The emergence of ranging-company leaders was apparent in the latter stages of President Lamar's wars. Moore's successes in the far West came only because he fought like a Comanche; he sneaked up on Indian villages exactly as a Comanche war band stalked an unsuspecting farmhouse. "Old Paint," Matthew Caldwell, was thinking like an Indian, or ahead of the Indians, at Plum Creek. The Ranger learned to seek out the enemies' weakness, then strike it without mercy. They played their own strengths against such weakness of discipline or mind as successfully as William the Conqueror disposed of Saxon thanes.
Still, there was one final, decisive factor in the winning of the Texas West. This was the invention of the revolving pistol by Samuel Colt, and the manufacture of this revolver at Paterson, New Jersey, by 1838.
It is a fact of history that Colt could not market his revolvers in the East. There was no civilian need, or market, nor could he interest the military in their use. The U.S. Army was still forest-bound and had no true cavalry arm. Colt's only outlet was in the West, and significantly enough, his first working model was called "The Texas." Somehow, almost immediately, while Colt's enterprise sank slowly into bankruptcy, some of these firearms arrived in the Republic.
The U.S. Army ordnance experts saw no need for them; but those experts had never seen a Comanche band. The Texas partisans riding the frontier between Austin and San Antonio saw the Colt's significance at once. Every Texan tried to beg, borrow, or steal a Texas model Colt's in any way he could. This early gun had many faults; it was too light, a civilian rather than a military arm, and to load it, it had to be broken down into three component parts—a maddeningly ticklish operation at the gallop by a man with only two hands. But it shot six times. It gave one Texan horseman the firepower of six.
Just when and how the first revolving pistols—they were never called revolvers in Texas, but six-shooters, six-guns, and a host of other names—arrived is not known. They were certainly in some use by 1839. Captain Jack Hays, who first proved the six-shooter in Comanche combat, was stationed at San Antonio, the junction of the Mexican and Indian frontier, in 1840.
Hays was twenty-three, a Tennesseean from the same region as Andrew Jackson, the Texas McCulloch family, and General Houston; Jackson bought his "Hermitage" estate from Hays's grandfather. He drifted into Texas as a surveyor; being a borderer, he logically ended up against the far frontier. He fought at Plum Creek, and that same year was appointed Captain of Rangers at San Antonio by Mirabeau Lamar. Hays, handsome, quiet, "a gentleman of purest character" as the citizens of San Antonio described him, was important to history and to his state. He set an indelible stamp upon the Texas Rangers, and by doing so, upon the whole Anglo-American southwestern frontier. For almost a century, every Texas Ranger wanted to be "like Jack Hays"—a monumental epitaph for a man who ended his service at the age of thirty-four. Three things stand out about John Coffee Hays above all others: he was no talker, but a born partisan who liked to ride the wild country by the North Star; he was not a great gunman, but a leader without fear who rose by sheer ability from among his peers; and he was a superb psychologist, who could bend both friend and foe to his will. In some way, Ben McCulloch, Sam Walker, L. H. McNelly, John B. Jones, John H. Rogers, and even Big Foot Wallace were similar, and McCulloch, Walker, and Wallace were Hays-trained.
Jack Hays was the first man to use Colt's six-shooter on Plains Indians. He was jumped on the Pedernales River, probably in Kendall County, by a party of seventy Comanches. Hays had fourteen men. He turned and fought a desperate, running battle on horseback, carrying the fight to the enemy. He lost several Rangers, but killed thirty Indians. Caperton, who wrote an account of this battle, said: "That was considered the best-contested fight that ever took place in Texas, and it showed that they could whip the Indians on horseback . . . the pistols gave them the advantage."
Hays, according to Mary Maverick, back at San Antonio gave full credit to his new firepower and to the total surprise of the Comanches. He now rode with confidence, convinced that six-shooting Texans could defeat any Comanche band alive. Shortly afterward, Hays's company encountered another heavily superior force of Comanches west of San Antonio, in the Nueces canyon.
The Indians, shrieking and shooting arrows, swept around and surrounded the mounted Rangers. At Hays's order, the Texans emptied their long rifles, then leaped into the saddle. Hays yelled "Charge!" in his high, clear voice. The Rangers were at close quarters before the startled Indians—who had rarely known white men to do anything but fort up or run—could turn their horses.
