Texas Rising

by Stephen L. Moore

  The Texas legislators appointed Major William H. Smith, a former cavalry company commander at San Jacinto, as commander of the new Mounted Rifleman Battalion. He was to organize five ranger companies in Texas that would cover the new counties of Gonzales, Shelby, and Mina (Bastrop). The new rifleman battalion would soon replace the three-company battalion under Colonel Coleman’s command and would obviate the need to continue Major Smith’s East Texas battalion.

  In late December, the First Congress also approved legislation to provide for a new Texas Army with one regiment of cavalry, one regiment of artillery, and four regiments of infantry. The Senate named Brigadier General Albert Sidney Johnston as the new commander in chief, with Colonel Henry Karnes to lead the First Regiment of Cavalry. Karnes’s horsemen would serve primarily on the western frontiers of Texas beyond the reaches of the mounted riflemen and rangers. During late December 1836 and early 1837, Colonel Karnes deployed his cavalrymen. Captain Lysander Wells’s men would operate at San Patricio on the lower Nueces River; Captain James W. Tinsley stationed his men along the coastal areas near Copano Bay; Captains Deaf Smith and Juan Seguín would tackle the San Antonio area; and Lieutenant David L. Kokernot’s small detachment of cavalry was assigned to command Post Sabine on the Texas–Louisiana border.23

  By November, Robert Coleman’s ranger battalion had already built Fort Colorado, and a second blockhouse at Milam; another detachment under George Erath was making good progress on a new fort on the Little River. “By the first of December I will show the government, as well as all others, what a Kentuckian can do,” Coleman wrote to Congressman Robertson. Misfortunes soon sidetracked the colonel’s good intentions, however. Coleman left First Lieutenant Alexander Robless in charge of Fort Colorado while he was in the field during December laying out a new frontier road. One of the rangers, Private Fee C. Booker, was known for his love of the bottle. After one particular binge, Booker was disciplined by Lieutenant Robless, a former U.S. Army soldier. Ranger Noah Smithwick recalled that Robless “ordered him tied up to a post all night to sober off. The man was so completely under the influence as to be unable to maintain an upright position; his limbs gave way, and he sank so that the cord around his neck literally hung him.”24

  Lieutenant Robless tried to dismiss the event as a suicide, but his rangers were in an uproar. Robless deserted his post and left Colonel Coleman holding the bag for his actions. President Houston relieved Coleman of command in early January 1837 and ordered him to report to the War Department in Columbia. He was held under military arrest in Velasco pending the outcome of an investigation into the wrongful death. Before he could be brought to trial, Robert Coleman—the man who had been most instrumental in the formal creation of the Texas Rangers—drowned in a fishing accident in early July 1837.25

  THE MOST SIGNIFICANT INDIAN encounter for the Coleman battalion occurred on January 7, 1837. Sergeant George Erath took ten rangers and three volunteers out from his Little River Fort to follow a fresh Indian trail.

  His men tracked them to Elm Creek in present Milam County and attacked early the next morning. Erath’s men killed several Indians with their first shots but then realized a serious problem. Instead of being about a dozen in strength, Erath found the Indians were actually “about a hundred strong.” The rangers were surrounded in the Elm Creek forest and were forced to retreat in small groups while under heavy fire. Two men perished before Erath’s surviving force reached their Little River Fort that night. A snow storm prevented reinforcements led by Major William Smith from reaching the scene of Erath’s fight until January 15. Sergeant Erath later believed that if all his men had been equipped with pistols or the six-shooters that evolved several years later, he could have dominated the Elm Creek battle.26

  During early 1837, Major Smith was directed by Sam Houston to absorb Coleman’s companies into his own new Mounted Rifleman Battalion. Smith’s rangers suffered from improper clothing during the winter months. The Texas government did purchase surplus U.S. Army uniforms to help replace their buckskin suits, but the supplies were limited. Noah Smithwick noted that Private Isaac Castner, a large man of about two hundred pounds, was given a uniform that “would have been snug for a man of 140” pounds. Commissary Samuel Wolfenberger’s pants reached only halfway down his legs, his jacket missed the top of his pants by six inches, and his arms extended a foot beyond the sleeves. Smithwick and other rangers howled with laughter as Wolfenberger “stalked up and down like an animated scarecrow, trying to negotiate a trade.”27

