A Bowie knife ( ) is a pattern of fixed-blade fighting knife created by Rezin Bowie in the early 19th century for his brother Jim Bowie, who had become famous for his use of a large knife at a duel known as the Sandbar Fight.
Since the first incarnation, the Bowie knife has come to incorporate several recognizable and characteristic design features, although in common usage the term refers to any large sheath knife with a crossguard and a clip point. The knife pattern is still popular with collectors; in addition to various knife manufacturing companies there are hundreds of custom knife makers producing Bowie knives with different types of steel and variations in style.
Historical complications
The early history of the Bowie knife is complicated by murky definitions, limited supporting documentation, and conflicting claims. The Bowie knife is not well defined. By the mid-20th century most included some combination of blade length and blade shape. In the mid-19th century, when the popularity of the knife was at its peak, the term was applied to a wide range of blades. Absent a consensus definition, it is impossible to clearly define the origin of the knife. To complicate matters, some American blades that meet the modern definition of the Bowie knife may pre-date Bowie.
The Bowie knife derives part of its name and reputation from James Bowie, a notorious knife fighter, who died at the Battle of the Alamo. James Bowie left a very thin paper trail; in the absence of verifiable facts, his history was buried in unverifiable knife-fighting legend. Historians seriously entertain the possibility that Bowie fought only one personal knife fight (and, if Rezin Bowie's account is true, that fight was not fought with a blade meeting the modern definition). That Sandbar Fight received national publicity (accounts in Philadelphia, New York, and the Niles' Register of Washington, D.C.) within months of the event. James Bowie prominently wore a large knife after the Sandbar fight.
The Bowie family provided a variety of conflicting knife histories. James Bowie left nothing. His brother Rezin Bowie provided a terse history two years after James' death. Sixteen years after James' death someone (assumed to be James' brother John) slightly amended Rezin's explanation to include a blacksmith. Rezin's grandchildren named a different blacksmith. A later Bowie claimed that the information attributed to John was a lie and that John probably never saw the document, etc.
In the mid-20th century, a Bowie knife book author took liberties with the historical facts. Some documents were misquoted, some reported facts cannot be confirmed, etc. Others incorporated the errors into their accounts of both Bowie and his knives.
With no solid definition and conflicting accounts of knife history, many were credited with the invention or improvement of the blade.
Origin and description
The historical Bowie knife was not a single design but was a series of knives improved several times by Jim Bowie over the years. The earliest such knife, made by Jesse Clift at Bowie's brother Rezin's request, resembled Spanish hunting knives of the day, and differed little from a common butcher knife. The blade, as later described by Rezin Bowie, was long, thick and wide. It was straight-backed, described by witnesses as "a large butcher knife", and having no clip-point nor any handguard, with a simple riveted wood scale handle.
Bernard Levine has reported that the first known Bowie knife showed a strong Mediterranean influence insofar as general lines were concerned, particularly the shape of the traditional Spanish folding knife (navaja), then often carried by immigrants to Mexico and other territories of the Old Southwest. In an 1828 account of the capture of a pirate schooner carrying a mixed group of Spanish and South American pirates, the carrying of knives similar to the early Bowie knife is mentioned:
After the Vidalia Sandbar fight, Bowie was a famous man, and the Bowie brothers received many requests for knives of the same design. Bowie and his brothers later commissioned more ornate custom blades from various knife makers including Daniel Searles and John Constable. George William Featherstonhaugh described them as, "These formidable instruments ... are the pride of an Arkansas blood, and got their name of Bowie knives from a conspicuous person of this fiery climate."