After James moved to Mexican Texas, Rezin accompanied him on an expedition to find the Lost San Saba Mine.

Rezin Bowie was born September 8, 1793, near what is now Gallatin, Tennessee, in Sumner County, Southwest Territory.

[5] His father had been injured while fighting in the American Revolution, and, in 1782, married the young woman who had nursed him back to health.

Elve was probably related to Thomas ap Catesby Jones (1790-1858), who was the naval commander at the 1814 Battle of Lake Borgne in Louisiana.

[6] The Bowie family moved again in 1809, settling on Bayou Teche in the now-American Territory of Orleans, before finding a permanent home in Opelousas, in St. Landry Parish, in 1812.

Each of their homes had been on the frontier, and even as a small child Bowie was expected to help clear the land and plant crops.

With his younger brother James, Rezin learned to speak, read, and write Spanish and French fluently.

[12] Bowie converted to Roman Catholicism in 1814 and married Margaret Nevil in St. Landry Catholic Church in Opelousas on September 15, 1814.

Later that year he and James enlisted in the Louisiana militia in response to Andrew Jackson's plea for volunteers to fight the British.

[20] The following year, on September 19, 1827, James Bowie and Major Norris Wright attended a duel on a sandbar outside of Natchez, Mississippi, supporting opposing sides.

James Bowie suffered several serious injuries, and was repeatedly shot and stabbed, but managed to pull his knife and use it to disembowel Wright, who died instantly.

Six miles (ten kilometers) from their goal the group realized that they were being followed by a large Indian raiding party and stopped to negotiate.

Accompanied by his brother James, he travelled to New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. to seek medical treatment.

While in Philadelphia, the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post persuaded Bowie to write an account of the San Saba fight, which was reprinted in 1833 in the book Atkinson's Casket or Gems of Literature, Wit and Sentiment.

While there, Bowie, along with General John Wilson, acquired the papers of Captain Vicente Sebastian Pintado, the royal surveyor for the Spanish government.

Pintado had kept his surveys and his records of deeds and grants in Louisiana (New Spain) as his personal property, and he refused to sell them to the United States.

After Pintado's death, his widow sold the papers to Bowie and Wilson for $24,500 (the United States declined to pay the high price).