Having just started this column on Legendary Lawmen a few months back it occurred to me that there are a few characteristics the men we've covered so far all seem to have in common. Many of the legends come from the "old west" and I thought it might be appropriate to take a look at (potentially) why...
First I suppose we have to recognize that movies made for the past several decades have presented the wild west as exactly that: wild - out of control. As such it took serious, skilled and dedicated men to stand up to the lawlessness. Many places in our country today are the same way - perhaps not as lawless as the movies made the old west appear - but haunted by bad people willing to do bad things and protected by skilled, serious, dedicated men who know the dangers of what they're doing. They do it anyway. They are often miles from their nearest back up / support, and they don't hesitate to face their job head on.
That spirit; that strength of character; that sense of duty if you will, seems to often be portrayed in books and movies by marshals, sheriffs, and rangers - all men of the law in that old / wild west. As such I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the history of the one organization that seems to keep coming up: the Texas Rangers.
The history of the Texas Rangers doesn't actually start in the state of Texas; it starts in Mexico way back in 1821 - before Texas was a state. At that time Mexico still claimed Texas and one Stephen F. Austin assumed control of his father's contracts to develop settlements in the Mexican province of Tejas. Austin built a militia to fend off attacks from various groups of Indians. In 1823 as the militia grew Austin referred to them as "rangers".
It wasn't until more than fifty years later in 1874 that the term "Texas Ranger" appeared in the state's legal documentation or legislation. Even then it wasn't the official name of the organization. And like Texas, the history and culture of the Texas Rangers is mixed. Caucasians, Hispanics and American Indians are all documented in the records of the Rangers serving at every rank as high as Captain. Early Rangers provided all of their own equipment and the assortment often followed them from their roots: Spanish pistols, Kentucky rifles, English Bowie knives and Mexican ponies.
The existence of the Texas Rangers certainly didn't wait on legislation. In 1835, as the debate over Texas' independence was raging, a group of colonial Texas representatives created a "Corps of Rangers". That Corps was actually paid and was able to elect their own officers. The Corps' first commander was R. M. Williamson nicknamed "three-legged" Williamson because of the wooden leg he used to support a crippled leg.
John Coffee "Jack" Hays, previously the subject of this column, arrived in San Antonio in 1837 and was a Ranger captain within three years. Hays, nicknamed by an Indian compatriot "brave too much" is credited with starting the Ranger tradition of toughness mixed with reliance on available technology.
Colt revolvers, manufactured by Samuel Colt, were often used by Hays and his men to fight with deadly accuracy on the Texas frontier. One of Hays' men, Samuel H. Walker, offered a suggestion to improve the Colt revolver that was adopted by Colt before the Mexican War. It's a revolver history now records as being the "Walker Colt".
In the late 1870s the Texas State legislature realized that lawless citizens were a larger problem that would need to be dealt with. Having created two Ranger groups in 1874, the state legislature then directed those Rangers to deal with the lawless. The Frontier Battalion under the command of Major John B. Jones and the Special Forces led by Cpt. Leander McNelly did their jobs well. The following five years are part of Ranger history with fact being intermixed with legend to an almost inseperable degree.
The career of Ranger Cpt. Bill McDonald is credited with having spawned two sayings that reflect the spirit and outlook of Texas Rangers: One Riot, One Ranger
And
No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's in the right and keeps on a-comin'.
Now when we look at that amount of history - bearing in mind that we haven't even gotten to the year 1900 yet - it's easy to see where the legendary lawmen of the old west can be found in the Texas Rangers. It's easy to see where some of the legends and myths were spawned while the Rangers' reputation was earned and is still respected today.
This month - since this article is being released on April Fool's Day - I was going to write a spoof about Texas Ranger Cordell Walker, the fictional character played by Chuck Norris in Walker Texas Ranger. After doing some research into the real Texas Rangers I thought this would be better. The fictional Cordell Walker may embody the character traits today's Texas Rangers actually carry, but he's still fiction. The Texas Rangers, both past and present are real. And they tend, in this author's opinion, to represent the better parts of Wild West law enforcement. I will look to their ranks for future columns.
Charles Bennett
Charles Bennett was born in our Nation's Capital and grew up in the Maryland suburbs. Mr. Bennett has been working in all aspects of the publishing industry since the late 1980s primarily in the fields of commercial photography and magazine production. Moving to California in 1992 to attend college resulted in B.F.A and Masters degrees. California also supplied Mr. Bennett with his wife. The two of them are avid sports persons and participate in shooting, scuba diving, surfing, running and bicycling. As a long time hobby Mr. Bennett has studied the legends of American law enforcement which led to his writing these columns.