"Powder-burn them!" Hays screamed, as Rangers rode between the Comanche ranks, knocking down Indians to either side. Comanches were entirely brave; they turned to stand, only to see the Rangers coming on, fire spitting again and again from their fists, striking down milling horsemen on all sides.
The Indians fled, and Hays chased them three miles. At the end, the demoralized Comanches were throwing aside their useless shields, lances, and bows and leaning low over their horses in routed flight. The Comanche war chief stated later that he lost half his people, and that wounded warriors died on the trail for a hundred miles to the Devil's River. "I will never again fight Jack Hays, who has a shot for every finger on the hand," the Indian moaned.
Hays, and all the Rangers of his time, never tried to downplay the crucial role of the revolvers in mounted combat. "They are the only weapon which enabled the experienced frontiersmen to defeat the mounted Indian in his own peculiar mode of warfare. . . ." a testimonial read. The Rangers learned to love and handle their new pistols with all the reverence the Anglo-American had lavished on his long German rifle. Every culture or subculture has had its distinctive arm: the Macedonians their 18-foot phalanx pike, the Romans their Spanish short-sword. In the 1840s the name of Texas became indelibly linked with the Colt's revolver.
The six-shooter was important beyond the romanticism and enduring symbolism it produced. A superb horseman in open country, armed with one or more long-barreled Colts, represented the most effective weapons system known to the middle 19th century. At one step, the Texas borderers achieved at least parity with the Plains Indians, and a marked superiority over the Mexican cuirassier's lance and the vaquero's rope. They would hold both until the dispersion of an effective, accurate breechloading rifle, which did not appear until the 1870s.
The revolver, very simply, meant power in southwest Texas, and long after the power was no longer needed, its symbol remained, much as the gentleman's sword was retained into the 19th century in parts of France and Ireland.
Hays and his comrades did not of course destroy the Comanche danger. The history of the frontier was that, as the Rangers became better Comanche fighters, the Comanches took up better "Indian" tactics, avoiding open combat, resorting more and more to the hit-and-run murder and stock-stealing raid. This was not to be ended until Texas again resorted to striking at the source from which Indian depredations flowed.
The Ranger and his revolver were to win enduring fame in 19th-century America, however, not against Indians, but in the long Mexican wars.
Hays had served with Henry Karnes's spy service on the Nueces in 1839; in 1841 he was sent to Laredo to check on the possibility of imminent Mexican invasion. Hays rode boldly into the town, which at this time was wholly Mexican and garrisoned with Mexican troops. He stared down the Mexican soldiery, calmly ran off a few horses, and camped on the edge of town. Then, he gave the horses back with a warning to the Mexican commandant that in case there were any robberies or raids north of the Nueces the Mexicans knew what to expect. Later, when a band of brigands attacked one of the wagon trains constantly plying between San Antonio and Laredo despite the international tension, Hays set out again for Laredo, with a dozen Texans and thirteen San Antonio Mexicans under Antonio Pérez, a noted Indian-fighter.
Ten miles from Laredo, a party of thirty-five Mexican cavalry charged Hays with the bugle. At the end of the battle, the Mexican force grounded arms and asked for quarter, with the exception, as
Webb wrote, "of the captain and three wise men who remained on horseback." The mayor or alcalde of Laredo came to meet Hays with a white flag and asked the town be spared. Hays spared it, again demanding that raids be stopped. Then he marched the hapless prisoners he had taken back over the dusty miles to San Antonio.
In these same months, Jack Hays fought too many combats with the Penatekas and other southern bands to be related in detail. He learned to ride into Indian country and locate Indian camps by the circling flock of buzzards that always hung over them, no matter how well they might be concealed in canyons. He hit them in bed and brush, where the Comanche bow was a useless weapon. He mauled Indians from the Nueces to the Llano, and never with more than fifty men. The remark of the Lipan ally Chief Flacco, who scouted for Hays on some of these raids, still stands: "Me and Red Wing not afraid to go to hell together. Captain Jack heap brave; not afraid to go to hell by himself."
