The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (30 page)

But the action that brought Davis more denunciation than perhaps any other was his creation of a state police that was viewed by many as nothing more than a means of protection for the Radicals and punishment of their opponents. Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb went so far as to call the Texas State Police an instrument of “official murder and legalized oppression.” During its three-year existence, its members often were accused of fabricating “escapes” so that they could kill prisoners. The fact that more than a third of its personnel at any given time were freedmen did little to enhance its image, and many people regarded the killing of a state policeman as a patriotic act. The record of the Texas State Police is beyond the scope of this work. Suffice it to say that although abuses did exist, the police performed the function of a constabulary that Texas had long needed and, when viewed dispassionately, its overall record was reasonably good. But its mere existence, particularly with the large number of blacks in its ranks, brought the governor scorn that became increasingly open and vocal as time passed.
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THE DIVISIONS AMONG
the whites continued to work in favor of the Indians. On June 27, 1870, twenty-five raiders swept through Wise County in north Texas, stealing “60 or 70 horses,” and the following night entered the town of Decatur itself, taking another six horses. “No person killed yet. [A] great many Indians in the country,” District Clerk G. Salmon reported to Secretary of State James P. Newcomb.
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Writing of a raid in Kendall County, in the Hill Country west of Austin, one local citizen told Governor Davis:

I am requested by my neighbors to post you of these occurrences & request you put the Rangers on the war path as soon as it is in your power to do so—We know the difficulties that lie in your way and hope they will be moved as speedily as possible—It looks as if all the Indians on the Plains had found out that there was a good place in Texas for their business & had gathered here.
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Davis was not indifferent to conditions on the frontier. Already, on June 13, the legislature had approved a bill calling for “the protection of the northern and western Frontier [by] twenty companies of Texas Rangers. . . .” Amazingly, the bill and the proposed bond issue to finance it came under attack from all sides. Many honest citizens of Texas viewed the new Rangers as extensions of the State Police and enforcers of Radicalism. In Washington, a group of corrupt businessmen and politicians known as the Indian Ring, who profited from Indian warfare and the resultant military contracts, saw Rangers as a potential threat to their lucrative transactions. And the estimated cost—at $750,000 one of the state’s largest single expenses—was more than the taxpayers of Texas believed they could afford. The bond issue failed, and the size and scope of the new Ranger service was reduced. There was an additional restriction besides funding; the War Department still did not trust an independent unit of armed Texans and insisted that the Rangers serve as auxiliaries to the army. The military would provide subsistence while the state paid the salaries. Under these conditions, fourteen companies were in the field by the end of the year.
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Despite the shaky start, these Texas Rangers (formally designated Frontier Forces) were the men who created the lasting image that has inspired so many motion pictures, television series, and pulp novels. The ever-observant A. J. Sowell, who served in Capt. David P. Baker’s Company F, gave a description that largely supports the image, at least as far as appearance and outlook:

In the first place he wants a good horse, strong saddle, double-girted, a good carbine, pistol, and plenty of ammunition. He generally wears rough clothing, either buckskin or strong, durable cloth, and generally a broad-brimmed hat, on the Mexican style, thick overshirt, top boots and spurs, and a jacket or short coat, so that he can use himself with ease in the saddle.

A genuine Texas ranger will endure cold, hunger and fatigue, almost without a murmur, and will stand by a friend and comrade in the hour of danger, and divide anything he has got, from a blanket to his last crumb of tobacco.
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One thing he did not have was a badge, at least not officially; not until 1900 did the state issue a badge—a five-pointed star with the words “Texas State Ranger.” Any shield or star carried by nineteenth-century Rangers generally was homemade, carved from the dollar-size Mexican silver eight-real coin or cut from a piece of tin (the latter giving rise to the Western expression “tin star” for a lawman). Rangers who did not want to fashion their own badges bought whatever was commercially available. These self-awarded badges generally were carried out of sight until the Rangers needed to show them.
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THE RANGERS MUSTERED
under the 1870 frontier defense act included, for the first time, a contingent from El Paso. Although El Paso County was among the jurisdictions entitled to protection and expected to provide volunteers under earlier militia laws, it apparently was so far removed from the mainstream that no effort was made to organize units from that area. Residents themselves had been slow to react to the frequent Apache raids, probably in part because the area was so sparsely populated. The only towns of any importance on the Texas side were Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario (the former is now incorporated into El Paso, and the latter two are suburbs slightly downriver). In the middle nineteenth century, however, the lone semblance of community in what is now El Paso proper was the four small American settlements of Hart’s Mill, Coone’s Ranch, Magoffinsville, and Stephenson’s Ranch. During the antebellum period, citizens petitioned Governor Bell for military protection, and Bell urged the government in Washington for some sort of action. Eventually the War Department established Fort Bliss near the American settlements, but the outbreak of the Civil War once again left the local population to its own devices.
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By the late 1860s, Apache depredations forced citizens to take some sort of action. In the three years between February 1864 and the spring of 1867, more than a dozen people were killed and thousands of dollars’ worth of livestock taken. After a particularly vicious raid on January 30, 1867, San Elizario justice of the peace Gregorio N. García gathered eighty volunteers and chased the Apaches for twelve days before losing them in the Guadalupe Mountains to the east. García’s effort ultimately led to the formal establishment, on August 26, 1870, of Company N, El Paso’s first Ranger unit, with García as captain. Representative of the population as a whole, all but two of its seventy men were drawn from the
tejano
community.

