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Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers were formed in 1826 at the urging of Governor Steven Austin, who wanted twenty to thirty Rangers in the field at all times to protect American settlers from Indian attacks. The Rangers, an independent law enforcement agency, became the most controversial, as well as the most fabled, lawmen in the U.S. The Rangers have a heritage that began with the earliest settlements in Texas. They have been compared to other world-famous law enforcement agencies, the FBI, Scotland Yard, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

During the Texas war for independence this paramilitary force served as a border patrol. Though they refused to wear any kind of uniform, or even salute their superior officers, the Rangers were a highly disciplined outfit noted for their marksmanship. They adopted the Colt six-shooter as their preferred weapon, and in time the gun became synonymous with the settlement of the West.

According to legend, they always got their man, yet they had a penchant for pursuing outlaws and fugitives across state and country borders, frequently into Mexico. The pre-Civil War rangers of the Wild West were as much villains as heroes, however. Heroes such as Ben McCulloch, Big Foot Wallace, Frank Jones, John Coffee Hays, and Leander McNelly are remembered with such rangers-turned-villains as Bass Outlaw, Ben Thompson, and Scott Cooley. For a short period, they were disbanded, then re-established in 1873 and they captured several notorious outlaws including King Fisher, Sam Bass, and John Hardin.

In May 1874, under Governor Richard Coke, the Legislature appropriated $75,000 to organize six companies of Texas Rangers, 75 to a company. They were stationed in districts at strategic points over the state in order to be on hand when ranches were raided. The service was known as the Frontier Battalion. Rangers were given the status of peace officers, whereas before this date the service was a semi-military organization.

During this era, the Ranger Service held a place somewhere between that of an army and a police force. When a Ranger was going to meet an outside enemy, for example, the Indians or the Mexicans, he was very close to being a soldier; however, when he had to turn to the enemies within his own society - outlaws, train robbers, and highwaymen, he was a detective and policeman.

The Frontier Battalion was abolished in 1901. As the frontier disappeared, Ranger activities were redirected towards law enforcement among the citizens. The Ranger Service was reorganized under a new law. Each Ranger was considered an officer and was given the right to perform all duties exercised by any other peace officer. They were stationed either in far West Texas or along the Mexican border. The activities of the new service were similar to those of the Frontier Battalion after 1880. With the taming of the the West, the Rangers became less important.

The twentieth-century rangers came under sharp criticism for anti-black, anti-Chicano, and anti-labor views. A state legislative committee found that they consistently ignored civil rights, killed criminals without provocation, and frequently murdered their prisoners. In one incident during WWI, nine Rangers shot and killed fifteen Mexicans in cold blood. The nine were dismissed, but no criminal charges were ever brought against them.

When Ma Ferguson was elected governor, she fired the entire Ranger force because they openly supported her opponent. The only Ranger she did not fire was Frank Hamer, the Ranger on special assignment who was one of the lawmen, who killed Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in 1934. Ferguson appointed her own people as replacements. The Ferguson Rangers, as the group came to be called, was one of the most corrupt law enforcement agencies ever formed, made up of thieving murderers. Ferguson's successor disbanded the agency and reformed it under the Department of Public Safety.

Four events - the Mexican Revolution, World War I, oil booms, and prohibition - made demands on the Texas Rangers, which they could not meet. The Mexican Revolution filled the Mexican border with raiders; the World War brought with it spies, conspirators, and saboteurs; oil booms made West Texas a gathering place for gamblers and murderers; and prohibition filled it with smugglers and bootleggers. In January 1919, there was a cutback in the service to four companies of not more than 15 men. The Texas Rangers had served officially for more than a hundred years under the Governor, the Secretary of State, and the Adjutant General of Texas.

On August 10, 1935, when the Texas Legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers and the Texas Highway Patrol became members of this agency, with statewide law enforcement jurisdiction. The true modern-day Ranger came into being on September 1, 1935. The Texas Rangers are the oldest law enforcement organization on the North American continent with statewide jurisdiction.

