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Landmark Books #72
The Texas Rangers
The Story of the Texas Rangers in the Landmark Books series #77. "Spring to saddle and ride with the Texas wind through dark river thickets, over blazing sunlit prairies, across burning desert and snow-swept mountain passes. Take the dark and desperate trail of the Four Horsemen of the Far West: the Comanche brave, the Mexican bandit, the American bad man and the Texas Ranger."
- GenresHistory
181 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1957
About the author
Will Henry
139 books17 followersAlso wrote westerns as Clay Fisher.
Henry Wilson Allen (September 12, 1912 – October 26, 1991) was an American author and screenwriter. He used several different pseudonyms for his works. His 50+ novels of the American West were published under the pen names Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Allen's screenplays and scripts for animated shorts were credited to Heck Allen and Henry Allen.
Allen's career as a novelist began in 1952, with the publication of his first Western No Survivors. Allen, afraid that the studio would disapprove of his moonlighting, used a pen-name to avoid trouble.[3] He would go on to publish over 50 novels, eight of which were adapted for the screen. Most of these were published under one or the other of the pseudonyms Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Allen was a five-time winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a recipient of the Levi Strauss Award for lifetime achievement.
Henry Wilson Allen was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Allen died of pneumonia on October 26, 1991 in Van Nuys, California. He was 79.
Henry Wilson Allen (September 12, 1912 – October 26, 1991) was an American author and screenwriter. He used several different pseudonyms for his works. His 50+ novels of the American West were published under the pen names Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Allen's screenplays and scripts for animated shorts were credited to Heck Allen and Henry Allen.
Allen's career as a novelist began in 1952, with the publication of his first Western No Survivors. Allen, afraid that the studio would disapprove of his moonlighting, used a pen-name to avoid trouble.[3] He would go on to publish over 50 novels, eight of which were adapted for the screen. Most of these were published under one or the other of the pseudonyms Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Allen was a five-time winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a recipient of the Levi Strauss Award for lifetime achievement.
Henry Wilson Allen was born in Kansas City, Missouri. Allen died of pneumonia on October 26, 1991 in Van Nuys, California. He was 79.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 3, 2023
In stark contrast to the last Landmark edition I read, "The Story of Oklahoma," this one was more in the vein of the adventure-story yarn which is the hallmark of most Landmark books. I get that they're supposed to be appealing to youngsters of the day - this one was published in 1957 - but it's a bit too Old-West-Dime-Novel for me, which means that the accuracy will be in serious doubt. It's a bit heavy on the drum-and-bugle-style for my taste, as it reads more like an adventure story than a work of history. I get that it has to be both, but this was just excessively salacious.
Example: in contrast to the last volume I read, which was published in the 1960s, I believe, here's what this one had to say about the indigenous people whose land was being increasingly colonized by people who killed off their buffalo, often leaving them no recourse but to raid settlements to find resources for survival: "Who was the enemy? He was of three types. First, he was the High Plains Horseback Indian, raiding and burning deep into the peaceful settlements. He murdered the luckless white man wherever he might find him - by his lonely campfire, standing guard over his livestock, or in the peaceful slumber of his cabin bed."
First, that wasn't the norm. It did occur, certainly, but the murder of white settlers wasn't the default state for most of the tribes in that, or any other area, as they knew that such extreme actions would bring great repercussions for the helpless women and children when the US Army was called in to quell the disturbances. Even tribal leaders frequently and repeatedly attempted to curtail such activities, which were often the result of renegade bands acting outside the traditional tribal authority, as the elders were well-aware of the consequences of violence against white settlers, which the US government then used as a pretext to enact even more draconian measures to deal with the Indian Problem. As such, the burning of white homesteads occurred most often during periods of uprising and unrest (but not exclusively, of course). The Landmark volume on Geronimo describes this in greater detail, but with much more nuance and accuracy.
Second, it would have occurred to an even far-less degree of frequency had "the luckless white man" himself been "peaceful," in honoring treaties made with indigenous people, refraining from murdering their women and children, ceasing to incessantly encroach upon and then forcibly drive the inhabitants off their own land, and killing off their "livestock," the herds of countless millions of bison from which they drew their sustenance. In this latter case, by the late nineteenth century, only a few hundred North American bison remained, with the entire species on the brink of extinction. It was said that every dead buffalo meant another dead Indian, so bison were slaughtered simply to render them useless to the indigenous people the US government was actively trying to exterminate, with the intent of facilitating THEM dying out. Of course, there is little mention of that here.
