79 Crawford to Chew, August 11, 1819, Letters Received, New Orleans Collection District, Bureau of Customs, Entry 1627, Record Group 36, NA.
80 Mims, Trail, 27, citing St. Landry Parish records.
81 Walter Pritchard, ed., “ George Graham's Mission to Galveston in 1818,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 20 (July 1937): 643.
82 Wells, Guide, 129.
83 Bowie, “The Bowies,” 380-81. Confirmation of John Bowie's description of the slave business is found in “Negroes Imported,” Nile's Register 15 (December 12, 1818): 29, which describes precisely this form of operation, claiming that ten thousand slaves were thus imported in 1818 alone.
84 New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 22, 1937, quotes then recently discovered records of the U.S. District Court in New Orleans showing that on January 16, 1810, Pierre Laffite was a deputy marshal.
85 James Sterrett to Josiah S. Johnston, November 21, 1821, Josiah S. Johnston Papers HSP; Joseph Anderson to Beverly Chew, March 14, 1820, Entry 1627, Record Group 36, NA.
86 Bowie, “The Bowies,” 380-81, Washington, Tex., Lone Star, October 23, 1852. It is necessary to state here that dating the commencement and duration of the Bowie slave enterprise is conjectural. Laffite's presence at Galveston from April 1817 to sometime in early 1821 provides the extreme limits of their possible involvement. The Joseph O. Dyer articles on Warren Hall in the Galveston Daily News (see note 78) state that he and James visited Laffite in 1818, though they are not to be relied on too heavily, while James's heavy activity in his subsequent land deals in 1820 would seem to restrict the time period to mid-1818 to early or mid-1820. John Bowie's statement that James sold his Bayou Boeuf property to fund the enterprise is the only potential clue to a more positive date, and James sold virtually all of that land in October 1819 (Conveyance Book D, 55, 96, Avoyelles Parish Courthouse). It is worth noting that in February 1819 James bought a slave for $1,200 at Opelousas, which would hardly make sense for him if he was already in the business of buying them from Laffite at $140 or less, and by September 1819 he still had not paid for the slave, an indication that he was not yet making the substantial profits from the slave business that brother John claimed in his article. Thus, the fall of 1819, though seemingly late, seems the best date to assume the Bowies' entry into the smuggling enterprise.
Amelia Williams, “Critical Study, III,” 92, says that the Bowies practiced the enterprise from 1818 to 1821, but gives no source, and thus must be taken as supposition. John Bowie“s statement in “The Bowies,” 380-81, that they made $65,000 before quitting argues that, at an average profit of $300 per slave, they smuggled more than two hundred blacks into Louisiana. Further, he says they bought them forty at a time, which would mean no more than five expeditions, hardly requiring a two- or three-year period to carry out. Finally, John Bowie says at the same time that James used his money from the enterprise to start speculating in land, which James certainly commenced in late 1820. Considering that the article “Negroes Imported” in the December 12, 1818, issue of Nile's Register (15,29) highlights the kind of operation that the Bowies ran as a current outrage, a period of mid- or late 1819 to early or mid-1820 seems to be a most logical time for the Bowie involvement, and is only gainsaid by the comment in the Hall articles that Bowie and Hall visited Laffite in 1818. It is possible, of course, that the Dyer articles are mistaken as to the date, being written a century after the fact, and it is equally possible that Hall and James did visit Laffite in 1818, but that the Bowie brothers did not respond to the opportunity until a year later.
87 Conveyance Book D, 96, Ayoyelles Parish Courthouse.
88 Ibid., 55.
89 Andrus v. Bowie, April 24, 1820, Bowie House Museum, Opelousas.
90 Josiah Shinn to Walter Bowie, June 23, 1917, Walter Bowie Papers, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore.
