In the decades following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, violence and corruption plagued westward migration like growing pains. Settlers traveled well-armed, prepared to defend themselves against a host of real and perceived threats. Within months of the infamous 1827 Sandbar Fight, Jim Bowie and his prowess with a blade attracted national attention. Soon, almost everyone wanted a knife “like Bowie’s” or “a Bowie knife.” Several reliable accounts claim that fighter and fortune-seeker Jim Bowie purchased a custom knife from James Black, and some historians suggest that Black’s Bowie No. 1 could be that legendary blade. This massive guardless-coffin knife is known among knifemakers and collectors as one of the most intriguing Bowie knives in existence. Its physical characteristics—the coffin shape and silver wrap of the handle, silver escutcheon plates and pins, rich burl-wood scales, and a tapered full tang—closely match other knives attributed to James Black’s shop. But whether James Black made this blade for Jim Bowie remains a mystery, and the engraved “Bowie No. 1” escutcheon plate raises more questions than it answers. Since none of the other knives attributed to Black feature engraving (except marks clearly added by another hand), the escutcheon plate was probably engraved by a subsequent owner. Speculation abounds, but this historical puzzle continues to confound both amateur and professional knife sleuths. Black’s simple, elegant knife with a coffin-shaped handle influenced the cutlery industry in America and in Sheffield, England, the cutlery capital of the world. Black made knives for the local market, but soon he was being directly copied by other cutlers, who were trying to get into the new self-defense market. Eventually the coffin-shaped handle had become one of the most popular for this new style of knife, which came to be called the Bowie knife, or Arkansas toothpick.