The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (18 page)

Since we have been in Matamoras [
sic
] a great many murders have been committed, and what is strange there seems to be but very weak means made use of to prevent frequent repetitions. Some of the volunteers and about all the Texans seem to think it perfectly right to impose upon the people of a conquered City to any extent, and even to murder them where the act can be covered by the dark. And how much they seem to enjoy acts of violence too!
²⁹

General Taylor shared that opinion. The Texans picked fights not only with the local population but also with U.S. regulars, and they had the annoying habit of shooting randomly at signboards and other attractive targets in the middle of town.
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“On the day of battle, I am glad to have Texas soldiers with me, for they are brave and gallant,” Taylor commented to one officer, “but I never want to see them before or afterwards, for they are too hard to control.”
³¹
Many times during this war, the Texans would justify both aspects of the general’s comment.

A MOVE TO
Reynosa, almost seventy miles upriver from Matamoros, did little to calm the Texans. Ironically, the move had been requested by the
alcalde
of Reynosa, who was prepared to surrender the city in return for American protection against Mexican stragglers and
rancheros
left behind during the retreat to Monterrey. As a pledge of good faith, he delivered one of Price’s Rangers who had been captured six months earlier. In response, Taylor sent four companies of infantry, a section of artillery, and Rangers to occupy the city and prepare a defense.
³²
The Rangers, however, included former Mier prisoners with harsh memories of this city, where they had been stoned and spat upon as they were marched through town. They also regarded Reynosa as the headquarters of many of the gangs that raided into Texas. Most believed some sort of retribution was in order, and Sam Reid noted wryly:

Our orders were most strict not to molest any unarmed Mexican, and if some of the most notorious of these villains were found shot, or hung up in the chaparral, during our visit to Reynoso [
sic
], the government was charitably found to suppose, that during some fit of remorse and desperation, tortured by conscience for the many evil deed they had committed, they had recklessly laid
violent hands upon their own lives!
“Quien sabe?” [Who knows?]
³³

Very probably the Rangers knew how these men had been hanged or shot. Given the strong hold of the Roman Catholic Church at that time, along with the vehement Mexican nationalism that justifies all things, remorse and suicide were highly unlikely.

Even in lighthearted moments, the Texans lived up to their reputation for unruliness. Lt. Rankin Dilworth of the First U.S. Infantry noted in his diary that the Rangers were quartered in an abandoned cotton gin near one of the American camps. “At dark,” he wrote, “hearing a great noise, I looked out in that direction and saw them all on top of [the gin] dancing a war dance to the infinite amusement of the natives who were collected below.”
³⁴

When the Mexicans observed St. John’s Day with displays of horsemanship, the Rangers mounted up to show what they could do. A race ensued, but according to one American officer, the Mexican ponies “stood no chance with Texas horses.” Finally the Texans wheeled their heavy horses around and charged the Mexicans, slamming into their light ponies, knocking them down, and scattering them. Far from aggravating the existing ill-feeling, the stunt won a grudging admiration from the Mexicans, who were serious in matters of horsemanship.
³⁵

A week or so later, however, McCulloch’s Rangers celebrated the Fourth of July with a barbecue, killing and eating every Mexican pig and chicken in the vicinity and washing it down with purloined whisky. They justified the slaughter of the local livestock by claiming that the animals wandered into the line of fire as they were discharging their guns to celebrate the holiday, and to keep the meat from going to waste it was cooked. Nobody seemed to care how this would affect the impoverished Mexican farmers, whose lifetime of hard work went onto the Texans’ cooking fires.
³⁶

