The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (21 page)

HAYS ARRIVED IN
Veracruz on October 17. Two days later the first consignment of Colt’s Walker Model revolver were delivered and issued to the Rangers. Although the war was nearing its conclusion, the U.S. garrison at Puebla, a major city on the road between Mexico City and Veracruz, was under a virtual state of siege. Hays began a series of strikes against suspected guerrilla hideouts and strongpoints, clearing the path for Lane’s troops to relieve Puebla. Ultimately Lane broke through, and Hays’s Rangers reached Mexico City, where they clashed almost continually with the local population. They divided their time between the capital and counterguerrilla forays until they were demobilized and sent home.
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The Mexican War secured Mexican recognition of Texas as part of the United States with the Rio Grande as the boundary. The United States also gained all of California, most of New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, and parts of Colorado and Utah. For Texas, however, the war was costly. Great Rangers like Walker and Gillespie were dead. Less noble Rangers gave the service a reputation for brutality that still lingers. But the fame of the organization had spread beyond the boundaries of Texas. The Texas Rangers were becoming a legend.

PART 3

THE TORCH IS PASSED

Chapter 7

A New Era

During Texas’s ten years as a sovereign republic, much of its resources
had been devoted to a two-front war—against the Indians to the north and west, and against the threat of Mexican military intervention in the south. As a result, little could be done to develop the vast, trackless interior west of San Antonio and Austin. But the close of the Mexican War removed the danger from the south, and the federal government was responsible for defense against the Indians. Texans were eager to break out of the confines of their eastern settlements and move into the frontier regions.

Jack Hays led the way. Famous throughout the United States because of his exploits during the Mexican War, he traveled to Washington in June 1848. There he turned in his resignation from the army and took advantage of a hero’s welcome in the federal capital to promote the opening of a road across the six hundred miles separating San Antonio and El Paso. Hays offered sound arguments. The government hoped that a practical way could be found to cut travel time to Santa Fe in the newly acquired territory of New Mexico.¹ Traditionally, trade between the United States and the New Mexico settlements followed a northern route through St. Louis, an expensive and uncertain process involving immense wagon trains traveling for months across the Plains. The western part of Texas was a void. Although Hays had been as far into that wilderness as anyone, he had never ventured more than about two hundred miles west of San Antonio. The area beyond was unknown country. Federal officials authorized him to enlist a detachment of Rangers and explore possible routes.

The El Paso expedition included seventy-two Rangers, civilians, federal soldiers, and Mexican and Indian scouts. They left San Antonio on August 27, 1848, traveling easily at first over familiar country. Striking out into the unknown beyond Las Moras Creek (near the present town of Brackettville), they followed crude Spanish maps, correcting many of the errors they found. The trip was brutal. Running low on food, they were forced to kill several of their horses, and water was always a problem. One man suffered a mental breakdown from the hardship, wandered off from camp, and was saved only by a band of Indians who found him and nursed him back to health. Eventually, Hays led them to Ben Leaton’s fortified trading post in the Big Bend of the Rio Grande near what is now Presidio, Texas. El Paso was only 150 miles up the river. Here the expedition turned back toward San Antonio. The Rangers, who were provided by the state, were expected to be back at their post on the Llano River near Fredericksburg within a certain time, and could go no farther and remain on schedule. Many of the civilians were in bad physical condition from the trip. Because the stretch between Leaton’s fort and El Paso was already known, Hays saw no point in continuing.

To avoid shortages on the return trip, he divided the expedition into three groups, theorizing that smaller parties traveling different routes would make less demand on local game, forage, and water holes. All eventually returned to civilization, and only one group suffered any particular hardship. Hays’s own band reached San Antonio on December 10. He had mapped a suitable route to El Paso, explored a river they named Devil’s because of the hellish country in which it was located, and corrected many errors on Spanish maps of the Pecos River.²

IT IS ONE
of those quirks of fate that Hays determined a route to El Paso just as news was reaching the east of the discovery of gold in California, because the influx of westbound argonauts soon made the new road essential. Among those heading to the goldfields were Hays himself, Ben McCulloch, and other old Rangers. The Mexican War, the acquisition of vast new western territories, and the Gold Rush marked the end of one era and the birth of another for the Texas Rangers. The men were passing who had set the standard for all Rangers to come. Hays remained in California, becoming a lawman, businessman, and land developer and one of the state’s leading citizens. McCulloch eventually returned to Texas, although he did not reenter the state’s service until the eve of secession. Defense of the Texas frontier now devolved on new leaders. They faced a difficult situation because their status under the American regime was not clear, and the Rangers were hampered by competing authority with the military and conflicting policies between the state and federal governments.³

NOW THAT THE
Mexican War had ended, the United States considered itself at peace, whereas the Texans viewed themselves as perpetually at war with the Plains Indian tribes. The Texas policy toward hostile Indians was simple—extermination. The federal government, on the other hand, was determined to pacify them through agencies and, in extreme cases, by removal to new locations. U.S. troops were sent to garrison the frontier, and it was assumed they would maintain the peace.

