Chapter XVI: Texas Ranger Service and its Origin

THE MASSACRE OF FORT PARKER. CYNTHIA ANN PARKER'S CAPTURE. RANGERS, AND WHAT THEY ARE FOR. THEIR CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR REQUIREMENTS

The early history of Texas was written in blood and fire. Her counties preserve the names of her martyrs. Parker, Coleman, Crockett, Fannin, Travis, Bowie and a hundred others have the map for their monument; their names are given daily utterance by those for whom their deeds have little meaning.

In the beginning, after the Indian tribes--friendly at first--became hostile, the warfare was almost solely with the savages. For a full half century every settler who built his campfire on the frontier did so at the risk of his property and his scalp. Those who established homes and settlements must have been a daring race indeed, for raids upon horses and herds were always imminent and massacres were as regular as the seasons.

We have already mentioned in these chapters the name of Chief Quanah Parker (still living) for whom the town of Quanah, Texas, was named. Quanah Parker's mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, a little white girl captured by the Tehaucano Indians, during a raid on what was known as the Austin Colony, in 1836. A brief story of that raid will serve as an example of a thousand others of a similar sort. The Austin Colony settled in what is now Grimes County,[3] and consisted of something more than a score of persons, including women and children. The Indians who dwelt in the neighborhood seemed friendly enough until a small party of unknown settlers came along and attempted to steal their horses. Immediate trouble was the result and the loss of Tehaucano friendship for the entire settlement. When the reader considers what follows, I believe I shall be forgiven for hoping that those newcomers who stirred up the first trouble received the sort of a reward which only an Indian would know how to confer.

As the Austin Colony consisted chiefly of the Parker family, a rude fortification which they erected was called Fort Parker, a name that to-day still suggests something of shuddering horror to those who have heard its history.

It was a fair May morning when that history was made. The early risers noticed that a body of restless Indians had collected within about four hundred yards of the fort. A white flag was hoisted by the savages to signify their peaceable intentions, and a warrior approached as if for conference. Benjamin Parker, commander of the fort, went out to meet him. He came back presently with the word that he believed the Indians intended to fight. He returned, however, to the hostile camp, where he was at once set upon and literally chopped to pieces by the savages, who then with wild yells and bloodcurdling war-whoops charged on the fort. Some of the inmates had already left the stockade. Others were trying to escape. John Parker and wife and a Mrs. Kellogg were overtaken a mile away. Parker was killed and scalped, his wife was speared and Mrs. Kellogg was made captive. Other members of the colony were butchered right and left, and mutilated in the barbarous fashion which seems to give an Indian joy. Silas Parker was brutally killed and his two children, one of whom was the little girl, Cynthia Ann, were carried away. A Mrs. Plummer--daughter of Rev. James W. Parker--attempted to escape, carrying her little son in her arms. A huge painted savage, begrimed with dust and blood overtook her, felled her with a hoe, and seizing her by the hair dragged her, still clinging to her child, back amid the butchery and torture of her friends. She and the others who were living were beaten with clubs and lashed with rawhide thongs. That night such of the captives as remained alive, and these included three children, were flung face down in the dust, their hands bound behind their backs while the Indians, waving bloody scalps and shrieking, danced about them and beat them with their bows until the prisoners were strangling with their own blood. Later, they took the infant child of Mrs. Plummer and slowly choked it before her eyes. When it was not quite dead they flung it again and again into the air and let it fall on the stones and earth. Then they tied a rope around its neck and threw its naked body into the hedges of prickly pear, from which they would jerk it fiercely with demoniacal yells. Finally they fastened the rope attached to its neck to the pommel of a saddle and rode round and round in a circle until the body of the child was literally in shreds. The poor fragments were then thrown into the mother's lap. For some reason, the little girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, received better treatment, and lived. She grew up an Indian, forgot her own race and tongue, married a chief and became the mother of another chief, Quanah, surnamed Parker, to-day a friend of the white race.

It was the massacre of Fort Parker and events of a similar nature that resulted in the organization of the Texas Rangers. The Rangers were at first a semi-official body, locally enlisted and commanded, with regulations and duties not very clearly defined. Their purpose, however, was not in doubt. It was to defend life and property, and their chief qualifications were to be able to ride and shoot and stand up against the warfare of bloodthirsty savages.

"Exterminate the Indians" became a watchword in those days, and the warfare that ensued and continued for forty years, can be compared with nothing in history unless it be with the fierce feuds of the ancient Scottish clans.

Early in 1836 Texas fought for and gained her independence, the only State in the Union to achieve such a triumph. On the following year the Texas congress recognized the Ranger movement and authorized several persons to raise Ranger companies to scour the country and annihilate marauding bands. Indians and low class Mexicans ("greasers") often consorted, and the work, desperate and bloody, continued along the ever widening and westering frontier up to within a period easily remembered to-day by men not beyond middle age. Many names of those early Rangers have been preserved in Texas annals and in local song and traditions, and it would take many volumes to recount their deeds. Jack Hays, James and Resin Bowie, "Big-foot" Wallace, Kit Ackland, Tom Green "Mustang" Grey, of whom the song says:

"At the age of sixteen
He joined that jolly band
And marched from San Antonio
Out to the Rio Grand,"----

these and a hundred others are names that thrilled the Texan of that elder day and they are still repeated and linked with tales of wild warfare and endurance that are hardly surpassed in the world's history of battle. A.J. Sowell, himself a Ranger in the early seventies, when Indian outbreaks were still frequent and disastrous, speaking of the Ranger equipment says:

"We had to furnish our own horses, clothing and six-shooters. The State furnished us carbines, cartridges, provisions, etc., and we got fifty dollars a month."[4]

It will be seen from the foregoing how different the Ranger service and regulations were from those of either the federal or state troops. Unlike the army they wore no uniform, and they provided, for the most part, their own equipment. They differed from State and county officials in that they were confined to no county or portion of the State, but could "range" wherever their service was needed and with little or no direction from headquarters until their mission was accomplished. It will be clearly seen that men constituting such a band must be not only brave, and quick and accurate with fire-arms, but must be men of good character and high, firm principle as well. It is the moral qualification more than any other that has given the Ranger organization its efficiency and power. A force, however small, composed of men who can shoot straight and are brave, and who believe in the right, is well-nigh invincible. The Rangers, originally organized for a great and sacred purpose, the defense of homes, went forth like knights inspired by lofty motives and high resolves, and during whatever change that has come in the aspect of their duties the tradition of honor seems to have been preserved. Indeed they have been from the beginning not unlike the knights of old who rode forth without fear and without reproach to destroy evil and to redress wrong.

Speaking further of Ranger equipment Sowell says:

"In the first place he wants a good horse; strong saddle, double-girted; a good carbine (this was before the day of Winchesters); pistol and plenty of ammunition. He generally wears rough clothing, either of buckskin or strong durable cloth and a broad-brimmed hat of the Mexican style; thick over-shirt, top boots[5] and spurs, and a jacket or short coat so that he can use himself with ease in the saddle."

And the author adds:

"A genuine Texas Ranger will endure cold, hunger and fatigue, almost without a murmur, and will stand by a friend and comrade in the hour of danger and divide anything he has got from a blanket to his last crumb of tobacco."

So much for the Ranger and his origin. As the years went by and the Indian was conquered or driven away, the Ranger's work changed, but his personality remained the same. The Ranger of seventy years ago is the Ranger of to-day--only, his duties have altered. Long before the conquest of the savages a new element of disorder had entered the field. The desperado who had stirred up the first Indian troubles had survived and increased, to plunder his own race. The new and sparsely settled land invited every element of lawlessness and every refugee of crime. Local authorities would not or could not contend with them. It was for the Rangers, now much reduced in numbers, to solve the problem of destroying the disturber in their midst as they had driven the savage enemy from their frontiers. They were made peace officers, and became a mounted constabulary, their duties being to quell disorders, to prevent crime and to bring criminals to justice. It was new work--less romantic than the wild Indian warfare of the frontier; work full of new dangers and what was still worse it was work which instead of inviting the encouragement and enthusiasm of a community, was of a sort to incur its displeasure, for the desperadoes of a neighborhood were either the heroes or the terrors of it, and in either case to molest them was likely to prove unpopular. So it was, during this new order of things, that the Ranger service had to contend not only with the offenders but sometimes with the very people whom they were hoping to protect. This made the work hard and discouraging, as work always is hard and discouraging when it is done amid enemies who wear the guise of friends. How well they have succeeded is told in the official reports. W.H. Mabry, Adjutant General of Texas in 1896, says in his report for that year, referring to the Rangers:

"This branch of the service has been very active and has done incalculable good in policing the sparsely settled sections of the State where the local officers, from the very nature of the conditions, could not afford adequate protection. Including the meanderings of the Rio Grande we have about 3,000 miles of frontier line. Part of this borders on a foreign country, with different customs, law and language. Only a river fordable at most any point intervenes. But for the Ranger force, specially equipped for continued rapid movements, this border line would be the rendezvous for criminals of nearly every description and class."

General Mabry then sets down the fact that the Ranger service has increased the State revenues by something like four hundred thousand dollars for the year through the protection of leased frontier State lands which otherwise could not be inhabited and would yield no return in either rental or taxes.

In concluding he adds: "It is true that the frontier force does not and could not cover all this territory, but the fact that they exist and are scouting over every foot they can travel prevents organized bands from being established along this border line.... They are circumscribed by no county limits; can easily and rapidly move from one section to another and criminals do not care to invite their pursuit. Specially equipped for continued rapid motion, they take up the trail and follow it with a persistency of the sleuth hound, until the criminal is either run out of the country, captured or killed.

"In every train robbery which has occurred in Texas, the robbers have been either captured or killed, whenever it was possible to carry the Rangers to the scene, so they could take the trail. The broad expanse of sparsely settled territory in this State would offer easy opportunity for such crimes, if it were not for the protection given by our mobile and active Ranger force."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: The scene of the Parker Massacre is located by some authorities, in Limestone County, somewhat further north. Accounts of the event itself also differ. The details here given are from "Texas Rangers" by A.J. Sowell, and are said to have been supplied by eye-witnesses.]

[Footnote 4: "Texas Rangers," by A.J. Sowell, of Seguin, Tex., 1884.]

[Footnote 5: The Ranger's boots like those of the cowboy are made with high heels to prevent his foot from slipping through the stirrup. Both the Ranger and the cowboy ride with the stirrup in the middle of the foot, it being safer and also less fatiguing on a long ride, sometimes a distance of a hundred miles between daylight and dark.]