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Forgotten Rangers
by Robert M. Utley
Early
historians of Texas and the Texas Rangers have found almost nothing
positive to write about the Radical Republican administration of Governor
Edmund J. Davis, 1870-73. The Rangers of the Davis regime, therefore,
are ignored altogether, confused with the hated state police, or dismissed
with a few condescending phrases. They deserve better.
With the readmission
of Texas to the Union on March 3, 1870, Reconstruction ended in Texas,
only to be followed by a governor who stirred as much rancor, conflict,
and violence as had Reconstruction. For all its immersion in the momentous
issues that split Texans, however, the Davis administration did not
neglect frontier defense. For the first time since the end of the war,
Texas Rangers would take the field.
Prewar Texans had
repeatedly faulted the federal government for not protecting their frontier
settlers from Indians. By 1870, Texans complained of a double grievance:
Not only did the federal defense line fail to safeguard settlers from
murder and plunder, but the federal government itself provided the Kiowas
and Comanches with a base of operations. Chiefs of both tribes had made
their marks on the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, by which they pledged
to settle their people on a reservation in the Indian Territory, accept
a bounteous array of gifts from the Great Father, and learn to support
themselves by farming. Under President Ulysses S. Grant’s Peace
Policy, pacifist Quaker agents set forth to transform their charges
into imitation whites.
Only Red River
separated the Kiowa-Comanche reservation from Texas, and far from diminishing,
the pace of aggressions quickened. After the treaties were signed, the
Peace Policy allowed troops in Texas to attack raiders in Texas but
barred them from crossing Red River onto the reservation. The big garrison
at Fort Sill watched over the reservation itself but could act only
on application of the agent—one whose religious scruples enjoined
nonviolence. Truly, as Texans charged, Fort Sill became a "city
of refuge," where warriors received government supplies and protection
while resting between raids.[1]
As Red River shielded
the Kiowas and Comanches, even more infuriatingly the Rio Grande shielded
Lipans and Kickapoos. All across South Texas, to the very outskirts
of San Antonio, these Indians ran off horses and cattle by the hundreds
and left dead or wounded any Texan who got in their way. Driving the
stock across the Rio Grande, the raiders readily disposed of them to
Mexican intermediaries. Influential Mexicans profited from this commerce
and authorities made only token effort to break it up. For U.S. troops,
of course, the Rio Grande presented an even more formidable barrier
than Red River.
A product of the
frontier himself, Governor Davis felt a keen obligation to the anguished
frontier families. At his behest, on June 13, 1870, the legislature
enacted a measure authorizing him to muster, for twelve months’
service, twenty companies of "Texas Rangers"—only the
second appearance of this term in law. Each company would number sixty-two
officers and men. As usual, Rangers would provide their own horses,
six-shooters, accouterments, and camp equipage. For the first time,
however, the shoulder arm—breech-loading cavalry carbines—would
be purchased by the state, issued to the Rangers, and the cost deducted
from the first pay. And pay was promised: from one hundred dollars a
month for captains to fifty for privates. The state would furnish provisions,
ammunition, and forage. Although organized under the rules and regulations
of the U.S. Army, the Rangers would always operate under state control,
reporting to an adjutant general authorized by the new militia act.[2]
The enabling legislation
remained silent on how to pay for what came to be known as the Frontier
Forces. However, on August 5, 1870, the legislature resorted to the
novel expedient of floating $750,000 in state bonds, with interest at
seven percent, payable in gold twice a year. These "Frontier Defense
Bonds" would be redeemable in twenty years and paid off in forty.[3]
With pay and logistical
support promised, ranger companies came together swiftly. Governor Davis
appointed the captains, mostly solid Unionists with solid ranger credentials.
By the end of 1870, fourteen companies had been organized and posted
at key locations on the frontier. The full twenty sanctioned by the
legislature never took shape, but for the first time since 1865 Texas
Rangers patrolled the frontier.[4]
The War Department
lost little more than a month in reacting to the advent of Texas Rangers.
