Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers
This month, I’m looking at the wild west, making this weeks book Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers by Doug J. Swanson. So let’s do this.
The book is broken down into three parts, Conquest 1821 – 1870, Dark Ages 1871-1930, and The Professionals 1931 to present.
So Conquest, is exactly that. It’s how the great state of Texas came to be, and pre-dating even Texas, were the Texas Rangers. When Texas started, it was definitely not a part of the United States, it was part of Mexico. And Mexico made a grave tactical error in the early part of the 19th century: They welcomed settlers from the United States, on the condition that they become Catholic.
So many early American’s hung signs on their houses saying GTT...Gone To Texas...and headed west….although it’s doubtful that very many of them actually converted. But what they were looking for was the excitement of new adventures. The east coast was settled, and with the War of 1812 freshly concluded, a lot of the young men who fought there or just missed out of enlisting, were looking for excitement. Which Texas offered in spades. So they hung their GTT signs and headed west.
And when they got there, they found Indians. Lots and lots of Indians. Now, some of the settlers, like Sam Houston, seemed to get along ok with with the Native Tribes, especially the Cherokee. Houston offered them settlement and lands after Texas won her independence from Mexico. Unfortunately for Houston, the congress critters in the state capital disagreed and would force the Cherokee out.
And into the void before Texas fought for independence, and lost so spectacularly at the Alamo, was Stephen F. Austin. Who HATED the native tribes, and almost single-handedly oversaw the extinction of the Karankawa Indian tribe. As well as the earliest incarnation of the Rangers, who would participate in the mass slaughter of a fairly peaceful tribe.
Less peaceful, by a long shot, were the Comanche. Now, the Comanche were initially from Wyoming. They migrated south as they came in contact with the horses the Spanish had left during their initial forays onto the North American continent and the Comanche were gifted, natural horsemen that the early Texas settlers compared to ancient Greece centaurs. And the Comanches gave as good as they got. Which is probably why this first part was called Conquest. Between the Texas fight for independence, the war against the Comanche, and the Mexican/American war, leading into Texas joining the south during the Civil War, the Rangers saw plenty of action. And in this part, the author does an admirable job providing both sides of the historical story, including what the Rangers did, and how the other side responded. It’s fascinating historically and while people like to paint the white settlers as the only bad guys historically, this is historically inaccurate. Grossly so.
There were no good guys historically. The Comanche were so hated in Texas that the more local Apache tribes would work with the Rangers in locating Comanche camps. And the Mexicans...well, it’s been ALMOST 200 years since the Alamo, and the atrocities commited under the auspices of General Santa Ana are remembered to today. So is the black bean incident. When Rangers were caught by the Mexican army, they were ordered to draw lots. And if you drew the black bean, you were executed. So again, no real good guys here. But in part two, there were definite bad guys. And as you may have guessed from the section title, Dark Ages, the Rangers, despite their usual attire, were not the White Hats.
So here we start to get into some of the better known rangers, most famous from this period was Leander McNelly, who was arguably among the best of the Dark Ages Rangers. And interestingly, his career might have been buried, except for a famous oil painting of him which hung in the White House during the I think it was Reagan admin….but it could also have been LBJ, he was quite famously from Texas,, but I’m pretty sure it was Reagan’s white house.
McNelly himself was “short, gaunt, thin of voice, and racked by tuberculosis.” His family came to Texas in the 1850’s. They were slave owners from West Virginia, which actually makes them fairly wealthy, since West Virginia was the poor part of Virginia, and actually became a state when it seceded during the Civil War to join the Union, mostly because the West Virginians didn’t think they should be fighting and dying for the rich east Virginians rights to own slaves.
For all that McNelly was a bit of a Unicorn in Texas in the 1870’s: A white man willing to work along side black men. He joined the Texas State Police, who were hated by the local whites because a lot of the Texas State Police at that time, were black men...reconstructionists from the North. And McNelly’s reputation survived this, and he went on to become a Texas Ranger. Which in the 1870’s meant running down Cattle Rustlers, in McNelly’s case, on behalf of cattle baron Richard King. And McNelly was effective in retrieving cattle….albeit, not necessarily the correct cattle. Their attempts at retrieval included raiding a Mexican cattle ranch, and the ranchers there were….quite surprised at the raid. And being slaughtered wholesale was also surprising.
McNelly then moved his rangers on to the correct location, where they were vastly outnumbered by a large number of extremely pissed off Mexicans, who chased them back to the original raid point and engaged in a shoot out. Eventually the shooting died down and McNelly convinced the Mexicans that they would leave if the Mexicans gave them 65 head of cattle.
McNelly, through out all of this, was battling consumption. Which any fan of Western movies would know from watching Tombstone is what killed Doc Holliday. So by 1877, McNelly was removed from the Rangers by Adjutant General Steele. Essentially, he was medically retired and on September 4, 1877, he died. He was 33 years old. Rancher Richard King paid for his $3,000 granite tombstone. Which is a far cry from the animosity displayed in the 2001 movie about McNelly, starring Dylan McDermott, simply titled Texas Rangers, in which King was the villain.
Despite the whole sale slaughter of the wrong Mexican’s, McNelly truly was the best of the rangers from the “Dark Ages.” It only goes down hill from here. Starting with the next chapter, Salt War. See, there are large areas of Texas that are dried out salt flats. Salt, being wholly as necessary to life as water is, this was commonly seen as community property. Everyone could go to the salt flats and help them selves as needed. Until some garbage human being, a lawyer Charles Howard and a banker, George Zimpelman, decided they’d buy the land around the salt flats, and start charging people for the salt. And when state representative Louis Cardis, who rightly represented ALL the people of the region, including the large Mexican population, pointed out that the lakes belonged to everyone...well, Howard shot him. Straight up shot his ass dead on October 10, 1877. And was allowed to flee to New Mexico territory.
