The Rangers “had a shot for every finger on the hand,” a surviving Comanche recalled. The men fired a volley-and then, without pause, another and another. As the riders rushed across the prairie, the Rangers drew their pistols. As the Rangers used up their ammunition, more Comanches emerged-sixty or seventy all told.Įventually, the Rangers ran out of bullets, and the Comanches closed in. The Comanches rode back and forth, goading them into taking shots. Still, the guns were small and inaccurate, and so the Texans reached for their rifles first. Intellectually, the Rangers understood the value of these weapons: there’d be no need to reload until all five rounds had been expended. The guns used rotating cylinders by drawing back a hammer, a shooter turned the cylinder, putting one of five chambers in position to fire. But each man also wore a pair of Colt Paterson revolvers, new and mostly untested. That day, the Rangers carried rifles-their usual weapons. More were almost certainly hidden nearby. The Lords of the South Plains, as the Comanches were known, had ruled the American Southwest for a century by displacing other Native American nations, raiding colonial outposts, enslaving people, and extracting tribute, they enacted what the historian Pekka Hämäläinen, in his book “ The Comanche Empire,” called a story of role reversal, “in which Indians expand, dictate, and prosper, and European colonists resist, retreat, and struggle to survive.” About a week into Walker’s expedition, dozens of Comanche horsemen appeared behind the Rangers, armed and shouting taunts in Spanish. Samuel Walker and fifteen other Texas Rangers rode into the countryside to hunt for Comanches in June of 1844.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |