From the Shelves of the Paco Library

It’s Frontier Day here at the Paco Library, and today’s pick is Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, by one of our most imminent historians of the old west, Robert Utley (Mr. Utley has also completed the second volume in his history of the Rangers, Lone Star Lawmen, which I have not yet acquired).

The author takes us back to the origins of the Texas Ranger tradition, in the years following the struggle for independence from Mexico. The term “rangers” is used broadly to refer to the various groups of men whose principal duties originally involved fighting Mexicans and Indians. Sometimes they were paid soldiers of the state, sometimes volunteers who responded to sudden emergencies, but up until the 1870’s they generally served the military function of patrolling the border with Mexico and the thinly-settled regions of central and western Texas (it was not until the last quarter or so of the 19th century that they became chiefly involved in law enforcement).

All the legendary names of the Rangers are here: John Coffee Hays, Samuel Walker, Rip Ford, Ben McCulloch, John Hughes and others of perhaps lesser renown, but of great importance in the development of the tradition. Mr. Utley provides a comprehensive, factual history of the Texas Rangers that is objective and even-handed; he does not whitewash the failures, excesses and crimes of various individual Rangers, but succeeds, in my view, in placing everything in the proper context of a violent place and time.

And the Texas of which Mr. Utley writes was, indeed, the wild west at its wildest: simmering hatreds between Mexicans and Anglos, savage raids by Comanches and Kiowas, rampant cattle theft, violent feuds, the field of operations for notorious outlaws such as Sam Bass and John Wesley Hardin, and, in the wake of the Civil War, clashes between Radical Republicans and die-hard Confederates. Frequently underfunded and undermanned, occasionally caught up in the machinations of powerful state politicians, and frustrated by the lack of cooperation afforded by county sheriffs and other local law enforcement personnel, the Rangers in their first hundred years nevertheless established an enviable record, accomplishing a great deal with limited resources. Mr. Utley provides a fine, well-researched history, and has included many photographs, illustrations and maps that assist us in our understanding of the men and places described in the narrative.

Other books by Mr. Utley that you may find interesting are Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1890, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (an account of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico), and The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull.