Legends of the Old West - TEXAS RANGERS Ep. 6 | “McNelly’s Rangers”

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

In November 1875, Captain Leander McNelly makes his most famous and controversial move: he leads his militia company into Mexico and attacks two villages to recover stolen cattle. His actions provoke a standoff with Mexican officials and consternation from his superiors, but his men love his bold strategy. After the events known as the Las Cuevas War, McNelly’s time in command draws to a close. But his lieutenant helps end the Sutton-Taylor feud, and his former sergeant leads the arrest of the infamous outlaw, John Wesley Hardin.   SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY “The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900” by Mike Cox “The Ranger Ideal, Vol. 1&2” by Darren L. Ivey “Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers” by Robert M. Utley “The Texas Rangers” by Walter Prescott Webb “Captain L.H. McNelly: Texas Ranger” by Chuck Parsons & Marianne E. Hall Little “Taming the Nueces Strip” by George Durham “Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers” by Doug J. Swanson “Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman” by J. Evetts Haley “Comanches: A History of a People” by T.R. Fehrenbach “The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West” by Peter Cozzens   Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1875, around the same time of McNelly's Palo Alto fight on June 12th, events were in motion all over the West that would soon have major impacts on American history. On June 2nd, ten days before the Palo Alto fight, Quana Parker and the final band of Free Comanche surrendered to the US Army. A year earlier, in August and September 1874, the Army had conducted a campaign against the Comanche that would be called the Red River War. The Army hadn't captured Parker, but after a long, hard winter, Parker's fight was done. With Parker's surrender, all the tribes of the Southern Plains had submitted to life on reservations. But trouble was slowly brewing on the Northern Plains.

At the same time the Army was beginning the Red River War in Texas, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was leading an expedition into the Black Hills. The expedition officially confirmed the existence of gold in the hills, which everyone knew was there anyway. A year later, in May of 1875, a month before Quana Parker surrendered and McNelly's Rangers fought bandits at Palo Alto, Lakota Chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Ulysses S. Grant. America was in the grip of a financial crisis.

Custer had confirmed gold in the Black Hills, and now Grant wanted to buy the hills from the Lakota and Cheyenne. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail said no. A few months later, in the fall of 1875, Grant sent a delegation to Nebraska to meet with the Chiefs and present a second offer to buy the hills. The Chiefs again said no. After the second refusal, Grant authorized the military campaign on the northern plains that would be known to many as the Great Sioux War. Ultimately, it would succeed in subduing the Lakota and Cheyenne, just like similar campaigns had done on the southern plains, but not before the disastrously historic Battle of the Little

Bighorn. In Texas, in the fall of 1875, at the same time Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were refusing Grant's offer a second time, Captain McNelly's network of spies was learning information that would bring the hard-charging leader back into the field after a long absence. After the Palo Alto fight on June 12th, 1875, the rest of the summer had passed uneventfully for roughly 30 men of the Washington County militia and their captain, Leander McNelly. They had killed 15 of 16 bandits during the galloping gunfight on June 12th and recovered between 250 and 300 head of stolen cattle. But they hadn't had a chase or a fight since then.

McNelly spent nearly all of July and August holed up in a hotel room in Brownsville as his tuberculosis worsened. He issued orders to his second-in-command, Lt. T.C. Robinson, and he kept his company in the saddle day and night, but he couldn't ride with them personally. McNelly also kept his network of paid informants operating. Even though he couldn't be out there in the thick of it, he wanted to know what was going on, and his men needed information.

In mid-October 1875, as Grant's delegation was returning to Washington with bad news about buying the Black Hills, McNally's spies brought him good news about catching bandits. A raiding party from Mexico had crossed into Texas a few miles up the Rio Grande from McNally's headquarters in Brownsville. The captain would leave his sickbed and jump back into the saddle for his most dangerous and controversial mission and his final significant action on the border. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host Chris Wimmer and this season we're returning to the stories of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're returning to the stories of the Texas Rangers.

This series will follow the Rangers through the Civil War to their final years as frontier fighters and then to their beginnings as lawmen. This is episode six, McNelly's Rangers. One of the many men in northern Mexico who wore multiple titles like general, politician, and wealthy rancher was Juan Flores Salinas. With Juan Cortina in prison in the summer of 1875, Salinas was one of the most prominent men in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

He was based in the town of Camargo, directly across the river from Rio Grande City. Camargo was one of the age-old hot spots for bandit activity and border crossings, like Reynosa across from Hidalgo, and Matamoros across from Brownsville, and Baghdad on the last strip of land before the Gulf of Mexico. In mid-October 1875, McNelly's informants told him that 200 cattle had been stolen from Cameron County, the home of Brownsville. The cattle had been driven across the border and ultimately delivered to Monterrey, the biggest city in that part of northern Mexico. The news stated that Juan Flores Salinas had been responsible for the raid.

