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Frontier Battalion Co. B about 1880 ©2003
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
A Brief History of the Texas Rangers
by Mike Cox
with updates by the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame
and Museum Staff
"They were men who
could not be stampeded."
That's the way the late
Col. Homer Garrison, Jr., long-time director of the Texas Department
of Public Safety, once described the men who have worn the silver
or gold star of the Texas Rangers, the oldest state law enforcement
agency in North America.
The Rangers have a heritage
that began with the earliest settlements in Texas. They have been compared
to four other world-famous law enforcement agencies, the FBI, Scotland
Yard, Interpol and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Scores of books, from well-researched
works of nonfiction to Wild West pulp novels to best-selling works of
fiction, have been written about the Rangers. And numerous movies, radio
shows and television shows have been inspired by the Rangers over the
years.
The Rangers are part of
the history of the Old West, and part of its mythology. Over the years,
a distinct Ranger tradition has evolved. As former Ranger Capt. Bob
Crowder once put it,
"A Ranger is an officer
who is able to handle any given situation without definite instructions
from his commanding officer, or higher authority. This ability must
be proven before a man becomes a Ranger."
FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE
Portrait of Stephen F. Austin
In 1821 Stephen F. Austin
assumed his late father's contract as empresario, or developer of settlements
in the Mexican province of Tejas. He was authorized to recruit settlers
from the U.S. and Europe who would be given land if, among other conditions,
they agreed to become Mexican citizens, adopt the Catholic religion
and learn to speak Spanish. Austin was to be rewarded for his services
with land, titles and military powers over the colony. His colony, and
those proposed by other empresarios, would serve to reinforce Mexico's
claim to Texas and act as a buffer between the hostile Comanche Indians
and Hispanic settlements at San Antonio de Bexar and Laredo.
By 1823, there
were serious problems with raids by the Comanche, Tonkawa and Karankawa
Indians. Under Mexican law, Austin was authorized to form a militia
to ward off Indian raids, capture criminals and patrol against intruders.
In May, while Austin was in Mexico City, his lieutenant, Moses Morrison,
used this authority to assemble a company of men to protect the Texas
coast from the Tonkawa and Karankawa Indians.
After returning to Texas
in August of 1823, Austin asked for additional ten men to supplement
Morrison's company. He called for "ten men...to act as rangers
for the common defense...The wages I will give said ten men is fifteen
dollars a month payable in property." These two companies are regarded
as the first ancestors of the modern Texas Rangers.
The term "Texas Ranger"
did not appear officially in a piece of legislation until 1874. During
Austin's day, companies of men volunteered and disbanded as needed.
Some served for days and others for many months. The official records
show that these companies were called by many names: ranging companies,
mounted gunmen, mounted volunteers, minutemen, spies, scouts and mounted
rifle companies. When communicating with the commanders of his Hispanic
ranging companies, Austin, who was fluent in Spanish, called them the
milicia nacional (national militia) after Spanish and Mexican militia
regulations dating back to 1713. By whatever name they were known, these
units performed the same ranging service.
Initially, several companies
fought on foot and employed fifers and drummers in the European and
Colonial American military tradition. When this proved ineffective against
mounted Indians, they quickly adopted frontier horseback tactics. They
became so effective against Indian guerrilla raids that they strongly
influenced the formation of the U.S. and C.S.A. cavalries during the
Civil War.
Early Rangers were required
to provide their own horses and equipment. They fought battles in which
they were often outnumbered by as much as 50-to-1, so it was common
for each man to carry multiple pistols, rifles and knives.
Like Texas, the
early Texas Ranger had multicultural roots. Company rolls show that
Anglos, Hispanics and American Indians served in all ranks from private
to captain. These men freely borrowed from each others' experience and
equipment. While most had been born in the American South, many hailed
from Ireland, Germany, Scotland and England and spoke with their native
accents. Early Rangers shot Spanish pistols, Tennessee and Kentucky
rifles, carried Bowie knifes made in Sheffield England and rode swift
Mexican ponies. One writer said that a Texas Ranger could "ride
like a Mexican, trail like an Indian, shoot like a Tennesseean, and
fight like the devil."
