My position is this -
1) Bowie knives were foremost weapons, and used as such. Both when various Bowie family used them, and when others used them, and when makers designed them and marketed them.
When you see the Bowie's using them it is as weapons in Affairs of Honor, and various melees. When you read of others using them, it's the same. When makers made them they did so as weapons, never as tools till much later. They had separate lines for edged tools, and general purpose knives.
Look at the actual designs -
http://barkriverknives.com/albums2/1A1/Later_Schivley.sized.jpg .
http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/7482/8787694_2.jpg?v=8CC7EC195CC2810 .
http://rusknife.com/uploads/monthly_06_2012/post-103-0-21958800-1339493189.jpg
http://www.timlively.com/images/englishbowies1.jpg .
http://www.timlively.com/images/englishbowies2.jpg .
http://www.timlively.com/images/englishbowies6.jpg .
http://www.svalbardrepublic.org/ebay/mpe0102.jpg .
Also look at the artful etches - They are etched with references to fighting and and various other combative frays. They aren't referencing woodsy or sporting pursuits. They are etched with such things as "self defender" and "protector", etc.... Not "ye olde tree beater" or "fireside whittler". No one cared about them as general purpose knives. They were designed, made, and sold with visions of heroic violence both real and imagined in mind for the most part. Their use as tools was for the most part secondary.
2)
The earliest findable comment by a Bowie that it was a Hunting knife was that letter in the Planter's Advocate in late 1838, a full 11 years after the knife first became in vogue. He had 11 years to comment that it was a hunting knife, but no findable reference is found in that 11 year time, and it isn't like Rezin and family were recluses, they were famous before the Sandbar Duel, and were near Rock Star Status after. Rezin regularly caroused with high powered people from all walks during those years, but never felt the need to harp on about it's pedestrian uses.
One could suppose that there are no early defenses of the knife as a hunting tool because there was a general understanding that they were weapons first, especially in the South, where personal duels were common, and that there hadn't been a need to defend it.
It only comes about after of a number of articles decrying both the family and it's name in the development of the knife. If you read the full text it's not so much about the development of the knife, but as a protection of the family name by an older and more well heeled Rezin. I don't wish to dig up all the articles decrying the Bowies and the knife during those years, but there are quite a few.
The text of the Planter's Advocate letter is here -
http://books.google.com/books?id=wb...Q#v=onepage&q=planters advocate bowie&f=false .
It is a defense of the family really, the defense of the knife is secondary.
I think were coming at this from different directions. Im paying attention to frontier use, where a big knife is a useful tool. Which can also serve as a weapon.
Youre paying attention to the Bowie knife as a marketing phenomenon. That actually makes sense. The Sandbar Fight made the Bowie famous as a fighting knife. There must have been many specialized fighters marketed as Bowies. Not as dual purpose tool, but strictly as a weapon. The fighting Bowie will have outsold the hunting Bowie because of demographics. There were far more people on the Atlantic coast. Especially the cities, from Portland to New Orleans. The thing about cities is, they contain a lot more customers than forests do.
Whos going to buy a Bowie in town? Town toughs will. Southern Gentlemen, with their honor culture, will. And drugstore cowboys willwhatever the equivalent term was back then. The same class of armchair adventurers and eager young men who bought Rambo knives a few decades ago. Few of these people wanted to play Natty Bumpo. They were, or pretended to be, dangerous butchers, men ready for any spree. They wanted a pure weapon.
So yes, I can see your point. Most of the Bowie Knife craze was a fighting Bowie craze. Most of the Bowies sold wereor pretended to befighting Bowies.
Thanks for linking to Rezins letter. Its been a while since I read the whole thing. Is that the first time Rezin talked about the Bowie knife? We just cant say. He may have been imitating a Roman stoic, saying little about it until that single letter. He may have been a local joke. There goes Bowie, boring on about brother Jims knife. Nobody listens to him. Unless someone wrote about it in a letter or journal, and that paper work survived, we would never know.
On the other hand, the long knife was both carried and used as a frontier tool/weapon. Heres an example, from
Bear Hunting in Tennessee: Davy Crockett Tells Tales, 1834.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5816/
I STOOD THERE FOR SOME TIME, AND COULD NOW AND THEN SEE A WHITE DOG I HAD, BUT THE REST OF THEM, AND THE BEAR, WHICH WERE DARK COLOURED, I COULDNT SEE AT ALL, IT WAS SO MISERABLE DARK. THEY STILL FOUGHT AROUND ME, AND SOMETIMES WITHIN THREE FEET OF ME; BUT, AT LAST, THE BEAR GOT DOWN INTO ONE OF THE CRACKS, THAT THE EARTHQUAKES HAD MADE IN THE GROUND, ABOUT FOUR FEET DEEP, AND I COULD TELL THE BITING END OF HIM BY THE HOLLERING OF MY DOGS. SO I TOOK MY GUN AND PUSHED THE MUZZLE OF IT ABOUT, TILL I THOUGHT I HAD IT AGAINST THE MAIN PART OF HIS BODY, AND FIRED; BUT IT HAPPENED TO BE ONLY THE FLESHY PART OF HIS FORELEG. WITH THIS, HE JUMPED OUT OF THE CRACK, AND HE AND THE DOGS HAD ANOTHER HARD FIGHT AROUND ME, AS BEFORE. AT LAST, HOWEVER, THEY FORCED HIM BACK INTO THE CRACK AGAIN, AS HE WAS WHEN I HAD SHOT.
