The Texas Rangers | The Frontier

Summary

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American History Hit

Episode Title: The Texas Rangers | The Frontier
Host: Don Wildman
Guest: Professor Benjamin Johnson, Loyola University Chicago
Release Date: March 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Don Wildman dives deep into the origins, myth, and reality of the Texas Rangers with historian Professor Benjamin Johnson. Together, they dissect the formation, enduring legend, and the often dark legacy of the Rangers, from their early days on the Texas border to their controversial and evolving role in American law enforcement and popular culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Beginnings of Texas and the Rangers (04:00–11:30)

• Texas in the Early 19th Century:

  • Tejas was a sparsely populated frontier, claimed by Spain (and later Mexico), but controlled more by the Comanche and Apache than any colonial power.
  • Mexico, after gaining independence in 1821, sought to settle Texas by inviting Anglo Americans (e.g., Stephen F. Austin and his 100 families) to colonize the region.
    • Johnson: "You could say it belongs to the Comanche more than it belongs to the Spanish." (04:10)

• Birth of the Rangers:

  • 1823 is cited as the founding year; Stephen F. Austin hires 10 frontiersmen as “Rangers" for punitive expeditions, mainly against indigenous groups.
  • Early Rangers operated as a loosely organized, paramilitary body with shifting missions: protection, cattle retrieval, guidance, and battling indigenous populations.
    • Johnson: "There's not a bureaucracy, there's not a uniform, there's not a command and control structure until...the middle of the Texas Revolution..." (06:55)

• Reputation and Myth-Making:

  • The image of the Lone Rider—armed, self-sufficient, and unburdened by bureaucracy—quickly became legendary.
  • Caperton Quote: "This little body of men, unencumbered by baggage wagons or pack trains, moved as lightly over the prairie as the Indians." (09:27, read by Wildman)

2. Organization and Early Actions (15:09–21:45)

• Ranger Structure:

  • Rangers were chartered by the Republic of Texas and functioned similarly to a volunteer army, often acting as a de facto standing military force due to Texas’ vulnerability and its position on contested land.

• John “Jack” Coffey Hays:

  • Hays, a pivotal figure, revolutionized combat tactics by adopting new firearms technology, allowing soldiers to fire from horseback.
    • Johnson: "He's one of the first people to realize that advances in gun technology mean you can actually fight from horseback..." (16:53)
  • His legacy is both technical and legendary, with counties named after him.

3. The Mexican-American War and “Los Diablos Tejanos” (19:34–24:26)

• Annexation and War:

  • Texas’ entry into the Union (1845) triggered war with Mexico.
  • Rangers served as scouts and irregulars in the U.S. military effort, earning a reputation for ruthlessness, especially at battles like Monterey.

• Violence and Controversy:

  • Wildman: "General Zachary Taylor...said, there is scarcely a form of crime that has not been reported to me as committed by them." (21:46)
  • Within a generation, Rangers become both bureaucracy and legend, but also a target of condemnation in both American and Mexican media and folk culture.

4. “Ethnic Cleansing” and Internal Policing (23:20–27:05)

• Campaigns Against Indigenous Peoples:

  • Texas—uniquely among western states—largely expelled its indigenous populations by the end of the 19th century, a campaign many scholars term “ethnic cleansing.”
    • Johnson: "Texas is remarkably successful in what many scholars call ethnic cleansing." (23:34)

• Transition to Policing Anglo Society:

  • As frontier violence receded, Rangers increasingly handled issues among the Anglo population, taking on more familiar law enforcement roles.

• The Rise of the Iconic Ranger Star:

  • Began appearing by late 19th century, a callback to the “Lone Star” of Texas.

5. 20th Century: Atrocity, Scandal, & Professionalization (27:22–37:32)

• Porvenir Massacre (1918):

  • Rangers, aided by U.S. cavalry, executed 15 Mexican and Mexican-American men and boys in a West Texas village, sparking public outcry and legislative investigation.
    • Johnson: "They line up 15 teenage boys and men...and they shoot them. This ends up resulting in a big outcry." (27:37)

• Controversy & Accountability:

  • Investigations exposed hundreds of extrajudicial killings mostly targeting Mexican-descent residents.
  • The Porvenir incident highlighted the Rangers’ unchecked brutality and precipitated reforms.

• Integration into Texas Department of Public Safety (1935):

  • Rangers transitioned to an elite investigative police force—professionalized, but not free from controversy.
    • Johnson: “They become like other police forces and they do the things that are very controversial and divisive about policing in the larger history of the United States.” (34:56)

• Continued Abuse:

  • Cited Supreme Court cases, such as the coerced confession and subsequent lynching of Bob White (a Black farm laborer), revealed ongoing abuses even after professionalization.