The problem with the federal policy was that annexation confronted the United States with a new and unfamiliar situation. In the past, by the time a territory attained statehood, the local Indian tribes had been subdued and reduced to the dependency of a federal reservation. The duty of the soldiers, therefore, was more the enforcement of laws governing white-Indian relations than protecting settlements from depredations. Thus when a string of military posts was established along a so-called frontier line of defense between Fort Worth on the Trinity River and Fort Duncan on the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, they were situated at great distances from each other and garrisoned largely by infantry, a branch of service virtually useless against mounted Indian tribes. “With the exception of the ‘mounted rifles’ [in this case, federal cavalry], we have no force that pretends to meet the Indian on his own ground,” one visitor commented. Even when cavalry was available, it was restricted to the federal policy of pacification.
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AS EARLY AS
1848, while the U.S. Army was still deployed in Mexico, the need for protection became obvious when a large band of Indians embarked on a prolonged raid through Texas. “Many were murdered, others robbed of all they possessed, and a general fear and alarm diffused throughout the whole extent of the frontier,” according to a Congressional report concerning state claims against the federal government for frontier defense.
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In the absence of federal military protection, Governor Henderson’s successor, George T. Wood, ordered six Ranger companies mustered not only for the immediate crisis but until a federal military presence could be established. He also directed an extension of the soon-to-expire enlistment of a frontier defense company near the headwaters of the Trinity River. The length of service of these companies is not clear, but they apparently were discharged once federal troops began settling into permanent garrison duty.
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Given their long experience with Indian raids, the Texans placed little confidence in the army, nor did they have any sympathy for the pacification policy. One California-bound goldseeker gave his opinion of the federal policy as his party reached Fort Worth.

Here were stationed a company of, or companies of, U.S. Cavalry which had recently replaced the discharged, efficient Texas Rangers. Hostile, wild Indians visited the Station almost nightly. They stole animals, shot at the sentries and committed any deviltry their mischievous hands found to do.
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The situation was aggravated because the Plains Indians themselves did not understand the impact of annexation. The Texans always had been a people apart from the United States. The Plains tribes were at peace with the federal government and at war with the Texans, and could not comprehend why the newly appointed federal Indian agents objected to their depredations against the Texas settlements.
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In early 1849, extensive raiding broke out in the vicinity of Corpus Christi. Because the nearest federal troops were infantry stationed more than eighty miles away, Governor Wood ordered the formation of two Ranger companies totaling 150 men to patrol the area for three months at state expense. After laying out approximately $12,000 for these companies, Texas was no longer able to carry the burden, and the army agreed to requisition three full companies of Rangers for six months at federal expense in the Corpus Christi area.
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Even the vicinity of the capital was dangerous. One citizen recalled, “In those days a gentleman seldom rode into the country any distance [from Austin] without carrying arms. It was not safe to ramble in the suburbs of the town unarmed.” A man who lived within the Austin city limits was attacked on his way to market.
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In May 1849, Indians struck settlements along the San Antonio River around Goliad, and even threatened Goliad itself. An ad hoc Ranger company attacked one band shortly before midnight on June 4, scattering the warriors and capturing their camp and equipment. Three days later, Governor Wood formally mustered the company into state service. Three additional companies were formed and taken into federal service for six months, beginning in August.
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Nevertheless, the raids continued through the end of the year, centering on an area running south from Goliad and across the Nueces Strip to the Rio Grande. On January 12, 1850, a prominent Corpus Christi citizen was ambushed and killed en route to Goliad, and between sixty and eighty horses were taken from a nearby ranch. News reached the Ranger station on the Nueces the following night, and on the morning of January 14, the men began pursuit. The Indians managed to stay ahead of the Rangers, lancing to death any of their horses that gave out and slowed their retreat. The trail finally led into the broken escarpment leading to the central Plains and the Rangers, who were running low on food, put in at Fort Inge near Uvalde to reprovision.

In the Rio Grande settlements downriver from Laredo, Indian depredations prompted the leading citizens to petition the new governor, Peter Hansford Bell (himself a former Jack Hays Ranger), for a company to be stationed on the Texas side of the river near its confluence with the Salado, about midway between Ringgold Barracks in Rio Grande City and Fort McIntosh in Laredo. The petition noted they were about sixty miles from either post and needed more immediate protection than the military could provide. Signed by forty-four of the leading Texan and
tejano
citizens, the appeal could not be ignored. Neither could their request that “Capt. John S. Ford. Be Commissioned to Command Such Company or force as may be stationed in accordance with the prayers of your petitioners.” As a result of this public pressure, the Ranger companies were reorganized and their enlistments extended.
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IF THE REPUBLIC
was the era of Jack Hays, the 1850s could well be called the Ford years, for John Salmon Ford distinguished himself on both the Indian frontier and the Mexican border. A native of South Carolina, Ford read medicine, which is to say that in an era of few medical schools he prepared for the profession by studying under the supervision of a trained physician. When news arrived in Tennessee of the Texas War of Independence and the fall of the Alamo, he began recruiting a company for service in the new republic. Although the war ended before he could organize his company, Ford was determined to try his luck in Texas anyway. He crossed the Sabine in June 1836, a month past his twenty-first birthday, and established a medical practice in San Augustine. It is unclear whether he was divorced or separated at this time, but he had custody of a small daughter.