Historical Memorabilia© 1997
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
Rangers served primarily
as volunteers since government offers of payment rarely materialized.
In 1835, as the movement for Texas independence was about to boil over,
a council of colonial Texas representatives created a "Corps of
Rangers" to protect the frontier from hostile Indians. For the
first time, their pay was officially set at $1.25 a day and they were
to elect their own officers. They were also required to furnish their
own arms, mounts, and equipment. The corps was commanded by R.M. "three-legged"
Williamson (so nicknamed because he had a wooden leg to support a crippled
limb) and led by Captains William Arrington, Issac Burleson and John
J. Tumlinson. Settlers rebelled against the Mexican government in 1836
over violations of their rights and the suspension of immigration from
the U.S and Europe. The Texas Rangers played an important but little
known role in this conflict. They covered the retreat of civilians from
dictator Santa Ana's army in the famous "Runaway Scrape,"
harassed columns of Mexican troops and provided valuable intelligence
to the Texas Army. The only men to ride in response to Col. William
B. Travis' last minute plea to defend the Alamo were Rangers who fought,
and died, in the cause of Texas freedom.
BRAVE TOO MUCH
Copyright© 1999
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
Certainly one of the most
famous early-day Texas Rangers was John Coffee "Jack" Hays.
He came to San Antonio in 1837 and within three years was named a Ranger
captain. Hays built a reputation fighting marauding Indians and Mexican
bandits. An Indian who switched sides and rode with Hays and his men
called the young Ranger captain "brave too much". Hays' bravado
was too much for many a hostile Indian or outlaw. In dealing with persons
deemed a threat to Texas, Hays helped establish another Ranger tradition--toughness
mixed with a reliance on the latest in technology.
THE COLT
REVOLVER
The Republic
of Texas was one of the earliest customers of a New England gun maker,
Samuel Colt. Colt had invented a fragile .36 caliber five-shot revolver,
a weapon Hays and his men used with deadly effect in defense of the
Texas frontier. No longer would his men have to pause in battle to reload
single-shot pistols and rifles while the Indians continued firing arrows.
Colt built his reputation on the use of his weapons by the Texas Rangers.
One of Hays' men, Samuel H. Walker, made some suggestions for improving
the pistol that Colt adopted during the Mexican War. The new weapon,
the five-pound frontier equivalent of a nuclear bomb, was called the
Walker Colt.
Colt Paterson "Texas" Revolver©
1999
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
In 1842, Walker and another former Ranger, Big Foot Wallace, took part
in the ill-fated Mier Expedition, in which a group of Texans invaded
Mexico. The Texans were captured and every tenth man was ordered executed.
The fate of the prisoners was determined in a drawing. Those who drew
white beans lived; a black bean meant death. Walker drew a white bean.
So did Wallace.
WAR WITH
MEXICO
In 1846, within a year of Texas' admission as the 28th state of the
Union, the United States and Mexico were at war. Walker joined one of
several Ranger companies that were mustered into federal service to
function as scouts.
The Rangers fought with
such ferocity in the war they came to be called "Los diablos Tejanos"
-- the Texas Devils. The luck Walker had after Mier did not hold. He
was killed in the fighting.
For the next decade after
the Mexican War, the Rangers existed primarily as volunteer companies,
raised when the need arose and disbanded when their work was done.
CIVIL WAR
During the Civil War, with
thousands of Texans off fighting with the Confederate Army, frontier
protection was afforded by a "Regiment of Rangers." Even it
eventually became part of the Confederate Army. The backbone of home
front security was still the volunteer "ranging" company,
whose members operated on the "legal authority" of the pistols
they carried on their hips or the rifles swinging in their saddle boot.
After the war, the Legislature
passed a bill creating three companies of Texas Rangers but a bill to
provide funding failed. Financial support for state law enforcement
in the early 1870's was sporadic. For all practical purposes, there
were no Texas Rangers for nearly a decade after the war.
During this time, law enforcement
was handled by a highly political and roundly hated organization known
as the State Police. Texas, like other Southern states, was in the throes
of reconstruction and any authority, civil or military, was distrusted.
The force eventually was disbanded.
