Bowie died on March 6, with the other Alamo defenders. In January 1836, he arrived at the Alamo, where he commanded the volunteer forces until an illness left him bedridden. This enhanced his reputation, although they didn't find the mine.Īt the outbreak of the Texas Revolution, Bowie joined the Texas militia, leading forces at the Battle of Concepción and the Grass Fight. Bowie led an expedition to find the lost San Saba mine, during which his small party repelled an attack by a large Native American raiding party. After moving to Texas in 1830, Bowie became a Mexican citizen and married Ursula Veramendi, the daughter of Juan Martín de Veramendi, the Mexican vice-governor of the province. This, and other stories of Bowie's prowess with a knife, led to the widespread popularity of the Bowie knife.īowie enlarged his reputation during the Texas Revolution. What began as a duel between two other men deteriorated into a mêlée in which Bowie, having been shot and stabbed, killed the sheriff of Rapides Parish with a large knife. His rise to fame began in 1827 on reports of the Sandbar Fight near present-day Vidalia, Louisiana. He spent most of his life in Louisiana, where he was raised and where he later worked as a land speculator.

Stories of him as a fighter and frontiersman, both real and fictitious, have made him a legendary figure in Texas history and a folk hero of American culture.īowie was born in Kentucky. He was among the Americans who died at the Battle of the Alamo. 1796 – March 6, 1836) was a 19th-century American pioneer, slave smuggler and trader, and soldier who played a prominent role in the Texas Revolution.

Legacy of the duelist steam