On July 19, Secretary of War William W. Belknap declared that the state
of Texas would not be allowed to make war on the Indians and that the
U.S. military authorities would preserve the peace. The U.S. military
authorities, of course, had signally failed to preserve the peace—either
in the interior or on the frontier—and the Texas commander, Brevet
Major General Joseph J. Reynolds, welcomed the prospect of twelve hundred
Rangers on the frontier. He and Davis promptly colluded to sidestep
the secretary’s edict. In direct violation of the law, Davis placed
the Rangers at the disposal of the War Department—i.e. a receptive
Reynolds. During the formative months of the Frontier Forces, therefore,
ranger officers operated under the command of the nearest senior federal
officer. That worked neither uniformly nor well.
General Reynolds,
moreover, had flouted the intent of his superiors, and he made matters
worse by recommending, as an alternative to the Rangers, the muster
of five hundred frontiersmen into the U.S. service. Hopelessly tangling
the issue was a dispute over whether the Rangers could draw subsistence
at U.S. military posts. By the end of 1870, so confused and frustrating
had the bureaucratic squabbling become, Davis had the state assume complete
control and support of the Frontier Forces.[5]
On one vital issue,
however, the governor had won. No matter what the secretary of war decreed,
the state of Texas would make war on the Indians.
Davis’s Texas
Rangers performed exceptionally well. Their record is especially impressive
in view of the short time allotted them. They began to deploy in the
autumn of 1870, and the last company was mustered out in June 1871.
Such was the state’s credit rating that the bonds that were to
pay for them proved unmarketable. The state treasury could not sustain
Davis’s expensive programs, and frontier defense was among the
first casualties. Despite their achievements, the Davis Rangers dropped
from memory, buried by the fulminations of early Texas historians against
the iniquities of the Davis regime.[6]
Despite the low
reputation of the Davis administration, two individual Ranger captains
proved particularly capable and energetic and should be noted: John
W. Sansom and H. J. Richarz.
A rancher and farmer
from the Hill Country north of San Antonio, John W. Sansom had campaigned
as both ranger private and ranger captain before the Civil War. Unionist
convictions drove him from Texas in 1862, and he served through the
rest of the war with Colonel Edmund J. Davis’s First Texas Cavalry
(Union). As a Davis Ranger in 1870-71, he fully lived up to his political
and professional credentials.[7]
Captain H. J. Richarz
was a veteran of Prussian military service who fled his homeland following
the revolution of 1848 and established himself as a sheep and cattle
grower west of San Antonio. Nearing fifty in 1870, he had suffered repeated
losses to Indians and had fought them as a minuteman during the Civil
War. His record as a ranger captain underscored the observation of an
acquaintance: "He has a kind and friendly disposition, and has
many friends. His judgment of men and things is astute, and he has a
blunt way of talking and expressing himself, but his judgment is seldom
at fault."[8]
Sansom sheltered
his men in the crumbling buildings of old Camp Verde, in strategic Bandera
Pass, while Richarz moved into the dilapidated remains of prewar Fort
Inge (present Uvalde), long used as hog and cattle pens. Thanks largely
to the drive of these captains, the southwestern frontier from the mouth
of the Pecos to Laredo came under closer scrutiny than ever before.
The favored river crossings of the Kickapoos and Lipans fell in this
sector. With their fellow captains John R. Kelso and Peter Kleid to
the north and west, Sansom and Richarz maintained a rigorous system
of scouts and patrols that disrupted the usual Indian routines. The
federal troops at Forts McIntosh, Duncan, and Clark had never kept so
constantly in the field. Even though the Rangers could seldom get within
rifle range of an Indian, the captains could report that constant and
thorough scouting had curtailed Indian raids and given stockmen of the
Nueces and Frio ranges a new sense of security.