91 Homer S. Thrall, A Pictorial History of Texas (St. Louis, 1879), 502-3 tells a story of ninety blacks escaping and fleeing westward, and of Bowie following them as far as the Colorado River. It seems hardly likely, since John Bowie states that they never moved more than forty at a time. Moreover, the Colorado was at least 180 miles from the Sabine, and at this point entirely unknown to James Bowie. Thrall is probably simply repeating a garbled and embellished story that may have some germ of truth.
92 Galveston, Daily News, March 21, 1930. In fact, the source states that Bowie said the slaves feared his knife's “unerring aim,” but this is certainly an after the fact assignment of knife prowess to Bowie based on the growth of the Bowie knife legend subsequent to James's death. There is no reason or evidence to suppose that at this or any other stage in his life James Bowie had any special prowess at throwing a knife, and in any event, contrary to popular fiction and film, a thrown knife simply does not have sufficient mass to leave more than a surface wound when it strikes pliable human flesh, especially when it has to penetrate clothing first. Only a hit on the skull would have any real possibility of being incapacitating.
93 J. G. Dyer to William Beer, February [no year], William Beer Papers, Tulane University Library, New Orleans. “The Bowie Knife,” American Notes and Queries 2 (March 23, 1889): 251, states that a Juan Antonio Padillo who served with Laffite became a lifelong friend of Bowie's. Like so many such sources, its obsession with the Bowie knife makes it a less than reliable source about Bowie himself.
94 Pritchard, “Graham's Mission,” 646-48.
95 Bowie, “The Bowies,” 380-81. It should be noted that in 1820-22 the United States filed charges against at least a dozen Louisianans, all involved in illegal slave importation, and in all of those cases the buyer of the illicit black forfeited the chattel and also faced a fine of a thousand dollars or more per slave. A share of those fines may also have been part of the Bowies' proceeds from their enterprise. Works Project Administration, Synopses of Cases in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, Cases #1 to #3000, 1806-1831 (Baton Rouge, 1941), pp. 203-5, 212.
96 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 383.
97 At the time that Bowie sold his Bayou Boeuf property to his brother Stephen, he also owned two small parcels in Avoyelles on Elm Bayou that he bought on December 3, 1818, for $900 (Conveyance Book C, 241-42, Avoyelles Parish Courthouse). No subsequent disposition of this property has been found, nor can Elm Bayou be located today, its name having presumably changed over the years. If it was adjacent to the Bayou Boeuf property, which seems probable, then it should have been a part of the sale to Stephen Bowie, but it is possible that James still owned this tract after the sale.
Chapter 3 Crockett 1815-1824
1 Crockett, Narrative, 125-26. Crockett does not say what she died of, but he does speak of “her sufferings,” making it evident that she did not die instantaneously by accident or seizure. Cholera would have taken about two days, and typhoid tow weeks. Since she had just given birth to their daughter a few months before, it could not have been birth labor that killed her, though of course any of a number of internal problems not connected with disease might also have been the cause.
2 Ibid., 126-27; Shackford, Crockett, 34.
3 Jessie Arn Henderson, “Unmarked Historic Spots of Franklin Country,” Tennessee Historical Magazine, Second Series, 3 (January 1935): 117-18.
4 Shackford, Crockett, 34.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 127-32.
6 Shackford, Crockett, 37-38.
7 Arpad, “Crockett,” 171-72.
8 Crockett, Narrative, 133-35, Court docket, May 5, 1818, August 3, 1819, copies in David Crockett Papers, UT; bill of sale, August 3, 1818, Daughters of the American Revolution Papers, East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 137-38.
10 Arpad perceptively identifies this self-image in “Crockett,” 135.
11 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 536.
12 Crockett to John C. McLemore, October 24, 1820, David Crockett Collection, DRT.
13 Crockett, Narrative,
138.
