Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875–1910 (review)

Andrew Graybill’s history of the origins of the Texas Rangers and the North West Mounted Police demonstrates the value of a comparative approach. Formed at a similar moment in the history of both Texas and the Canadian North-West, the Mounties and the Rangers also shared a similar ecology, a point Graybill emphasizes in repeated references to the ‘two ends of the Great Plains.’ The demography of the two regions was similar, featuring the mixing of settlers and Aboriginals in competition for limited resources. Finally, the economic commonality emphasizes the incorporation of two frontiers into the expanding realm of international capitalism. As such, the Mounties and the Rangers shared a similar mission in their role as the physical arm of the state in Ottawa and Austin.

Do the many common elements of these two histories make the comparison of the Rangers and the Mounties a useful one? Graybill suggests that such a methodology challenges the notions of historical exceptionalism that characterize interpretations of the two police forces. The analytical overview proposed by Graybill is impressive for its ability to draw together both the specific elements that warrant a comparison as well as the wide-ranging national and international forces at play on the Great Plains. It is this approach that brings the region into focus and successfully links the Mounties and the Rangers. And yet, although the commonalities between the two forces are instructive, it is Graybill’s exploration of the divergences that are often the most striking elements of the book.

The first task of each police force was to remove or confine Indigenous populations. The contrast between the methods employed by the Rangers and the Mounties was sometimes drastic. The Rangers favoured intimidation, torture, and murder in their efforts to pacify and remove Indigenous people, while the Mounties usually employed less violent methods. This gives some credence to the well-worn characterization of two frontiers as a contrast between mild and wild. However, Graybill also emphasizes the similar coercive elements used by each force in responding to Indigenous peoples. While the Rangers carried out the directive from Austin to rid Texas of neighbouring Indigenous peoples, the Mounties presided over complex assimilationist policies created by the Department of Indian Affairs.

Graybill describes a similar process involving both constabularies and the dispossession of mixed-blood peoples in the Canadian North-West and Texas. Both Mexicans and Metis practised methods of settlement and resource sharing that contradicted the demands of private property and Anglo settlement. While the Mounties played a more detached role in the absorption of the Metis into North-West society, the Rangers’ policing of Mexican communities in South Texas closely resembled their violent interactions with Indigenous peoples. Exploring the motivation behind these divergent strategies, Graybill has advanced a crucial point. The Mounties, he argues, operated from a position of class-based attitudes towards Aboriginal people, which resulted in a paternalist protectionism over Aboriginal people. While this appears to de-emphasize the role of race in the Canadian North-West, the comparison between class and race motivations illustrates the racial tensions that characterized the relationships between Texas Rangers and Mexican people.

The final two chapters turn to the role of the Rangers and Mounties in ushering capitalist development onto the Great Plains. This happened first through the protection of large-scale ranching from disgruntled and dispossessed Aboriginal people, homesteaders, and small-scale ranch operations. The willingness of both Ottawa and Austin to cede their peripheries to internationally financed ranching syndicates required a police presence if profit was to be maximized. In a second example, the role of the two police forces in early industrial disputes points to a similar trend in the consolidation of capital over the Great Plains. The Texas Rangers played a key role in protecting the interests of mining capital at the end of the nineteenth century by delaying and preventing unionization and effective organization of dissidents. The...