  William Smith’s Colorado River area battalion was all that remained by late March in terms of rangers to protect the Texas settlements. He directed his men to continue building frontier forts during the winter to help stave off the occasional murders committed by marauding Comanches. The more distant settlements were protected by frontier posts, each manned by companies of Colonel Henry Karnes’s cavalry. The first company to form, that of Captain Deaf Smith, remained on the San Antonio River below town during the early weeks of 1837. The experience that some of his men gained in the cavalry would serve them for years to come as they later turned to the ranger service. The most notable of this category was one John Coffee Hays, who reached his twentieth birthday while camping with Deaf Smith’s spies in early January 1837.28

  Jack Hays had been born on his family’s plantation near Little Cedar Lick, Tennessee. His Scotch-Irish father, Lieutenant Harmon Hays, named his son after General John Coffee, under whom he had served in the War of 1812 along with Sam Houston. Young Jack, a fair-complected lad with dark hair and piercing hazel eyes, had the chance to listen to the tales of General Andrew Jackson on many occasions and he was quite impressionable. Jack’s parents succumbed to illness when he was just fifteen, leaving him and his siblings to be raised by a Mississippi uncle, Robert Cage.29

  Young Hays soon struck out on his own, taking a job as a chain boy for a surveying crew. He and another surveyor were locating claims near a Choctaw hunting section one day when they were charged by several Indians. Jack shot and killed his first Indian to secure the possession of the fallen man’s horse in his first hostile encounter. He stuck with surveying for two years before entering the Davidson Academy in Nashville, where Jack stood out as the fastest runner in the school. Before his first year of school was complete, illness forced him back to his uncle’s Mississippi plantation—where he was working when he heard news of the Alamo’s fall.

  He decided to fight for the Texian cause. Using some of his surveying money, Jack Hays bought a good knife and a brace of pistols and headed for New Orleans. There he joined a group of southern volunteers and made his way to Nacogdoches. The quiet, slender, five-foot-eight youth became the object of attention of a particular Nacogdoches barroom bully who decided that Hays would make a good victim. The man stared into Jack’s face and knocked the drink from his hand. Hays said nothing, but his glaring eyes gave away his inner anger. The bully reached for his gun, but young Jack was faster. In a split second, the larger man was lying on the dirty barroom floor bleeding out. Hays, completely exonerated for defending himself, soon moved on from Nacogdoches and served with the Texas Army during the mopping-up stages of the Texas Revolution.30

  During his time with the Texas Cavalry, Hays’s simple mannerisms and sense of humor quickly endeared him to his fellow soldiers. He and his comrades learned many lessons the hard way in 1837. In mid-February, Captain Smith was forced to move his cavalry to the Medina River just to find grazing grass for their horses. On February 21, his company faced a major setback when their entire herd of horses was stolen. At this inopportune time, Secretary of War Fisher issued orders for Deaf Smith to conduct a mission to Laredo to assert Texas’s claim to that area. Smith led Hays and his other men into San Antonio to secure new horses. While there on February 25, they joined Lieutenant Colonel Juan Seguín’s company in providing a proper funeral ceremony for the fallen Alamo heroes. Their remains were collected from the ash piles where they had lain for almost a year and were buried in a
black coffin with full military honors.31

  Hays’s first fight with Deaf Smith’s cavalry came on March 17. Smith’s men had reached the old San Ygnacio Ranch on the Arroyo Chacón, five miles east of Laredo, on March 16. They were attacked the next afternoon by forty Mexican cavalrymen from the Laredo garrison. They tied off their horses and took cover in a mesquite thicket as the Mexican horsemen advanced, firing on the Texans. “When they were about fifty yards distant, I returned their fire, giving strict orders that not a piece should be discharged until every man was sure of his aim,” said Smith. Jack Hays was stirred by shouts from the Mexicans of “cowardly Texans” and “damned rascals” as they attacked. They were met by such a deadly outpouring of lead shot that Hays felt it “threw them into confusion and completely routed them. The rangers did not surrender.”32