Frontier Battalion Co. "F" in 1882 ©1999
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
Unfortunately, the problem that had made some kind of statewide police
force necessary in the first place had not disappeared along with the
State Police. But Texas was changing. The military, led by war-seasoned
veterans of the Union Army, was methodically ridding Texas of its Indian
problem.
THE FRONTIER BATTALION
Maj.
John B. Jones© 1997
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
By the second half of the decade, the biggest threat to Texas was lawless
Texans. In 1874, the Legislature created two Ranger forces to cope with
the situation - -the Frontier Battalion, led by Major John B. Jones
and an organization called Special Forces under Capt. Leander McNelly.
In five years time the Rangers
were involved in some of the most celebrated cases in the history of
the Old West. Much of the fact that would later be mixed with Ranger
legend occurred during this turbulent period.
Texas' deadliest outlaw,
John Wesley Hardin, a preacher's son reputed to have killed 31 men,
was captured in Florida by Ranger John B. Armstrong. After Armstrong,
his long-barreled Colt .45 in hand, boarded the train Hardin and four
companions were on, the outlaw shouted "Texas by God!" and
drew his own pistol. When it was over, one of Hardin's friends was dead,
Hardin had been knocked out cold, and his three surviving friends were
staring at Armstrong's pistol. A neat round hole pierced Armstrong's
hat, but he was uninjured.
Hardin served a lengthy
prison sentence, only to die in a shoot-out in El Paso in 1896 shortly
after his release.
SAM BASS
Another well-known Texas
outlaw who had a run in with Texas Rangers did not make it to prison.
Train robber Sam Bass, who had been in Texas since 1870, was confronted
by four Texas Rangers in Round Rock in the summer of 1878. In the shoot-out
that followed, one of Bass' gang was killed outright. Bass was gravely
wounded, but managed to escape. He was found, taken back into town,
and later died. One account has the 27 year-old outlaw saying "Life
is but a bubble, trouble where you go" shortly before he died.
Bass may or may not have
described life as a bubble, but the Texas Rangers certainly found plenty
of trouble wherever they went. Rangers contended with local disturbances
that amounted to miniature wars, bloody feuds, lynch mobs, cattle thieves,
barbed wire fence cutters, killers and other badmen. The Rangers usually
prevailed.
As the turn of the century
approached, the reputation of the Ranger as the person required to take
care of a situation beyond the means of local law enforcement was well
established.
Adjutant General W.H. Mabry
wrote of the Rangers in his 1896 report to the Legislature that "This
branch of the service has been very active and has done incalculable
good in policing the sparsely settled sections of the state where the
local officers...could not afford adequate protection."
PRESERVING
LAW AND ORDER
In the 1890's,
Rangers preserved law and order in Big Bend mining towns, tracked down
train robbers and even were called on to prevent an illegal prize fight
from taking place on Texas soil. The promoters of the storied Fitzsimmons-Maher
bout finally had to settle for staging the boxing match on an island
in the Rio Grande.
In 1894-95, the Rangers
scouted 173,381 miles; made 676 arrests; returned 2,856 head of stolen
livestock to the owners, assisted civil authorities 162 times and guarded
jails on 13 occasions.
Unidentified Texas Rangers on Patrol© 1999
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
In 1900, the Frontier Battalion
faded along with the frontier; but by July of 1901, the Legislature
passed a new law concerning the Ranger service. The force, to be organized
by the governor, was created "for the purpose of protecting the
frontier against marauding or thieving parties, and for the suppression
of lawlessness and crime throughout the state." Ranger captains
picked their own men, who had to furnish their own horses and could
dress as they choose. They did not even have a standard badge.
ONE RIOT,
ONE RANGER
The law authorized for Ranger
companies of a maximum of 20 men each. The career of Co. B. Capt. W.J.
McDonald, and a book written about him, added much to the Ranger legend,
including two of its most famous sayings.
 Capt.
Bill McDonald © 1999
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
The often cited "One
Riot, One Ranger" appears to be based on several statements attributed
to Capt. McDonald by Albert Bigelow Paine in his classic book, Captain
Bill McDonald: Texas Ranger. When sent to Dallas to prevent a scheduled
prizefight, McDonald supposedly was greeted at the train station by
the city's anxious mayor, who asked: "Where are the others?"