14 Shackford, Crockett, 42-43.
15 Crockett, Narrative, 139-43.
16 Ibid., 143-44, tells this story, implying that the discussion took place at a meeting in Pulaski. However, Crockett told the story early in 1836 to John Swisher and then said it happened while he and Polk were on their way to Washington to take seats in Congress in 1827, or so Swisher remembered it (John M. Swisher, The Swisher Memoirs [San Antonio, 1932], 19-20). Certainly Crockett embellished and varied his stories in the retelling. In this case the date of 1821 with the legislature the destination seems the more likely timing, as in the Narrative, but the venue is more likely the horseback ride to Murfreesboro, as in Swisher. Indeed, viewed in the light of the Swisher version, Crockett's statement in the Narrative that he and Polk spoke “in a large company,” would mean a “company” of travelers rather than a meeting, as usually assumed.
17 Crockett to McLemore, October 23, 1820, Crockett Collection, DRT; James K. Polk to Samuel H. Laughlin, March 15, 1822, in Herbert Weaver and Paul H. Bergeron, eds., Correspondence of James K. Polk, vol. 1, 1817-1832 (Nashville, 1969), 13-14n.
18 Shackford, Crockett, 47-49; Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 72-73.
19 Ellis, Crockett, 58-59; quoting the Cincinnati Gazette of unknown date in the early 1880s.
20 John L. Jacobs to the editor of the Morristown Gazette, November 22, 1884, Correspondence by Subject, David Crockett, TSL.
21 Crockett, Narrative, 144-45.
22 Shackford, Crockett, 50-52; Crockett, Narrative, 142n.
23 This episode comes from the Matthew St. Clair Clarke ghostwritten book Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee (Cincinnati, 1833), 51-53. Shackford, Crockett, 52-53, and 257-58, concludes that Crockett made at least passive contributions to this book by passing along recollections to the author, thus lending some authority to incidents such as the encounter with Mitchell, a conclusion that seems sound, as will be discussed later.
24 Galveston Daily News, January 27, 1895. This commentary on Crockett's hunting dress, and his comments on rifle and knife, are from John G. Chapman's account of conversations with Crockett in 1834.
25 Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, Conn., 1973), 412-13, 415. Admittedly this conclusion about the significance of hunting to Crockett—other than as recreation and a means of putting meat on the table—is purely speculative and will no doubt draw fire from those who object to so-called “psychobabble” in biography. Nevertheless a biographer has the duty at least to make an attempt at informed speculation on a subject's motives, using whatever sources are at hand, even if, as with Crockett, they are nothing more than recorded behavior. Measured against the whole of Crockett's life, this conclusion about hunting fits a broad pattern in the way be dealt with failure and defeat. It is thus, at least plausible and consistent with the evidence. However, it is certainly possible that other interpretations might be drawn from this same evidence. Slotkin's thoughtful work was of great help in addressing this whole subject.
26 S. H. Stout, “David Crockett,” American Historical Magazine 7(January 1902): 17.
27 Crockett, Narrative, 147-54.
28 Shackford, Crokett, 55-56.
29 Ibid., 58.
30 Ibid., 56-58.
31 J. V. Drake to the editor of the News, October 17, 1877, David Crockett Biographical File, DRT.
32 No evidence exists to provide any detail of the rifle Crockett used in these days. Jim Cooper, “A Study of Some David Crockett Firearms,” East Tennessee Historical Society Papers 38 (1966): 62-65, states that on May 5, 1822, in Nashville he was given a presentation rifle, which his son John sold after Crockett's death, but that eventually it found its way back to John W. Crockett, David's great-grandson, who said he doubted that it ever belonged to his ancestor. Judging from the description of the embellishments on the rifle, and from the fact that Crockett had no known business in Nashville in May 1822, it seems probable that the story of this gun was a hoax.
33 Crockett, Narrative, 155-65.
34 Shackford, Crockett, 59.
35 Crockett, Narrative, 166-67.
36 Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 74, misreads Crockett's statement in his Narrative, 169, about having a special shirt made for the tobacco and liquor. This is clearly only Crockett's brag and bluff, done for humorous effect in front of a crowd, not an actual shirt that he made and used. Shackford, Crockett, 65, gets it right.