Still, the work
was frustrating because of the sanctuary across the Rio Grande. To compound
the indignity, the Indians disposed of their plunder within a river
width’s view of U.S. troops. The Kickapoos even had the effrontery
to send Mexican messengers to Richarz vowing to drive him away and sweep
the country to San Antonio. "If it were not for this cursed international
law," Richarz proclaimed, "I know very well what to do to
clean out these bloody savages on the other side of the Rio Grande."[9]
Rigorous scouting
for Indian trails uncovered a class of depredation the Rangers had not
been formed to combat but that would increasingly preoccupy them for
decades to come: cattle theft.
Returning from
the war, stockmen found the ranges swarming with thousands of unbranded
longhorns as well as hundreds of would-be stockmen and freebooters of
less respectable intent. By 1870, cattlemen with branded herds of longhorns
and squads of cowboys to handle them curved west and north from San
Antonio to the headwaters of the Llano River. South of the Nueces, a
land of defined though unfenced ranches, vaqueros managed branded herds
in much the same fashion as they had for more than a century. Texas
beef emerged as a profitable commodity, especially after trail drives
north to the railroads connected the longhorns with lucrative northern
markets.
On the postwar
generation of stockmen, burgeoning gangs of cattle thieves preyed mercilessly,
even extending their depredations to cattlemen south of the Rio Grande.
Emulating the Kickapoos and Lipans, Mexican gangs scooped up Texas herds
and spirited them to sanctuary beyond the Rio Grande.
The Frontier Forces
had been established to fight Indians, not to deal with criminals. But
county law officers seemed powerless, if not actually in league with
the offenders; and Davis’s state police were preoccupied with combating
crime (and political opposition) in the interior counties. Adjutant
General James Davidson instructed the ranger captains to arrest cow
thieves and turn them over to the local authorities.
Captain Sansom
had already discovered ample evidence of cow theft, brand "blotching,"
and slaughter of cows for their hides in the hilly grasslands at the
head of the Guadalupe River and in unorganized Kimble County west of
Fredericksburg. His Rangers succeeded in apprehending some of the culprits,
but he found the courts unable or unwilling to deal with them.[10]
In addition to
the outstanding individual accomplishments of Sampson and Richarz, two
companies stood out as distinctive if not wholly unprecedented. Composed
of Hispanics, Captain Cesario G. Falcón’s unit took station
on the lower Rio Grande while Captain Gregorio García’s
formed around distant El Paso. Falcón campaigned tirelessly.
García passed his entire term doing little more than trying to
get his men armed and equipped.
From the beginning
of their service, the two companies stationed on the lower Rio Grande
dealt almost solely with cow theft. Indian raiders seldom found their
way that far down the river, but Mexican bandits constantly stole from
ranchers on the Texas side. Captain Cesario Falcón in Starr County
and Captain Bland Chamberlain in Zapata County campaigned tirelessly
and sometimes successfully.
On the northwestern
frontier, the Kiowas and Comanches also found the new Rangers worthy
foes. Honors for the hardest fight fell to Sergeant Edward H. Cobb of
Captain David P. Baker’s company, posted to cover the favorite
crossings of Red River in Montague County. Baker sent Cobb and eighteen
men to camp on the eastern edge of the Cross Timbers, twenty-five miles
south of the river. Cobb was a seasoned combat veteran of the Confederate
Army but had never fought Indians. Nor had any of his men, most of whom
were young and inexperienced—Billy Sorrell was only sixteen.
Early on February
7, 1871, a settler dashed into camp with word that Indians were raiding
down Clear Creek, on the open prairies to the southeast, toward Denton.
With ten men and the citizen, Cobb hit the trail at once. All day they
rode hard, at one point discovering another trail joining the first
and indicating a combined force of at least forty warriors. Horses tired
and slowed, and one man had to turn back. By late afternoon the Rangers
came up with the quarry, half mounted and half afoot, clearly identifiable
as separate parties of Comanches and Kiowas. The Indians noted the small
number of pursuers and, shouting and brandishing shields and weapons,
turned to give battle. Both the Comanche chief and the Kiowa chief,
vividly painted and ornamented, rode boldly to the front and taunted
their foes with dazzling displays of horsemanship.[11]
Cobb faced a dilemma.