The people of El Paso, revolted. Cardis was highly respected, and the locals began seizing government officials and private property. Howard, from across state lines, asked the governor of Texas for help from the Rangers. And the governeor responded by dispatching Major John B. Jones, battalion commander. Who showed up and promptly helped suppress the people who didn’t think they should have to pay for salt that had previously been free to all.
As the frontier in Texas closed in the wake of the Civil War, the Rangers took to running down emancipated slaves. And slaughtering whatever remained of the Native Tribes...no matter what tribe. Including their former allies, the Apache. And of course, that perennial enemy of Texas, Mexicans. All with the blessing of the state government of Texas. And instead of being the face of law and order, the Rangers inspired terror wherever they went.
Throughout the book, Swanson chronicles, with receipts, the long bloody history of the Rangers. And more often that not...they were not the white hats their reputation paints them as. And as we move into the 20th century, they didn’t really get any better. When the civil rights events were happening...The rangers literally stood by and let the staff and students at a school hang a black effigy rather than allow black students to enroll. At one junior college, one of the would be students, Jessalyn Gray, approached Ranger E. J. Banks and pleaded with him for protection, to just do his damn job. He threatened to arrest her if she proceeded to enroll.
And as media became the current metier of fame, the Rangers began to chase it. With two quite infamous cases, both of which were...embarrassing...both in the moment and retrsopectively. And at least one of those two was criminal. Like, the Rangers literally engaged in provably criminal activities.
The first was Billie Sol. Who was famously a con-man. Like...everyone KNEW he was a con-man. Yet, he managed to convince Ranger Clint Peoples that President Lyndon B. Johnson had been involved in the murder of one Henry Marshall. Now, Marshall WAS murdered. He was a federal agricultural official who “committed suicide” by shooting himself five times. The Rangers DID manage to get this reclassified as a murder. Then went off the rails by insisting that Marshall was murdered at behest of Johnson. On the word of a known con-man and liar, who had not one single shred of evidence for the allegation. Yet Peoples believed him.
The other one, was made into a Netflix Special. No joke. Check out The Confession Killer, about Henry Lee Lucas. Now, Lucas, from his travel records, history, and what is KNOWN to be true about him, most likely killed three people. One for sure, because he was convicted of killing his mother and served 10 years before being released. And after his release, he moved to Texas, and was picked up by a local preacher who offered him shelter at like a church homeless shelter. And after his arrival, an elderly woman he had previously helped, Kate Rich, and his 15 year old child bride, Frieda Becky Powell, went missing. So we’re pretty sure, historically, than in addition to his mother, he definitely murdered those two. The remaining like 200 some odd “confessed” killings, were shear fabrication.
The initial Ranger who spoke with him, Phil Ryan, was not buying his bull shit. Lucas initially confessed to murdering 77 people in 13 states. Ryan tested him by providing details of about 15 made up murders, which Lucas promptly confirmed as accurate. So Ryan, at least, disbelieved Lucas’s confessions. But...there are an awful lot of unsolved murders out there. And as long as the various agents kept him rolling in Pall Malls and strawberry milkshakes, Lucas was happy to claim credit for them. And the Ranger in charge of Lucas, NOT Ryan, but one Bob Prince, was all too happy to escort Lucas first class, on private jets, around the country, where various law enforcement agencies closed long open cold cases on Lucas’s say so.
Not all officers were happy to close these cases. Prince had instructed officers who were “questioning” Lucas about their cases to provide Lucas ahead of time with case notes and photos of the crimes, which would then allow Lucas to provide the officers with salient details of the crime...enough to close the case. Swanson reported on at least officer who refused to provide Lucas with advance details of the crime, and left mad that he’d wasted the trip.
But the real crime was not Lucas’s persistent lying to receive strawberry milk shakes. That’s...expected...for a criminal, especially one who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, following the murder of his mother. The real crime is that documentation sent to the Texas state archives proves definitively the Rangers KNEW Lucas was lying. Like...they tracked Lucas’s movements during his claimed travels and knew that when he CLAIMED he was murdering someone in, say, Washington, he was also cashing a paycheck in Florida. And yet they let the confessions continue. One confession had closed a case until Swanson, in 2019...keep in mind Lucas was caught and began confessing in 1983, so 36 years later...Swanson notified Baytown police that one of the murders they’d closed by Lucas’s confession could not possibly have been done by Lucas. And so they quietly reopened the murder of Diana Lynn Underwood, 23, who had been working as a clerk at a 7-eleven store in Baytown, TX, on June 23, 1981.
Modern Rangers are...better? There are like 167 of them for the entire state of Texas. They’re now required to have a law enforcement background, including I think it was at least 10 years as a Texas Highway Patrol officer. And they’re working hard to live up to the hero myth that surrounds their legend. And now, the real question. WHY do they have the legend of being hero’s? They have, and have always had, AMAZING PRESS. Like, no joke, from the very beginning, with Stephen F. Austin, the Rangers have had an amazing PR apparatus, that swept their failures under the rug, and presented them as decorated hero’s of the common man. Despite a very long history of only being a hero to the common “white” man.
This book was...eye opening. I can’t say I thought one way or the other about the Rangers. I mean, I know them from what Hollywood says. And Hollywood has done a lot to move and keep that press as always positive. The Lone Ranger, Walker Texas Ranger, and the reboot of the same, starring Jared Padalecki, Walker. And of course, the Hollywood version discussed earlier starring Dylan McDermott. And in all of these presentations, the Rangers are the heroes, not the ones committing wholesale slaughter at the behest of the government. Which is, historically, more in line with what actually happened. I will say, I can’t imagine going to Texas, and telling any of the residents of that state that historically, the Rangers are the black hats.
