Customer Reviews

The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900

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Book review: Straight-talking look at first Rangers

Web Posted: 03/07/2008 12:18 PM CST

Sterlin Holmesly
Special to the San Antonio Express-News

The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900
By Mike Cox

Forge, $25.95


Texas Ranger lore continues to fascinate, and Mike Cox makes a substantial contribution to it with this work on the force's first 80 years.

Stephen F. Austin's settlers were threatened by the cannibalistic Karankawa Indian tribe. A small group of armed riders was formed for protection. That was the beginning of the Rangers.

Over the next eight decades, the Rangers battled Comanches, Apaches, Mexican soldiers, bandits, rustlers, fence-cutters, bank robbers and outlaw mobs. They furnished their own horses and weapons and were poorly and erratically paid. Their numbers expanded and contracted according to the size of the threats to the frontier and the shaky state budget. Many served hoping to be paid by the next session of the Legislature.

The Rangers quickly developed a reputation for ferocity. They were often accused of being racist vigilantes, accurately in some cases. Still, they deserve credit for protecting the state's expanding frontier and eventually making Texas a safe place to live and work.

For Mike Cox, this book is obviously a work of love and fascination. For 15 years, the former journalist served as the spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which includes the modern Rangers.

It is a meticulously researched book, drawing on newspapers of the day (including the San Antonio Express), letters, orders and official reports cited in copious source notes. The writing is straight-ahead.

We meet such leaders as Capts. "Rip" Ford and Leander McNelly as well as privates who put their lives on the line and rode the country from San Saba to El Paso.

Cox details the capture of outlaw John Wesley Hardin and the shooting of Sam Bass and his gang, two highlights in Ranger history.

As the book ends, some Texans began to believe that the Rangers were a relic of the past and were no longer needed. As we know, that wasn't true.
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Sterlin Holmesly is a San Antonio author.

I came away from independent historian Mike Cox's new classic Ranger history with a new view of the fabled outfit, the samurai of early Texas. There's less of their invincibility here than vulnerability. Despite committing occasional injustices, they seem often to have been short of manpower, money and even modern weapons yet would charge into a fight they couldn't reasonably win and only after taking as well as inflicting casualties, withdraw. They usually were effective, but they usually paid a price.

One review I saw complained that Cox's tale is too bloody. It is graphic in describing the appalling things the Commanche and other maurauding Indians liked to do to settler families, but no more so I don't think, than some recent historical fiction. More so, however, than professional historian Walter Prescott Webb's 1935 classic that Cox has updated with skill and thorough documentation. Webb, for instance, says on page 313 only that Ranger D.W.H. Bailey was slain in July, 1874, trying to get water for a thirsting company under Indian siege. Cox tells us that Bailey's name was Dave and quotes a comrade that the Indians killed him in sight of the others by cutting off his nose, ears, hands, arms, etc. and eating his flesh until their leader dispatched him with a tomahawk. It helps you understand why the early Rangers tended to shoot Indians on sight. When the savages finally were subdued, there were still Anglo and Mexican murderers and border bandits to fight and the Rangers kept charging, and sometimes losing, but were always ready to charge again.

Cox is finishing a second volume to bring the Rangers up to the 21st century, something Webb didn't live to do, and it should make a dandy story, or rather series of stories, which is the way this first volume is put together. Rangers are mainly detectives, nowadays, but their mystique lives on in their holstered but cocked .45s. I'll look forward to No. 2 while recommending this one to anyone interested in Texas. As my Corsicana grandfather used to say, "It's a peach."

In this wonderfully written, well documented history of the early Texas Rangers, Mike Cox tells it the way it was, without attempting to romanticize, justify or condemn. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Texas frontier history, where lawlessness was the rule and racial hatred prevailed on all sides, the author puts into perspective the violence of the era and the attrocities committed by all the competing cultures during such turbulent times. With a second volume on the way, this is destined to be the definitive work on Texas Ranger history.

Ever since I was a kid I have had a fascination with the Texas Rangers (the law enforcers, not the baseball team). Mike Cox does a wonderful job recounting the story of their establishment by Stephen F. Austin, their role in the Texas republic, and later in the state of Texas. He details, with many well researched and fast paced stories, their role as Indian fighters, quasi-military frontier protectors, and shows how later they morphed into a law enforcement arm of the government who spent most of their time trying to keep the peace (particularly "out west") and corral the criminals who were making mischief in the developing state.

The book is thoroughly documented and does a splendid job of combining the details of politics and history with many tales of hair-raising shoot outs, battles and bravado. The second volume is slated to be released in August this year (which will cover 1900 to the present), and I am looking forward to reading it too. If you're interested in Texas history, this is a keeper.

I gave this book a rating of 10 out of 10.

This is a well written book that contains a wealth of factual and historical information about the 1st century of the Texas Rangers. It contains thorough references that allows additional study on a topic, should one choose. This book is historical in nature and does not contain fantasy stories of Ranger Lore and Legend. It does, in a number of places, show how the legend was born from actual events.

I would not recommend this book for a "First Time" Ranger reader. It is aimed for the student of the Rangers who is trying to expand his knowledge. A final note is the title talks of wearing the Cinco Peso which was not worn until the mid twentieth century, a time not covered by this book.

The Texas Rangers:Wearing the Cico Peso,is a wonderful history of an amazing institution. At least until 1900 the Rangers were entrusted with the protection of the citizens of Texas, a monumental task, in light of the prevelance of vigouous Indian tribes, many lawless whites who came to Texas to escape the law in more settled States, and the absence of laws to deal with the ownership of such vital assets as land and cattle. The Rangers performed their dangerous work excellently despite being grossly unmaned, underfunded and poorly paid. Mike Cox has managed to put together this factually monumental work and make it a gripping read as well.
Bob Fussell

Mike Cox delivers a fabulous history of the legendary Texas Rangers. This is the 1st book in a two book series that chronicles the Rangers history from 1821-1900. Well documented history of the frontier peacekeepers from the days of Stephen F. Austin's colinization to the beginning of the 20th century. Gives well researched accounts of the battles against Indians, rustlers, desperados, train robbers, and those truly evil wire cutters. I have read a couple of other books about the Texas Rangers and this book is far and away the best of the bunch.

Ordering was an easy matter and the order was filled and shipped in excellent time.

I will use this process more often for books and cd's.

The author was ill served by his editor. This book is choppy and without a narrative flow. I had to reread sentences and paragraphs, skip ahead, go back, and, like a TV soap opera, realized I could jump up a hundred pages and miss nothing. The author introduces so many characters, most of them unimportant to the narrative, that I couldn't keep straight who was who. If you're a Texas Ranger junkie I suppose this is a good book. If you wanted to learn about their history, evolution, and their impact on the West (and vice-versa) you would be better served with an abridged version of half the book's length.