The horses were too fatigued to charge or retreat. He had his men move
slowly in an arc away from the Indians to the shelter of a ditch forming
the head of Hickory Creek. Once in the ditch and somewhat rested, Cobb
suddenly said, "Boys, what do you say to a charge?" No man
objected, and the squad assembled and pushed out on the prairie at a
slow gallop, heading for the Indians. When within range, the warriors
leveled their rifles. Cobb shouted, "Dismount, they are going to
fire." Everyone leaped to the ground as the volley cut the air
overhead. Scattering in the tall prairie grass, they returned a heavy
fire from their Winchester repeating carbines. Time and again the Indians
charged; then turned back under heavy fire. Observing that the Rangers
had six-shooters as well as repeating carbines, the warriors shrank
from risking lives. Both sides fired many shots without doing much damage.
As Ranger Andrew Sowell observed, "an Indian is hard to hit; protecting
himself with a shield in front spoils the aim even of the best marksmen."
Surmising that
the Indians intended to wear down the Rangers, exhaust their ammunition,
then charge in to finish them with lance and tomahawk, Cobb told the
men to mount and fall back to a low knoll some five hundred yards to
the rear where they could better defend themselves. This move proved
nearly fatal. As the others rode off, the exhausted horses of Sowell
and Gus Hasroot balked. Suddenly surrounded by Indians, Sowell and Hasroot
shouted for help, and their comrades wheeled back to their rescue. A
big Indian galloped at Hasroot with lance leveled. "The boys all
thought Gus was gone up," the company’s lieutenant later reported,
but at the last moment Gus fired his carbine at such close quarters
that the smoke engulfed the Indian and his horse, which reared and threw
the dead rider to the ground, breaking the lance.
The rest of the
Rangers pitched in and fought viciously at close quarters—thirty
paces, remembered Sowell. A pistol ball hit Billy Sorrell in the left
side, disabling him. The Comanche leader rallied his men and charged.
Cobb and several others shattered the charge, putting a ball through
the chief’s left eye and killing his horse at the same time. Now,
with the sun sinking, the Kiowa chief led his followers to the attack
as the Rangers dismounted and spread a protective line in front of the
prostrate Sorrell, bleeding profusely from the hip. "The chief
came almost at full speed, firing his revolver," related Sowell.
"He seemed determined to ride us down." At twenty paces a
ball smashed his chest. He dropped his shield and pistol and fell forward.
The horse carried him through the ranger line before his weight turned
the saddle and dragged the animal to a halt.
As the Kiowas fell
back, some of the exultant Rangers followed as fast as their fatigued
horses could carry them. Others, at Cobb’s direction, ran to secure
the chief’s horse, for Cobb’s own horse had been shot down.
While they maneuvered to corral the horse, Sowell and a comrade decided
to get the chief’s scalp and "rigging." Another Indian
charge aborted that move, and the Kiowas succeeded in bearing off the
body of their chief.
In the fading light,
the Indians abandoned the field. Cobb, mounted on the Indian horse and
covered with the chief’s blood, led his men from the field. Their
ammunition was all but exhausted and Sorrell was in a bad way. They
withdrew to the nearby home of a settler. Sorrell almost died that night,
but ultimately he pulled through. Several others had taken minor wounds
and lost horses, but suffered no greater casualties.
By morning, farmers
and ranchers had gathered to give pursuit, but it was too late. Examining
the battlefield, they found the bodies of six Indians, including the
Comanche leader, and returned with six scalps and trophies enough for
all. Cobb’s lieutenant reported, "All the citizens say with
one accord, and proudly too, they never saw Rangers like these, to contend
with such great odds."
The citizens did
not exaggerate. For so few, youthful, and inexperienced men to stand
up to four times their number of seasoned Indian warriors was extraordinary.