"You may depend," General Houston wrote, "on the gallant Hays and his companions." Lamar's papers indicate that much of the success against the southern Comanches circa 1840 was due to Hays's detachment of Rangers.
In June 1841, Lamar sent what Andrew Jackson called "the wild-goose campaign to Santa Fe." Its survivors were surrounded, they surrendered to keep from starving, and some were shot, all mistreated, but due to United States' diplomats' efforts, most were eventually returned. This raid caused the Mexican government to retaliate with the expedition against San Antonio, in March 1842.
Hays had to let Vásquez take the city, since he had only about 100 men. He followed Vásquez back to the Rio Grande, but could not attack. The Ranger captain was never foolhardy. He was not involved in the clash between several hundred Texas volunteers under Davis and Ewen Cameron at Lipantilicán with General Canales.
Despite the fact that war was not open on the Nueces frontier, the Republic disbanded Hays's troop, except for himself and a few "spies," as scouts were then officially called. The reason was Houston's bankruptcy. Hays was "authorized" to raise and equip 150 men; he never did so because he could not pay or arm them.
On September 11, 1842, General Adrian Woll and some 1,200 Mexican soldiers again captured San Antonio. Woll meant this to be merely a demonstration in force, with the triple purpose of asserting Mexican sovereignty, chastising the Texans, and giving U.S. annexationists and Texas's European allies pause. Woll remained only a short time, but did succeed in capturing the district court, which was in session, and a number of prominent Texans.
Hays carried the word to the eastern settlements beyond San Antonio, and soon "Old Paint" Caldwell had raised 225 militia volunteers. Caldwell, with this small force, actually brought Woll to battle along Salado Creek on September 17. From the brush and timber Caldwell knocked back 200 horse and about 600 regular infantry. He sent out calls for more men: "The enemy are all around me on every side, but I fear them not. I will hold my position . . . Come and help me . . . There are eleven hundred of the enemy. I can whip them on my own ground without any help, but I cannot take prisoners. Why don't you come? Huzza! huzza for Texas."
Caldwell was doing splendidly, because he knew how to fight both Mexicans and Indians and knew better than to give either an even break. The Mexican heavy cavalry could not ride into his timbers, and no Mexican infantry force of only three-to-one could assault Texas rifles firing from a rest. Woll retreated, carrying away his dead. But Caldwell's appeal resulted in Texan disaster.
Captain Nicholas Dawson rushed from La Grange with 53 men. Woll's horsemen spotted him in open country, and surrounded him, keeping out of rifle range. Mexican field artillery pounded Dawson brutally, and he surrendered under the white flag. Dawson did not know how to fight Mexicans.
The cavalry refused to accept the white flag, and Yoakum detailed how Dawson's men were cut down after giving up. Only fifteen got away, but Woll's triumph was very mixed. The long rifles killed 60 Mexican regulars.
Hays, at the head of a Ranger force, harassed Woll all the way back to the Rio Grande. On one occasion, Hays actually led a cavalry charge into a Mexican artillery position, killing every gunner with pistols and the shotguns many Rangers had now begun to carry in place of rifles. Woll is said to have offered five hundred dollars in silver for the head of this twenty-five-year-old, which, as the Texans gleefully said, was a lot of coin for a five-feet-ten youth who weighed about 160 pounds.
Sam Houston, the President, agreed to a demonstration in force to the Rio Grande under General Somervell. This, called the Mier Expedition, suffered from a historic flaw so many previous expeditions had; it was recruited from a rabble more intent on plunder than defeating Mexican arms. Somervell left San Antonio with 750 men on November 8, 1842, but in this army the frontier militia and Hays's force of Rangers were only a tiny segment.
Somervell easily captured Laredo, and his army, without orders, engaged in a rape of the town. Somervell arrested some stragglers and returned the plunder he could find, though he was unable to restore any women to their former state. This provoked a rebellion in the ranks. Two hundred men deserted. The remaining five hundred soon refused to obey General Somervell's orders in all things.
Somervell declared the demonstration aborted, and marched home. Major Hays and Ben McCulloch went with him, but about 300 men, including the Ranger Captains Ewen Cameron, Samuel Walker, and Big Foot Wallace, stayed for the fun.
