Where history is doubtful, legend is assured; and a volume of the most
engrossing narratives might easily be compiled on the Almagres Mine.
The legend, in its color, variety, and luxuriance, has reached into the
literature of England and continental Europe, [48] reverted with
thousand-fold increase to the Mexican land of its birth, and flourished
in the camps, households, and offices of a century of American cowboys,
rangers, miners, farmers, bankers, lawyers, preachers, and newspaper
writers of the Southwest; entering, on one hand, into professed
fiction, [49] and on the other hand, leading hundreds of men into the
grave business of disemboweling mountains, draining lakes, and turning
rivers out of their courses.
It is a great pity for the sake of romance that we have no biography of
Bowie such as we have of Crockett. James Bowie must have been a
colorful and spirited soldier of fortune as well as free-hearted
patriot. We know that he was a successful slave runner. We know that in
the early twenties he and his brother Rezin P. Bowie came to San
Antonio and that from the beginning he had one eye open for a quick
fortune. According to Sowell, he prospected for gold and silver on the
Frio River. [50] He must have been rather credulous, as is natural to
men with untrained imagination and bounding lust for adventure. Witness
his precipitate action in the so-called “Grass Fight.” [51] While he
was in hot-headed quest of the San Saba Mine, he engaged in one of the
most brilliant Indian fights of early days. [52] Thousands of men have
believed and yet believe that he knew where untold riches lie. He died
in the Alamo, carrying with him a secret as potent to render him
immortal as his brave part in achieving the independence of Texas.
I shall now briefly sketch Colonel Bowie’s connection with the mine
that bears his name. My information is based somewhat on Hunter’s
pamphlet, but I have heard the legend in a dozen different forms and
shall attempt nothing more than an amalgamation.
“In the first place,” says West Burton of Austin, a most persistent
seeker for the mine, “never be fooled into thinking that there is any
such thing as the Bowie Mine. You can follow a lead if you hit it and
locate any mine, but there is not any lead to the so-called Bowie Mine.
That wasn’t a mine at all, but a storage for bullion taken from the San
Saba or Los Almagres mines proper. Remember that the Spanish fort on
the San Saba was destroyed three times and that the Indians were on the
warpath constantly. Under such conditions, a strong and secure place
had to be found for storing the bullion as it was smelted out. That
place was somewhere on the Llano. In it were stored five hundred jack
loads of silver bullion when the Indians ran the Spanish out the last
time and destroyed the mines. It was that storage that the Lipans
showed to Bowie and that he tried to get.”
Over the Llano region roamed and ruled a band of Lipans. Their chief
was named Xolic, and for a long time he was in the habit of leading his
people down to San Antonio every year to trade off some of the bullion
they had captured from the Spaniards. They never took much at a time,
for their wants were simple. The Spaniards and Mexicans in San Antonio
thought that the ore had been chipped off some rich vein; there was a
little gold in it. Of course they tried to learn the source of such
wealth, but the Indians had a tribal understanding that whoever should
reveal the place of the mineral should be bound and tortured to death.
No Lipan broke his agreement. At length the people of San Antonio grew
accustomed to the silver-bearing Lipans and ceased to try to enter
their secret. Then came the curious Americans.
Bowie laid his plans carefully. He at once began to cultivate the
friendship of the Lipans. He sent back East for a fine rifle plated
with silver. When it came he presented it to old Chief Xolic. A powwow
was held and Bowie was invited to join the tribe. Formally, by the San
Pedro Springs, he was adopted into it. Now followed months of life with
the savages. Bowie was expert at shooting the buffalo; he was foremost
in fighting against the enemies of the Lipans; some say that he married
the chief’s daughter. He became so thoroughly a Lipan and was so useful
a warrior that his adopted brothers finally showed him the source of
their precious mineral. He had expected much but he had hardly expected
to see millions. The sight seemed to overthrow all caution and
judgment. Almost immediately he deserted the Indians and returned to
San Antonio to raise a force for seizing the treasure.
He was between two fires. He did not want too large a body of men to
share with; he must have a considerable body to force the Indians. He
took some time in arranging the campaign. Meanwhile old Chief Xolic
died, and a young warrior named Tresmanos succeeded to his position.
Soon afterwards he came with his people to San Antonio on their annual
bartering trip. There he saw Bowie, accused him of treachery, and came
near being killed for his insolence. The time was at hand for Bowie to
start on his campaign. Thirty-four men had promised to accompany him.
In actuality, only ten put in their appearance, among whom were his
brother Rezin P. Bowie and a negro slave. The fewness of numbers,
however, did not deter him. He was determined to reach the site of the
mineral—whether smelted bullion or natural veins of crude ore legend
does not agree—and to establish a stockade there and proceed with
exploitation.
Some distance north of San Antonio in the hills he met a friendly band
of Indians who warned him that Tresmanos was on the warpath against him
and his rumored invasion. Bowie pressed on. November 21, 1831, near
Calf Creek, in what is now McCulloch County, the little party was
attacked at sunrise by 164 Indians. The Texans had one man killed and
two wounded and all their horses lost; the Indians, according to their
own subsequent report, had eighty men killed besides a great number
wounded. In 1905, Hunter described the remains of the barricade hastily
constructed by the Bowie party as being “still traceable,” and added
that the barricade “would be almost intact but for the hand of the
impious treasure seeker.”
It is generally said that the battle of Calf Creek marked Bowie’s last
attempt to get to the San Saba Mine, and that the remaining few years
of his life were taken up with the duties of a patriot. According to
one legend current in the San Saba country, on the word of Mr. Carlos
Ashley, a native, Bowie was seeking the San Saba treasure in order to
finance the Texas army. This is the patriotic theme also of a Texas
novel in which Bowie is the hero: William O. Stoddard’s The Lost Gold
of the Montezumas—A Story of the Alamo. Mr. Matt Bradley, editor and
publisher of Border Wars of Texas, says that only three months before
Bowie fell in the Alamo he was trying again to reach the riches of
which he alone among white men knew the secret. [53] Some years ago a
man named Longworth, who is now in Kansas, paid a Mexican in San
Antonio $500 for a document purporting to have been taken off Bowie’s
body by a Mexican lieutenant who entered the Alamo immediately after
the last defender had been silenced. The Mexican who sold the document
claimed that lieutenant as a paternal ancestor. He swore that it gave
directions to the mine, but somehow Longworth could not follow them.
Thus we see that, in fact, Bowie had nothing more to do with the mine
than to hunt it. But because he was its greatest hunter and because he
is presumed to have found it, his name has come to be linked with it.
However, this linking is of a comparatively recent time. I doubt if the
name “Bowie Mine” was used at all until after the Civil War. All the
earlier histories and books of travel that mention the mines—and they
are many—refer to them as the San Saba Mines. “Bowie Mine” is a popular
coinage of the last half century, and now the legend of the mine is
living to no small extent by virtue of the legend of the man.