The adjutant general published general orders holding up Cobb as an
example for all Texas Rangers.[12]
The feat took on
added importance several months later when Captain Baker had occasion
to send three Rangers to Fort Sill with dispatches for the Kiowa-Comanche
agent. The agent said that in February a wounded Indian had told of
a fight in Texas with Rangers. The slain Comanche chief was Young Horseback
(possibly the son of the Nokoni Comanche head chief Horseback), and
the other dead leader was the nephew of old Satank, the principal chief
of the Kiowas.[13]
With the termination
of the Frontier Forces in June 1871, Texas Rangers no longer strove
to head off Kiowas and Comanches. That mission remained with the federal
troops, who did no better. As a substitute for the Rangers, in November
1871 the legislature authorized twenty-four companies of minutemen to
serve for twelve months. The new adjutant general (Davidson had absconded
with $37,000 in state funds) convinced himself that the minutemen were
more effective while less expensive.[14]
Less expensive
they were, but whether more effective is arguable. Forgotten to history,
the Frontier Forces of 1870-71 played a brief but creditable role. They
deserve to be remembered.
Robert
M. Utley served for 25 years in various capacities with the
National Park Service and other federal agencies. Since his retirement
from the federal government in 1980, he has devoted himself full time
to historical research and writing. His specialty is the history of
the American West. Nine of his books have been selections of the History
Book Club, seven of the Book of the Month Club.
In 1988 Utley was
awarded the Western History Association Prize for distinguished published
writings and in 1994 the same organization's Caughey Prize for The Lance
and the Shield as the best western book of 1993. Twice, in 1988 and
1989, he received the Wrangler Award of the National Cowboy Hall of
Fame and Western Heritage Center (for High Noon in Lincoln and Cavalier
in Buckskin). In 1994 he received the Spur Award of the Western Writers
of America (for The Lance and the Shield) and also the Owen Wister Award
for distinguished lifetime achievement. In 1997 the Society for Military
History honored him with the Samuel Elliot Morison Prize.
Utley began his
career in history at Custer Battlefield National Monument, Montana,
and served for six summers during his college years, 1947-52. From 1954
to 1957 he was a historian with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department
of Defense, both as an army officer and as a civilian. He then returned
to the National Park Service to serve, successively, as Regional Historian
of the Southwest Region in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1957-64; as Chief Historian
in Washington, D.C., 1964-72; as Director, Office of Archeology and
Historic Preservation, 1972-73; and as Assistant Director of the National
Park Service for Park Historic Preservation, 1973-76. From 1977 to 1980
he was Deputy Executive Director of the President's Advisory Council
on Historic Preservation.
One of the founders
of the Western History Association, Utley served on its governing council
1962-74 and as its president 1967-68. He was a member of the editorial
board of The American West Magazine 1964-80. The Western Historical
Quarterly was launched during his presidency, and he served on its editorial
board 1968-73. He was a founder of the Potomac Corral of the Westerners
in 1955 and its sheriff in 1973. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors
of Eastern National Park and Monument Association 1985-87 and 1989-92.
He has appeared frequently on television productions relating to the
history of the West.
Born in Arkansas
( October 31, 1929) and reared in Indiana, he was educated at Purdue
University (B.S. 1951) and Indiana University (M.A. 1952). He holds
Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Purdue (1974), the University
of New Mexico (1976), and Indiana University (1983). He received the
Department of the Interior's Distinguished Service Award in 1971.
He served in the
U.S. Army 1952-56, attaining the rank of captain. He is married to Melody
Webb, also a National Park Service veteran and also a historian.
Books
by Robert Utley
A Life Wild and
Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific (Holt, 1997).
The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (Holt,
1993; Ballantine, 1994).
Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Nebraska, 1989).
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military
Frontier (Oklahoma, 1988).
High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (New Mexico,
1987).
The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890 (New Mexico, 1984).
American Heritage History of the Indian Wars, with Wilcomb Washburn
(1977).