A month later, McNelly's spies gave him similar information, except this information might be actionable. On November 16, a group of 16 rustlers had driven 75 cattle from Texas to Mexico near Rio Grande City. This time, the cattle were destined for the ranch of Juan Flores Salinas at the small community of Las Cuevas, near the border town of Camargo. McNelly jumped into the saddle and headed for Rio Grande City, across the river from Camargo.

He arrived two days later, on November 18th. 30 of his men arrived that evening after riding 55 miles in 5 hours. They found an international incident already brewing. When McNelly made it to Rio Grande City, he found a unit of the 8th U.S. Cavalry negotiating with the alcalde of Camargo for the return of the cattle and the arrest of the thieves. The day before McNelly arrived, the cavalry had chased the rustlers to the border. The cavalry killed a couple of the bandits, but most had escaped into Mexico with the cattle. Now, the army major was trying to persuade the Mayor of Camargo to give up the thieves and the cattle, and he was getting nowhere. McNelly grew increasingly frustrated as the Major instructed him to stay in Texas and

wait for a result. When McNelly's men arrived that evening, he told them he was done waiting. He gathered the troop and spoke plainly about his intent and the danger of the mission. Magnelli intended to cross the border, strike Salinas' ranch at Las Cuevas, and recover the stolen cattle. The mission would be outside the law. They had no authority in Mexico. If they met resistance, they would receive no quarter from their enemies, and they would give none in return. He could not guarantee the survival of the men who followed him, but he was going no

matter what. All the men agreed to go, and that night they began crossing the Rio Grande. There was a heavy fog on the night of the 18th, which helped mask the movements of the Rangers. But the mud was so thick at that point of the river that the troop only got five horses across. All the other Rangers had to row across in a small boat and then move inland on foot. After three miles, the Rangers approached a village of thatched roof huts. Rangers approached a village of thatched roof huts. One account said Sergeant John Armstrong shot and killed a guard, and that started the firefight. Another said someone from the village fired a shot at the Rangers and McNelly responded

and killed the shooter, and that started the firefight. Either way, the battle was on and the Rangers charged the village. When McNelly later wired Adjutant General William Steele, he said his troop killed four men during the attack. Other accounts said the Rangers killed 20 to 25, but as with many such engagements, it's impossible to know the truth. Either way, lots of important people were following the progress of the raid.

A U.S. Army telegraph operator back across the river in Rio Grande City had climbed to the top of a telegraph pole and was watching the action from afar. He could see the flashes of gunfire, and he was basically doing a play-by-play commentary of the events. He sent messages down the line to Fort Brown in Brownsville. Fort Brown forwarded them up to the Department of Texas headquarters in San Antonio, and then to the War Department in Washington. And suddenly, in the middle of the night, everyone knew that Captain McNelly had led a group of rangers into Mexico and was now engaged in a gunfight as he attacked a village. And to make matters worse, he was attacking the wrong village. The village of Las Cuevas, the stronghold of Juan Flores Salinas,

was another mile inland from the village McNelly had attacked. The mistake gave Salinas time to rally his fighting force. He was a general in the Rurales, the Texas Rangers of Mexico, and he marshaled 250 men to make a stand at his village. Despite being badly outnumbered, McNelly and his troop of about 30 advanced toward Las Cuevas. When they reached the village, a fierce firefight erupted. After about 10 minutes, it became obvious to McNelly that his men were in a

tight spot. He ordered a retreat back to the Rio Grande, and the Rangers hoofed it four miles to the river. There, they turned and set up a defensive perimeter. At 7 a.m. on November 19, Juan Flores Salinas and about 25 of his men galloped into view. They charged straight at the Rangers, and McNeely shouted at his men to open up on the attackers. The Rangers opened fire and killed several of the Mexican fighters, including Juan Flores Salinas. At that point, with Americans engaged in battle just across the river, an Army captain sent 40 U.S. Army cavalrymen into Mexico to support the Rangers. McNelly wanted the horsemen to continue inland and attack Las Cuevas, but the captain wisely

would only allow the soldiers to defend the rangers. Throughout the day, Mexican fighters attacked the American line in waves, but they did little damage. At about 5 o'clock in the evening, the Mexican force raised a flag of truce. The army captain crossed the river and began a series of negotiations with representatives of the Alcalde of Camargo. The representatives demanded the removal of all American forces, and in exchange, they promised to do everything possible to return the stolen cattle and capture the rustlers. McNelly didn't believe the promise for a second, but an Army major ordered the regular soldiers to return to Texas.

McNeely, meanwhile, stayed right where he was. The Rangers camped on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande to see how the situation would play out the next morning. The next morning, the Army major urged McNeely to come back to Texas, and he said he would not send any more troops to support McNelly's position. McNelly held his ground all day on November 20. Late in the afternoon, he once again got sick of waiting. He issued an ultimatum to the Mexican officials. They needed to guarantee they would deliver the stolen cattle and the thieves by 10 a.m.

the next morning or he would attack them one hour from right now. The officials agreed, and McNelly led his troop across the river to Texas. The next morning, to no one's surprise, there were no cattle and no thieves. McNelly gathered 12 heavily armed rangers and rode back into Mexico. They threatened the Mexican officials until some of the cattle were eventually returned. The numbers vary, but somewhere between 35 and 65 head were delivered to Texas, and none of the thieves. But that was as good as it was going to get.

By the morning of November 21, 1875, the events that would become known as the Las Cuevas War were done. The excursion into Mexico in pursuit of a few stolen cattle and a handful of thieves would be a double-edged sword for Captain McNelly. He was both wildly popular and barely tolerable at the same time. popular and barely tolerable at the same time. After the Las Cuevas escapade, the newspapers loved McNelly, the people of Texas revered him and his men worshipped him. He was a slim man with a persistent illness and a hacking cough, but he was also a bold

leader, a ruthless fighter, and brave nearly to the point of insanity. He quite simply didn't care what it took to get the job done. He would do it. He invaded Mexico with 30 men and then maintained a multi-day standoff just to recover about 75 cattle. But the qualities that made him beloved by many people were starting to test the patience of his superiors.

That and some other things. McNelly was a good field commander, but he was not a bureaucrat. He had no time for paperwork or tedium. His reports to Adjutant General Steele were erratic, and he was terrible about keeping financial records. He was a big believer in the concept of shooting first and asking questions later, and he had no problem creating an international incident. When you add all those things up, his methods were starting to wear thin. But even with all that said, in that time and that place, he wasn't entirely wrong either, especially when it came to his assessment

of local lawmen, judges, and politicians. McNeely's next mission took him more than 200 miles upriver to Eagle Pass. To catch an outlaw who remained free, McNeely believed, because of the weakness of local lawmen and the judicial system. The outlaw was John Fisher, who was better known as King Fisher. He fell into the category of Old West outlaws who were high on name recognition but low on confirmed details. King is sometimes listed as his middle name, John King Fisher, and sometimes as a nickname because he was known as the

king of his little corner of territory outside Eagle Pass. Either way, the label was true. He ruled a small area like his own bandit kingdom. He was born and raised in Texas, and he started getting into trouble early in life. He went to jail for four months when he was 16 years old, and within a couple years, he had built a ranch in the northwest corner of the region of South Texas known as the Nueces Strip. His ranch was a haven for outlaws, and his business thrived on cattle rustling. He was a fancy dresser, he carried two ivory-handled pistols, and he was rumored to have killed dozens of people.

But like John Wesley Hardin, it's impossible to separate rumor from fact, and the truth is probably less spectacular than the story. And the most fun tidbit is the one that is repeated most often. Supposedly, on the road that led to Fisher's ranch, his outlaw group posted a sign that read, This is King Fisher's Road. Take the other. By the summer of 1876, King Fisher was the established cattle-rustling king of his territory, and he was just 21 years old.

Local authorities couldn't or wouldn't stop him, so McNelly decided to arrest Fisher himself. In early June, 1876, McNelly and his men rode to King Fisher's ranch, disregarded the sign on the road and surrounded Fisher's ranch house. McNelly shouted to the bandit that he had two choices, surrender or die. Fisher and nine of his men surrendered.

