Supply and demand of course.
Moore (the author) gives a cost of $200 for a Paterson Colt in the years being discussed here. About seven month's salary for a Ranger, assuming they were getting paid, who IIRC got around $30 a month.
Assuming Ranger pay was pretty low, say, equivalent to a $25,000 salary today, that would put the relative cost of Patersons way-high, like around $20,000 for us today.
Here's an invaluable account of the cost of firearms about this time from another forum...
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/256994/pid/985479/ A bit later but it gives a good idea of the variety being used in the area by Texans.
In 1843 Captain Philip St. George Cooke, in command of a dragoon detachment patrolling an area along the north bank of the Arkansas River, encountered a band of Texas "irregulars/freeboters" who were threatening a Santa Fe caravan. Anticipating trouble from the captain and his frontier-toughened troops, the Texans hastily concealed a number of their best weapons (including some
Colt repeating rifles), but Cooke nevertheless relieved them of various other guns, including muskets, shotguns, pistols, and rifles.
Among the rifles Cooke confiscated and later turned in at Fort Leavenworth were:
30 flint lock rifles, valued at eighteen dollars each, including the barrel of one which has no stock, which appears to have been lost in
transportation.
12 percussion rifles, valued at twenty two dollars and fifty cents, including the barrel of one which has no stock. . . .
3 half stock Middletown rifles, percussion lock, valued at eighteen dollars each.
1 full stock percussion lock [Middletown rifle], valued at eighteen dollars.
1 halfstock flint lock Middletown rifle, valued at eighteen dollars.
NOTE: The "Middletown rifles" were probably altered U.S. Model 1817 contract arms made by Simeon North
Totals: 31 flinters and 16 percussion So, by 1840 standards, a Paterson in Texas cost about as much as ten regular rifles. Maybe an important clue there as to why Colt went broke.
Interesting to note too that the cost of a hand-made muzzleloading rifle (they were all hand-made back then of course) was about equivalent to what it is now; pretty much most of a month's salary for a not-very-well-paid individual, or ballparking $1,500 to $2,000 for a plain example.
Also of interest to note is that Smithwick, a gunsmith and blacksmith, went rangering in 1839 precisely because "cash money being scarce in those days", he needed the money.
Ten years later, Colt revolvers would still be rare enough that RIP Ford's group of Rangers operating in South Texas didn't have any much of the time, using Mississippi rifles and, at one point, multiple old single-shot "horse pistols", as many as eight per man.
Frequenting 18th Century reenactor boards I have learned that the expected life of a conventional Frontier longarm was about twelve years. We can be pretty certain that the first round of Colt Patersons didn't even come close to that. After Colt retooled again, his Colt Walkers were pretty short-lived too, which is part of the reason originals are so scarce and valuable today.
Yet, by the end of the 1850's, Frederick Law Olmstead in his classic travelogue "A Journey Through Texas" would report that virtually every Texas male carried a Colt's revolver.
Prob'ly a major study here doable re: advances in manufacturing and the quality of steel in the 1850's. I have read that the 1851 Navy, produced in England as well as here, revolutionized the manufacturing industry, Colt being the Henry Ford of his day.
Next question is, how did the guys going out into the boonies into what was then exceedingly dangerous country compare to just regular Texans? Browsing around I came up with a population of 100,000 in Texas in 1840. I'm gonna float a WAG that 40,000 of these were slaves, leaving about 60,000 White folks.
I'm also gonna guess that the proportion of combat-age males was higher than it is in most normal populations. Ordinarily you would estimate a 5 to 1 ratio, as in 12,000 combat age males available out of those 60,000 Texas Whites in 1840. I'm gonna ballpark 24,000 combat age White males in Texas in 1840.
If you can come up with as many as 3,000 of those under arms in organized ranging companies or Republic of Texas military units at any given point in 1840 you're doing good. About 12%, one in eight, of the available pool of White men.
So, even as early as 1840, seems like the guys going out against Comanches weren't your average people and that those who went were drawn from among the minor percentage of the population who were attracted to such endeavors.
That, and cost. Rangering can't have been cheap for the average Joe. A rifle and a brace of pistols would cost about the equivalent of about $5,000 today, and perhaps an equivalent cost in horses and supplies, with the propects of reimbursement by a broke Republic being iffy at best.
So, in the space of just about a month a young man who lost his horses and/or lost/broke his guns could be effectively ruined financially, while running a considerable risk of a lonely and brutal death somewhere way out there in the boonies. I dont know if rangering impressed the young women of that era, if not, there'd be scant motivation to go, except possibly for revenge if one had lost kin.
Not hard to understand why relatively few young men got involved with these endeavors. Perhaps even fewer older men, having a wife and family to worry about, could afford to.
Birdwatcher