  Captain Smith’s company suffered two men wounded, but he believed they killed ten Mexicans and wounded an equal number. He returned to San Antonio on March 26 with twenty captured horses but found no hero’s welcome from the townspeople. They showed Smith that “their sympathy was with the enemy.” President Houston was later critical of his old pal Deaf Smith for making a campaign without orders—an action the politician no doubt feared could have stirred new controversy with Mexico. Captain Smith, irked by the lack of support and facing failing health, turned command of his mounted men over to Captain Nicholas Mosby Dawson in June. The seasoned hero of San Jacinto then settled with his wife, Lupe Smith, and their family at Richmond in Fort Bend County, to struggle with his health. Smith lost his last battle on November 30, 1837, when he succumbed to his illness. The intrepid scout of the Texas Revolution was honored in 1876 when Deaf Smith County was carved out of the former Béxar Territory.33

  THE ONCE-POWERFUL TEXAS ARMY began to crumble during 1837.

  Albert Sidney Johnston, appointed by the First Congress as the new senior brigadier general, was challenged to a duel by Brigadier General Felix Huston, the acting army commander. The two Texans faced off with inaccurate horse pistols, firing at each other half a dozen times before Johnston was felled with a severe hip wound. The lack of action took a toll on the regulars during the months that General Huston held acting command. Illegal whiskey became a mainstay in some of his camps and mutinies were soon on the rise. Colonel Henry Teal was murdered in his sleep by another soldier on May 5. By mid-month, President Houston was so angry with his Texas Army that he ordered three of his four regiments furloughed. The remaining six hundred troops continued to dwindle over the ensuing months as more men deserted, were furloughed, or completed their enlistment periods.34

  By summer 1837, only a few of Colonel Karnes’s cavalry companies remained in service on the southwestern frontier. Captain Dawson’s spy company was on duty in the San Antonio area, where Sergeant Jack Hays—the assistant quartermaster for the Béxar cavalry—often commanded patrol parties that ranged out to distances of fifty miles from their base camp. Hays led a surprise roundup against Mexican bandits on one occasion in which he attacked them at sundown. His men killed three outlaws and pursued the remaining five on horseback. Hays shot one of the bandits from his horse. The chase only ended after three of the remaining outlaws had been apprehended.35

  Major William Smith’s ranger battalion suffered a number of setbacks in the spring of 1837. Lieutenant Nicholas Wren led fifteen rangers out to attack a small Comanche camp, managing to kill only one Indian in exchange for the life of one of his rangers. Weeks later, another group of Comanches eased up on the rangers’ Colorado River outpost, stampeded their horses, and escaped with some of them. On April 28, a similar stampede was carried out against the horses of Captain Daniel Monroe’s rangers at Fort Smith on the Little River. This time the rangers were too weak in number to even pursue them. Two weeks after losing his horses, Captain Monroe moved his rangers back to Fort Fisher, near the site of the old Waco village. He sent a party of three rangers and two volunteers to fetch a wagon team. They were attacked by a large band of Comanches on May 15 near Post Oak Springs in present Milam County and all five men were slaughtered.36

  During the next month, yet another ranger was killed by Indian violence near Fort Milam. The Second Congress of the Republic of Texas responded by authorizing a new battalion of ten mounted riflemen companies to range on the northern frontier. Colonel Joseph Bennett found recruiting difficult at best, and Captain John M. Bowyer’s Harrisburg County company was one of the few to fully organize. Bowyer’s mounted gunmen arrived at Fort Smith in early October to join an expedition under Captain William Eastland, commanding a small ranger company of Major Smith’s battalion still in service. Eastland departed on October 13 with a detachment of Captain Bowyer’s company commanded by First Lieutenant A. B. Vanbenthuysen. Disagreements arose between the companies and they parted ways two weeks later in the field.

  Lieutenant Vanbenthuysen continued tracking Indians into early November with eighteen of his men. On November 10, they engaged a party of about 150 Indians in present Archer County near a rock formation known as the “Stone Houses.” Heavy fighting took place for ninety minutes; the rangers lost six horses and four men in that time. The Indians took a brief hiatus before advancing on the rangers again. This time they lit fire to the prairie grass to drive the Texans from their defensive position. Six more rangers perished as they were forced to charge on foot through the Indian lines into the timber. Among the fallen was Lieutenant Alfred H. Miles, who had been involved in the capture of Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Vanbenthuysen and seven other rangers survived the Stone Houses Fight, three of them being wounded.

