Ep. 03: The First Gunfighters
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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How did Texas Rangers use Colt revolvers against the Comanches?
On June 9, 1844, a squad of 15 Texas Rangers was patrolling the hill country northwest of San Antonio looking for Comanche Raiders. This was during the years when Texas was still an independent country, eight years after the Alamo, still a year before it would enter the Union. That day, the squad's leader, a sharp ranger captain named Jack Hayes, had armed his men with a new weapon, something no one had used against the deadly Comanches and their allies. A private climbed a tree to study the horizon and suddenly shouted, Jerusalem Captain! Yonder come a thousand Indians. It was more like a hundred, but still, Hayes found himself outnumbered, something like seven to one. When the Comanches withdrew into a hilltop thicket and began heckling them, Hayes gathered his men, but rather than retreat or call for reinforcements, he announced they were going to charge.
15 Rangers, 100 Comanche, charged. And they did. As the horses barreled up toward the Comanche, the Rangers did as they always had, firing with their single-shot muskets. But once they resheathed their long guns, they didn't take out their swords as they often did, but instead took out this new fangled weapon, a massive five-shot Colt revolver. As the Rangers plunged into the Comanches, a desperate hand-to-hand fight ensued, unlike anything in history to that point. Its impact would echo down through the years of the gunfighter era. This is Gunfighters, brought to you by Takovas, good boats for good times.
Hey y'all, it's Brian, and thanks for dropping by. I'll tell you more about this fight in a minute, but first I want to say something about Jack Hayes and his men. They were Texans like me. I live in Austin these days. And as you'll hear, Texans played a big part in the story of the gunfighter era. It wasn't just that Texans were the first to popularize the new revolvers that helped make the Old West so wild, or their hallowed proficiency with these and other weapons. It was the visceral kind of personal violence they spawned, especially in the years after the Civil War, that did more to set the stage for the gunfighter era than just about anything else. Without Texas and these swaggering Texans, I'm not sure we're even here talking.
Seriously. Which shouldn't be all that surprising. Texas was among the largest gateways for immigrants moving west, and for years was renowned as pretty much the most violent place in North America. Violence and gunplay were just in the Texans DNA. I mean it was a dangerous place, and had been from the beginning. Born of a bloody revolution against Mexico. The kind thing to say here is that Texans kind of needed to be violent. After the Mexican Revolution, they stayed at war pretty much for years against Mexican raiders, sure, but incessantly against the depredations of a Comanche nation that still occupied half of Texas on a diagonal line into the 1870s. Comanches raided as far as the Gulf Coast in those years.
Why did Texas gunfighters shape violence across the Old West?
So yeah, Texans knew their guns because they had to. But it wasn't until I started combing through the details of individual gunfights across the old frontier that I began to appreciate the extent of their influence. Because no matter where you look, not just in Texas, but in Arizona, in Montana, in Kansas, I mean everywhere, you find a particular kind of person keeps turning up in major, notable gunfights. A Texan. I noticed it right away. The great Texas historian Bill O'Neill has too. He's actually done a statistical analysis.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:43
2
How did Texas Rangers use Colt revolvers against the Comanches?
0:43–3:58
3
Why did Texas gunfighters shape violence across the Old West?
3:58–6:23
4
How did Samuel Colt and Sam Walker develop the first six-shooter?
6:23–11:11
5
Why did California become the first stage of the Old West gunfighter era?
11:11–15:10
6
Who were the early California Gold Rush gunfighters and outlaws?
15:10–18:09
7
Who was Joaquin Murrieta, California’s notorious Gold Rush outlaw?
18:09–23:14
8
How did Mark Twain describe Nevada’s early gunfighter culture?
23:14–33:22
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Gunfighters
Ep. 02: Wait, Gunfighters Came From Where?
Ep. 01: When Gunfighters Stalked the Old West
Introducing: Gunfighters, with Bryan Burrough
Ep. 42: Favorite Films About the West | The American West
Ep. 41: Favorite Books About the West | The American West
Ep. 40: Becoming Natives of Place in the American West | The American West