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Post by Kevin Young on Mar 28, 2011 11:33:44 GMT -5
Or because Crockett was a national celb at the time of his death?
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Mar 28, 2011 18:24:21 GMT -5
Both men had name recognition, but Crockett certainly was nationally known. Bowie had Bexar connections, thanks to his marriage, and had spent some time checking out various parts of Texas before the Alamo. He certainly was involved in the fight long before Crockett rode in -- and the command of the Alamo would not have been solely Travis' had Bowie not taken ill.
Much of the latter course of action was the product of Travis, but I wonder how it would have been with Bowie still an active participant in the decision-making? We will never know.
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Post by gtj222 on Mar 28, 2011 20:58:27 GMT -5
Both were living legends...but for different reasons!
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Post by Tom Nuckols on Mar 29, 2011 23:35:24 GMT -5
Consider these factors: The Mexicans had several motivations (financial gain and national pride?) to report that "the braggart Santiago Bowie" died cowering in bed. The Texians had several motivations to report to Americans east of the Sabine (including some of my ancestors) who were brimming to go to Texas to fulfill Manifest Destiny that the Lion of the West had been mercilessly executed by the Mexicans. Disney had his own motivations (financial gain via national pride?). How confident can anyone be about any historical acount without taking into account the motivations of the reporter?
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Mar 30, 2011 4:07:31 GMT -5
I think the term used in the media today is "spin", which can be a nice, one-syllable word for "propaganda."
Paul
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Post by Kevin Young on Mar 30, 2011 11:09:59 GMT -5
I think part of the Alamo myth is having him rise like Lararus and to fight like an avening angel against the "demonic" hordes...
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Post by johnwsmith on Mar 30, 2011 14:37:29 GMT -5
I remember back in the mid-'80's portraying James Bowie in the Battle of the Alamo documentary for the Discovery Channel. We filmed it indoors at the Wayneamo, in the partition of the church built for Barbarosa. The director had said that he wanted Bowie's death depicted in shadows on the wall. Then the director left to film another scene outside while the technicians set up an array of powerful lights that cast my silhouette against the adobe wall.
I did not recall seeing any Mexican soldados die during the entire assault on the Alamo in that production. So I already knew, without being told, that Bowie was not going to kill any soldados. So in rehearsals for the lighting techs, I worked out a simple routine. As the soldados rushed toward me, I rose up slightly from the cot, and my feeble, wavering hand brought my knife into view. Hardly intimidated by the large blade, a soldado dashed up and plunged his bayonet into my bedridden form.
I liked that scenario, and I believed it. No one knows for sure how Bowie died, but that scene seemed very credible. The knife, while certainly identifying the figure in the shadow, also provided just a touch of defiance from a man who already may have been dying.
Coincidentally, Stephen Harrigan would portray Bowie's death in a very similar manner in his 2000 novel, The Gates of the Alamo.
But it was not good enough for the Discovery Channel director. He said, "I think the knife is a bit much." He told me to just raise my arms in futile panic as I was bayonetted.
I did what I was told. But I did not like it. And I did not believe it.
I remembered that documentary as I wrote the concluding sentence of the section on Bowie's death in my book, The Alamo Story.
Since it seems appropriate here, I have reprinted that section below.
From The Alamo Story:
The very imaginative, Sergeant Francisco Becerra encountered a sick man lying on a bed. Becerra wrote that he intended to spare the invalid, despite Santa Anna's orders to give no quarter. Then the sergeant witnessed two other Mexicans enter the room, both intent on fulfilling Santa Anna's orders--only to fall before the bedridden man's pistols. Becerra changed his mind, shot the sick man, and claimed his two discharged pistols as a war trophy. Although he did not identify James Bowie as the sick man, Becerra had provided an oft repeated version of Bowie's death. "Colonel Bowie was sick in bed and not expected to live," Susanna Dickinson stated in one of her many accounts, "but as the victorious Mexicans entered his room, he killed two of them with his pistols before they pierced him through with their sabres." Even Enrique Esparza provided Bowie with a Hollywood death scene. "[Bowie] loaded and fired his pistols until his foes closed in on him," Esparza stated in 1907. "When they made their final rush upon him, he rose up in his bed and received them. He buried his sharp knife into the breast of one of them as another fired the shot that killed him." Madame Candelaria maintained that she was with Bowie when he died. "A dozen or more of the Mexicans sprang into the room occupied by Colonel Bowie," she asserted in an 1899 account. "He emptied his pistols in their faces and killed two of them." Most accounts have Bowie fighting to the death, at least armed with two pistols, and sometimes with his knife. But if he was bedridden, and he apparently was, the knife would have been of little value. Soldados armed with five foot muskets could have pierced him with their bayonets, and even with a twelve-inch blade extended from a long arm, Bowie's knife could not have reached his attackers. Unless, of course, the Mexicans were shoving into his room, even as they shoved against the north wall, pushing those in front into range of that deadly blade. But other accounts exist in which Bowie does not offer resistance. In one of her earlier accounts, Madame Candelaria related that Colonel Bowie died in her arms "only a few minutes before the entrance to the Alamo by the soldiers." Sergeant Felix Nunez reported a sick man killed in the big room on the left of the main entrance. The transcriber or translater assumed Nunez meant the entrance to the church, but if Nunez meant the gate as the entrance, he would