Several participants in the brawl had previously engaged in duels, fist fights, and exchanges of gunfire.
Two previous attempts at resolving disputes by dueling had ended without resolution, either because they degenerated into shouting matches between seconds or because one party failed to appear.
The duel that became the Sandbar Fight was initially arranged over grievances between Samuel L. Wells, III, and Dr. Thomas H. Maddox, both of Alexandria, Louisiana.
On Wednesday, September 19, 1827, at midday, Wells and Maddox, accompanied by their seconds and supporters, met on a sandbar near the town of Natchez, Mississippi.
The Maddox party and local observers then arrived by horse from a nearby Mississippi plantation house, fording a bayou.
Wells and Maddox each fired two shots, and as neither man was injured, resolved the formal duel with a handshake.
[7] At the conclusion of the initial duel, the party of six (Wells, Maddox, McWorter, Crain, Dr. Cuny, and Dr. Denny) prepared to celebrate survival.
The duel participants were intercepted by the remaining Wells partisans; Crain now faced three additional armed men.
Wright then drew his sword cane and stabbed Bowie in the chest, but the thin blade was deflected by his sternum.
[13] The brief (90-second)[14] brawl left Samuel Cuny and Norris Wright dead, and Alfred Blanchard and Jim Bowie badly wounded.
[17] Determining the precise order of events that led to the brawl between Wells' and Maddox's supporters is difficult, as the fight was described by at least eight eyewitnesses with significant discrepancies, such as: "Crain and Bowie exchanged fire.
[20] On September 24, five days after the brawl, Samuel Wells wrote to the press, claiming that Crain's shooting of Cuny constituted premeditated murder.
I could not miss, shooting not further than ten feet and the object is to excuse his conduct for killing our poor friend [Major Wright].
Samuel L. Wells, III, died within a month of an unrelated fever, so his testimony was not long available to support criminal charges.
Discrepancies also exist in many other elements of the accounts, including the number injured, the nature of their wounds, and the precise sequence of events.
Bowie's fighting prowess and his knife were described in detail; he had matched or bested multiple opponents after being severely wounded.
Due to the national attention drawn by the Sandbar Fight, Bowie and his knife became well known throughout the country as icons of a rugged frontier lifestyle.
[30] By the middle of the 20th century, it was associated with a more specific design - a large sheath knife with a "concave clip point, sharp false edge cut from both sides, and a cross-guard to protect the user's hands".