Hey Doc, what I meant was, the Rangers were merely following standard common-sense modes of travel for most EVERYONE crossing hostile country; travelling fast, wary and light, actually not a whole lot different from the common practice of illegals trying to cross our wild country today.
I'm not going to argue contrariwise. We know that small-unit irregular actions had been incorporated into North American military forces as early as the 1740's, with Rogers' Rangers being the most famous example (although the French had adopted the Indians' tactics a century before, and the eastern Indians had been fighting that way for centuries or longer!). So the adoption of such tactics by Jack Hays and his Texas rangers in the 1840's was not really innovative in the larger scheme.
One thing I'm ready to be disproved on here is the legendary and oft-quoted role of the Colt's revolver in Ranger hands in "changing the balance of power on the Plains".
Birdwatcher
Well, I'm not sure we can prove or disprove in retrospect the supremacy of the role of Colt's revolver in the conquest of Comancheria, but it did unquestionably help change the balance of tactical advantage. My library is still mostly packed in cardboard boxes from my move so I can't quote direct passages (most of my books are secondary sources and histories anyway), but more than a few authors have commented on the concept that the revolving pistol gave white men a weapon that allowed them to finally fight the Comanches on a more equal footing.
The Comanches were wizards with their short bows, as you've said. It seems that in order to be considered competent with a bow and therefore suitably skilled for war, a Comanche boy had to be able to hit a post while galloping past it at full gallop, shooting from under his horse's neck. The fact that a warrior could fire a dozen arrows in half a minute with that kind of accuracy put whites, armed with muzzle-loading single-shot pistols and rifles only, at a huge disadvantage unless they possessed superior numbers and fought on foot. Reloading muzzleloaders on horseback was highly problematic (but not impossible... I have a reproduction of a Frederic Remington painting of a buffalo hunter reloading his rifle at full gallop with a ball held in his mouth, a practice Remington observed many times). As such, prior to the advent of the revolving pistol, whites were at a distinct disadvantage in terms of weaponry.
Samuel Walker placed his order for Colt's revolvers in 1842 or 1843. There is some speculation as to how they were initially employed, but it seems Hays and Walker and their Rangers spent a lot of time training with the weapons before they were ever employed in combat. It seems they realized the revolvers were not very accurate, but were devastatingly effective at close range. Each Ranger carried two revolvers with two spare pre-loaded cylinders, giving him 10 readily available shots, more than enough for most close engagements, and another 20 rounds at his disposal if he chose to reload and re-engage the enemy. The strengths and limitations of the revolving pistols no doubt dictated the tactics Hays developed for battle. The Rangers would attempt to sneak in as close as they could to their Comanche enemies as they could, then they would charge into them, pistols drawn, and once inside effective range, twenty yards or less, they would open fire. A troop of 20 Rangers had 200 rounds of .44 caliber ball ready at hand, which could be discharged very rapidly. The effect on their enemies was devastating.
And yes, Gus's attack on the Kiowa renegades in
Lonesome Dove was quite illustrative of that sort of tactic.
Changing cylinders wasn't easy or quick, therefore unlikely to have been undertaken in the heat of battle. I have some experience with this, having used black powder revolvers exclusively in my Cowboy Action shooting career over the past 12 years or so, and most of that with cap and ball revolvers. Even if you have pre-loaded cylinders at hand, it takes a minimum of two to three minutes to break the pistol down, remove the spent cylinder, mount the fresh cylinder, reassemble the revolver, and cap the nipples. If a Ranger ran out of ammo during a melee, he would have no choice but to holster his handguns and draw his sword.
Some people disparage the accuracy of the cap and ball revolver. Such people are simply ignorant of the capabilities of the weapon. I don't have a Walker Colt, but I do have a number of big pistols: a Colt 3rd Dragoon, a pair of 1860 Army revolvers and a pair of 1858 Remington revolvers (Italian replicas, of course, not originals) and I've trained with these pistols for years. I have found that because of their heavy weight and long barrels they can be fired very rapidly and very accurately, even while moving. The Walker revolver, being even heavier, would be a stable and very accurate weapon with which to engage enemies at close range from horseback. Furthermore, the flash, smoke, and roar of these big revolvers is impressive, to say the least, even when it's only a single Cowboy Action shooter taking his turn at the firing line; a troop of Rangers, all discharging their hand-cannons at once, would be terrifying to face.
The Colt revolving pistol may well have been the most important technical innovation in the Rangers' success against the Comanches, but I think it was the tactics Jack Hays developed for implementation of the revolver that was the real key to victory. He and his Rangers so impressed the Army in the Mexican War in 1848 that it became the model for light cavalry tactics in the Civil War, particularly among the Confederate guerillas. I have a photograph of one of Quantrill's raiders in which he displays no less than four Remington revolvers on his person. Confederate horse soldiers were known to carry as many as eight loaded revolvers on horseback. The records show that this was a highly effective fighting technique.