To that McDonald is said
to have replied, "Hell! ain't I enough? There's only one prize-fight!"
And on the title page of
Paine's 1909 book on McDonald are 19 words labeled as Capt. McDonald's
creed: "No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's
in the right and keeps on a-comin'." Those words have evolved into
the Ranger creed.
During the first two decades
of the Twentieth Century, Rangers found themselves up against men in
the wrong as always, but some of the law enforcement problems these
officers confronted were as new as the century itself.
Since the days of the Mexican
War, Rangers had had occasional work to do along the long, meandering
Rio Grande, but the emphasis on the river increased in 1910 with the
outbreak of revolution in Mexico. Generally easy to ford, the Rio Grande
had never been much more than a symbolic boundary. Some of the violence
associated with the political upheaval in Mexico crossed the river into
Texas.
BANDIT
RAIDS
Panic
spread in 1915 when authorities in McAllen, Texas, arrest Basilio Ramos,
Jr. Ramos was carrying a copy of the Plan of San Diego, a revolutionary
manifesto supposedly written and signed at the South Texas town of San
Diego. It called for the formation of a "Liberating Army of Races
and Peoples," of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Japanese,
to "free" the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California,
and Colorado from United States. Versions of the plan call for the murder
of all white citizens over 16 years of age. The goal was an independent
republic, which might later seek annexation to Mexico.
Raids
from both side the the border quickly escalated into guerilla warfare.
Francisco (Pancho) Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916,
causes more panic and the United States responds by sending a large
military force under Gen. John J. Pershing in pursuit of Villa.
Texas
responded, as it had so many times in its history, by raising Ranger
companies. At the time the Texas Ranger Force was very small, and incapable
of maintaining law and order along the border. The Texas Legislature
by authorizing mass inductions and the "overnight" creation
of new Ranger companies.
Hispanic,
as well as Anglo, Texans served in these units. The Ranger
force grew to its largest level, but the lack of training and controls
were evident. Some of the new companies upheld the law while
others functioned as vigilante groups incensed by raids from Mexico.
These
Rangers were were given orders and wide powers to keep the hostilities
in Mexico from washing across the river into Texas. Gov. O.B. Colquitt
wrote Ranger Capt. John R. Hughes: " I instruct you and your men
to keep them (Mexican raiders) off of Texas territory if possible, and
if they invade the State let them understand they do so at the risk
of their lives."
The
vigilante nature, and poor command structure on the new Ranger units
led to incidents unacceptable to "regular" Rangers.
Serious crimes were committed that led to the 1919 Canales Investigation.
After one retaliatory Ranger raid into Mexico, an entire company
was dismissed.
In one battle in 1917, as many as 20 Mexicans may have been killed by
Rangers who crossed into Mexico.
The
35th legislature also created a "Loyalty Ranger Force" under
the "Hobby Loyalty Act" to serve as a secret service for the
State. Loyalty Rangers were to brief the Adjutant General on Mexican
revolutionary activities outside of San Antonio and in the border counties
in Mexico and Texas.
In
response to Pershing's US troops on Mexican soil, President Carranza
demanded the withdrawal of US forces, which was summarily rejected.
As a result, Mexican raiding intensified and an attack against Laredo
was considered with a combined force of "San Diego raiders"
and regular Mexican Army soldiers. A state of war was narrowly averted
when US and Mexican officials agreed to a peaceful settlement.
The
fragile peace was again threatened again in 1917 when a World War I
telegram sent to Mexico by the German Secretary of State Zimmermanbecame
public ". . . we propose
an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war
together and together make peace. We shall give general financial support,
and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory
in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement...."
Nothing materialized, but it served to further
alarm the public.
Mexican raids into Texas in 1915-16 caused an estimated 21 American
deaths; an estimated 300 Mexicans or Tejanos may have been killed in
South Texas by the actions of Rangers, vigilantes and citizens. Some
sources place the death toll as high as 300 and 3,000.
In
January of 1919 Representative José T. Canales of Brownsville
demanded a legislative investigation of the conduct of the various Ranger
forces during the period 1915-1917 and the reorganization of the force.