Even the flier for the book, taped to the first page (the first of which I've seen, which is like an advertisement for the release of new volumes), reads like a trailer for the latest black-and-white Western movie, for which the 50s were so famous: "Turn back the clock of time a century or more! Spring to the saddle and ride with Texas wind through dark thickets, over blazing sunlit prairies, across burning desert and snow-swept mountain passes. Take the dark and desperate trail of the Four Horseman of the American West...", etc., etc. Really heavy on cheesy rhetoric for something that's supposed to be a history book, not a modern-day dime novel.
That said, it was entertaining and quasi-informative. I just wasn't crazy about some of the language, as usual, in many of these book, or its "adventure-story" approach to appeal to young readers.
Example: in contrast to the last volume I read, which was published in the 1960s, I believe, here's what this one had to say about the indigenous people whose land was being increasingly colonized by people who killed off their buffalo, often leaving them no recourse but to raid settlements to find resources for survival: "Who was the enemy? He was of three types. First, he was the High Plains Horseback Indian, raiding and burning deep into the peaceful settlements. He murdered the luckless white man wherever he might find him - by his lonely campfire, standing guard over his livestock, or in the peaceful slumber of his cabin bed."
First, that wasn't the norm. It did occur, certainly, but the murder of white settlers wasn't the default state for most of the tribes in that, or any other area, as they knew that such extreme actions would bring great repercussions for the helpless women and children when the US Army was called in to quell the disturbances. Even tribal leaders frequently and repeatedly attempted to curtail such activities, which were often the result of renegade bands acting outside the traditional tribal authority, as the elders were well-aware of the consequences of violence against white settlers, which the US government then used as a pretext to enact even more draconian measures to deal with the Indian Problem. As such, the burning of white homesteads occurred most often during periods of uprising and unrest (but not exclusively, of course). The Landmark volume on Geronimo describes this in greater detail, but with much more nuance and accuracy.
Second, it would have occurred to an even far-less degree of frequency had "the luckless white man" himself been "peaceful," in honoring treaties made with indigenous people, refraining from murdering their women and children, ceasing to incessantly encroach upon and then forcibly drive the inhabitants off their own land, and killing off their "livestock," the herds of countless millions of bison from which they drew their sustenance. In this latter case, by the late nineteenth century, only a few hundred North American bison remained, with the entire species on the brink of extinction. It was said that every dead buffalo meant another dead Indian, so bison were slaughtered simply to render them useless to the indigenous people the US government was actively trying to exterminate, with the intent of facilitating THEM dying out. Of course, there is little mention of that here.
Even the flier for the book, taped to the first page (the first of which I've seen, which is like an advertisement for the release of new volumes), reads like a trailer for the latest black-and-white Western movie, for which the 50s were so famous: "Turn back the clock of time a century or more! Spring to the saddle and ride with Texas wind through dark thickets, over blazing sunlit prairies, across burning desert and snow-swept mountain passes. Take the dark and desperate trail of the Four Horseman of the American West...", etc., etc. Really heavy on cheesy rhetoric for something that's supposed to be a history book, not a modern-day dime novel.
That said, it was entertaining and quasi-informative. I just wasn't crazy about some of the language, as usual, in many of these book, or its "adventure-story" approach to appeal to young readers.
April 17, 2019
This one was just a little too rah-rah and a little light on solid description. There was a lot of telling how great the Rangers were without really showing, which made it a sluggish read. Henry acknowledges that “frontier history is never too reliable. The fable is frequently as accurate as the fact” (50) but it seems to lack much detail.
This account also lacks some modern political correctness repeating the saying “Like the Rangers, the frontier townsfolk had no use for any kind of an Indian but a ‘good’ one. In Ranger language, this meant one with a Texan bullet hole between his eyes” (40) and repeated use of the term “red man” (32). This is a much different stance than many of the other Landmark books that have some hindsight empathy for the plight of Native Americans.
This lack of empathy makes for missed opportunities for storytelling. When the Rangers expel all Indians from reservations regardless of peacefulness, he writes of the forced marches out of Texas only “On June 11th, they began the odious chore. By August 8th, 1858, they had completed it” (98). The Rangers were no-nonsense, sure, but there should be some room to question the necessity of it in the first place.
There are some interesting tidbits and lines, though. I like where he says the Mexicans describe the Texans as “half man and half devil, along with a mixture of mountain lion and snapping turtle” (87-88). The Fighting Snapping Turtles could be a great mascot somewhere. The story of Tobin Rhodes mirroring Paul Revere was interesting (48) as was the idea of breaking out people imprisoned in Brownsville prison because they felt those inside were victims of the justice system and lawyers. I also like Sam Bass’s last words “The world is bobbing around” and his tombstone’s lines “A brave man reposes in death here/Why was he not true?” (162).
I’m glad I read it because of my upcoming Texas trip and my quest to read as many of these Landmark books as I can get my hands on, but for a casual reader I’d say skip this one.