(Ed. and intro.) Life in Custer’s Cavalry: Diaries and Letters
of Albert and Jennie Barnitz, 1867-1868 (Yale, 1977; Nebraska, 1987).
Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865
(Macmillan, 1967; Nebraska, 1981).
Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891
(Macmillan, 1973; Nebraska, 1984).
(Ed. and intro.) Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American
Indian, 1867-1904, by Richard Henry Pratt (Yale, 1964; Nebraska, 1987).
The Last Days
of the Sioux Nation (Yale, 1963).
Notes
[1] The literature
of the Fort Sill reservation is voluminous. I have dealt with and documented
the subject in Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian,
1866-91 (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 207-14; and The Indian Frontier
of the American West, 1846-1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1984), 140-48.
[2] H. P. M. Gammel,
comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, 10 vols. (Austin: Gammel Book Co.,
1898), 6:179-82. For the militia act of June 14, 1870, and the state
police act of July 1, 1870, see ibid., 185-90, 193-94.
[3] Ibid., 6:45-46.
[4] General Order
No. 3, Hq. State of Texas, Adjutant General’s Office, Austin, August
3, 1870, RG 401 (Ranger Records), Box 1156, Folder 15, Texas State Archives
(hereafter TSA). Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Texas
from June 24, 1870, to December 31, 1870 (Austin: Tracy, Siemering &
Co., 1870), 6-7, 61-63.
[5] A chronological
abstract of the correspondence, War Department, Adjutant General’s
Office, April 9, 1872, appears in Claims of the State of Texas, Senate
Executive Document No. 19, 45th Congress, 2nd Session, 1878 (Serial
1780), 10-12. Reynolds to Assistant Adjutant General, Division of the
South, Austin, September 30, 1870, Annual Report of the Secretary of
War, 1870, 41-42. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Texas
from June 24, 1870, to December 31, 1870 (Austin: Tracy, Siemering &
Co., 1870), 6-7.
[6] For the bonds,
see Message of Governor E. J. Davis to the legislature, January 10,
1871, RG 301(GC), Box 89, Folder Davis350, TSA; and Report of the Adjutant
General of the State of Texas for the Year 1872 (Austin: James P. Newcomb,
1873), 6-8.
[7] John E. Lich,
"Sansom, John William," The New Handbook of Texas, 6 vols.
(Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), 5:879-80.
[8] A. J. Sowell,
Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas (Austin: Ben C.
Jones, 1900; Austin: State House Press, 1986), 202-05, 542-53.
[9] Richarz to
Adjutant General James Davidson, Fort Inge, December 4 and 12, 1870,
RG 401 (Ranger Records), Box 389, Folder 13, TSA. Periodic reports from
Richarz and Sansom are in ibid., Folders 9-16. For Governor Davis’s
view of the Mexican refuge, see his message to the legislature of January
10, 1871, RG 301 (GC), Box 89, Folder Davis350, TSA.
[10] Sansom to
Davidson, Camp Verde, February 17, 1871, RG 401 (Ranger Records), Box
390, Folder 3, TSA. See also same to same, October 17, 1870, Box 389,
Folder 10; and same to same, February 28, 1871, Box 390, Folder 4, TSA.
[11] The fight
is described in graphic and convincing detail by Ranger A. J. Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers of Texas (San Antonio: Shepard Bros., 1884; New
York: Argosy-Aantiquarian, 1964), 298-345. The official report is also
detailed: Lieutenant A. C. Hill to Davidson, Thompsonville Station,
Wise County, February 9, 1871, RG 401 (Ranger Records), Box 1156, Folder
18, TSA.
[12] General Order
No. 4, Adjutant General’s Office, February 27, 1871, RG 401-984:
General Orders AGO, pp. 21-22, TSA.
[13] Sowell, Rangers
and Pioneers, 345.
[14] Act of November
25, 1871, Gammel, Laws of Texas, 7:36-38. Report of the Adjutant General
of the State of Texas for the Year 1872, 8-9.
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