A History of the Texas Rangers: Background information when reading The Bullet Swallower

A History of the Texas Rangers

This article relates to The Bullet Swallower

In Elizabeth Gonzalez James's novel The Bullet Swallower, a group of Texas Rangers pursue the protagonist, Antonio Sonoro, with maniacal zeal. The most dangerous member of the posse tortures and murders innocent civilians as a warning to Sonoro, crossing the Rio Grande and attacking Mexican citizens with impunity. Set in the mid-1890s, the novel captures the brutality and extra-legal tactics often employed by the Texas Rangers, particularly in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Founded in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin, the Texas Rangers — originally just a group of 10 men — spent their first decades fighting Native American tribes and Mexicans in the territory of Texas as white settlers arrived in greater numbers. They were officially established in 1835, just a year before Texas declared its independence from Mexico. When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, the Rangers acted as a kind of guerilla force, earning a fearsome reputation for violence, according to Doug Swanson's Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.

Attacking Native Americans and Mexicans and bounty hunting those who escaped slavery constituted much of the Rangers' activities in the mid-19^th century, despite later romanticized, whitewashed depictions of the Rangers in pop culture and Hollywood. Those depictions were driven in part by their participation in high-profile cases, such as foiling assassination attempts against President William Howard Taft and President Porfirio Diaz of Mexico in 1909. They were also responsible for killing the infamous Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.

Far less publicized, however, were Ranger atrocities such as the Porvenir massacre in 1918, where Rangers shot and killed more than a dozen innocent Mexican men and boys in the small village of Porvenir as revenge for a nearby raid, despite no evidence linking Porvenir residents to the earlier violence. The Rangers' captain at the time resigned over the incident, but no Rangers were punished or otherwise held accountable.

The Texas Rangers were briefly disbanded during the Great Depression, a mix of cost-cutting and political vendetta after they supported the losing side in a state election. But in 1935, they were reconstituted as part of the Texas Highway Patrol, with their new organization largely staying the same to the present day.

From TV shows like The Lone Ranger and Walker, Texas Ranger to countless Hollywood Westerns, the Texas Rangers were sanitized to appear as a righteous, brave citizen militia, and their violence against non-white populations was largely ignored for many years. As historians and novelists like Gonzales James bring more information to light, that narrative is finally under increasing scrutiny.

Terry's Texas Ranger Monument in front of Texas State Capitol, courtesy of Texas State Preservation Board

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This article relates to The Bullet Swallower. It first ran in the March 6, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.