Rangers, Mounties, and the Subjugation of Indigenous Peoples, 1870 .. 1885

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Spring 2004 Rangers, Mounties, And The Subjugation Of Indigenous Peoples, 1870 .. 1885 Andrew R. Graybill University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Graybill, Andrew R., "Rangers, Mounties, And The Subjugation Of Indigenous Peoples, 1870 .. 1885" (2004). Great Plains Quarterly. 2450. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2450 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. RANGERS, MOUNTIES, AND THE SUBJUGATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, 1870 .. 1885 ANDREW R. GRAYBILL During the 1840s and 1850s, more than The Indians' predicament was not theirs 300,000 traders and overland emigrants fol alone, however, as Native efforts at self-pres lowed the Platte and Arkansas rivers west ervation posed a significant threat to Euro ward across the Central Plains, the winter American plans for the frontier. To that end, habitat of the bison. The rapid environmental government officials on the peripheries of the degradation of this area had the ·effect of driv Great Plains developed a remarkably similar ing the bison to the extreme Northern and strategy: the use of mounted constabularies to Southern Plains, where white hidehunters pacify indigenous peoples. Indeed, the North slaughtered the animals.! By the mid-1870s West Mounted Police were created and the indigenous peoples at both ends of the grass Texas Rangers renewed and reorganized in the lands, in places such as the Texas Panhandle early 1870s specifically to address the pressing and the upper Missouri River valley, fiercely "native question" confronting Texas and west defended the dwindling herds in an attempt ern Canada, among the few places where bi to avoid starvation.2 son still roamed after 1870. Of course, 'authorities in Austin and Ottawa relied on other armed forces to wrest control of their hinterlands away from indigenous peoples KEY WORDS: Blackfoot, Canada, Comanche, Cree, most notably the US Army and the Canadian Kiowa, N orth-West Mounted Police, Texas Rangers militia-but no two groups rendered more ef fective service in this regard than the Rangers Andrew R. Graybill, a visiting assistant professor of and the Mounted Police.3 history at the University of Nebraska~Lincoln, is Few scholars have situated the efforts of completing a book manuscript on the Texas Rangers these constabularies within the context of the and the Canadian Mounties. For their assistance with rapidly changing conditions for Indians on the this article, he thanks Fran Kaye and Pete Maslowski. Great Plains after 1865. Studies of the Rang ers tend to regard their post-Civil War anti [GPQ 24 (Spring 2004): 83-1001 Indian vigilance as merely the continuation 83 84 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2004 of an inevitable conflict between incompat note than did Texas residents, noting that the ible cultures, while Canadian historians have Comanche responsible for the raids were "fast overlooked the more coercive dimensions of passing away," and that unless they soon chose the Mounties' duties, especially in the 1870s.4 a more civilized path, "it is not likely they will An examination of the two forces, however, last much beyond the present generation."9 reveals that both Austin and Ottawa called Tatum's letter is particularly useful in evok on their rural police to manage indigenous ing the climate along the state's northern and populations facing societal collapse, and that western frontiers, for it suggests that white the constabularies responded in similar fash settlers were not the only residents of the ion: by controlling or denying the Natives' Southern Plains experiencing great hardships access to the bison. following the Civil War. Like many of the settlers, though, Tatum seems not to have rec Though fought almost entirely to the east of ognized the powerful correlative relationship Texas, the Civil War was nevertheless costly between the sufferings of both Anglos and for the state, as it lost some of its leading ante Indians at this time. White insecurities bellum political figures. 5 More disturbing, per stemmed directly from the Natives' own di haps, was the recession of the frontier, a lemmas and shaped Austin's strategies to se byproduct of the manpower needs of the Con cure the Texas frontier. federacy, which had left Texas unable to de The Comanche who raided in northern fend itself from Indian attacks, long a feature Texas during the nineteenth century were of Anglo-Native relations in the state. Given descendants of the group's eastern branch, the instability of the Civil War era in Texas, which had migrated to Texas from present the violence of this period was among the worst day Colorado in the mid-eighteenth century. that the state's population had yet endured, The Kotsoteka-or "buffalo eaters"-hunted with one historian estimating that over 400 elk, black bear, deer, and antelope, but as their residents were killed, wounded, or taken cap name suggests, their principal means of sub tive between 1862 and 1865 alone.6 sistence was the bison. 