American Indian & Hispanic Rangers

One of the persistent myths of Texas Ranger history is that, until recently, all Rangers were Anglo-Europeans. Surviving enlistment records prove that Texans of Hispanic and American Indian descent served from the Mexican era well into Statehood.

The following is a sample of names from very early enlistment records compiled by museum intern Rebekkah Lohr during research for her graduate thesis. She received guidance from Christina Stopka, head of the Texas Ranger Research Center, and used records at the Hall of Fame and Museum and the Texas State Library and Archives. Tables of Tejano and Indian names from the Republic era appear below; a few comments are in order about why the spellings and names may seem unusual.

Early Texas was a land of many languages but few schools. Many famous leaders of early Texas — like Stephen F. Austin, Juan Seguin and Sam Houston — were formally educated in the letters and the law. They led Tejano, Anglo and Indian frontiersmen who were far from ignorant and could converse in several languages. However, lack of schooling meant that many early Texans were illiterate or could barely read and write.

Enlistment rolls for the Texas Rangers were usually kept by Southerners of Anglo-European descent or recent German and English immigrants. Most were not fluent in Spanish or the Indian languages. They frequently resorted to transliteration and translation to fulfill their duties as record-keepers.

Most Tejano Texas Rangers (Texas-born of Spanish/ Mexican ancestry), like their Anglo brothers-in-arms, were either barely literate or illiterate. Only a handful of "ricos" (Tejanos of money and position) had the wealth to send their children to the private and Catholic schools in Mexico City, St. Louis and Philadelphia.

None of the Indian languages — such as Tonkawa, Apache and Waco — existed in written form. Indian recruits, unless they learned Spanish in mission schools, were illiterate. They usually signed the enlistment rolls with a mark and had to rely on whatever an enlistment officer from another culture wrote down as their name. Anglo recruiters often recorded Indian and Hispanic names by transliteration (writing the sounds of another language as familiar combinations of English letters). This accounts for many of the unusual spellings of Hispanic names:

• "Juarez" became "Juaris"
• "Luis" became "Lewis"

When an enlistment officer thought he understood the meaning of an Indian name, or was given a name by an interpreter, he made attempts at translation:

• "Gopher", "Buzzard" and "Panther" were probably accurate.
• Whether names like "They have Shot the Dog" or "Over the Branches" were correctly translated is unknown.

If an Indian name was especially difficult for English-speakers, or if an Indian was known by a nickname, the recruiter sometimes took the easiest way out by using nicknames or "Christian" names such as:

• "Big John", "Jack" or "Little Jack"
• "Tom", "Louis" or "Moses"
• After centuries of acculturation with Spanish- speakers, some Indians adopted Spanish names for use outside the tribal group: such as "Manuel", "Antonio" and "Fernando."