It began with Jim bribing Xolic, chief of the Lipan Apaches, with the gift of a silver-plated rifle, to adopt him into the tribe and show him their secret mines containing a million dollars’ worth of silver. Rather than let the Bowies have their treasure, the chief told Jim where to find a still richer mine, on the San Saba River, near an ancient, deserted Spanish fort. On November 2, 1831, Jim and Rezin set out to recover this treasure. They took along with them eight others for mutual protection, six white men and two black slaves. Soon they found themselves waylaid by no less than 164 Caddo and Tehuacana Indians, determined to keep the treasure for themselves. The odds were fifteen to one. Jim had his men entrench themselves in a great hurry and put up some sort of a breastwork. Behind it the treasure seekers made their stand.
Before the shooting started, Jim tried to negotiate his party out of their predicament, sending Rezin and a man called Buchanan to parley with the Indians, who responded by crying: “How d’ye do? How d’y do? and firing a salvo that shattered Buchanan’s leg. The ensuing do-or-die fight lasted all day. Bowie lost one man dead and three wounded. Of the Indians no less than fifty were killed and thirty-five wounded. They decided to leave Colonel Jim alone. There was no surgical kit in Bowie’s party, “not even a dose of salts” to treat the leg. Jim “boiled some live oak bark, very strong, and thickened it with pounded charcoal and Indian meal, made a poultice of it, and tied it around Buchanan’s leg. They then sewed a piece of wet buffalo hide around the leg to hold the whole mess together. Miraculously, Buchanan recovered completely. Eventually, Bowie found the mine, which was even richer than he had hoped for. He began shipping wagonloads of silver to San Antonio. But whoa! Hold it! Some low-down skunks insisted that there never was a Bowie Mine, and that Jim got his silver by robbing mule trains carrying precious ore from established mines to a number of refineries.
The search for the Lost Bowie Mine has never stopped since. Mexicanos and gringos, settlers, ranchers, prospectors, city slickers, clergymen, ruffians, and gentlemen, even grimly determined women, have torn up the earth, tunneled into hillsides, drained ponds, diverted lakes, and dug up huge boulders to get at Bowie’s treasure—all in vain, though a stone gatepost of the old Spanish fort was found, bearing the inscription BOWIE MINE, 1832.
In 1833 tragedy engulfed Jim Bowie. A cholera epidemic struck San Antonio. Jim sent his wife and two small children to her parents’ home in Monclova. There all five died of the dread disease, while Jim, in San Antonio, remained immune and unscathed, drowning his grief in oceans of whiskey.
In 1835 the outbreak of the Texas War of Independence made impossible any further treasure hunts or silver mining (or the robbing of bullion-transporting mule trains). Leading a ragtag company of volunteers, Jim Bowie was commissioned its colonel. With thirty men he joined the Americans and Texicans defending the Alamo, vowing to die rather than retreat. Davy Crockett also arrived at the head of a dozen marksmen calling themselves the “Tennessee Mounted Volunteers.” Such reinforcements heartened the defenders, but their enthusiasm cooled when Colonel Bowie and his men went on a colossal drunk, parading, reeling, through the streets of San Antonio, frightening sober-minded citizens out of their wits. In the course of events Colonel Bowie and Colonel Travis jointly assumed command of the Alamo. Well enough when he had arrived, Jim was at death’s door toward the end, succumbing to the last stages of consumption. (But whoa! Hold it! Some said he was mainly suffering from a broken leg, the result of a fall from one of the Alamo’s walls.)
General and Jefe Supremo Antonio López de Santa Anna, arrived to besiege and take the Alamo with 5,400 men and twenty-one cannon. Of defenders there were barely 180. The outcome was never in doubt. The Texicans withstood assaults and bombardments for eleven days. On the twelfth day the Mexican bands played the degüello, a trumpet call signifying “no quarter,” as Santa Anna launched his final assault. The defenders were overwhelmed and every male survivor put to the sword.