6. Hollywood, Myth, and Modern Memory (33:00–42:30)

• Legend-Making in the 20th Century:

  • Writers (notably Walter Prescott Webb’s 1935 book), dime novels, radio, and especially TV (“The Lone Ranger,” “Tales of the Texas Rangers,” “Walker, Texas Ranger”), solidified the Rangers’ status as cultural icons.
    • Johnson: “By the time you get to the 1940s, you have the television show the Lone Ranger… the legend…only grows, and it's part of the embrace of the western past.” (33:14)

• Revision and Reckoning:

  • Statues and team names have come under scrutiny and protest, especially in the 21st century (e.g., the statue at Dallas Love Field removed in 2020 after new public awareness of Ranger violence against Black and Mexican Americans).
    • Johnson: “These critical accounts of the Rangers have been around as long as the Rangers have been around. And it's just that now they circulate in public more.” (40:10)

• Enduring Debate:

  • Standoffs between hagiographers and critics continue: “We're at a point where the lovers and the haters of the Texas Rangers...both get an audience for their points of view.” (41:55)

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Notable Quotes

• On early Texas:
  “Tejas in 1820... you could say it belongs to the Comanche more than it belongs to the Spanish.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (04:10)

• On the Ranger’s early mission:
  “They're always been a...somewhat mixed mission.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (08:59)

• On violence and reputation:
  “Their view is that they're out of control and their violence against civilian populations actually incites the Mexican populace to be more likely to resist American rule.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (20:51)

• On violence against Indigenous Peoples:
  “Texas is remarkably successful in what many scholars call ethnic cleansing.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (23:34)

• On legendary status:
  “By the time you get to the 1940s, you have the television show the Lone Ranger… the legend...only grows, and its part of the embrace of the western past.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (33:14)

• On modern controversy:
  “They become like other police forces and they do the things that are very controversial and divisive about policing in the larger history of the United States.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (34:56)

• On ongoing debate:
  “We’re at a point where the lovers and the haters of the Texas Rangers...both get an audience for their points of view. They used to be just the cheerleaders for the Rangers did, but that's now changed.”
  — Professor Benjamin Johnson (41:55)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:00 – Setting the scene in 1820s Texas: power struggles, sparsity, and the emerging role of Anglo settlers.
• 06:53 – Formation of the Texas Rangers—myth and fact.
• 16:53 – The legend of John “Jack” Coffey Hays and innovations in frontier warfare.
• 19:34 – Texas Rangers’ role in the Mexican-American War.
• 23:34 – Discussion of Ranger violence and success in expelling indigenous populations.
• 27:37 – Porvenir Massacre and legislative inquests.
• 34:56 – Rangers professionalize within the Department of Public Safety; modern abuses.
• 33:14 / 40:10 – The building of the Ranger legend in popular culture vs. recent public reckoning.
• 41:55-42:30 – Ongoing debates over the Rangers' place in history and culture.

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Memorable Moments

• The vivid portrait of the early Ranger on the prairie, summed up by a period quote, paints the myth of the lone, self-reliant lawman—setting tone for the whole discussion.
• The chilling account of the Porvenir Massacre and its aftermath—a stark reminder of the human cost behind the legend.
• The host and guest’s candid discussion on the Rangers’ modern reputation—acknowledging the influence of television, statues, and social movements on how history is remembered and re-examined.

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Resources Mentioned

• Books by Professor Benjamin Johnson:
  • Texas: An American History
  • Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans
• Organizations:
  • refusingtoforget.org

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Conclusion

This episode unpacks the complicated, often grim legacy of the Texas Rangers. With Professor Johnson’s expertise and Don Wildman’s narrative flair, listeners are guided through the Rangers’ fluctuating roles: as frontier warriors, law enforcers, controversial antiheroes, and enduring cultural symbols. The discussion ultimately underscores the need to reckon with both myth and reality—not just in the story of the Rangers, but in American history more broadly.

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Transcript

[Don Wildman]

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Hei hei.