García’s Rangers first centered their activities near Fort Quitman, in the desert downriver from El Paso near what is now Sierra Blanca, apparently to be closer to the Apaches’ mountain strongholds. Within a few months, however, they moved their headquarters back to San Elizario. Records of the company are obscure, and the only action appears to have been an incursion into New Mexico in February 1871, in pursuit of Apache raiders. A month later, the company was redesignated Company D, as which it was disbanded on June 15, 1871. Whatever its service record might have been, García’s company was a portent of the key role Rangers would play in theTrans-Pecos well into the next century.
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AS EACH NEW
company was organized, it took to the field, and the impact was felt immediately. After three scouts through the often harried Hill Country in November 1870, Capt. John W. Sansom of Company C wrote to Adjutant General James Davidson:

I am very glad as yet that I can report to you that there has been no horses stolen from the district . . . that I am assigned to Guard. And I assure you that ever since the War among our selves closed say
1865
the Indians have been very bad, in Kendall, Kerr, Blanco & Bandera Counties. And not a horse has been taken from the above counties since my Co. Has been in the field. They may come; but I will try to beat them at their game when they start out.
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On the Lower Rio Grande, where horses and cattle had been stolen and driven into Mexico, Lt. John Heineman of Company G made a scout through Hidalgo, Starr, and Zapata counties, after which he reported to Capt. C. G. Falcón, “At all of the . . .
ranchos
I made carefull inquiries concerning the illegal driving of Stock and learned that although the practice has been carried on largely in times past, yet that in the last few weeks or since our arrival in this section, settlers have had less reason to complain.”
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The real trouble, however, remained on the northwest frontier, which was the jurisdiction of Captain Baker’s Company F. Local citizens long since had taken steps to protect themselves, and as early as 1868 had formed ad hoc Ranger units that rode together with military scouting parties from newly established Fort Richardson at Jacksboro, some seventy-five miles west of Fort Worth. Now the state was making a concerted effort to provide regular defense for the northwestern counties.

Company F was mustered into service in San Antonio on November 5, 1870, and assigned to scout the Wichita Mountains up near the Red River. The Rangers furnished their own horses, clothing, and revolvers, while the state furnished carbines, cartridges, and provisions. The thorough Captain Baker’s first act was to send Sgt. Joel Payne with a procurement detail to Austin for wagons, mules, carbines, and other equipment the state was obligated to provide. When Payne returned on November 18, each man was issued a new Winchester carbine, and the following day, in high spirits, the company started on the five-hundred-mile trek to the north. Above Fort Mason they set up strict watches at night, because they now were in the country routinely traversed by the Indians. Scouting details were sent ahead during each day’s march to look for Indian trails, and one group reported they had surprised and chased three Indians but lost them in a thicket. The Rangers had several other minor scrapes before they finally reached their station and spread out into several camps.
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The raids were bold, vicious, and consistent. “It was impossible for us to keep the Indians from coming into the settlements,” Sowell wrote, “for they were constantly doing so, in spite of all we could do to prevent them. There was such a large scope of country for the rangers to protect that we could not watch all points at once.”
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The Indians also had weapons comparable to anything in the Ranger arsenal, as Sgt. E. H. Cobb learned on February 7, 1871, when he and eight other men engaged a party of forty warriors “well armed with Henry rifles, needle guns, six-shooters, bows and arrows.”
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That morning, Cobb had received word that the Indians were heading toward the settlements, and he followed their trail some thirty miles until he found them on the prairie near the “four corners” junction of Wise, Cooke, Denton, and Montague counties. The Indians retreated over a rise to a stand of tall grass. About half the warriors were dismounted and concealed in the grass, with the mounted men to the left and right. As the Rangers came over the rise, the Indians rose up and tried to surround them.

The Rangers opened fire, killing the chief in the first volley. His horse bolted, carrying the body through the Ranger lines before it fell off. Some of the Rangers recovered the horse “with his very fine Silver bridle worth forty dollars, his extra fine bow and quiver, and his richly adorned Cap with plumes and was about to lift his Scalp when the enemy dashed up to rescue the body of their chief which brought them again in close combat.”

Ranger Gus Hasroot was cut off from the others by a warrior who attempted to lance him. “The boys all thought, Gus was gone up, but he made the lucky shot that droped [
sic
] the Indian dead before him, but a few steps.”

Sergeant Cobb ordered the men to withdraw to a better position. According to a report to Adjutant General Davidson, “The Sergent [
sic
] came out bloody all over, but could not give a satisfactory account of it.”

The Indians recovered the body of their chief and the warrior killed by Hasroot. Several others were believed to have been wounded. Ranger “Little Billy” Sorrells was shot in the hip with a revolver. His companions took him to the nearest home, summoned a physician, and left two Rangers with him.

The following morning, Sergeant Cobb took his remaining men and a band of local citizens to follow the trail, but the Indians had scattered in different directions. The citizens returned to their homes, and Cobb started back for his station. The Indians, meanwhile, had reassembled, and late that night Cobb ran into them, but apparently neither side was prepared for a fight. As soon as he got back to his station, he sent a courier to Captain Baker, who organized another search. Near Decatur, Baker found where a party of about twelve Indians had slaughtered some beeves, apparently eating the meat raw because they left no trace of a fire. This party, likewise, scattered.
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THE FRONTIER COUNTIES
were in an uproar. These were more than ordinary stock raids. Each new onslaught left a trail of murder, and the settlers dreaded the bright “Comanche moon” of the spring that allowed the Indians to travel long distances at night. “Every new moon makes the number less of both men and horse, in this unfortunate part of our noble, lone Star State,” Lt. A. C. Hill of Company F wrote Adjutant General Davidson. An army officer stationed at Fort Richardson commented, “The entire border was ablaze, and the stories that these wretched settlers brought in from time to time of murder, rapine, burning, pillaging and plundering was almost heartrending.” Although the settlers praised the Rangers for taking on vastly superior bands of Indians, bravery alone was not enough to stop the depredations. There simply were too few Rangers and too many Indians.
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