When the oncoming hordes of the Mexicans swept into and through the battered breaches, they found Bowie stretched upon his cot, his life fast ebbing away from attacks of his dread disease, consumption. With an unquailing eye he looked upon approaching death and seizing his pistols he determined to sell his life as dearly as possible. Two of the cowards who dashed toward him, fell beneath his steady aim and then he grasped the trusty knife that had served him so well upon that sandy battle-ground on the far-off Mississippi. The blood of the hero for a moment gave him strength and the noble steel was plunged into the bodies of three of his murderers, before his gallant spirit took its flight from that frail tenement now pierced by almost a hundred wounds.
The Mexicans tossed his body on their bayonets until his blood covered their uniforms and dyed them red. Thus ended the life of a knife fighter.
The mythmakers were as busy with Bowie as they were with the likes of Davy Crockett or Calamity Jane. There are therefore almost as many versions of Bowie’s death as there were mythmakers. One sample:
Two Mexican officers were detailed to pile up the bodies of the defenders and burn them. In the search they found a man still alive, lying sick on a stretcher.
“Do you know him?” asked one.
“I think,” replied the other, “it is the infamous Col. Bowie.” They berated him for fighting against the Mexican government; he replied by denouncing them for fighting under such a tyrant as Santa Anna; they commanded silence, he answered:
“Not when ordered by such as you.”
“Then we will relieve you of your tongue,” rejoined one of the officers.
The brutal order was given to the soldiers nearby, and speedily obeyed. The bleeding and mutilated body of the gallant Texan was thrown upon the heap of the slain, the funeral pile of the patriots saturated with camphene, and the tall pillar of flame that shot upward bore the soul of Bowie up to God.
Won’t You Light, Stranger?
A gentleman was once traveling where water was not the most abundant article, when he discovered a specimen of a one-mule cart—such as some good citizens use for purposes of emigration, when they are necessitated to seek a new location, in consequence of the supply for the manufacture of tobacco failing in the old homestead. Every appearance indicated a camp for the night, though the only person moving was a “right smart chunk of a boy,” who was evidently in trouble. The inside of the cart gave a constant strain of baby music, and a succession of groans, indicating deep distress. This, and the grief of the boy, aroused the kind sympathy of the traveler, and he rode up and inquired if anything was the matter.
“Is anything the matter?” replied the boy—“I should think there was. Do you see that old feller lying there, drunk as thunder?—that’s Dad. Do you hear them groanings?—that’s the old woman; got the ague like blazes! Brother John he’s gone off in the woods to play poker for the mule, with an entire stranger. Sister Sal has gone scooting through the bushes with a half-bred Ingen, and durn if I know what they are up to; and do you hear that baby? don’t he go at it with a looseness!—well he does that—and he is in a bad fix at that, and it is a mile to water, and there isn’t the first drop of licker in the jug; and ain’t that matter enough? Won’t you light, stranger?—Dad’ll get sober, and Sal will be back arter a bit. Darn’d if this ain’t moving, though. Is anything the matter?—shouldn’t think there was much, no how. Give us a chaw of terbacker, will ye, stranger?”
Ohio Poem
Come all ye fine young fellows
who’ve got a mind to range
Into some far-off countree
Your fortunes for to change.
We’ll lay us down upon the banks
of the blessed O-Hi-o,
Through the wild woods we’ll wander,
And we’ll chase the buffalo.
Take your powder, boys,
And keep your rifles handy,
Take your whiskey and your rum,
And don’t forget the brandy!
CHAPTER 4
Ring-Tailed Roarers of the W
estern Waters
When George Washington visited Pittsburgh in the 1770s, it was a desolate caricature of a town, consisting of some twenty hovels inhabited by about a hundred bedraggled settlers. But there was already talk of Pittsburgh being destined to become the great metropolis and commercial center of the West, the springboard to the Far West. By 1786 the population had grown to five hundred but, in the words of an early traveler, “The town is inhabited almost entirely by Scots and Irish, who live in paltry log houses, and are as dirty as in the north of Ireland, or even Scotland.” The town had one great asset, though; it was strategically situated at the confluence of the Ohio and the Allegheny rivers, the Ohio being looked upon as the great liquid high-road to the Far West.