McNelly and the company escorted them to jail and rounded up about 600 to 800 head of stolen cattle. And then, two days later, McNelly was furious to learn that all the men had been released and all the cattle had been returned. It was a problem that was nearly as rampant as cattle rustling. Prosecutors and judges refused to move forward with cases because of corruption or fear. It annoyed McNally and the other commanders to no end. They all experienced it, and McNally complained loudly when he testified before the Texas legislature three weeks after he arrested King Fisher. But the bandit king continued to sidestep the law, and then he joined the ranks himself. Five years after he tangled with McNally, King Fisher became deputy sheriff of Uvalde

County, and then acting sheriff when his boss was indicted for criminal activity. Fisher intended to run for sheriff on his own merit later in 1884, but in March he and his friend, the famous gunfighter Ben Thompson, went to a theater in San Antonio. Thompson had crossed paths with Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok in Kansas and Bat Masterson in Sweetwater, Texas. Now, like Hickok and Jesse James and many others, Ben Thompson and King Fisher were shot and killed by a couple guys with no reputation or celebrity. On June 21, 1876, Captain McNelly testified

before the Texas legislature about the problems that lawmen faced in South Texas. Four days later and 1,200 miles to the north, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry in an ill-fated attack on the village of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. When news of the Battle of the Little Big Horn broke in early July, McNally and his company were in the midst of transition. The Texas legislature passed a bill that reorganized McNally's company into a new, larger unit that was called the Special State Troops. The governor appointed McNally as the commander of the unit, and the legislature chose McNelly second in command. The congressman chose Jesse Lee Hall and appointed him to the rank of lieutenant.

The choice was not well liked by McNelly's men. They had preferred Sergeant John Armstrong, a young ranger who had served with the company for the past year during the entirety of McNelly's campaign on the border. But the men would quickly come to respect Lee Hall, or Red as he was often called because of his red hair. Hall had spent five years earning a solid reputation as a peace officer in the area around Sherman, Texas, 60 miles north of Dallas. In the summer of 1876, he was the serge-at-Arms for the Texas House of Representatives in

Austin, which was how he became friends with the lawmakers who appointed him Lieutenant of McNeely's new Special State Troops. Hall officially began work with the unit on August 10th, and he hustled to the company's headquarters in the Nueces Strip. As Major John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers were beginning their transition from Indian fighters to law enforcement officers, a similar transition was happening for the Special State Troops. Their primary mission was no longer to pursue cattle rustlers from Mexico.

It was to pursue homegrown criminals in South Texas, and there were plenty of Texan murderers, robbers, and rustlers to keep the new lawmen busy. Two weeks after Hall joined the company in the Nueces Strip, he received word of a bank robbery in the town of Goliad. Captain McNally was confined to his sickbed in San Antonio, so Hall assumed field command of the unit. He took a detachment to Goliad and quickly learned that the situation was worse than an isolated bank robbery.

The gang who committed the robbery were also believed to be guilty of cattle rustling and murder. The local sheriff was allegedly protecting them, and local ranchers had formed a vigilante group to protect their stock, and they had killed two people as well. Throughout September 1876, Hall and his troops dispersed the vigilantes and tracked the outlaw gang. The sheriff was suspended from duty, and Hall assumed the role of the top lawmen in the county. He and his company arrested 20 men, broke up the gang, and made sure they were brought to court in October. Hall's first mission with the unit was a success.

The next month, their work turned unexpectedly bloody. Hall and a squad from the company were helping a deputy sheriff serve murder warrants when the suspects opened fire on the Rangers. The Rangers lost the two suspects and ended up killing a friend of one of the two men. Three days later, right before Thanksgiving, 1876, Lieutenant Hall and the unit traveled up the road to DeWitt County, where it all

began for the Washington County militia two years earlier. In September 1876, the final murders of the Sutton-Taylor feud were credited to the Sutton clan. An elderly doctor and his son had been dragged out of their home and executed in an event that was shocking even by the standards of the feud that was called the longest and deadliest in Texas history. Lieutenant Hall and the company arrived two months later and spent a month investigating the crime. Right before Christmas, they secured murder indictments against seven men and then crashed a wedding to arrest all the suspects. The suspects spent a year in jail before going to trial in December 1877, and the trials had predictable results. One man had his case dismissed. Two were found not guilty and set free.

Three were found guilty but then released on a technicality. And the last man's case took 20 years to wind its way through the legal system. He was finally convicted in 1899 and then promptly pardoned by the governor. For the second half of 1876, while Lieutenant Hall led the informal ranger company that was formerly known as the Special State Troops, Captain McNally's tuberculosis was slowly and steadily growing worse. There was no cure for the disease, and the only treatment that was prescribed by doctors was to go west to find a dry climate that would make life more tolerable. That was what a part-time

dentist, part-time gambler named John Henry Dock Holliday was doing at the same time McNelly was suffering. Dock had been diagnosed with tuberculosis a couple years earlier, and in 1876, he was traveling around the Colorado-Wyoming region. By the summer of 1877, while McNelly was living out his final days on his farm near Brenham, Doc was beginning his lively stay in Fort Griffin, Texas. McNelly didn't make it into the field in the second half of 1876, and the enlistments for his company of special state troops ran out in January 1877, about a month after Lieutenant Hall and the company made the final arrests of the Sutton-Taylor feud.

