The Men Who War the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (22 page)

Ford spent the next ten years involved in community affairs and politics, and he served in the local militia when the Cherokees were expelled from east Texas. He was elected to the Texas Congress as a strong advocate of annexation. In 1845 he remarried and moved his family to Austin, where he was copublisher and editor of a newspaper. On May 10, 1847, he enlisted as a Mounted Volunteer for service in Mexico, rising to lieutenant and serving as Jack Hays’s adjutant in General Scott’s campaign. This began a career as a soldier and Ranger that Ford would follow for the next two decades. Besides a reputation as a competent officer, he also acquired a nickname; when a soldier or Ranger was killed, he habitually signed the condolence letter to the family “RIP [Rest in Peace]/Ford,” and so became known as Rip Ford or Old Rip.
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Ford was different from many Ranger captains in that he emphasized drill. Writing in the third person, he said he

never subscribed to the theory that Texas Rangers needed no drilling. He had seen enough service to convince him it was necessary for men to know how to perform simple evolutions to render them efficient in the presence of an enemy. He exercised the men in the manual of arms, wheeling, changing front, and other maneuvers.
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He was already known to the citizens of the Rio Grande area, having led Rangers in the vicinity the previous year. Perhaps the fact that virtually nothing happened during that initial assignment (the bulk of the trouble was along the Nueces and around Goliad) helped convince people that if he was in charge, they could sleep securely.
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FORD ESTABLISHED HIS
base at an abandoned ranch called San Antonio Viejo, once the seat of a large stock raiser who had been driven off by Indians. In keeping with the petition of the citizens who sought his presence, the camp was located about forty-five miles upriver from Ringgold Barracks and seventy-five miles downriver from Fort McIntosh. The Rangers lived in tents pitched around a square, using the ranch buildings for storing their supplies. Several good wells and stone troughs provided water for men and animals.

Because the company’s pistols were unserviceable, Ford decided to combine a requisition for new ones with a scouting expedition. He would take forty men upriver as far as Laredo, from there move north along the road toward the city of San Antonio, turning east to Corpus Christi, where he would draw new pistols, and finally cut southwest across the desert back toward the Rio Grande and San Antonio Viejo.

The expedition left camp in early May, stopping for a few days at Laredo to draw supplies and equipment from the army at Fort McIntosh, then patrolled about thirty more miles upriver before turning north. “We proceeded cautiously,” Ford wrote, “keeping our men out of sight as well as we could.” A few of the most cautious and trustworthy men were sent well ahead. Although they initially saw no signs of Indians, they believed them to be near, and soon began finding evidence of recent hunts to confirm their suspicions.

Ford ordered Lt. Andrew J. Walker to take half the men eastward toward the Nueces River, while he continued on slightly northwest to its headwaters. In doing this, he hoped the Indians would spot one group of Rangers and, trying to avoid it, would run into the other group. Walker was the first to encounter Indians and chased them until his horses gave out. Soon after, on May 12, Ford’s detachment located the fresh trail of the same band. They followed it to the Nueces and found where the Indians had forded. Crossing after them, Ford’s scouts noticed that the Indians were in no particular hurry, apparently assuming they had outdistanced the Rangers. In fact they were amusing themselves as they rode by slashing with their whips at the pads of the prickly pear cacti that grew in profusion in the region. Riding as hard as they could without exhausting their horses, the Rangers followed the trail some eight miles until they spotted the Indians emerging from some timber onto a prairie. They were Comanches.

“Here they are!” Ford yelled, galloping toward them. A Mexican scout whom Ford called Roque Maugricio (probably Mauricio) and Sgt. David M. Level joined him. Seeing only three men, the Comanches turned on them. About that time the other Rangers arrived, and both sides—each with sixteen men—formed up for a fight. Only Ford and Level had revolvers. The other Rangers had government-issue single-shot, muzzle-loading Mississippi rifles, and Ford cautioned them to alternate, half firing while the others reloaded.

The Comanche chief rode out toward the Rangers as if daring them to shoot him.

“Be steady, boys!” Ford cautioned. “He wants to draw your fire and then charge you with the lance!”

The chief came at Sergeant Level, who wounded him in the arm with a shot from his revolver. As he turned and rode back toward the other Comanches, Ford ordered the Rangers to charge. The Comanches divided up, half moving to the left and half to the right. The Rangers, staying together, rushed around the flank of the left, firing as they passed. The Indians let out a wail, signifying prominent warriors had been killed. The right line of Comanches cut loose with a volley of arrows, and Ford ordered each Ranger to move in close to a warrior so the Indian’s companions could not fire at them. After several minutes of vicious hand-to-hand fighting, the Comanches broke off, unwilling to take any more losses. The Rangers chased them four or five miles before giving up.