The country west of Pittsburgh was still a near wilderness. The only way for land-hungry settlers and their goods to move westward was by river. This gave rise to a particular mode of transportation by means of rafts, barges, bateaux, arks, pirogues, flatboats and keelboats. Arks have been described as floating homes conveying whole families and their chattels, sometimes as movable saloons or general stores. Pirogues were oversized canoes, smaller than arks, serving the same purpose. Often encumbered with odd-looking additions, like warts on a toad, they were referred to as monstrous craft, defying classification. Slow and lumbering, they could be used on the largest rivers. Such craft were not the stuff out of which legends are made—neither were the humble barges and rafts—but the flatboats and keelboats were the darlings of the wild rivermen.
The typical flatboat resembled a large box on top of a huge rectangular plank. It had no draft at all and could float, so it was said, on an inch of water. It was equipped with two large, slanted steering oars on either side, which gave it its other name—broadhorn. It could be rowed, but was most often poled. If not too big or heavy, and with a sufficiently large crew, it could be lifted up and carried around an impassable stretch of the river. It could only go downstream.
The keelboat, as the name indicates, had a keel and, in rare cases, provided with a sail, managed to attempt a poor imitation of tacking against the wind. Usually, it was moved along with the help of poles. The typical keelboat, called a “bateau” by the French, was pointed at bow and stern, of light draw, between twenty and forty feet long. It had a crew of fifteen to twenty-five men. They were equally divided between each side and took turns on the walking boards that extended the whole length of the craft. The men planted their poles firmly in the river bottom and then, facing toward the stern, “walked” their boat against the current. Arriving at the stern, each man picked up his pole and went back to the bow, repeating the whole performance again and again. It was hard, backbreaking work that demanded strength and hardihood. Flatboats and keelboats went out of fashion on the Ohio sometime between 1815 and 1820 with the appearance of the first steamboats. On the far side of the Missouri they lasted some fifteen years longer until replaced by steam-driven craft there also.
The rivermen were an amphibious breed, extravagant boasters who could outrun, outjump, outfight, knock down and drag out more men than any other cuss form the Roarin’ Salt to the Massassip. They loved to brawl for the sheer fun of it, “Kentucky style,” that is with no holds barred. Favored battle tactics included groin kneeing and eye gouging. Some brawlers let the nails of their little fingers grow to monstrous length, so that they resembled bobcat claws, to rip out their opponents’ eyes. Biting off an ear or a nose was part of the fun. Cruel practical jokes were looked upon as welcome entertainment, sometimes ending in death. The rivermen had a gift for inventive swearing and created a language all their own, yeasty and flavorful. When old age had tamed them, out-of-work boaters became easy prey for eastern writers of almanacs and weeklies who plied them with tanglefoot, being in return regaled with tall tales that the writers further expanded and exaggerated with wonderful skill. Thus a new species of legend was born.
The most written-about ring-tailed roarer was Mike Fink, the “king of the Keelboat men,” also known as the “Ohio Snapping Turtle,” the “Salt River Roarer,” the “Snag on the Massassip,” the “Prince of Moosecatchers,” or the “Last of the Flatboat Men.” Mike kept generations of nine-teenth-century writers busy inventing endless new feats accomplished by their favorite subject. However, Mike did exist in the flesh as well as in some author’s head. He was born at Pittsburgh, in 1770, some say of Scotch-Irish parents, while others insist that he came from Pennsylvania Dutch stock. The country was still swarming with not overly friendly natives as Mike began his career as hunter and scout, wise in “Ingin ways.” When a wave of pioneers took to the water in order to go west, Mike found his true vocation as a riverboatman. He was not an endearing character—a liar, braggart, brawler, even murderer. Yet he was also a hero of sorts—a superb marksman, fearless, of herculean build, with immense physical strength and endurance. He could be at the same time gallant and insanely cruel toward women, kindly or brutal toward his fellows. In his time and peculiar environment such “horse-alligators” had admiring followers.