[Stephen]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way we'll do Character, Deep Div, Magic Explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

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[Don Wildman]

A rider moves across the wide Texas prairie, hat drawn low, dust rising behind his horse's hooves, rifle close at hand. Upon his coat pinned to the lapel, a five pointed star glints in the sun. He's tired. He's hungry. He's riding alone. But somewhere out there is the trouble he's been dispatched to find. But whether he finds it or not almost matters less than what he represents to us today. That rider and the star he wears is a memory we all carry the legend, the Myth the magic of the Texas Ranger. Greetings, all. Welcome to American history. Don Wildman's by name. And today we are back out on the American frontier in the vast, unspoiled lands of Texas. Teos, that is, while still well within the borders of sovereign Mexico. In this land of opportunity and danger emerged a group of men who would rank among the most iconic figures of the Wild West. The Texas Rangers, delivering Silver Star justice to a lawless frontier. Or so goes the myth. Who were these Texas Rangers? Defenders of order or agents of exploitation and violence? We'll explore it all with Professor Benjamin Johnson of Loyola University Chicago, author of several books, including Texas An American History and Revolution in How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans. Ben Johnson, great to have you with us. You have a name like a Texas Ranger.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Thank you so much. I'm very pleased to be with you.

[Don Wildman]

Our telling of the story begins around 1820, beginnings of Texas, which was known by the Mexicans and Spanish who founded the place as Tejas. What's going on in Tejas in 1820?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Tejas in 1820 is really kind of on the ropes. It has, you know, long been the claimed by Spain as the northern extent of its possessions in North America. But, you know, you could say it belongs to the Comanche more than it belongs to the Spanish. There's been lots of civil unrest and insurrection associated with efforts to create an independent Mexico that will govern itself instead of being under the rule of Spain.

[Don Wildman]

It's a vast expanse, but had a low settler population, making it difficult to project colonial authority, especially against these Apache and Comanche tribes. I imagine settlements were few and far between in those days, right?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

That's correct. And there's really, you know, the largest is San Antonio. So there's a cluster of Hispanic residents around San Antonio, some farther east in Nacogdoches, some farther south. And what will end up being South Texas, and it's in worse shape than it had been a few generations before. And as Mexico gains its independence in 1821, I hope I'm not getting ahead of our story too much. There is a lot of sentiment that they need to bring in more property owning, sedentary people. And they have a lot of land, and there are a lot of such people in the United States who don't have land. And, you know, maybe this could work out. Maybe we could invite some Americans down there.

[Stephen]

Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

Mexico itself had been unable to encourage its own population to settle that land. So this is what you're talking about. They're encouraging These outsiders to come in instead. After 1821, Anglo Americans from the USA start to migrate to the territory. Stephen F. Austin, the famous name, led a band of colonists to this Texas region. And over time, tensions begin to grow between the Anglo Americans, the indigenous nations, and the Mexican authorities. This is really what starts to boil up, right?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

That's correct. Although, you know, there are also ways in which for about a decade after Stephen F. Austin brings in 100 families, you know, it really does work. Stephen is known as a stab on. That's how I write about him in my book. He's the godfather to Mexican children. He becomes fluent in Spanish. He converts to Catholicism. At one point, he even helps put down an uprising in East Texas against Mexican rule. But I think everyone has a sense that this is a kind of volatile cocktail and unsteady mix. Right. That people are still figuring out how this whole thing is going to work.

[Don Wildman]

He's really, what a fascinating man, Stephen Austin, really known to Anglos anyway, as the Father of Texas. In 1823, the precursor of what becomes the Texas Rangers is founded. How so? And why?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Sure, that is the date that the Rangers give for their founding. And, you know, it does have a basis. There's a description that Austin hires 10 experienced frontiersmen as what he calls Rangers and a punitive expedition against Tonkawa Indians. But there's not, you know, there's not a bureaucracy, there's not a uniform, there's not a command and control structure until really the middle of the Texas Revolution, towards the end of 1835, when Texas lawmakers, you know, the congress of this would be independent nation which is still fighting Mexico for its independence, create a force, authorize the creation of a formal force called the Texas Rangers. So 1823, 1835. Take your pick.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, exactly. And just to remind people who are rusty on this, the Texas Republic is founded between what years?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Yeah, the Texas Republic exists between 1836, when Texas very improbably wins its revolution and actually captures the head of state of Mexico, Santa Ana, a vastly larger polity that it had no chance of actually conquering. And the Republic lasts until 1845, when it becomes a part of the United States as a state.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. Just important to keep that political backdrop in mind as this group is founded. That is really. Is it fair to call it a militia? Not really. Right.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

I think a militia. You know, paramilitary is the word that's often used. Sometimes they're doing things that look like law enforcement. Sometimes, particularly in the early years, they're mostly doing things that look like Military endeavors. Right. They are making war on hostile powers and attempting to prevent outside powers from making war on Anglo Texas.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. And they're first organized by Austin, but then led by a guy named Moses Morrison, who their essential job is to patrol the roads and the lands in general and essentially protect these Anglo settlers, right?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