Following custom, the Indians retrieved their dead and wounded, but Ford estimated they had lost four killed and seven wounded. One Ranger was wounded, and a horse was killed. Ford himself received what appeared to be a scratch on the back of his right hand, which, while unusually painful, did not appear serious. It never stopped troubling him, however, and within six years, his right arm was completely paralyzed. As these were also the symptoms of an untreated snakebite, he speculated the scratch came from an arrow poisoned with rattlesnake venom.
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THE MISSISSIPPI RIFLES
carried by Ford’s men were efficient long-range weapons that contributed substantially to the American victory during the Mexican War. They were totally unsuited, however, for Ranger service. A Ranger customarily fought at close quarters, and chose his weapons accordingly. By the mid-1850s, most provided their own horses, saddles, arms, and equipment, except for rifles, which were supplied by the state.
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When equipment was lost, company commanders filed claims against the state, and these documents, preserved in the State Library and Archive in Austin, give an idea of the arms preferred by the Rangers. The handgun of choice appears to have been Colt’s .44-caliber Dragoon Model revolver, along with a double-barreled shotgun, both suited for close-in fighting. A subsequent requisition from the Executive Department of Texas to the U.S. Bureau of Ordnance indicated a preference for the Colt’s repeating rifle, which had a revolving cylinder, like the Colt’s pistol, and was deemed the rifle “peculiarly adapted to our border warfare.”
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Derived from the Walker Model, the Colt’s Dragoon pistol was a betterbuilt, more streamlined, and more efficient weapon. It was the same caliber as the Walker and, at four pounds two ounces, was lighter, if not by much. It was produced with slight variations from 1848 to 1862 and, like the Walker, had the Indian fight scene engraved on the cylinder.
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The Colt’s Dragoon was the first revolver formally adopted by the regular U.S. Army after a reluctant Bureau of Ordnance was forced by the realities of frontier warfare to purchase them for the U.S. Regiment of Mounted Rifles. By the end of the 1850s, virtually every U.S. mounted unit on the frontier carried Colt’s revolvers. Federal cavalry often operated in conjunction with Rangers during that period, and the Texas influence became evident as the army also adopted the broad-brimmed hat to replace the shako and kepi for field service, and went to a horse more suited for the rigors of frontier service than the Eastern thoroughbreds. Soldiers also employed the Ranger tactic of slipping quietly up on the Indians and catching them unawares.
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IN 1852, FORD
dropped out of the Rangers for the time being, assuming a seat in the state senate and returning to the newspaper business in Austin.
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Throughout the 1850s, however, Indian raids were common along the frontier, and Ranger units were almost continually in service. People on the Rio Grande, left without Ranger protection following the disbanding of Ford’s company, complained that federal troops at Ringgold Barracks and Fort McIntosh “are totally inadequate to protect the lives and property of our citizens.”
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One problem facing Texas was that its citizens were expanding and settling the frontier faster than either the state or federal government could secure it. Whereas in 1848 the line of defense ran north-south from Fort Worth to Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass, within seven years it had extended as much as 150 miles westward. Fort Worth itself no longer had any military value and was abandoned, its name preserved in the community that had grown up around it. It was replaced by Fort Belknap some hundred miles farther west, and Camp Cooper about fifty miles beyond Belknap. Military posts were also erected along the new road running between San Antonio and El Paso.
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Nevertheless, the Rangers remained the premier defenders of the frontier. Frederick Law Olmsted, later famous as the architect of Central Park in New York, visited Texas in 1854 and described Rangers returning to San Antonio from six months in the field. “They had only a few rags tied together and drawn round them for decency,” he wrote. But on dismounting, they headed for the local merchants, emerging “in fine cloth, stove-pipe hats, and all the etceteras.”

Olmsted was impressed by their casual attitude.

Men and officers were on terms of perfect equality, calling each other by their Christian or nick-names. Their time, when not in actual service, was spent in hunting, riding, and playing cards. The only duty was for four (out of seventy) to stand guard. Men were often absent, without leave, three or four days, without being reprimanded. They fought, when engaged, quite independently, the only order from the commander usually being—“All ready, boys? Go ahead.”

Their principal occupation has always been Indian fighting, but two or three regiments of them were employed, during the Mexican war, with great advantage, mainly as scouts, pioneers, and foragers.
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The Rangers continued to be a volunteer service called up when needed. The American people (and, by extension, the people of Texas) still distrusted a permanent, regular military force, preferring to place confidence in citizen-soldiers, minutemen, and short-term volunteers. Neither the state nor the federal government seemed to have much foresight, and the possibility that frontier defense would be a long-term proposition apparently never occurred to anyone. Thus frontier defense laws were for specific time periods, and the legislature frequently had to approve new bills in order to keep Rangers in the field. Often Ranger companies were mustered at the behest of military authorities to serve together with U.S. regular troops.
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The situation was aggravated because the legislature did not always approve a new defense bill when the old one expired, leaving the frontier virtually unprotected. During one such lapse in 1856, marauders struck the settlements west of Austin, and the governor had to tell the citizens that there was “not means . . . placed at my disposal for the protection of the frontier.” He advised them to form “a Company of Minute Men” for their own protection, and said he would urge the legislature to reimburse them for their expenses.
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In 1854, the U.S. Congress sought to resolve the Indian crisis by establishing two reservations, which were occupied the following year.
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The state’s willingness to allow these reservations was a complete reversal of its previous policy, which had denied Indians the right to any land for settlement. It came at the behest of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, who reasoned that as long as the Indians had no land of their own, they had a right to go anywhere they pleased and the army could do nothing until they actually committed depredations. If, on the other hand, they were given a specific territory and required to remain there, the army could intervene anytime they were off their reserve.
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One of the new reservations, on the main stream of the Brazos twenty miles below Fort Belknap, was for the Anadarkos, Tawakonis, Wacos, Tonkawas, and Caddos. The second, at Camp Cooper on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, was allocated for the more tractable southern bands of Comanches. Here the tribes were expected to establish permanent homes and support themselves with farms and ranches.
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Though the Southern Comanches were willing to try their hand at agriculture and stock raising, the Northern Comanches and Kiowas were determined to continue their raids into Texas from Oklahoma. Despite Davis’s optimism, the northwest frontier became a bloody battleground, particularly during the period of 1858 to 1860. Not only did the Northern Comanches and Kiowas attack whites, but they also remembered that the various tribes congregated around Fort Belknap had scouted for soldiers and Rangers, and so raided that reservation as well. The hostile tribes were armed with rifles provided by the federal government. Ostensibly the rifles were for hunting, but in fact they gave them an edge for their forays into Texas, where they would steal livestock, then drive the stolen animals north to the Arkansas River and sell them to white traders.
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