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The Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers and also known as Los Diablos Tejanos, is an investigative law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction in the U.S. state of Texas. It is based in the capital city of Austin. In the time since its creation, the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted in riot control and as detectives, protected the governor of Texas, tracked down fugitives, served as a security force at important state locations, including the Alamo, and functioned as a paramilitary force at the service of both the Republic (1836–1846) and the State of Texas.
Henry Eustace McCulloch was a soldier in the Texas Revolution, a Texas Ranger, and a brigadier general in the army of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.
Peta Nocona, son to Iron Jacket, was a chief of the Comanche Kwahadi division. He married Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been taken as a captive in a raid and was adopted into the tribe by Tabby-nocca's family. Among their children was Quanah Parker, the last war chief of the Comanche.
The Comanche Wars were a series of armed conflicts fought between Comanche peoples and Spanish, Mexican, and American militaries and civilians in the United States and Mexico from as early as 1706 until at least the mid-1870s. The Comanche were the Native American inhabitants of a large area known as Comancheria, which stretched across much of the southern Great Plains from Colorado and Kansas in the north through Oklahoma, Texas, and eastern New Mexico and into the Mexican state of Chihuahua in the south. For more than 150 years, the Comanche were the dominant native tribe in the region, known as “the Lords of the Southern Plains”, though they also shared parts of Comancheria with the Wichita, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache and, after 1840, the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho.
John Coffee "Jack" Hays was an American military officer. A captain in the Texas Rangers and a military officer of the Republic of Texas, Hays served in several armed conflicts from 1836 to 1848, including against the Comanche Empire in Texas and during the Mexican–American War.
Buffalo Hump was a War Chief of the Penateka band of the Comanche Indians. He came to prominence after the Council House Fight when he led the Comanches on the Great Raid of 1840.
Henry Wax Karnes was notable as a soldier and figure of the Texas Revolution, as well as the commander of General Sam Houston's "Spy Squad" at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Arroyo Seco may refer to:
The Battle of Plum Creek was a clash between allied Tonkawa, militia, and Rangers of the Republic of Texas and a huge Comanche war party under Chief Buffalo Hump, which took place near Lockhart, Texas, on August 12, 1840, following the Great Raid of 1840 as the Comanche war party returned to west Texas.
The Great Raid of 1840 was the largest raid ever mounted by Native Americans on white cities in what is now the United States. It followed the Council House Fight, in which Republic of Texas officials attempted to capture and take prisoner 33 Comanche chiefs who had come to negotiate a peace treaty, killing them together with two dozen of their family and followers. The Comanche tribe was supposed to have brought white hostages as their part of the negotiations but only brought one young woman. Arguments and fighting then broke out among the Texans and Comanches. The Texas Officials were determined to force the Comanche to release all white captives among them. To avenge what the Comanche viewed as a bitter betrayal by the Texans, the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump raised a huge war party of many of the bands of the Comanche, and raided deep into white-settled areas of Southeast Texas.
The Battle of Pease River occurred on December 18, 1860, near the present-day town of Margaret, Texas in Foard County, Texas, United States. The town is located between Crowell and Vernon within sight of the Medicine Mounds just outside present-day Quanah, Texas.
The Battle of Little Robe Creek, also called the Battle of Antelope Hills, took place on May 12, 1858. It was a series of three distinct encounters that took place on a single day, between the Comanches, with Texas Rangers, militia, and allied Tonkawas attacking them. It was undertaken against the laws of the United States at the time, which strictly forbade such an incursion into the Indian Territories of Oklahoma, and marked a significant escalation of the Indian Wars. It also marked the first time American or Texas Ranger forces had penetrated the Comancheria as far as the Wichita Mountains and Canadian River, and it marked a decisive defeat for the Comanches.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
The Battle of Bandera Pass in 1841 marked the turning point of the Texas-Indian wars. Though they would continue another 34 years, the tide began to turn at Bandera Pass.
The origins of today's Texas Ranger Division trace back to the first days of Anglo-American settlement of what is today the State of Texas, when it was part of the Province of Coahuila y Tejas belonging to the newly independent country of Mexico. The unique characteristics that the Rangers adopted during the force's formative years and that give the division its heritage today—characteristics for which the Texas Rangers would become world-renowned—have been accounted for by the nature of the Rangers' duties, which was to protect a thinly populated frontier against protracted hostilities, first with Plains Indian tribes, and after the Texas Revolution, hostilities with Mexico.
The Córdova Rebellion, in 1838, was an uprising instigated in and around Nacogdoches, Texas. Alcalde Vicente Córdova and other leaders supported the Texas Revolution as long as it espoused a return to the Constitution of 1824,
Matthew Caldwell,, also spelled Mathew Caldwell was a 19th-century Texas settler, military figure, Captain of the Gonzales – Seguin Rangers and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Because of his recruitment ride ahead of the Battle of Gonzales, some call him the Paul Revere of Texas.
James Milford Day was a 19th-century Texas military figure. He was a member of Mathew Caldwell's and Jack Hay's Seguin Rangers and a participant in the Mexican–American War.
Robert Addison Gillespie (1815–1846) was a business man, land speculator, and Captain in the Texas Rangers under John Coffee Hays and Zachary Taylor. Gillespie died in the Battle of Monterrey. Gillespie County, Texas, was named in his honor.
Yellow Wolf, Spirit Talker 's nephew and Buffalo Hump 's cousin and best support, was a War Chief of the Penateka division of the Comanche Indians. He came to prominence after the Council House Fight, when Buffalo Hump called the Comanches and, along with Yellow Wolf and Santa Anna, led them in the Great Raid of 1840.
References
- Moore, Stephen L. (2006), Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas, Volume II, 1838-1839, Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, ISBN 1-57441-206-X
- Account of Karnes fight on the Arroyo Seco from Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas by John Henry Brown published 1880, hosted by The Portal to Texas History
- Contemporary newspaper account, Telegraph and Texas Register, Vol. 4, Saturday, September 1, 1838, hosted by The Portal to Texas History