The Texas AFLCIO, in 1967, called for their disbandment, claiming they were used as tax-paid strikebreakers. The State Supreme Court ruled against the Rangers, claiming they used excessive force in breaking up a United Farm Workers strike. In the 1970s, a candidate for governor ran a very strong, albeit unsuccessful, campaign calling for the abolition of the Rangers.

The Texas Rangers will always figure prominently in the legends and folklore of the Old West. As Walter Prescott Webb wrote in his 1935 history of the Rangers, they "are what they are because their enemies have been what they were. The Rangers had to be superior to survive. Their enemies were pretty good...(the Rangers) had to be better..."

George W. Arrington

One of the greatest Texas Rangers on record, Arrington was born in Greensboro, Ala., on Dec. 23, 1844, and fought for the Confederacy in Mosby's Raiders. Following the Civil War, Arrington joined other Confederate soldiers and went to Mexico, offering his services to the doomed Emperor Maximilian and then moved on to seek adventure in Central America before returning to the U.S. in 1867. He eventually moved to Texas and joined the Texas Rangers in the early 1870s, fast rising through the ranks until he was appointed a captain. Arrington's territory was the Panhandle of Texas, then one of the worst nightmares for any lawmen. The area was overrun with hostile Indians and hundreds of hardcase outlaws who would rather shoot it out than talk truce. Whenever Arrington and his company of twenty men went out in sweeps to capture outlaws, fugitives by the scores were either captured or killed. In one month alone, July 1878, Arrington and his company rounded up forty men, half of these having separate murder charges against them.

As a captain of the rangers, Arrington proved himself fearless. Often as not, if his men were on duty elsewhere, he would go after several desperadoes alone and invariably bring in two or three rustlers. He was as tough as any outlaw on the plains, and his strict discipline was applied to his own men. Whenever he caught one of his own rangers tipsy he would order him locked up as a common drunk. Arrington was living proof that the Rangers, like the Mounties, always got their man. He would track fugitives to both ends of the continent. He trailed one wealthy cattle rustler all the way to New England, returning him to Texas secretly. Arrington knew that the wealthy fugitive would have lawyers waiting in each state through which they would travel so the intrepid lawman purposely changed trains at regular intervals and stayed in hotels using aliases for himself and his captive.

Arrington left the Rangers in the early 1880s and became sheriff of Wheeler County, a post he kept for eight years before retiring to his Rocking Chair Ranch in 1890. The old lawman came out of retirement briefly to become sheriff for the same county in 1894 and during this time he was confronted by six tough drunken cowboys in a local saloon who dared him to throw them into jail. Arrington had a small jail and no deputy so he did the next best thing. The lawman handcuffed the six men to the bar rail and held them in custody for twenty-four uncomfortable hours, until all promised to leave town without creating further disturbances. Arrington died on his ranch, Mar. 31, 1923.

William Jesse McDonald

William Jesse McDonald was born in Kemper County, Mississippi, September 28, 1852. After the Civil War, Bill, his mother and other relatives moved to Texas, settling on a farm near Henderson in Rusk County. Graduating from Soule's Commercial College in New Orleans in 1872, he taught penmanship in Henderson until starting a small store at Brown's Bluff. He later established a grocery at Mineola.

The often cited "One Riot, One Ranger" appears to be based on several statements attributed to Capt. McDonald by Albert Bigelow Paine in his classic book, Captain Bill McDonald: Texas Ranger. When sent to Dallas to prevent a scheduled prizefight, McDonald supposedly was greeted at the train station by the city's anxious mayor, who asked: "Where are the others?" To that McDonald is said to have replied, "Hell! ain't I enough? There's only one prize-fight!"

Bill McDonald died of pneumonia on January 15, 1918 at Wichita Falls. He is buried at Quanah. On his tombstone is carved the following motto: "No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that's in the right and keeps on a-comin'." Those words have evolved into the Ranger creed.

Jay Robert Nash. . Da Capo Press. 1989.

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