Antique Bowie Knives

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Collectors have long been fascinated by the niche these knives have carved into American history. Bowie knives were carried and used by many famous and infamous Americans during a period when this country was undergoing severe growing pains of a small nation becoming great. American frontiersmen, buffalo hunters and soldiers all used these knives as tools of their trade and as a means of protection. Bowie knives were common in the sparsely settled frontier areas, the California gold Rush fields, the plains thick with buffalo and the battlefields of the Civil War. many of these knives are not only treasures for their historical value, but for their great value as pieces of art.

-Classic Bowie Knives, by Robert Ables

On September 19, 1827, more than a dozen men on a Mississippi sandbar, degenerated into a violent melee over an affair of honor. Repeatedly wounded, Bowie resorted to his knife. He chased one adversary from the beach, repelled a second assailant with a painful slash to the abdomen and killed a third.

The altercation became famous as the Sandbar Fight. The knife became even more famous. The term "Bowie knife" soon became entrenched in the popular vocabulary, although it seems to have been loosely applied to a wide diversity of blade designs. The majority of these knives were produced by the great cutlery industry of Sheffield, England.

Jim Bowie's death in the heroic defense of the Alamo, March 6, 1836, furthered both his legend and that of his knife.

-The Riddle of the Original BOWIE KNIFE, J.R. Edmondson

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James Bowie