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Not Even Past

“The Battle of Bandera Pass and the Making of Lone Star Legend”

This article is part of an occasional series of articles highlighting the extraordinary collection of historical documents in the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin.

By Nathan Jennings

 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bhughes/AndrewJacksonSowell.html
Andrew Jackson Sowell and ”Big Foot” Wallace.

The John Coffee Hays Collection at UT Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History contains a printed oral history by early Texas historian Andrew Jackson Sowell. The oral histories recount the involvement of settler Thomas Galbreath in three frontier skirmishes between the Texas Rangers and Comanche warriors during the 1840s. Sowell’s article serves as an example of the way Texas’s early events were passed orally by participants and thus became part of the inexact, and possibly fictional, landscape of Lone Star lore and legend. Though the article is undated, it names Sowell as the author and was probably taken from the column, “Frontier Days of Texas” that he wrote in the San Antonio Light newspaper during the 1910s. The son of Texan settlers, Sowell interviewed Galbreath himself, as well as participants Benjamin Highsmith and Creed Taylor decades after the events took place. Since Sowell was not born until 1848, he captured the history from aging frontiersmen who recounted their experiences years after the era of the Texas Republic (1836-46).

In addition to offering an overtly romanticized and partisan description of the Texas Rangers’ role in frontier dominance, the validity of the article has been called into question by several modern historians. The most controversial Anglo-Indian skirmish in the article, famously called the Battle of Bandera Pass, narrates how John Coffee Hays’s Texas Rangers defeated a much larger Comanche force in the Texas Hill Country. As historian Stephen Moore points out, Sowell places the fight in 1841, but men listed as participants do not appear in Hays’s rosters until 1842. Some, such as Samuel Walker, do not even arrive in Texas until years later. Furthermore, the author places the event in the wrong county. A current historical marker stands in Bandera, in south-central Texas, but the battle probably took place in Kendall County to the east. Not a single primary source memoir, report, or contemporaneous press account records this battle, which is uncommon for fights of that scale during the period, and consequently brings even its occurrence into question.

John Coffee Hay, circa 1857. Via Wikimedia Commons.
John Coffee Hay, circa 1857. Via Wikimedia Commons.

The result of this flawed amalgamation of oral histories was the addition of another legendary feat of martial prowess to the lore of Texas history. Though possibly fictional and probably incorrect, the Battle of Bandera Pass became accepted as fact for generations of proud Anglo-Texans. In a larger context, printed articles of this manner assisted in establishing the iconic Texas Ranger at the apex of popular Texan cultural masculinity. Offered as stories of bravery and victory at the expense of feared Comanche opponents, Sowell’s writings came to symbolize a past Golden Age for Lone Star nationalism.

Comanche Feats of Horsemanship by George Catlin 1834. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Comanche Feats of Horsemanship by George Catlin 1834. Via Wikimedia Commons.
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More amazing finds at the Briscoe Center:

A Texas Ranger and the Letter of the Law

“The Die is Cast”: Early Texans Face the Comanches

Standard Oil writes a “history” of the old south

Stephen F. Austin visits a New Orleans bookstore

 

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First image courtesy of http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bhughes/AndrewJacksonSowell.html

Second and third images via Wikimedia Commons.


The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

A Texas Ranger and the Letter of the Law

This article is part of an occasional series of articles highlighting the extraordinary collection of historical documents in the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin.

By Nathan Jennings

John Salmon “Rip” Ford had a long military career as a soldier of the Texas Republic (1836-46). He was a volunteer in the Mexican War, a Texas Ranger on Texas’s borders, and commander of a Confederate Cavalry Regiment in the Civil War. Ford’s archive at UT-Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History, contains records of his activities as a physician and newspaper editor, as well, revealing an uncommon breadth of occupational skills. But the bulk of the archive is occupied by Ford’s voluminous memoirs, which span his life from 1815 to 1892.

John Salmon Ford, photographed while serving as a Colonel in the Confederate 2nd Texas Cavalry during the War Between the States. Original photograph circa 1860 to 1865. (Via Wikimedia commons
John Salmon Ford, photographed while serving as a Colonel in the Confederate 2nd Texas Cavalry during the War Between the States. Original photograph circa 1860 to 1865. (Via Wikimedia commons)

Those memoirs detail an informative event in the history of civil-military relations in nineteenth-century Texas. In 1858 Ford refused to follow the orders of a District Judge to arrest eighteen Anglo-Texans accused of murdering reservation Native Americans. This account of what became known as the Garland Affair, after the main culprit, Peter Garland, and Ford’s perspective on the event, provide insight into how Texas Rangers prior to the Civil War perceived themselves in relation to both civil law enforcement and military service.

Ford’s memoir is notable for the clear distinctions he makes between civil authority and military limitations. His argument and actions, as he described them, contradict the popular notion of the Texas Rangers serving as the premier law enforcement order during Texas’s early years. When Judge N. W. Battle ordered the Captain Ford to “forthwith arrest” Garland and his band of settlers in Central Texas for the murder of seven Native Americans, including women and children, the ranger flatly refused. Ford articulates the difference between a “sheriff” and a “military officer,” and further questions the order on “principal” to use his company to “attack a body of American citizens.” He finishes by emphatically stating that the judge had no authority “to command me, as the captain of a company of rangers, to arrest Garland and others.” He also worried that “a civil war might have been the consequence.”

This argument, made by the senior Texas Ranger in the state, revealed the purely military intent of the early ranger forces. Even though the guilt of Garland and the others was never in doubt, and the judge ordered a legal arrest, Ford nevertheless refused “to act except in strict subservience to law.” These Texas Rangers viewed themselves as irregular cavalry, not police forces. It is equally possible that the ranger felt disinclined to move against a fellow Anglo citizen on behalf of a native victim, or that he was hesitant to provoke a possible violent confrontation between his force and the settler militia. Regardless of motive, Ford’s intransigence also reveals that, despite the volatility of Texas’s rough frontier culture, the historical American aversion to military interference in civil matters had matriculated westward. Eventually the captain offered to subordinate his company under the prosecuting leadership of “the civil authorities” to “assist” in the arrest. Garland and his perpetrators, however, were never arrested.

These writings are now partially edited in Stephen Oates’s 1987 book, Rip Ford’s Texas.

More amazing finds at the Briscoe Center:

“The Die is Cast”: Early Texans Face the Comanches

Standard Oil writes a “history” of the old south

Stephen F. Austin visits a New Orleans bookstore


The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

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