1O By the early 1800s With the end of the war, however, Austin the Kotsoteka were in full control of the bi turned its attention once again to the nagging son-hunting grounds below the Canadian problem of Native depredations, which, if any River, and Comanche bands ranged as far into thing, seemed to be growing worse after 1865. Texas as the Hill Country, located in the cen In north Texas, settlers complained frequently tral part of the state.ll of Kiowa and Comanche raids emanating from Hunting alongside the Comanche were the the Indian Territory just across the Red River.7 Kiowa, who-despite cultural and linguistic It would be difficult to overstate the anxiety differences-had forged an extremely close caused in Austin by such missives, as state alliance with the Comanche during the late officials worried that the violence, if un eighteenth century. 12 Like the Comanche, the checked, would halt migration to west Texas, Kiowa inhabited the grasslands south of the a concern voiced explicitly by a number of Arkansas River, developing a cultural and eco whites.s nomic reliance on the region's bison, whose Texans were not alone in their dire assess numbers-estimated by Dan Flores at approxi ments of the circumstances along the frontier, mately eight million-must have seemed in as several federal officials dispatched to the exhaustible to the Indians during the first half region commented on the adverse effects of of the nineteenth century.13 Such was not the Native violence on white settlers. One such case, however. observer was Lawrie Tatum, the Indian agent By the early 1860s a combination of human at Fort Sill in the Indian Territory. Tatum, and ecological factors had reduced the number however, sounded a slightly more optimistic of bison. 14 Compounding matters for the Indi- RANGERS, MOUNTIES, AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 85 FIG. 1. This bison cow and her calves-photographed in the 1890s in Canada's Banff National Park-were among the few remaining buffalo on the Great Plains in the late nineteenth century, as the vast majority had been killed off by changing ecological conditions and especially human predation. Courtesy of Glenbow Archives, NC-27 -11. ans was the fact that white settlement and ceedings on the Little Arkansas River. In re expansion into the Central Plains had pushed sponse to Commissioner ]. B. Sanborn's pro the dwindling herds into Texas, which had posal that the Comanche and Kiowa cede lands expelled the Comanche from their reserva north of the Canadian River and accept settle tion on the Brazos River in 1859. 15 Caught ment on a reservation in the Indian Territory, between a scarcity of game and the brutal tac Eagle Drinking replied: "I am fond of the land tics employed by the US Army in defending I was born on. The white man has land enough. railroads and Euro-American settlers, the I don't want to divide again."17 Nevertheless, Kiowa and Comanche-with estimated popu in exchange for a supposedly permanent hunt lations in the late 1860s of 2,000 and 4,000, ing ground in far northwestern Texas, Eagle respectively-met several times with federal Drinking, among others, signed the treaty on representatives, hoping to establish peace and October 18, 1865. to chart a course for Native survival. 16 As the Comanche and Kiowa were to dis Treaty negotiations also provided Indian cover, however, peace negotiations often prom leaders a chance to vent their frustrations with ised more than they delivered. For instance, US policy, as captured in a speech by Eagle while the bands who signed the 1867 Treaty Drinking, a Comanche chief, at the 1865 pro- of Medicine Lodge Creek believed that the 86 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2004 agreement had guaranteed them exclusive ac necessary to resuscitate the Rangers. 21 There cess to the hunting grounds below the Arkan are two answers. In the first place, the Rangers sas River, the treaty never expressly forbade were revered within Texas as Indian fighters Euro-Americans from entering the area. Thus, par excellence, a reputation that dated back the white hidehunters who poured into the to the brutal campaigns led by Capt. John Texas Panhandle after 1870 drove to the brink Coffee Hays against the Comanche in the of extinction the very herds of bison on which 18408. 22 Faced now with a level of Indian vio the Indians had pinned their own hopes of lence not seen since those days, Texans looked self-preservarion.18 to the Rangers once more to deliver them from Frustrated by the disappearance of the bi "the many tribes of savages" along the fron son and exasperated by the perceived duplic tier, a job for which they seemed uniquely ity of federal officials, as many as two-thirds of qualified.

Load more