AS ARMY SCOUTS, RANGERS TERRORIZED MEXICAN RANCHOS

National Intelligencer
August 20, 1847
From: Camp at Buena Vista with Zachary Taylor's Army

"...While we have no expectations whatever of an encounter with a heavy army of the enemy, we have no doubt that parties – guerrilla parties – will keep us somewhat employed and claim at our hands a passing notice. Every train that passes from Camargo to Monterey, or from Monterey to Saltillo, is watched from their mountain passes by these cowardly depredators during its whole route, but they rarely dare an attack, and never without overwhelming odds.

 

But if a few Texas rangers – any 20 or 30 – are sent with a train, and placed (their proper post) in the advance, that train gets safely through. A lancer's fear of a ranger is most remarkable – remarkable even to ludicrousness, as we learn from the Mexicans about here.

I would not be surprised to see a dozen rangers, with their rough, uncouth, board-rimmed, but shapeless and slouch white wool hats, (peculiar to themselves,) then fronts pulled up and fastened full up and aside, to permit the seemingly reckless but really quick and observant eye in the sunburnt countenance beneath to have full scope, their red or fancy-colored shirts, their equally fanciful pantaloons, from the handsome Mexican buckskin of green, black, yellow or blue, to the common American domestic, their rifles (that most valuable of all their property) hanging from the sides of as good horses and as fast ones as the service can produce, and their huge bowie knives in their sheaths, in close company with rifles and pistols – I say, I would not be surprised to see a dozen such fellows charge down, and, after a crack of their rifles. take with ease a couple of hundred of the yellow skins, with their lances as long as the mast of a small sloop.

Indeed, all Mexicans, whether friendly or in arms, are dreadfully afraid of them. A few words will explain why and as it is very rarely that these things see the light, even in the immediate neighborhood of the army, or of a town, it may be well to give you some idea of what is a horrid fact. In their capacity of rangers, the Texans, of course, have an endless field of movement. If sent out from a city or a camp they are never expected to return before or until night, or the next day. If attached to a train, they are expected to show themselves occasionally, to signify that they are on alert.


Now, it has frequently happened that a stray ranger has been cut off while on one or the other kind of duty, by perhaps depending too much on his own prowess and strength in a gang of Mexicans with whom he may have fallen in, or he may have been caught asleep, or in some other way may have given them the advantage of him, and his life is lost. He is missed, search is made for him by his comrades; his body is perhaps found, perhaps not. The nearest Mexicans to the vicinity of the of his disappearance are required to answer for him; they will not or cannot.

The bowie knife is called upon, and deliberately every male Mexican in that rancho is speedily done for, guilty or not guilty. But these are not enough to make an offset for the life of a Texan. Another rancho receives the fearful visit, and again blood flows.

The number killed on some occasions in this way has been fear fully great. As has been gathered from what fell from the Texans, but no one but themselves knew about it, as a report of any such doings to the nearest commanding officer would only be followed by a tenfold retaliation on the nearest “customers.”

This is all horrid, it is true, but it has had the salutary tendency of causing all well-disposed and honest Mexicans to ferret out and inform on those who practice murder and robbery. Going about at some distance from camp is consequently much more safe."