded, as the renowned Jim Bowie.”20 He struck a friendship with the lawyer Angus McNeil, who would soon replace Quitman as his attorney in Natchez, and no doubt received visits from his brother Rezin, whom he could well thank now for that knife.21

  Meanwhile the story of the fight and what John Johnston called “the feuds of our parishioners” soon became national news.22 The Natchez press reported it extensively, a whole special edition of the Ariel appearing on October 19, and thanks to that the papers in Philadelphia and New York eventually picked it up. Nile's Register, the most widely read news weekly of the day, republished an article on it. Though Bowie himself did not figure prominently enough in most accounts even to have his first name appear, still, having been a participant, and the most active one at that, a mantle of notoriety inevitably attached itself to him above all the rest. It was no duel, but a small spontaneous riot. Borrowing from the old Anglo-French, Rezin called it a “chance medley,” a onetime legal term for an accident that was not completely accidental, and typical of frontier hardscrabble scrapes in which the real fighters risked themselves only when they seemed to have the advantage and happily ran to cover otherwise—all except Bowie, that is. Impelled by the rage that blinded him to fear or self-protection, he stood his ground and simply kept fighting. That was the sort of thing that turned brutal, pointless brawling into legend.

  Naturally a grand jury met in Natchez on the fight, since two deaths had taken place in the county. It sat on January 24, 1828, but did not call Bowie to appear, and in the event, the jury handed down no indictments. Meanwhile the atmosphere back in Rapides remained as charged as ever even after the release of all that animosity on the sandbar. Having survived his duel with Maddox and the free-for-all that followed, poor Samuel Wells succumbed to a fever three weeks later, and yet another Cuny brother seemed in line for the office of sheriff to replace him. “The fighting I am afraid is not done away,” lamented a friend of Johnston's. “The animosity which exists still among the Parties must end somewhere.” Crain himself simply went to New Orleans, resolved never to return to Rapides so long as any of the Cunys lived, though in fact he came back within the year, seeking a seat in the legislature.23

  Though bedridden and in severe pain, Bowie wasted no time. Ever since learning of the death of Reuben Kemper, he intended to renew his campaign for the de la Français claim, especially since the prize now ran to more than forty thousand dollars. Originally he had expected to go to Washington in person that winter to press the matter with the Treasury and State Departments, but his wound now made that seem unfeasible. Recently he had taken on a partner, however, none other than Maj. Isaac Thomas of Rapides. Years before, Thomas had written several letters to the General Land Office on behalf of Bowie's Sutton report claims, in spite of the common knowledge of their fraudulence, and the previous year Thomas dealt with John Bowie, too. Before long he also entered a partnership with William Wilson, the front for Bowie in one of the Terrebonne claims, making it evident that despite his good reputation locally, Thomas probably was not wholly incorruptible.24 Just how he acquired a one-half share in the Kemper claim is uncertain, but given Bowie's perpetual need for money, he probably simply sold Thomas an interest or gave him a share to redeem a debt.25 Certainly Bowie owed Thomas money even after he took him on as a partner in the claim, for in January 1828 he allowed his brother Stephen by power of attorney to turn over one thousand arpents of his Terrebonne property to Thomas in fulfillment of a debt owed him jointly by James Bowie and Robert Martin.26 The land turned over, of course, was part of the very ground that Bowie had gained through fraud and accident, with Martin as his front, and on behalf of which Thomas had written to the General Land Office. The land may have been a final payoff for Thomas's influence—though it had not worked the trick—or it may even have been part of a larger scheme of which the Kemper claim interest was only a portion. Certainly Thomas had influence: In 1830 he would be a candidate for the governorship.

  At a meeting in early November, Bowie agreed that Thomas should go to Washington on their behalf during the coming winter. Through Bowie he already knew what he needed, including statements of evidence of the actual purchase of the arms during the West Florida rebellion, their possession by the infant republic and subsequent assumption by the United States, and the actual use of part of them in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. He could get ample testimony from Gen. Fulwar Skipwith, Maj. Philemon Thomas, and other veterans of the West Florida enterprise, by all of which they hoped to persuade the government to reconsider its position on the claim. Indeed, Bowie may already have secured some or most of this on advice from Secretary of State Clay.27

  Though hardly robust, Bowie moved to New Orleans in November and attended to some business in Rapides again late that month, and a few weeks later went to Terrebonne to sell another of his newly confirmed tracts on Bayou Caillou for a much needed twelve hundred dollars to support him when he wintered in New Orleans as usual.28 The bulk of his attention, however, he turned to his next land campaign, the Arkansas grants. He and John had bombarded the authorities with hundreds of claims, all of which in that territory went to the superior court, which tried them for confirmation. The Bowies were clever. Prior to the trials they transferred many of the claims to some of Arkansas's most prominent men, and these men, perhaps acting as fronts like Martin and Wilson, engaged the territory's best lawyers in defense of “their” claims. If they succeeded in defending Bowie's spurious grants, then they would buy the property from John at a preferential price.

  United States Attorney Samuel C. Roane found himself virtually alone and overwhelmed, with neither the time nor the wherewithal to mount a case against what he already believed to be fraudulent claims. He sought a postponement that he might learn enough Spanish to study the grant documents and go to Louisiana to talk with the General Land Office people there familiar with Bowie frauds, but on both counts the court denied him. As a result the court first passed favorably on thirty-six cases, and then in a Christmas Eve bonanza,
the court on December 24 confirmed another 117 or more. The decisions covered between fifty and sixty thousand acres, of which the Bowies had already transferred a considerable portion to those influential associates. The success was stunning.29

  James Bowie only knew of his Arkansas successes from afar. Too weak yet to travel that far, he went to New Orleans around the first of the new year, there to remain for the next two months continuing his recovery. While there he began selling his Bayou Black and Bayou Caillou tracts, receiving $2,500 in hand and a promissory note for the same amount a year hence.30 He also bent his efforts to getting the necessary papers for the Kemper claim, without informing his partner Thomas, but in the main he rested. New Orleans was always exciting, especially this season of the year. He was there for Mardi Gras in February, and was surely in town for the great event of the month before when the city welcomed back its hero of 1815. It was no secret that Andrew Jackson wanted to seek the presidency again in that year's election, and the Louisiana legislature issued him an invitation to be the honored guest at an anniversary celebration of his victory on January 8. Jackson came down the Mississippi, stopping at Natchez on January 4, and then four days later made a somewhat triumphal landing at the Crescent City. For the next four days he was feted, especially at a Jackson Ball held on January 10, and while the Creoles and the Henry Clay people gave him a cool reception, his own supporters were warm enough.31 Certainly James Bowie was no Jackson man, but he could not have avoided witnessing the outpouring of enthusiasm for this apostle of the “common man,” and he would hardly have missed an opportunity to attend one of the balls and dinners, if only to see the beautiful ladies and cultivate the acquaintance of the wealthy and influential.32 There is one social call that Bowie almost certainly did make while he was in New Orleans. Somehow he and Robert Crain each learned that the other was in town that season. Crain, already tiring of living with the fear that every hand in Rapides stood poised to kill him, invited Bowie to meet him in his hotel room and Bowie accepted, despite the advice of friends to keep his distance. There, behind a closed door and with no one to witness what they said, they ended their differences permanently and emerged as friends. In future years Bowie even spoke in endorsement of Crain's character. If the rest of the Rapides factions continued their hostility, at least one small peace broke out there in New Orleans.33