have put this unidentified man in the south wall. "He was bayoneted in his bed," Nunez related. "He died apparently without shedding a drop of blood." ". . . the pervert and braggart Santiago Bowie, died like a woman, almost hidden under a mattress," an unidentified Mexican soldier wrote to a Mexican newspaper in 1836. "Buy [sic], the braggart son-in-law of Beramendi, [died] as a coward," claimed Sanchez-Navarro in his diary. Historian William C. Davis [Three Roads to the Alamo] interpreted these accounts to suggest that Bowie was too ill to offer any resistance, perhaps only semi-conscious, but because he was not in the hospital, the Mexicans assumed he was attempting to hide. Davis wrote, "In a cruel irony at the end of a remarkable life, one of the most fearless men of his generation died at the contemptuous hands of soldiers who mistook him for the worst sort of coward." But perhaps Bowie did live up to his reputation. An unidentifed Mexican captain told Creed Taylor "he did not hear of a sick man being bayoneted while helpless on his bed but there was a sick man who got out of his bed when the Mexicans entered the fortress and died fighting with the rest." The most outlandish version of Bowie's death came from storyteller William P. Zuber, who allegedly heard it from a Mexican fifer named Apolinario Saldigna. In this lurid tale, Bowie was too weak to fight, but he so vehemently lambasted the Mexicans that they cut out his tongue and "pitched him alive upon the funeral pyre." Ultimately there is no absolutely reliable source as to James Bowie's death. Almost certainly he did not pile up around his cot the numerous Mexican corpses recounted in more fanciful tales. But there was, at least, a historical precedent. The man from the Sandbar, who kept fighting after he had been shot down, kept fighting after he had been clubbed in the head, kept fighting after he had been stabbed repeatedly, would not have given up easily even though confined to a cot in the Alamo. If Bowie were alive, if he were conscious, if he had had the strength to raise his arms, his hands would have held weapons.
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Post by mjbrathwaite on Mar 30, 2011 17:09:15 GMT -5
Great summary of the evidence, John! I'd forgotten about Enrique Esaparza's account. Although I'm not sure how believable it is, I guess it does add to the weight of evidence that Bowie fired at least one shot.
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Post by gtj222 on Mar 30, 2011 18:09:41 GMT -5
The only problem with Enrique Esaparza's account is that he was no where near Bowie at the time of Bowie's death.
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Mar 30, 2011 19:09:29 GMT -5
The only problem with Enrique Esaparza's account is that he was no where near Bowie at the time of Bowie's death. That's really the problem with much of the Alamo's story. No defender's survived to bear witness to the events that morning. We are left to do the best we can with what little we know mixed with a fair dose of speculation and educated guesswork. johnwsmith makes some good points.
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Post by Kevin Young on Mar 30, 2011 20:51:24 GMT -5
Good summary JR-and a nice refresher course in the various deaths of Jim Bowie...never liked the Bowie death scene in the Discovery Channel version (was disapointed in the final product in general).
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 30, 2011 21:39:26 GMT -5
Excellent summary and, as usual, we are left to ponder.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Mar 30, 2011 22:00:09 GMT -5
Both were living legends...but for different reasons! Was Bowie really a living legend before he died famously or was it more the history and mythology surrounding his big knife during the previous bloody decade?
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Post by gtj222 on Mar 31, 2011 9:08:34 GMT -5
I believe the San Bar Duel was a pretty big deal and word of mouth along with newspaper accounts helped the legend grow.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 31, 2011 13:55:19 GMT -5
I'm not familiar enough with Bowie's life to draw any definitive conclusions. From what I gather, he was typical of many frontier men of his generation, including Crockett, who were ambitious and looking for a way to move up in the world. The key to that was owning land and either cultivating it for profit (with slave labor) or making quicker money as a land speculator. Although Davis paints a pretty grim picture of Bowie's land dealings, there are alternative interpretations of what Bowie was doing. It does appear that he was engaging in illegal slave importing and running a scam with Laffite, as described by Davis.
I believe that the Sand Bar event was widely known and his survival in that brawl is quite remarkable. No doubt it increased his reputation as a man to be reckoned with. He showed unflinching courage and leadership in the early Texas War battles, as well as at San Saba. Since he was on good terms with Houston, he probably would have enjoyed a high position in the Texas Republic, had he lived. But Bowie's fame probably grew far more after the Alamo when his name became tied to the battle and he became one of the "holy trinity." Also, the popularity of the Bowie Knife (in all of its forms) no doubt added to his legend, regardless of how much he and/or his brother, Rezin, had to do with inventing, or designing, the knife/knives.
I don't have the text, but I know that Andrew Jackson wrote at least 2 letters from the White House in which he disparaged Bowie severely. Jackson seems to have regarded him as little more than a con man and land swindler. But Jackson typically held extreme views on nearly everyone he knew; he was the original "you're either with me or against me" guy. He was equally brutal toward Crockett, because he opposed him politically, and even extended his hatred to Crockett's son, John, when he won a seat in Congress. I don't know how well Jackson even knew Bowie, but he could form strong opinions based on what he'd learned about people. It's kind of ironic inasmuch as Bowie has always been considered a "Jackson man," just as Houston was, and unlike Crockett, who grew to dislike Jackson intensely, and hated his successor, Martin Van Buren, even more.
Allen
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