Don Wildman

And they're first organized by Austin, but then led by a guy named Moses Morrison, who their essential job is to patrol the roads and the lands in general and essentially protect these Anglo settlers.

Right.

Yeah, they're the state police, it sounds like, before there's a state.

By 1830s, their pay was set to $1.25 a day, but they had to provide their own horses and their supplies.

I got a quote here from a guy named John Capperton.

He wrote something called The Sketch of Colonel John C. Hayes, Texas Ranger.

I'll read it.

Each ranger was armed with a rifle, a pistol, and a knife, with a Mexican blanket tied behind his saddle and a small wallet in which he carried salt and ammunition, and perhaps a little panola or parched corn, spiced and sweetened, a great allayer of thirst.

And, of course, tobacco.

He was equipped for a month.

This little body of men, unencumbered by baggage, wagons, or pack trains, moved as lightly over the prairie as the Indians."

I mean, this is really the picture of this lonely rider out on the plains, isn't it?

Let's talk about how they get that reputation as we go.

These are not polished lawmen.

They are organized, but they're riding out from sort of separate headquarters, I suppose.

Kind of half farmers, half fighters patrolling a wilderness where the government barely existed.

With the outbreak of the Texas Revolution, 1836, the provisional government officially sanctioned the first ranger force to patrol the frontier.

How large was this force?

Yeah.

And within a few years, it grows.