The
Texas Legislature investigated nineteen charges made against the Texas
Ranger forces in the aftermath of the Plan of San Diego and the War.
The investigation
resulted in the reduction of the Ranger force to four companies of 17
men each. A tightening of qualifications for the Texas Ranger service
led to its initial professionalization.
BOOTLEGGERS
AND SPIES
In 1918, the
national prohibition law was passed. It gave the Rangers, along with
federal officers, another problem to cope with on the border. Many a
burro train of bootleg liquor from Mexico was intercepted, and shoot-outs
between Rangers and smugglers were not infrequent.
Ranger and Stills Destroyed on Prohibition Raids
© 1999
Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
During the
first World War, the already large regular Ranger force was supplemented
with another 400 Special Rangers appointed by the governor. After the
war, on the heels of a Legislative inquiry into the Rangers' operation
on the border, the Legislature in 1919 reduced the size of the force
to four companies of 15 men, a sergeant and a captain. Additionally,
the lawmakers authorized a headquarters company of six men in Austin
under a senior Ranger captain.
Texas was in a state of
transition, and so were the Rangers. Rangers still rode the river on
horseback, but they also used cars. The automobile was taking over as
the principal mode of transportation in Texas and the rest of the country.
And horseless carriages needed oil, not oats. The increased national
demand for petroleum fueled a new law enforcement problem for the Rangers.
In addition to their traditional
duties, along with assisting in tick eradication efforts, handling labor
difficulties and the enforcement of prohibition, the Rangers had to
deal with lawlessness that came with the oil boom in Texas. One of the
first places that happened was in a community that years before had
been named in their honor.
OIL
Ranger in the Oil Fields
© 1997, Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
The small Eastland County
town of Ranger, so named because it had been settled near the site of
an old frontier Ranger camp, boomed with the discovery of oil in the
area. By 1920, Ranger had a population 16,000, and a substantial number
of those residents were not particularly interested in abiding by the
law. Texas Rangers who were sent to Ranger, Texas raid gaming halls,
smashed drinking establishments, and corralled a wide assortment of
miscreants and felons. When Rangers filled the jails, prisoners sometimes
had to be handcuffed to telephone poles.
The same story would be
repeated throughout the '20s and '30s. Only the names of the towns changed.
From Borger to Mexia, Rangers preserved what peace and dignity they
could in the wild oil field boomtowns.
The Rangers had greater
mobility, but so did the outlaws. Robbers could hit a small town bank
and quickly make their getaway. Rangers were given railroad passes,
but had to provide their own cars. In the early 1930s, every third Ranger
in a company got an $80.00-a-month car allowance.
Capt.
Frank Hamer on Horseback
©1999 Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
FRANK HAMER
Texas Ranger
Hall of Fame and Museum
One of the best known Rangers who made the transition from horse to
car was Frank H. Hamer. He first joined the Rangers in 1906. Hamer left
the force occasionally to take other law enforcement jobs, but by 1921,
he was captain of Ranger Co. C, stationed in Del Rio. At the beginning
of 1922, he was transferred to Austin, where he would spend the next
decade as a Ranger captain.
One of the major problems
facing the Rangers during Hamer's tenure as Senior Ranger Captain was
bank robbery. The situation got so bad, the Texas Bankers Association
offered a standing $5,000 reward for bank robbers. There was one catch--the
money would be paid for dead robbers only.
As the Depression took hold
in Texas, unscrupulous types began setting up phony holdups, hiring
men to rob a bank and then killing them in the act so the reward money
could be collected. This was a situation the Rangers could not solve
with force. Instead, Hamer went to the press, exposing what was happening.
Hamer's move paid off--the banking association's reward policy was changed.
As Senior Ranger Captain,
Hamer reported to the state's adjutant general, a man appointed by the
governor. A governor also could appoint Rangers, or influence a selection.
As governors changed, Ranger leadership usually changed. Though history
shows many good men wore the Ranger badge in the 1920s and 1930s, the
system was rife with politics and ripe for abuse.
When Gov. Miriam "Ma"
Ferguson took office in 1933, Adjutant General W.W. Sterling resigned
his office. Forty Rangers, including Capt. Hamer, left with him.
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