I HAD LAID DOWN MY GUN IN THE DARK, AND I NOW BEGAN TO HUNT FOR IT; AND, WHILE HUNTING, I GOT HOLD OF A POLE, AND I CONCLUDED I WOULD PUNCH HIM AWHILE WITH THAT. I DID SO, AND WHEN I WOULD PUNCH HIM, THE DOGS WOULD JUMP IN ON HIM, WHEN HE WOULD BITE THEM BADLY, AND THEY WOULD JUMP OUT AGAIN. I CONCLUDED, AS HE WOULD TAKE PUNCHING SO PATIENTLY, IT MIGHT BE THAT HE WOULD LIE STILL ENOUGH FOR ME TO GET DOWN IN THE CRACK, AND FEEL SLOWLY ALONG TILL I COULD FIND THE RIGHT PLACE TO GIVE HIM A DIG WITH MY BUTCHER. SO I GOT DOWN, AND MY DOGS GOT IN BEFORE HIM AND KEPT HIS HEAD TOWARDS THEM, TILL I GOT ALONG EASILY UP TO HIM; AND PLACING MY HAND ON HIS RUMP, FELT FOR HIS SHOULDER, JUST BEHIND WHICH I INTENDED TO STICK HIM. I MADE A LOUNGE WITH MY LONG KNIFE, AND FORTUNATELY STOCK HIM RIGHT THROUGH THE HEART; AT WHICH HE JUST SANK DOWN, AND I CRAWLED OUT IN A HURRY. IN A LITTLE TIME MY DOGS ALL COME OUT TOO, AND SEEMED SATISFIED, WHICH WAS THE WAY THEY ALWAYS HAD OF TELLING ME THAT THEY HAD FINISHED HIM.
Crockett doesnt call his butcher a Bowie. But it wont have been shaped like the Green River knives. Not if Crockett could thrust it home into a bear without his hand sliding onto the edge. Some sort of quillons would do. So would a shape like the Forest Bowie.
On a later occasion Crockett talked about giving a Comanche chief a big Bowie.
David Crockett: His Life and Adventures, by John S. C Abbott.
The quote in included here.
http://www.teachamericanhistory.org/File/Davy_Crockett.pdf
THE CHIEF SHOUTED THE WAR-WHOOP, AND SUDDENLY THE WARRIORS CAME RUSHING IN FROM ALL QUARTERS, PRECEDED BY THE OLD SQUAW TRUMPETERS SQUALLING LIKE MAD. THE CONJURER SPRANG TO HIS FEET, AND WAS READY TO SINK INTO THE EARTH WHEN HE BEHELD THE FEROCIOUS-LOOKING FELLOWS THAT SURROUNDED HIM. I STEPPED UP, TOOK HIM BY THE HAND, AND QUIETED HIS FEARS. I TOLD THE CHIEF THAT HE WAS A FRIEND OF MINE, AND I WAS VERY GLAD TO HAVE FOUND HIM, FOR I WAS AFRAID THAT HE HAD PERISHED. I NOW THANKED HIM FOR HIS KINDNESS IN GUIDING ME OVER THE PRAIRIES, AND GAVE HIM A LARGE BOWIE-KNIFE, WHICH HE SAID HE WOULD KEEP FOR THE SAKE OF THE BRAVE HUNTER. THE WHOLE SQUADRON THEN WHEELED OFF AND I SAW THEM NO MORE. I HAVE MET WITH MANY POLITE MEN IN MY TIME, BUT NO ONE WHO POSSESSED IN A GREATER DEGREE WHAT MAY BE CALLED TRUE SPONTANEOUS POLITENESS THAN THIS COMANCHE CHIEF
Did the Bowie boys originally make Bowies as weapons? The argument seems to be that they were inveterate dualists, always armed and ready. There are many stories of Jims knife fighting prowess that I find dubious. If he was nothing else, Jim was a story magnet. When a story appears decades after Jims death, or it turns out to originate Miami newspaper, I doubt its authenticity. Its been years since I looked into the research. tltt, can you show links to these Bowie family duels? Id appreciate it
Consider this depiction, the first I found on the web.
http://vidalia.op4web.com/custom/webpage2.cfm?content=News&id=38&pt=News&Cat=History
BOWIE'S FAME CAME ABOUT AS A RESULT OF A FEUD WITH NORRIS WRIGHT, THE SHERIFF OF RAPIDES PARISH. THE TWO HAD PARTICIPATED ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF POLITICAL PARTY SQUABBLES AND COMPETED AGAINST EACH OTHER IN LAND SPECULATION VENTURES. BOWIE HAD SUPPORTED WRIGHTS'S OPPONENT IN THE RACE FOR SHERIFF, AND WRIGHT, A BANK DIRECTOR, HAD BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN TURNING DOWN BOWIE'S LOAN APPLICATION. AFTER A CONFRONTATION IN ALEXANDRIA ONE AFTERNOON, WRIGHT FIRED A SHOT AT BOWIE. AN UNINJURED BOWIE WAS ENRAGED AND TRIED TO KILL WRIGHT WITH HIS BARE HANDS. WRIGHT'S FRIENDS INTERVENED AND STOPPED THE ATTACK, AND BOWIE RESOLVED TO CARRY HIS HUNTING KNIFE ON HIS PERSON FROM THEN ON. THE KNIFE HE CARRIED HAD A HUGE BLADE THAT WAS NINE AND ONE-QUARTER INCHES LONG AND ONE AND ONE-HALF INCHES WIDE.
In this case Jim knew he had an enemy in town. Yet hes walking around unarmed. (Or with a jackknife in his pocket, depending on the version.) Is this how an eager dualist behaves? Not to my way of thinking. He would have been
packing.
It was only
after this episode that Rezin loaned little brother his hunting knife. Which was really just a long hunting knife. That seems to me to correspond with the evidence.
.
