BOWIE KNIFE BOWIE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 448, 20 November 1875, Page 2

BOWIE KNIFE BOWIE.

The New Orleans Times says :—The following obituary appeared in last Friday's city papers : Bowie.—On Thursday, the 24th, at 6 am., at the residence of Eugene Soulat, in this city, Mrs Margaret Frances Neville, relict of the late Colonel Rezin P. Bowie, aged eighty-live years. The venerable deceased was the widow of that renowned fighter Rezin Bowie, the brother of the famous James Bowie, whose name was bestowed upon that fearful instrument known as the bowie knife. In a few months the widow would have survived her husband half a century. After a life of startling adventures and innumerable bloody combats, James Bowie fell at the Alamo in the Texas war of 183f5, with his Bowie knife clinched in the right hand, and with the gory victims of his valour and his prowess strewed around him. He fell with Travis, Crockett and others at the head of a small body of Texan s who defended that fort against the whole force of Santa Anna's army. The others of the slain defended themselves with guns and pistols. Bowie, however, preferre«l his favourite and trusty knife, and it was said that a dozen slaughtered Mexicans attested its efficiency. Rezin Bowie was, as well as his brother, a representative man of his era. Intelligent and generous, and even well educated, his whole life had been passed in the Valley of the Mississippi, where men engaged in active pursuits were compelled to rely upon personal courage and prowess to maintain their rights and secure the respect and confidence of the masses. The Bowies were regarded in that day as the chief of the men who relied upon these qualities. They were utterly insensible to fear, but though always fighting to the death, they were not usually aggressive, but generally managed to place themselves in defensive attitudes in all their quarrels. They were generous and faithful in their friendships, and. kind and liberal in their natures. The invention of the bowie knife, and its adoption in personal combats, was justified by them on the ground that it made combats more terrible and decisive, and thereby prevented the frequency of duels and other less decisive modes of settling personal quarrels. There are many stories illustrative of Rezin Bowie's desperate courage. His relict, the venerable lady whose death occurred last week, through her long and peaceful widowhood clung to her early love and memory with a tenacity and warmth of affection which were the highest proofs that Kezin P. Bowie was a man of heart and of those qualities that never fail to inspire a true woman with deep and undying love and devotion.