Mike Fink was described as being swarthy, muscular, and dark-haired, walking around in a red flannel shirt, moccasins, and a coonskin cap, a huge hunting knife stuck in his belt, never without his rifle, lovingly called Betsy or Bang-all.
Early writers who claimed to have known him, or to have known somebody who had known him, made their readers believe that they had jotted down some of Mike’s typical brags, such as: “I walk tall into varmints and Ingins, it’s a way I got, and it comes as natural as grinning to a hyena. I’m a regular tornado, tough as hickory, longwinded as a nor’wester. I can strike a blow like a falling tree, and every lick makes a gap in the crowd that lets in an acre of sunshine. I’m a Salt River Roarer, and I love the wimmin, and am chockfull of fight. Whew, boys!”
One of these writers was honest enough to admit that he and his rivals had invented so many yarns about Mike that their readers began having doubts that there ever was a man called Mike Fink.
Mike got around. Starting out on the Ohio, he went on to pole his crafts on the Salt, the Mississippi, and the Big Muddy. In 1822 he joined General William Ashley on his epic fur-trapping expedition to the Rockies, eventually having his brains blown out on the Yellowstones, dying a true westerner.
Seymour Dunbar, in his History of Travel in America, gives a wonderful description of flatboat men and their crafts.
They resembled—those unwieldy vessels of such a short time ago—a mixture of log cabin, fort, floating barnyard and country grocery. At night, as they drifted on the dark waters, their loopholes often spurted jets of rifle fire, while women loaded the hot rifles of the men in the flickering light of pine knots held by silent children, and watched for the answering shots of red enemies through the fog which hid them. By day, on a more kindly voyage, some backwoods genius on the cabin roof would touch the resin to his fiddle-bow and send the wild strains of a hoe-down to the wooded shores and back again, while the family mule gave vent to his emotions in a loud heehaw, the pigs squealed, the children shouted and danced to the melody of the combined orchestra, and the women rolled up the bedding, milked the cow, hung up the wash and killed a few chickens for dinner.…
Dunbar described the typical broadhorn:
He was of the restless type that in every period of American development has done the unusual and dangerous thing just for the love of doing it.… He was an epicure of excitement. Work no other men would do was his one luxury.… In his normal state he was silently waiting for something to happen, knowing quite well that it certainly would. When the bomb of circumstance exploded the human creature was on the dot of time transformed into a combination of rubber ball, wildcat and shrieking maniac, all controlled by instantaneous perception and exact calculation. After the tumult he subsided again into his listless lethargy of waiting, the monotony being endured by chewing tobacco and illustrating the marvelous accuracy with which he could propel a stream of its juice for any distance up to fifteen feet.
Still another distingui
shing feature of the professional flatboatman was his iridescent vocabulary. He spoke in a ceaseless series of metaphors, similes and comparisons. Everything was described, whether the thing discussed was an inanimate thing or human action, by likening it to something else.… When a boatman wanted to say that some act had been performed with celerity he declared it had happened “quicker nor a alligator can chaw a puppy.”
A Shooting Match
“I expect, stranger,” said Davy, “you think old Davy Crockett war never beat at the long rifle; but he war, though. I expect that there’s no man so strong but he will find someone stronger.
“If you haven’t heerd tell of one Mike Fink, I’ll tell you something about him, for he was a helliferocious fellow, and made an almighty fine shot. Mike was a boatman on the Mississip’, but he had a little cabin at the head of the Cumberland, and a horrid handsome wife, that loved him the wickedest that ever you see.
“Mike only worked enough to keep his wife in rags, and himself in powder and lead and whiskey, and the rest of the time he spent in knocking over b’ar and turkeys, and bouncing deer, and sometimes drawing a bead on an injun. So one night I fell in with him in the woods, where him and his wife shook down a blanket for me in his wigwam.
“In the morning says Mike to me, ‘I’ve got the handsomest wife, and the fastest horse, and the sharpest shooting iron in all Kentuck, and if any man doubt it, I’ll be in his hair quicker than hell could scorch a feather.’
Legends and Tales of the American West Page 9