At that time, McNelly was, in essence, medically retired. Lee Hall was the clear leader of the company, which mustered back into service, and his star was on the rise. At the same time, Sergeant John Armstrong's star was also on the rise. He had risen up through the ranks of McNelly's company during the border campaign and he was continuing to rise. And his status in Texas lore would be cemented late in the summer of 1877. While McNelly was home on his farm, Armstrong was making the arrest of a lifetime.

John Wesley Harden had been on the run since he and Jim Taylor had killed a deputy sheriff in 1874. Harden, his wife Jane, and their infant daughter Molly were hiding in Alabama, with Harden making frequent trips to Florida for business. In the spring of 1877, newly promoted Second Lieutenant John Armstrong started working on the Hardin case. In July, he received help from Jack Duncan, a Dallas policeman. Duncan was added to the Ranger troop as a private for the express purpose of catching Hardin. Duncan

went down to South Texas, to DeWitt and Gonzalez Counties, and went undercover as a supporter of the Taylor clan. Within a month, he became friends with Jane Hardin's father and learned that the fugitives were hiding in Alabama. By mid-August 1877, Armstrong and Duncan were on a train to Alabama. Back in Texas that summer, Major John B. Jones and the Frontier Battalion were closing the book on the Horrell-Higgins feud. A week before Armstrong and Duncan set off for Alabama, Jones published his two-part peace treaty in the Lampasas Dispatch newspaper. When Armstrong and Duncan arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, they were temporarily stalled by one of the chief burdens of all lawmen—paperwork. While Texas Adjutant General William Steele sorted out the legal logistics of arresting a Texas fugitive in another state, Armstrong and Duncan learned that Hardin was scheduled

to take a train from Pensacola, Florida to Pollard, Alabama. The two lawmen jumped on a train for Florida and enlisted the help of a county sheriff and a posse of eight to arrest the fugitive. They boarded Hardin's train and found the wanted murderer in the smoking car with three friends. The posse entered the car from the front and the back and surrounded Hardin's group. Armstrong approached Hardin, and Hardin was instantly suspicious. Armstrong grabbed Hardin and that set off a scuffle in the car. One of Hardin's friends pulled the gun and fired at Armstrong, but missed. Armstrong drew his pistol and returned fire, and killed Hard Armstrong but missed. Armstrong drew his pistol and returned fire and killed

Hardin's friend. Armstrong, Duncan, and the posse wrestled Hardin into custody, and the two lawmen eventually dragged Hardin back to Texas to stand trial. When Armstrong, Duncan, and their famous prisoner arrived in Austin five days later, August 28th. A crowd had gathered at the train station that was so large that the Rangers had to lift Hardin over their heads and carry him to jail because it was impossible to walk through the mass of spectators. Exactly one week after 2nd Lieutenant John B. Armstrong returned to Texas with John Wesley Harden, Captain Leander McNelly passed away on his farm near Brenham in Washington County, Texas. He was 33 years old. He'd spent half of his life in Texas,

and for nearly all of that time, he had been a fighter. He entered the Civil War at 17 years old. He spent four years with the state police, and he spent three years as the commander of the Washington County Volunteer Militia, which was typically called a Texas Rangers unit. Captain McNally passed away September 4, 1877, and he's buried in the Mount Zion Cemetery in Burton, Texas, about 20 minutes up the road from Brenham. There's a fenced-in monument to the famous ranger in a corner of the small, unassuming cemetery, which seems perfectly fitting for the man who was both quiet and larger than life at the same time. If you're a lover of out-of-the-way places that are overlooked by the masses, I highly

recommend making the pilgrimage to the quiet, solemn, and peaceful resting place of Captain McNelly. Next time on Legends of the Old West, we're going to begin a regular series within a series to tell some stories that have been frequently requested but don't technically fit into the Old West time period. They're American frontier stories here on Legends of the Old West, and we're starting with the mountain men, Jedidiah Smith, John Jeremiah Johnson, and Hugh Glass. Get ready for wild adventures in the earliest days of the American West, next time on Legends

of the American West. Next time on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. And they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just five dollars per month. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm your writer, host, and producer Chris Wimmer. Thanks for listening.