That's right. Yeah. And especially in the early years, they end up doing a lot of things right, because government capacity generally is just developing and is very limited. And so they also do things like in the middle of the Texas Revolution, they are retrieving cattle. They are trying to help refugees cross muddy trails and swollen streams and the like. So the Rangers are just. They're always been a. It's an organization that changes and has always had a somewhat mixed mission.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, they're the state police, it sounds like, before there's a state. By 1830s, their pay was set to $1.25 a day, but they had to provide their own horses and their supplies. I got a quote here from a guy named John Caperton. He wrote something called the Sketch of Colonel John C. Hayes, Texas Ranger. I'll read it. Each Ranger was armed with a rifle, a pistol, and a knife, with a Mexican blanket tied behind his saddle and a small wallet in which he carried salt and ammunition and perhaps a little panola or parched corn, spiced and sweetened, a great allayer of thirst and, of course, tobacco. He was equipped. For a month, this little body of men, unencumbered by baggage wagons or pack trains, moved as lightly over the prairie as the Indians. I mean, this is really the picture of this lonely rider out on the plains, isn't it?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Yeah, sure is. And they become, you know, by the 1840s, they have a reputation well outside the state of Texas for exactly the kind of thing you're talking about.

[Don Wildman]

Let's talk about how they get that reputation as we go. These are not polished lawmen. They are organized, but they're riding out from sort of separate headquarters, I suppose, kind of half farmers, half fighters, patrolling a wilderness where the government barely existed. With the outbreak of The Texas Revolution, 1836, the provisional government officially sanctioned the first Ranger force to patrol the the frontier. How large Was this force?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

56, 60 people, 6 companies of mounted volunteers. And they're meant to be a bit geographically dispersed.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. And within a few years, it grows. There's about 300 in a couple of years from then. And as you explained, they're not only, you know, riding for law, they're riding to help people and. And scout for people. Their Couriers, their guides. They also perform sort of rear guard actions during several battles that are going on with the Mexican army after the Battle of the Alamo. Why is this such a unique thing to Texas? I'm curious. Why aren't we talking about the Arkansas Rangers? Why Texas?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons. I mean, one, their power and influence and their scope grows over time, Right? So when they start off in the Texas revolution in late 1835, 1836, they're not a particularly militarily significant force. And they're actually, somewhat to their frustration, being used sparingly as scouts and couriers during the revolution and actually after the Battle of the Alamo, rather than leading shock troops in battle against Mexican forces. But they become more and more significant, particularly on the Texas frontier, as really the kind of the point of the spear, to use that phrase, for Anglo Texans. And then this is a theme throughout Ranger history, really, you know, after just a generation. So by the 1840s, they are as significant as cultural icons and legends as they actually are as a bureaucracy. So I think that's what distinguishes them from, you know, Arizona has Rangers, California has Rangers. It was a general term for sort of back country woodsman that was used across much of the English speaking world. But it's only in Texas that you get the confluence of an actual paramilitary bureaucracy and organization and a body of legend and lore that lasts all the way up both of them until today.

[Don Wildman]

Let's take a short break and when we come back, we'll talk about the notable engagements the Rangers fought in and the darker aspects of their history right after this.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Steph. You're bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Don Wildman]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Don Wildman]

Okay, we're back with Professor Benjamin Johnson talking about the Texas Rangers. No, not the baseball team. The real ones, we've called them. Sort of a bit of a militia, kind of a state police. How were they organized and how did one become a Ranger?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

So, yeah, they're organized. You know, they are officially chartered by the government of the Republic of Texas. And officers are hired and then calls go out for men to enlist. So in that way, it really does look like a volunteer army. And Texas is in a very tenuous position. Right. Its whole existence as an independent sovereign is really improbable that they catch the Mexican army in a moment of vulnerability after its leader, the President of Mexico, Santa Ana, very unwisely decides to split forces and captures them. And they're still right next to some very powerful indigenous people, most notable, most powerful of whom are the Comanche. And they're still right next to Mexico, a country that is literally hundreds of times its size and that views them as illegitimate bandits and upstart revolutionaries and would like to recapture them. But precisely because of that vulnerability, then the people leading the Republic of Texas see the need to have a kind of frontier military force that is out in the field more or less full time. Right. That's not just mobilized like a volunteer fire department when there's an emergency. And so the Rangers in their early years are really a frontier military force. And their opponents, as they very readily acknowledged, are indigenous peoples in Mexico. Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

Tell me about a guy named John Hayes. John Jack Coffey Hayes, 1840s, right?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Sure. Yeah. So Hays is a fascinating figure and he's really the first real legendary Texas Ranger. He comes to Texas in the middle of the Revolution in 1836 and is one of the people who Sam Houston asked to join a company of Rangers that's engaged in service between San Antonio and the Rio Grande. Right. So right on the what they hope will become the border with Mexico. And he fights during the Texas Revolution and then goes on to do kind of a combination of surveying frontier lands, Right. Which the Rangers are involved in and are the kind of the security force for that, and then actively fighting indigenous people. And I think the reason he comes to fame is that he is both a technical innovator. Right. So he is one of the first people to realize that advances in gun technology mean that you can actually fight from horseback in a very different way than armed European or an American soldiers had done. It used to be you would use the horse for mobility, for speed, and when it came time to fire your musket, you would dismount and form up into some kind of ranks. Well, he realizes that there's now weaponry that means that you can actually fire from horseback. And so he changes the tactics of frontier warfare. He adopts many native tactics as well. But the other reason is he's kind of counter type. Right. You know, these pictures of Rangers especially that are taken in the 20th century are these big larger than life figures. Hayes is a very diminutive, short, soft spoken man, but you know, he really deals very effectively in violence. And so I think it's that contrast that helps and his objective importance to the development of frontier warfare that gives rise to him as a legend. There's a county named after him still in Texas. So that tells you something about what an impression he made.

[Don Wildman]

He had to have been very aware of weapon development and how things were changing back east, I suppose, in what was available.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

That's right. And you know, the Rangers have a kind of throwback vibe to them. Right. As people who live in the past, who live in rougher, more frontier conditions. And that's true, but in a way they've always been on the cutting edge. And they were certainly early adopters of firearms technology coming out of particularly New England and particularly the Colt Firearms Company.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. Right there in Hartford. You could drive right past the building. Once Texas is annexed into the United States, 1845ish. How did the Rangers change with that? And then what happens when the Mexican American War breaks out?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Sure. So the annexation of Texas in 1845 is really the, the cause for the U.S. mexican War. Right. Because Mexico does not accept this breakaway province joining the United States. And the American President uses this as a pretext to start a war that will end up lopping off the, you know, north 40% or so of Mexico and giving the United States the contemporary states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and parts of Wyoming. And so the US Mexican War is, you know, a war of conquest. It lasts from 1846 to 1848. And in a way it's from the point of view of the Texas Rangers, it's just an extension of the fighting against Mexico that they've been involved in virtually since their inception. So Hayes serves as Commander of the 1st Regiment of Texas Mounted Riflemen, which joins the larger constellation of American forces in the U.S. mexican War.

[Don Wildman]

They develop quite a reputation, especially within the war, for ruthlessness. I mean, Battle of 1846 and Battle of Monterey. Texas Rangers are massacring civilians, burning nearby settlements. Had they been utilized by the military strategically, that way they are at least

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

for a while useful to the overall US cause. Right. So that kind of scouting or anti guerrilla warfare or kind of informal warfare, right. It's useful for the American military to have this not fully controlled militia body that can do things that benefit them without the American officers necessarily having to take blame or take credit for the actions of the Rangers. And they come to be known as the Los Diablos Tejanos. Right. So the Texas Devils, literally. And at some point American military officers actually start condemning the Rangers, Right? Because their view is that they're out of control and that their violence against civilian populations actually incites the Mexican populace to be more likely to resist American rule. So it's a double edged sword for the US Military, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

[Don Wildman]

General Zachary Taylor, later President, is quoted to have said, there is scarcely a form of crime that has not been reported to me as committed by them. And this is where things start to get controversial. Historically, the Rangers are accused of atrocities. How does this come out? I mean, where do we hear about Texas Rangers?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

So you hear about, I mean, if you read the press in either Mexico or the United States, you would hear reports and accounts of these. If you have, you know, a brother or a son or a husband who's in the American military and he's riding home, he may be mentioning the Texas Rangers and these stories. And then particularly in the, in the Mexican descent population in both Mexico and Texas now there are oral histories, there are stories being told. It's about this time that the term rinche, which is a derogatory term for Ranger in Spanish comes into wide circulation. They're corridos or the kind of traditional folk music or ballads of northern Mexico. And they come to feature Texas Rangers or more centrally, what the songs cast as heroic Mexican men who stand up to them and who resist them. So, you know, within a generation of their founding, they are simultaneously a bureaucracy and legends and contested in the press and in popular culture in ways that really, you know, they change over time. But the pattern that lasts up until the 2020s is already set by the end of the US Mexico War.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, their main targets, I mean, certainly within the borders of Texas were the Apache and Comanche tribes. What was their goal in that? Were they claiming land for people or were they just killing people? I mean, what was their general objective?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Sure, I mean, you know, Texas is not unique, certainly, and engaging in vicious war on both sides. Of course at times with indigenous peoples, you see similar things across the west and nice liberal California in the 1850s is an absolute horror show. But Texas is remarkably successful in what many scholars call ethnic cleansing. Right. So if you look at the indigenous population by the end of the 19th century in Texas and compare it with Indian Territory, what becomes Oklahoma or New Mexico or even Louisiana or Arkansas to its east? Texas has very, very few indigenous people. And that's because Texans, including the Rangers, were very motivated and very successful in expelling once large and powerful indigenous populations.

[Don Wildman]

Battle of Little Rope Creek 1858 we're moving across the decades here. Civil war is coming up, but a Ranger named John Salmon Ripford, I guess his name Ripford, led a group of 100 Rangers on a months long campaign from Texas into Indian Territory, as you mentioned, modern day Oklahoma, against the native Comanche tribe, as was done in those days, aided by another tribe, the Kankawa tribe, traditional enemies of the Comanche. They basically tracked them to their permanent camp. Tell me what went down then.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Yeah, so they penetrate to the heart of the Comanche domain and attack Comanche villages and are able to successfully return. They sometimes kill women and children and take them hostage and they go after food supplies and including, they go after the bison populations which are really the basis of Comanche, Kiowa and other polities, economic orders. And they're not particular, they don't really have the authorization to do this. Right. They are crossing a border that the federal government doesn't want them to cross, but there aren't federal forces to stop them. So they just kind of go ahead and do that. And it's really in this battle, also known as sometimes referred to as the Battle of Antelope Hill, that the tactics that the US army will later use in the 1870s in both the northern and southern plains come into fruition. So once again, the Rangers, for better or for worse, are kind of setting the template for frontier warfare.

[Don Wildman]

The expulsion of natives brought more settlers into Texas. The ranges found themselves dealing more and more with internal issues of the Anglo population. They become more akin to the local police force. They earn the nickname prairie patrolman. So it's a fascinating thing to see over a 30 year period, 30, 40 year period, really, how this group changes its role in this ever changing society.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

And I think one thing you have to take into account is that modern policing itself is just in its infancy, right. So people are not used to seeing uniform police officers all over the place. We think of the United States as a country with a large standing military. The United States is not a country with a large standing military. Its political culture is vehemently opposed against that. So time and time again, state authorities turn to the Rangers as one of the few forces that's actually able to project violence and charges them with various tasks that the people running the state find to be worthwhile.

[Don Wildman]

They're infamously known for their star. When did they start wearing those shiny little stars?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

It's there by the end of the 19th century, but when that starts, I don't know. I mean, I think it's gotta be, you know, a knockoff of the Lone Star of Texas. So my guess is that it goes way back to the beginning.

[Don Wildman]