37 H.S. Turner, “Andrew Jackson and David Crockett,” Magazine of American History 27 (May 1892): 385-87; Stanley J. Folmsbee, “David Crockett and West Tennessee,” West Tennessee Historical Papers 28 (1974): 6. Shackford, Crockett, 64, and Folmsbee, “West Tennessee,” 6, are misled by their source on the matter of Crockett's giving Butler's speech for him. They accept at face value the statement by Turner that Crockett usually spoke last and on this occasion asked Butler to let him go first. Stump speaking did not work in this fashion. The candidates either alternated speaking first or else decided the matter by chance. Thus Crockett did not have to ask to be allowed to go first, though by the time Turner wrote his recollection of the event in 1892, he may have remembered it that way. Also, by making Butler the unwitting agent of his own embarrassment in letting Crockett go first, the story took on added irony.
38 A very good exposition of the Trickster in mythology will be found in Nikolai Tolstoy, The Quest for Merlin (Boston, 1985), 186ff.
39 Slotkin, Regeneration, 308.
40 Crockett, Narrative, 171.
41 M.J. Heale, “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics: David Crockett and the Myth of the Self-Made Man,” Western Historical Quarterly 4 (October 1973): 416-17.
42 Shackford, Crockett, 68-70; Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 76-82.
43 Arpad, “Crockett,” 169-73.
44 Speech of Col. Crocket [sic] on a resolution to remove the seat of the Legislature, n.d., Calving Jones Papers, SHC, UNC.
45 Shackford, Crockett, 68-72; Folmsbee and Catron, “Early Career,” 76-84.
Chapter 4 Bowie 1820-1824
1 Joseph G. Tregle, Jr., “Louisiana in the Age of Jackson: A Study in Ego-Politics” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennysylvania [Philadelphia], 1954), 70-72. Tregle's brilliant study of the Byzantine workings of Louisiana politics in the 1820s is due to be published in 1998 by Louisiana State University Press.
2 John Millikin to Josiah Meigs, February 1, 1821, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 3. 609.
3 Ibid.
4 Johnston to Register and Receiver, March 15, 1814, American State Papers, Public Lands Series, vol. 3, 250.
5 Caiaphas Ham, Recollections, John S. Ford Papers, UT; Robert B. Ardoin, com, Louisiana Census Records, vol. 1, Avoyelles and St. Landry Parishes 1810 & 1820 (Baltimore, Md., 1970), 17, 119. since James Bowie does not appear in the 1820 Louisiana census by name, this argues further that his 1819 sale to Stephen included all of his Avoyelles property, including the two Elm Bayou parcels. However, in all his business dealings for the next four years, he is listed as being “of Avoyelles,” and in 1824 he officially changed his residence from Avoyelles to Rapides Parish. Stephen Bowie's census enumeration shows that there were living at his plantation four white males aged sixteen to twenty-six, one of them being Stephen himself. Since the age limit of twenty-six exactly matches James Bowie's age in 1820, since he officially resided in Avoyelles, and since he appears nowhere else in the census, it is rather conclusive that he lived with Stephen and was one of the other three males mentioned.
6 Stafford and Bowie v. Spencer and Lee, November 21, 1820, District Civil Suit no. 496, Spencer and Lee v. Stafford and Bowie, January 7, 1822, District Civil Suit no. 403, St. Landry Courthouse.
7 Sparks, in Ellis, Crockett, 214-15.
8 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 54.
9 Ibid., 221-22.
10 Elijah Hayward to Andrew Jackson, January 16, 1832, Entry 404, Le
tters Sent Re: Fraudulent Bowie Claims in Louisiana, 1829-1873, Records of the Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office, Division D (Private Land Claims Division), Record Group 49, NA.
11 Sparks in Ellis, Crockett, 222-23.
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