The ragtag army marched to Mier, an adobe town in the northern Mexican desert. Here the Texans were surrounded by a large Mexican force. They could have fought their way out, but Colonel Fisher, the commander, was wounded, and in this mutinous-minded force no one had control. An election was held, and the majority of American volunteers insisted on surrendering, especially since Mexican terms involved their being treated as prisoners of war, and being held near the border.
After laying down arms, they were marched rapidly into the interior of Mexico. Cameron and Walker led a successful escape from Saltillo; in this escape the Americans captured a number of Mexican soldiers, but released them after stipulating the wounded men left behind must be treated with the honors of war.
The escapees became lost in the desert above Saltillo, and wandered hopelessly under hideous conditions. Some men ate insects, other dug feverishly for wet earth to wet their swollen tongues. A few, mad, drank their own urine and died a ghastly death. The Mexicans followed with cavalry, and when the escapees had thrown away their arms, rode down and put them all in irons.
Santa Anna, again in power in Mexico, at first angrily demanded that all should be executed. The American and British ministers put up a fearful protest at this, and Santa Anna relented. The Mier Expedition would only be decimated, in the Latin fashion—one in ten would be shot. A pitcher with 159 white beans, 17 black ones, was set in front of the prisoners. Those who drew black were to be shot. Big Foot Wallace, who cannily noticed the black beans were poured in on top of the white, "dipped deep." He lived. Ewen Cameron drew a white bean, but General Antonio Canales, who hated the big Scot, ordered him shot anyway.
The remaining white-bean men, were "horribly mistreated," as Webb and others reported, but again American and British diplomats eventually got them out. They lived to return to Texas just before annexation.
Their experiences were to have a decided effect on the Mexican War of 1846–48, because the Ranger detachment with the Mier Expedition saw Mexican soil again, as conquerors. In such ways cruelty begat cruelty, and bloodshed shed blood.
Chapter 26
SOUTH OF THE BORDER
Hays's Rangers have come, their appearance never to be forgotten. Not any sort of uniform, but well mounted and doubly well armed: each man has one or two Colt's revolvers . . . The Mexicans are terribly afraid of them.
ETHAN ALLEN HITCHCOCK, MAJOR GENERAL, U.S. ARMY
The commanding general took occasion to thank them for the efficient service they had rendered, and we saw them turn their faces toward the blood-bought State they represented, with many good wishes and the hope that all honest Mexi
cans were at a safe distance from their path.
LUTHER GIDDINGS, SKETCHES
AROUND the cold camps in cedar brakes along the Nueces and the Colorado, Hays's boys frequently discussed the invention of Samuel Colt. They had adapted the six-shooter to their use, but these fighting men were concerned with its salient faults. The breakdown in three parts, the disappearing trigger, the small bore (caliber .34), and the balance were all wrong. Colt's first six-gun was not a military or range weapon; it was more an Easterner's toy.
Some time after 1840 Captain Samuel H. Walker went East, to the United States. His was an official trip, to buy the latest Yankee arms. Walker, who had served first with Hays, was born in Maryland, and arrived in Texas after fighting in the Florida Seminole campaign. He was remarkable, like Hays, for a brilliant coolness; he was only a few years older. Samuel Colt, Walker, and Hays were actually all of the same generation, and their histories were to be inseparably linked across almost 2,000 miles.
Sam Walker looked up Sam Colt in New York City. The young Ranger told the young inventor that his pistols were the best seen yet, but the Texas Rangers had some improvements in mind. Delighted, the Connecticut-born Colt took Walker to his Paterson plant. Out of this visit came the world's first martial revolver, which was to become world-famous, and which was called the Walker Colt.
This pistol had a heavy, strong frame, able to withstand rough use and wear. The grip was natural, slipping easily into a large hand. It had a sturdy trigger guard, so it could be worn in a belt. The new caliber was .44, and the balance was beautiful in the palm. Captain Walker was delighted with two improvements above all: the pistol could be used profitably as a club, on someone "not worth shooting," and it could be reloaded by a lever rammer, solidly affixed beneath the newer, longer barrel, without breaking the gun apart. This was a horseman's weapon. It, and its series of modifications and improvements, was to kill more men than any other handgun ever made.
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