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5. Los Diablos Tejanos!
- University of North Texas Press
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101 ★ 5 ★ Los Diablos Tejanos! Stephen B. Oates I n the sweltering twilight of May 22, 1846, a company of sunburned , grim-faced Texas Rangers, the advance unit of a newly organized Texas regiment, rode into Fort Brown, the farthest southern outpost of Anglo-American civilization in Texas and combat headquarters of General Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor, commander of the Army of the Rio Grande. The war with Mexico over the disputed Texas boundary and ultimate control of the American Southwest had begun less than a month before, but Taylor’s troops had already won two decisive victories over a demoralized Mexican army and sent it in headlong retreat for Monterrey , some one hundred fifty miles southwest of Fort Brown. The possibilities of crushing this army and ending the war in northern Mexico were bright indeed, and Taylor was already moving his veterans across the placid waters of the Rio Grande when the Texans, who had seen no action yet, halted on the weed-infested parade grounds and reported to the general. Taylor promptly sent them along to scout the hostile lands ahead of his advancing columns. As the Rangers splashed across the river into a Mexican sunset, they broke into their celebrated “Texas Yell.” At last—at long last—they could shoot Mexicans legitimately and shoot to kill. It was not long before the rest of the Texas regiment, under the overall command of a convivial, boy-faced colonel named John C. 102 ★ Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Nineteenth Century “Jack” Hays, joined this advanced company near Matamoros. Taylor no doubt expected a great deal from Hays’s outfit. The Rangers were veteran Indian fighters, known for their extraordinary courage and endurance. As individual fighters they were virtually incomparable: almost no one could fire a six-shooter with more accuracy; almost no one could move quicker and use a bowie knife with more skill in close-quarter combat. But as soldiers who had to respect rank and order, these Rangers were beyond hope; they soon proved themselves so wild and tempestuous in camp, so uncontrollable in battle, that even Taylor, as spirited and independent as any man, came to regard them as barbarians, as “licentious vandals.” For no sooner had they arrived in Mexico than they began to commit distasteful acts of violence: they raided villages and pillaged farms. They hanged unarmed Mexican civilians. On one occasion Taylor lost his temper altogether and threatened to jail the lot of them. The occasion was a Fourth of July celebration near Matamoros in which the Texans stole two horse-buckets of whiskey to wash down a meal of Mexican pigs and chickens which they had killed “accidentally” while firing salutes to honor the day. What could Taylor do with such men? He could not put all seven hundred of them in the Roundhouse no matter how much he might like to because the Rangers would be indispensable as scouts once the entire army was underway. As one of their own put it, “the Rangers were not only the eyes and ears of General Taylor’s army, but its right and left arms as well.” Nevertheless, the general had to do something, for on August 2 he received a report that the Rangers were at it again. While encamped at Matamoros they attended theaters, jingling spurs on their boots, rifles in their hands, Colt revolvers in their holsters, and pistols and bowie knives tucked in their belts. They not only frightened the citizenry but also picked fights with regulars in the United States Army and shot down signs in the middle of town. What, Taylor kept asking, made these men do such things? Was it simply inherent in their nature? Were they criminals? Were they [44.213.65.97] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:47 GMT) Los Diablos Tejanos! ★ 103 mad? Or had it something to do with that wild frontier beyond the Rio Grande whence they came, that land whose revolution some ten years before had finally started this war which Taylor was committed to win? For Texas in 1846 was indeed a hard, cruel frontier, whose soil was thin and dry, whose commerce was slight, whose Indians were most belligerent and, if Tonkawas, were man-eaters— a land where pioneers, if they lived at all, lived by their own cunning and granite will. The Rangers themselves came from the fringe areas of frontier Texas, from the thickly wooded and red-hilled districts in the east, from the...