Professor Benjamin Johnson

kind of go ahead and do that.

And it's really in this battle, also known as, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Antelope Hill, that the tactics that the U.S.

Army will later use in the 1870s in both the northern and southern plains come into fruition.

So once again, the Rangers, for better or for worse, are kind of setting the template for frontier warfare.

And I think one thing you have to take into account is that modern policing itself is just in its infancy, right?

So people are not used to seeing uniformed police officers all over the place.

We think of the United States as a country with a large standing military.

The United States is not a country with a large standing military.

Its political culture is vehemently opposed against that.

So time and time again, state authorities turn to the Rangers as one of the few forces that's actually able to project violence and charges them with various tasks that the people running the state find to be worthwhile.

It's there by the end of the 19th century.

But when that starts, I don't know.

I mean, I think it's got to be, you know, a knockoff of the Lone Star of Texas.

So my guess is that it goes way back to the beginning.

Sure.

So the massacre itself is at the end of January in 1918.

Essentially, the Rangers, with a bit of an escort from the U.S.

Cavalry in far west Texas, the nearest landmark today, if you want to call it that, would be Big Bend National Park, but it's hours of driving to get even there.

They come into the small village of Port Veneer right on the Rio Grande.

And they separate the men and boys from the rest of the villagers, and they line up 15 teenage boys and men against a bluff, and they shoot them.