JAMES HOLLAND, THE
Ranger from Harrison County in east Texas, was still downriver at Fort Brown, where his company had arrived on June 25, after a grueling march. These Rangers—assigned to a companion regiment, the Second Texas—were supposed to be in Point Isabel, but had taken the wrong road below the Arroyo Colorado and found themselves closer to Matamoros. Their commissary, meanwhile, had taken the right road and was in Point Isabel, so the east Texans set up camp miserable and hungry in a pouring rain. The following day, they continued on toward the Rio Grande, passing Palo Alto, where Holland noted “Mexican bodies lying here and there the victims of our arms.” Some U.S. troops invited them to breakfast, and they finally rendezvoused with their commissary. The rain kept up all day and all night, so they slept outside Fort Brown in water and mud, albeit with full stomachs.
³⁷

The sun came out on the morning of June 26, and the Rangers occupied themselves doing their laundry and cleaning up. So far, the war had been only an abstract in Holland’s mind. Now, however, they were in a strange and hostile environment. Many of the men were desperately ill from unknown tropical fevers, and there was a Mexican city in plain view just across the river. Reality sank in. “Never thot of dying before,” he remarked in his diary, “scared to death.” Later he added, “I wish the Mexicans would behave themselves and let us alone.”
³⁸

That last statement seems incredibly naive, but unlike the Rangers from San Antonio and the frontier, these men had enlisted for purely patriotic reasons. Isolated in east Texas, they had minimal—if any—contact with Mexicans, and they felt little animosity toward Mexico. Holland expressed their view in his diary:

All is dull and gloomy—becoming tired of a stationary life—want to be moving—if there is no fighting to be done—as there seems to be—we are all willing to go home.
³⁹

On July 2, after six weeks in the field, the Harrison County men were finally mustered into federal service as part of Col. George T. Wood’s Regiment of Texas Rangers, the six-month term retroactive to the date of their arrival on the Rio Grande. In contrast to the rowdy Fourth of July celebration by McCulloch’s Rangers, the east Texans listened to a reading of the Declaration of Independence and patriotic speeches.
⁴⁰

EVEN THE MEN
who had spent much of their adult lives fighting Mexicans could occasionally put aside old grudges and join the Mexicans for a good time. For not only were the Texans and Mexicans locked in a war against each other, both had to struggle to survive against the Indians, and against the man-killing climate and terrain of the borderlands. The Mexicans, having lived there longer, had far more experience, and the Texans had acquired many of their survival skills. In the process, they had become much more Mexicanized than either side cared to admit. Many Rangers spoke Spanish, had the same likes and dislikes as the Mexicans, and enjoyed the same types of amusement and entertainment. Sometimes circumstances brought the two groups together.

One night Lt. John McMullen, who commanded McCulloch’s company in Reynosa while the latter was in Matamoros on business, was told the
ranchero
leader Antonio Canales was attending a dance at a ranch six miles from Reynosa. Canales, who previously had joined with the Nueces “cow-boys” in a secession attempt, now was colonel of a Mexican militia regiment in Camargo. He coordinated the activities of the
rancheros
in the area and was believed to be responsible for the death of Colonel Cross, the murdered quartermaster. McMullen formed up the Rangers and started toward the ranch. About a mile away, they spotted lights coming from the ranch. As they crept up, they came on a scene that Sam Reid describes as “unique and beautiful.”

The dance was held in the open air; and the bright fires kindled at different points, the candles and torches moving to and fro, the animated groups of revellers clustered on every side, the white robes of the girls prettily contrasting in the fire-light with the dusky apparel of their partners; while gay forms, replete with life and motion, founded in the lively dance, or floated in the graceful waltz, in sweet accord with the spirit-stirring strains of music which the night-breeze wafted to our ears.
⁴¹

“Halt!” McMullen commanded. “Dismount! Creep up cautiously, men, and surround the house—and when I call you, come up quickly and firmly at the charge.”

With that, he loosened his pistols and strolled into the middle of the dance. Before the startled Mexicans could recover, they were surrounded by Texas riflemen. Women screamed, and the men tried to break through the line but were forced back at gunpoint. A quick search of the ranch house failed to turn up Canales, and the Rangers concluded they had been misinformed.