By the turn of the 20th century, I'm leaping ahead here. The need for Rangers was called into question as those frontier settlements and townships began establishing their own enforcement. 1918, the Porvenir Massacre happens. Very ugly incident. Tell me about that.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Sure. So the massacre itself is at the end of January in 1918, and essentially the Rangers, with a bit of an escort from the U.S. cavalry in far West Texas. The nearest landmark today, if you want to call it that, would be Big Bend National Park. But it's, you know, hours of driving to get even there. They come into the small village of Porvenir, right on the Rio Grande, and they separate the men and boys from the rest of the villagers. And they line up 15 teenage boys and men against a bluff and they shoot them. And this ends up resulting in a big outcry. And eventually the next year in 1919, a very long and well publicized set of legislative hearings when a state representative basically charges them with crimes against humanity, right? With violating their oath, with killing innocent people. And there's a long inquest not only into poor veneer, but into a set of larger killings in the 19 teens that probably involved hundreds of victims at the hands of the Texas Rangers and others, almost all of them along the US Mexican border, almost all of them Mexican descent people, some involved in military actions and banditry, many of them simply being Mexican and being stuck in the wrong time or the wrong place, or having land that a neighbor of theirs coveted and fingered and turned their names over to the Texas Rangers. This is associated with the Mexican Revolution. Right. So after a long period of relative calm and actual cooperation for economic development and for the suppression of indigenous peoples between the governments of the United States and Mexico, there is a full fledged revolution breaks out in Mexico in 1911. It kind of destabilizes the U.S. mexican border. It sends lots of migrants from Mexico into the United States. So there's a lot of social turmoil, there's a lot of fear. And for the first time, Anglos are coming into regions along the US Mexican border, which even though we're now, what, 90 years after, 80 years after the Texas Revolution, still had majority Mexican populations who voted, who held land, who held local political office in a way that non white people in the United States virtually never did. Right. So these border regions are very distinctive. There had been a raid on a prominent West Texas ranch, the Bright Ranch, the month before in December of 1917. And state authorities really wanted to show that they were responsive to, to the Brights and to families like theirs. And there's no evidence linking the residents of Porvenir to this, but there they were. It was an opportune, you know, they were an opportune target. And the Ranger commander, James Fox on the scene had been sent there. It was well known that he executed completely innocent Mexicans and Mexican Americans in South Texas in the previous years. And it's just so clear that, you know, he was sent there. Basically, take off the leash, do whatever you need to do, terrorize these people. We want to show the Brights and others that we are serious about this, that we're serious about this violence. But the Mexican government protests. There's a local white school teacher who had married into the poor Venera community, who, Harry Warren, who keeps a list of people who were killed. The American military is very angry about this. Again, kind of a reprise of the U.S. mexican War. They don't want to be associated with this, and they don't want the communities that they ride in to view them with immediate hostility, which is what they're afraid is going to happen. So Orvenir from the beginning, is a huge black mark on the the reputation of the Texas Rangers.

[Don Wildman]

After the break, Ben and I will discuss how the Rangers rise above all of these controversies and attain a legendary shining star status.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

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[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

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[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

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[Hayden]

AI, howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Don Wildman]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Foreign.

[Don Wildman]

We've covered a few of the darker chapters in the history of the Texas Rangers. Somehow, though, they attain a legendary status in American culture. How does this reinvention happen? Who's responsible and what made the turn?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Yeah, there's a couple of things that happen. I mean, this is where I think we need to leave the actual, like, lived experience of the frontier and the bureaucracy of the Rangers and go into Hollywood and the realm of popular culture. So, as we've talked about, they already had a reputation right by the 20th century as a kind of larger than life force. Historians who are deeply invested in the frontier past start writing about them. And particularly a guy named Walter Prescott Webb publishes a book simply entitled the Texas Rangers in 1935 that kind of cast them as a frontier defense force, as the point of the spear. And what Webb celebrates is An Anglo Saxon conquest over inferior, so called inferior peoples, meaning Mexicans and Indians. And then you already have Ranger dime novels. The Rangers are already invested in their own reputation. And by the time you get to the 1940s, you have the television show the Lone Ranger, which runs from 1949 to 1950. And on radio you have tales of the Texas rangers in the 1950s as well. And so that then, in a world where most people at that point are living in cities or living in suburbs, you know, it's a very different society than frontier Texas in the 19th century. The. The legend of the Rangers only grows, and it's part of the embrace of the western past.

[Don Wildman]

There's also, though, an increased professionalism about the Rangers in terms of the organization. At some point, they're integrated into the Department of public safety. 1935, right?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

That's correct. So, yeah, 1935 is in some ways a turning point, certainly in terms of its bureaucratic organization is the turning point for the Texas Rangers. They become a part of the Texas Department of Public Safety. And they really then become, for all intents and purposes, another law, professional law enforcement agency. Right. They've lost that character. They're not going to war with anybody anymore. They are charged with enforcing the law as a kind of elite investigative unit, which in some ways you could call it like the FBI of the state of Texas. But again, other states have them. Right. Minnesota has the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, for example. It's just nobody's ever made a television show about the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. And I should say that, you know, this is often framed as a story of, oh, they become just like other police forces. Therefore, they're not as controversial and they don't do bad things. But I think the better way to put it is they become like other police forces and they do the things that are very controversial and divisive about policing and the larger history of the United States. So just, for example, two years. So they end up in the Supreme Court twice in the 20th century, and the first time comes out of a case that's just two years after they're folded into the dps. In East Texas, a black farm laborer named Bob White is accused of raping and murdering a white woman who's married to a farmer who was white's employee. There's no real physical evidence. The local authorities don't have enough evidence to charge him. So they call in the Texas Rangers. And the way the Rangers handle this case is that they take Bob White out of the county jail every night for a week, chain him to a tree and beat him senseless. And after five or six days of this treatment, sure enough, White unsurprisingly confesses. This goes to court, he's convicted and sentenced to death. But he appeals. And the national association for the Advancement of Colored People, so the nation's foremost civil rights organization takes up his cause and says, you can't use this evidence in court because it was tortured from him, it was coerced. And the Supreme Court ends up throwing out the evidence. You know, White is assassinated in open court by his former employer. So it doesn't do him any good, but it just shows you that even though they've become a conventional police force, not unlike other state police forces, their actions are still deeply controversial.