  Only two ranger companies remained in service by year end 1837 as their enlistment periods ended. President Houston had furloughed most of the Texas Army during the year, and he refused to appropriate any money to support the Texas Militia structure. Henry Karnes’s cavalry had dwindled to forty-seven men by late 1837. The lack of military forces prompted the Second Congress of Texas to address the issue, with or without Sam Houston’s blessing. In spite of President Houston’s veto, a supplemental militia act was passed by the Congress on December 18, 1837. Major General Thomas Rusk was elected into command of the new, single-division Texas Militia, which would be divided into four brigades with regional brigadier generals in command. The four militia brigades for 1838 were: the First Brigade, under General Ed Burleson, including all areas west of the Brazos River; the Second Brigade, under General Moseley Baker, covering the territory between the Brazos and Trinity; the Third Brigade, under General Kelsey H. Douglass, covering the area between the Trinity and Sabine; and the Fourth Brigade, under General John H. Dyer, covering the area north of the Sabine and up to the Red River settlements.37

  Unlike rangers who served continually, the militiamen would only be called up in times of crisis or to make specific campaigns that did not exceed three months. All able-bodied men within a county between the ages of seventeen and fifty were required to enroll in a militia company. The actions of the Texas Militia were presided over by its adjutant general, the chief militia officer, Colonel Hugh McLeod. Although it was not called into service during the early months of 1838, the new militia structure authorized by the Second Congress would prove to be important as Sam Houston allowed the ranging service to continue dwindling.38

  By early spring, only Captain William Eastland’s ranger company remained in service on the Colorado River at Fort Houston, the post originally built by Colonel Coleman. The last of these rangers were honorably discharged in late April as their service terms expired. Among them was Noah Smithwick, who completed his second one-year service period on April 26, 1838. A ranger was given 1,280 acres of land for each twelve-month service period. “No one cared anything for land those days,” Smithwick recalled. “I gave one of my certificates for 1,280 acres for a horse which the Indians relieved me of in less than a week.”39

  The decline of proper military forces in Texas came at a time when Indian violence saw a sharp increase. Many of the encounters in 1838 came as a result of th
e new General Land Office of the Republic of Texas, which opened for business on January 4, along with other county land offices. A flood of land claimants and surveying parties began invading what was previously Indian-held territory.

  This new land rush led to steady work for surveyors such as Jack Hays. His time with the Texas Cavalry had expired in 1837, so he went to work in his familiar profession. He soon became the deputy surveyor of the Béxar District under Robert C. Trimble. Hays and his men had several brushes with Comanches during the year, but he still managed to locate seventy-six certificates during 1838.40

  Some of the Indian tribes were eager to keep the peace with the expanding white settlers, including the Lipan Apaches. Chief Cuelgas de Castro signed a treaty for the Lipans on January 18, 1838. The Texans offered them $250 in gifts and for trading houses to be established among them. In return, neither the Lipans nor the Anglos would attack each other. Chief Castro’s men became respected scouts who helped the rangers and militiamen with one of their own enemies, the warlike Comanches. The war chief of the Lipans, Chief Flaco, became a close ally to frontiersman and surveyor Jack Hays. Flaco learned from Hays’s methods of remaining cool under fire. Hays learned from his new Lipan friend important skills such as trailing a foe, cultural variations of Texas tribes, and the unique methods of fighting employed by various Indians.41

  President Houston’s new secretary of war, Barnard Bee, appointed Albert Sidney Johnston and Lysander Wells to serve as commissioners to treat with the Comanche Indians. Colonel Henry Karnes was added on April 12 as a third Indian commissioner, and they made efforts to meet with the Comanche leaders. Bee and Colonel George Hockley completed a peace treaty with Chief Placido’s Tonkawa Indians on April 11 at Houston. Commissioners Johnston, Karnes, and Wells met with a band of about 150 Comanches near San Antonio in May. Chiefs Essowakkenny and Essomanny accepted gifts of friendship and pledged that Essomanny would later appear before the Texas Congress to continue their peace talks. Congress tried to further provide for the frontiers in May by adding mounted gunmen companies within each militia district, but Sam Houston refused. He felt it was his duty alone to decide when to call out the militia, and he did not trust the aggressive nature of some ranger leaders who might stir up the Indians. “Everything will be gained by peace,” wrote Houston, “but nothing will be gained by war.”42