One drunken old man shouted, “We are poor honest people—what have we to fear from our enemies?” and the crowd began to calm down. Equally eager to avoid a confrontation, McMullen apologized for the intrusion and explained it by saying the Rangers had been out on patrol and had stopped by to investigate the gathering. The Mexicans then invited the Rangers to join the dance, and two or three of the best dancers in the company chose partners from among the girls. It was the first time in months they had been able to dance, and they intended to make the most of it. “We had seen some pretty
tall
dancing in our time, but we think the feats we witnessed that night, were a little ahead of anything in that line we ever saw before,” Reid said.

Finally, McMullen intervened.

“Come, boys,” he ordered, “this is enough fun for one night. Mount and return to quarters.”

There was a last round of drinks and the Rangers rode back to their camp. Their only disappointment was that they had not found Canales.
⁴²

ABOVE REYNOSA, THE
flat coastal plain gives way to rolling hills and semi-desert where, on a clear day, the northernmost spur of the Sierra Madre Oriental can be seen in the distance from the Texas side. This is one of two great mountain ranges that divide Mexico into thirds along a north-south line, the other being the Sierra Madre Occidental. Between these two ranges, a central valley leads hundreds of miles into the wealthy, populous Mexican interior. The city of Monterrey is on a plateau in the Sierra Oriental, guarding the pass into the valley. If he had any hope of advancing beyond the Rio Grande, General Taylor would have to take Monterrey, and the city was heavily fortified.
⁴³

Taylor determined to make his base at Camargo on the San Juan River, about a mile from its confluence with the Rio Grande and about fifty miles upriver from Reynosa. Already, Rangers had reconnoitered within eighty miles of Monterrey and determined that the most feasible route for the army was through Camargo rather than directly from Matamoros. Water was scarce on the Camargo road, but it was closer than Matamoros by more than a hundred miles and could be readily supplied by steamer.
⁴⁴

While Taylor was consolidating his forces, he found himself confronted by an enemy that would become all too familiar to American soldiers over the next three decades—Comanches. As early as mid-June, rumors had reached Reynosa that some five hundred Indians were raiding on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, “robbing cornfields and taking some of the inhabitants,” according to one officer.
⁴⁵
On July 22, a runner reached the Ranger camp in Camargo with news that a large war party under the chief Buffalo Hump “had been scouring the country above us, on both sides of the Rio Grande, stealing horses, burning ranchos, murdering the Mexican
hombres,
and carrying off [into captivity] the most beautiful of the Mexican
Señoritas.
”

Already, they had raided Gillespie’s Ranger camp about three miles away, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, and made off with some of the horses.
⁴⁶

Gen. William J. Worth, commanding officer in Camargo, told McCulloch to take thirty men and hunt down the Indians. Knowing very little about Comanches at that time, the Americans apparently assumed reasoning might work, and McCulloch was instructed “to have a parley with them, if possible, and not engage them without absolute necessity.”
⁴⁷

McCulloch started out at dawn the next morning. Reaching the Rio Grande, the Rangers hailed a heavily loaded steamer struggling against the swollen river and sent aboard their saddles, blankets, and arms to be ferried across. The boat, however, was too heavily laden to carry the extra weight of men and horses against the current, so the Rangers were told they would have to cross on their own. They stood for a while watching the five-mile-an-hour current sweeping past, carrying trees, driftwood, and other flotsam. The horses were beginning to grow nervous. Finally, McCulloch called out, “Now, boys, wade into it,” and spurred his horse into the river.

McCulloch and about a dozen men and horses made it across, but the rest were forced back when their horses refused to swim out into mid-stream. The Rangers stranded on the south bank cut long poles and prod-ded their animals back into the river. Most made it across, but one young Ranger bringing up the rear went under, bobbed back to the surface, waved his arms, and went under again. Several companions searched the bank and found a dugout canoe and went after him. They had almost given up when he came to the surface, laughed, and swam ashore; it had been a prank. According to Reid, the young Ranger was reprimanded with “unvarnished and original cursing [that] would make a devil cross himself with fear.”
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