[Don Wildman]

But there was a Texas State Police. I mean it goes back to the 1800s who were later disbanded. Was it because Texans related to the Rangers more than the, than the cops?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Well, the Texas State Police has its origins in the Reconstruction era government. So this is a government of black voters in Texas, white unionists and you know, white Unionists from the north who had been sent down. So that police force is really is hated by many white Texans. And when Reconstruction is overthrown and the white south as a whole is left to run its own affairs with disastrous results for the black population, for the freed people and their descendants, the Texas police, that Texas police force goes away. And I forget when the DPS was refounded, but yeah, they're a branch of state government and of the state police. They're like cousins to the highway patrol and the people who stop you if you speak today.

[Don Wildman]

To this day, the Rangers are part of the Texas Department of Public Safety. They are a division of all of that. The famous incident we should point out, which gets a lot of notoriety. Former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer leads a party of a combination of Texas and Louisiana law officers that hunt down the infamous Bonnie and Clyde. 1934 gets a lot of press out of that.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

What's often forgotten about Hamer, if I can interject and downplayed by the Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame, is that in the nineteen teens he was involved in these killings along the US Mexican border. And the one state representative, Representative J.T. canales from South Texas, Mexican American guy, the only non white guy in the Texas legislature at that point. He's the one who files the charges against the Rangers after the Porvenir massacre. And Frank Hamer stalks him through the streets of Austin. Sitting state representative shows up, flashes his gun at him, confronts him down in South Texas tells him if he keeps running his mouth off, he's going to run into real trouble. So Hamer has a reputation long before he is responsible for killing Bonnie and Clyde.

[Don Wildman]

This legend of the Texans Rangers is being, you know, obviously even within this conversation, we can hear it, a reevaluation of where they're at. And the controversies of their reputation continue to this day. I mean, of course, you have all the Dyne novels, the Lone Ranger TV series, Walker, Texas Ranger, of course. But these days, things are being looked at in a different light. Can you explain that process and what's going on today? Sure.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

I think the punchline of the story is that these critical accounts of the Rangers have been around as long as the Rangers have been around. And it's just that now they circulate in public more. Or to put it more, the Texas Rangers and their hagiographers and defenders have really lost the public monopoly on how their story is told. You can see this as early, actually as 1972, when a professional baseball team moves to Dallas and renames itself the Texas Rangers. They get picketed by Mexican American civil rights activists who think of the Rangers as the ones who spied on them and brutalized them and tried to stop them. There's a historical marker that I was involved and that this organization I'm with, refusing to forget, was involved in putting up to the memory of the poor Veneer Massacre. So there's just more public recognition of these things. And there was a statue called One Riot, One Ranger. The Texas Ranger who modeled for that statue played a key role in preventing the integration of Mansfield high school by four black students in 1956. That was put up in Love Field, Dallas's old small airport, the one that Southwest Airlines flies in and out of. And it stood there from 1961 to 2020. I would see it every time. I would fly up there to go visit my grandmothers as a child. And that was taken down in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. And a lot of scrutiny was directed at historical monuments. And the authorities decided after this journalist, Doug Swanson, published a book called Cult of Glory that recounted the story of what the model for the statue had been involved with. They just decided they didn't want any part of this. And then, lo and behold, last month, I think it was, the Texas Ranger ball team put the statue back up in its stadium, right? And they've been criticized for that. And people are writing op eds and letters to the editors and, you know, the predictable social media controversies. So you know, we're at a point where, where the lovers and the haters of the Texas Rangers, you know, they, they both get an audience for their points of view. They used to be just the cheerleaders for the Rangers dead, but that's now changed.

[Don Wildman]

Ben Johnson is a professor of history at the Loyola University in Chicago, author of several books I've already mentioned. An American History and Revolution in How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans. Very complex story. Those are good books to check what you can. How can people know what you're doing these days, Ben?

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

They can go to the website of texasandamericanhistory.com or they can go to refusingtoforget.org Nice.

[Don Wildman]

Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.

[Professor Benjamin Johnson]

Thanks, Don.

[Don Wildman]

Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes, dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support,

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[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan, Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Don Wildman]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.