This account also lacks some modern political correctness repeating the saying “Like the Rangers, the frontier townsfolk had no use for any kind of an Indian but a ‘good’ one. In Ranger language, this meant one with a Texan bullet hole between his eyes” (40) and repeated use of the term “red man” (32). This is a much different stance than many of the other Landmark books that have some hindsight empathy for the plight of Native Americans.
This lack of empathy makes for missed opportunities for storytelling. When the Rangers expel all Indians from reservations regardless of peacefulness, he writes of the forced marches out of Texas only “On June 11th, they began the odious chore. By August 8th, 1858, they had completed it” (98). The Rangers were no-nonsense, sure, but there should be some room to question the necessity of it in the first place.
There are some interesting tidbits and lines, though. I like where he says the Mexicans describe the Texans as “half man and half devil, along with a mixture of mountain lion and snapping turtle” (87-88). The Fighting Snapping Turtles could be a great mascot somewhere. The story of Tobin Rhodes mirroring Paul Revere was interesting (48) as was the idea of breaking out people imprisoned in Brownsville prison because they felt those inside were victims of the justice system and lawyers. I also like Sam Bass’s last words “The world is bobbing around” and his tombstone’s lines “A brave man reposes in death here/Why was he not true?” (162).
I’m glad I read it because of my upcoming Texas trip and my quest to read as many of these Landmark books as I can get my hands on, but for a casual reader I’d say skip this one.
March 12, 2024
This is a great book of untold heroes in American history, who played an important role in the formation of the freest state in the Union.
This book convinced me that the influence of special grace on a society, not only makes gives them the potential for doing much greater good to the world, but also much greater evil. In other words, the same grace that allowed the Christian pioneers and settlers of America to do far more good via technology, written laws, medicine, and obviously the Gospel to the Indians than the Indians could ever return to the settler, also allowed the evil, hypocritical, and lawless members of the early West, and indeed in all of colonial history, to do more damage to the Indians than the Indians could otherwise have done to them. To put it yet another way, God's grace, both special and common, on America gave them the logic, the books, the peaceful society, and the guns that Satan then twisted to slander the name of Christianity through lawless sons of Japheth who, with tools supplied by the grace of Christianity, hurt those pagans whom they should be raising.
Undoubtedly, the colonization of America brought far more good to the Native Americans than they could ever have rendered back to the pioneers, or even paid for themselves. Such colonization also undoubtedly did far more good than evil both the indigenous peoples and the rest of the world. But the evil done the Indians was also greater than the evil the Indians could ever have returned back to the Americans. The betrayal of the part of the US government against the Eastern tribes is terrible, and it caused even the violent, treacherous Comanches to attack the treacherous "pace-faced Tejanos." The first third of the book was self-inflicted by the Texans, but it was the most edifying for me. The other two thirds, discussing the illegal Mexicans and the American "badmen" respectively, contained amazing tales of bravery, unparalleled in our modern world. It made me wish that we could return to a day when such men existed and were formed.
This book convinced me that the influence of special grace on a society, not only makes gives them the potential for doing much greater good to the world, but also much greater evil. In other words, the same grace that allowed the Christian pioneers and settlers of America to do far more good via technology, written laws, medicine, and obviously the Gospel to the Indians than the Indians could ever return to the settler, also allowed the evil, hypocritical, and lawless members of the early West, and indeed in all of colonial history, to do more damage to the Indians than the Indians could otherwise have done to them. To put it yet another way, God's grace, both special and common, on America gave them the logic, the books, the peaceful society, and the guns that Satan then twisted to slander the name of Christianity through lawless sons of Japheth who, with tools supplied by the grace of Christianity, hurt those pagans whom they should be raising.
Undoubtedly, the colonization of America brought far more good to the Native Americans than they could ever have rendered back to the pioneers, or even paid for themselves. Such colonization also undoubtedly did far more good than evil both the indigenous peoples and the rest of the world. But the evil done the Indians was also greater than the evil the Indians could ever have returned back to the Americans. The betrayal of the part of the US government against the Eastern tribes is terrible, and it caused even the violent, treacherous Comanches to attack the treacherous "pace-faced Tejanos." The first third of the book was self-inflicted by the Texans, but it was the most edifying for me. The other two thirds, discussing the illegal Mexicans and the American "badmen" respectively, contained amazing tales of bravery, unparalleled in our modern world. It made me wish that we could return to a day when such men existed and were formed.
February 18, 2021
Good book with a brief history of the Texas Rangers. Would be great for kids.
June 8, 2025
This was an interesting collection of accounts involving the Texas Rangers, but it was more gory than I would have preferred for a read aloud with a youth.
September 16, 2012
Awesome.
August 31, 2013
A great Landmark book on the Texas Rangers for young readers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews