The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900
Formerly the stuff of dime-novel legend, Texas Rangers have since fallen into disrepute as vigilantes who were primarily occupied with murdering Native Americans and hunting escaped slaves. Texas journalist Cox retains much of the old admiration however, and has produced a thick compendium of gunfights, pursuits and general skullduggery that contains everything anyone would want to know about the Rangers, the "mounted irregulars operating with government authority to meet an exigency." That exigency was the Native American presence in the rich Mexican territory of Texas. Early local governments quickly recruited young men to secure the land for American colonists. The early Rangers had to provide their own horses and arms, but there was no shortage of pugnacious adventurers. There was always a shortage of money, however, and governments rarely financed more than a year of service. Only in 1874 did the state government set up a permanent force. Cox mines contemporary newspapers, letters and diaries to cobble together a journalistic account that-except for the occasional detour into politics (invariably about raising money for the Rangers)-consists overwhelmingly of sketches and human interest stories. Old West buffs will enjoy the steady stream of anecdotes, but readers looking for a thoughtful or critical history of law enforcement along the Texas frontier will be left unsatisfied.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.