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Thanks K for that info; Texas cattle drives from the 1720's, so many untold stories implied in all of that, and an interesting aside that the livestock trading Texano family Deaf Smith married into had roots going back to Los Adaes.

Anyhoo... moving the narrative along.... two 1860's quotes from George Armstrong Custer, during that war....
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_armstrong_custer.html


I was looking for a quote of his I recall reading to the effect of the joys of running down fleeing Confederate cavalrymen and shooting them out of the saddle, but could not find it.

The point being that George Armstrong Custer and John Coffee Hays likely would have understood each other perfectly. I have already noted how small a minority of the Texian population gravitated towards rangering as an avocation as opposed to an occasional necessity.

In the case of Jack Hays we have a youth immediately entering the service upon arrival while still a teenager and then keeping company by choice with the most violent of men, Indian, Mexican and White, until his abrupt and permanent departure from Texas twelve years later.

Some men it seems love mortal combat. By the time of his famously audacious revolver victories against much larger groups of Comanches, Hays had already been taking to the field on and off for seven years of his life.

Yet no taint of outlawry during this violent period popularly attaches to him: By Texian lights at least, one supposes that all the men Hays killed (and there was probably many) "needed killing".

Certainly Hays seems to have successfully walked a fine line, commanding the respect and obedience of the likes of the violent psychopath and future infamous scalphunter John Glanton, while at the same time earning the grateful adulation of the law-abdiding mainstream.

The closest thing to a taint of savagery we have attached to Hays comes from the Mexican War, where recent scholarship has revealed that Hays and his men cut a bloody swathe through the civilian population in actions that would today be termed "atrocities". Worth noting too that his second-in-command at the beginning of this period was the same notoriously bloody-handed Glanton.

How many of Hays earlier kills would be considered crimes by modern standards is hard to figure. Certainly Texas Hispanic tradition paints a very different picture of the "Rinches" than the Ranger of legend, but IIRC most of that infamy comes from post Civil War actions along the Border at a time when Hays had been gone for decades.

Continuing along author Stephen Moore's narrative ("Savage Frontier") Hays remained in service out of San Antonio after the departure and untimely death of Deaf Smith in 1837 and, at nineteen, displayed such an aptitude for the work that he was prmoted to sergeant, aggressively leading his own patrols, presumably seeking combat.

Although the [Texian] Army was mustered out [beginning in May of 1837] several companies of cavalry remained in service under Colonel Karnes on the southwestern frontier. Captain Dawson's cavalry spy company remained on duty in the San Antonio area. Jack Hays was promoted to sergeant, and as such he often commanded a patrol party of several men who ranged out distances of up to fifty miles from their base camp.

How all this sudden rangering and patrolling on the part of the but-recently-arrived Texian population complemented/coexisted with the considerable volume of routine trade and traffic we know was already going on across those same plains I dunno.

At least two of Hays' larger expeditions out of San Antonio two years later would include a large Bexareno contingent, so presumably many of the miscreants Hays and his men targeted in these early years were also considered ne'r do wells by the Hispanic population as well. So at worst, the interdictions practised by Hays and his men did not apparently incite popular discontent in San Antonio.

Still, Moore's accout of one of Hays 1837 actions does raise questions...

On one occasion Sergeant Hays reportedly led his men to capture Mexican bandits in a sundown surprise roundup. In the ensuing fight, one Texan was wounded and three Mexicans were killed. Taking up the chase of five fleeing bandits, Hays used his pistol to shoot one Mexican from his horse.

In the end another bandit was thrown from his horse, while Hays and a fellow ranger reportedly trailed and captured the remaining three outlaws.

So, perhaps eight outlaws on this occasion, a pity we are not told the size of Hays' party or the transgressions of this particular group of outlaws.

At least three and perhaps four or five of those Mexican outlaws that survived the intial surprise attack do appear to have been poorly armed for folks involved in the criminal trade, such that no return fire is recorded during the shooting/apprehension of the final four, by just two rangers.

Birdwatcher