Don’t have to take the words of this old Tejano; take it from an Army Major who had to work with them.
When Major Samuel P. Heintzelman was sent to the lower Rio Grande in 1859, his job was not to defend Juan Cortina. It was to defeat him. That is what makes Heintzelman’s opinion of the Texas Rangers so important. He was a professional United States Army officer sent south after Cortina had seized Brownsville, defeated local volunteers, and embarrassed Texas Ranger forces, yet the more Heintzelman worked alongside the Rangers, especially the men under Captain William G. Tobin, the less impressed he became.
The surviving journal of Heintzelman’s Texas service records what historians at the Texas State Historical Association describe as his “disdain and distrust of the Rangers.” It also records something more serious: Rangers killing Mexican and Tejano civilians indiscriminately. (tshaonline.org) This was not criticism coming from Cortina, from Mexico, or from some modern historian trying to tear down an old Texas legend. It came from the American officer commanding the campaign against Cortina.
By December 1859, Heintzelman had seen enough of Tobin’s Rangers to question both their discipline and their usefulness. On December 11, roughly one hundred Rangers rode toward Cortina’s camp, encountered his pickets, were fired upon, turned around, and came home. Two days later, Heintzelman complained that he could not get the Rangers to do effective scouting. While pursuing Cortina, he again tried to send Rangers forward to reconnoiter the ground. They hesitated and did not want to advance until daylight, so Heintzelman rode forward himself with several Army officers. Only then did they discover that Cortina’s position had already been abandoned. A later transcription of the journal preserves those complaints, while the U.S. Army’s own historical study describes Heintzelman as unimpressed with Tobin and his men. (rrunrrun.blogspot.com)
The Rangers had reason to be cautious. They had already fought Cortina and had already been beaten. The Army historical account says Rangers and Brownsville volunteers who attacked Cortina in November were quickly routed. By the time Heintzelman arrived with regular soldiers, the Rangers were no longer facing Cortina with the confidence later Ranger mythology would suggest. The professional soldiers now supplied the discipline, artillery, and organized military force.
Heintzelman’s strongest criticism, however, was not about battlefield performance. It was about what the Rangers did to people who were not fighting them. During the December campaign, Heintzelman ordered that a heavy fence on Cortina’s ranch be burned because it provided military cover, but he specifically prohibited unnecessary destruction. The Rangers ignored the distinction and, according to Heintzelman, burned property belonging to friend and enemy alike. After watching their conduct, he reached a remarkable conclusion: “We would undoubtedly have done better without the Rangers.” The U.S. Army’s own history preserves that judgment. (citeseerx.ist.psu.edu)
There was more. Heintzelman recorded that some of Tobin’s men or stragglers had hanged a Mexican man. Tobin claimed that he knew nothing about the killing and had not ordered it, but Heintzelman understood immediately what such violence would do to the population: it would turn people against the Americans. His frustration became so great that he considered asking the governor to recall Tobin’s Rangers. According to the journal transcription, Heintzelman complained that they were providing little useful service and instead damaging the country. (rrunrrun.blogspot.com)
He was not alone in seeing the problem. When advisers sent by Governor Sam Houston investigated conditions along the Rio Grande in early 1860, the Texas State Library summarizes what they found bluntly: Tobin’s “undisciplined” Rangers had terrorized Mexican civilians, and those civilians feared Tobin more than they feared Cortina. (tsl.texas.gov) That is an extraordinary statement when placed beside the traditional story. Cortina was the man portrayed as the outlaw, the bandit, and the menace who required the intervention of the United States Army, yet Mexican Texans living along the Rio Grande could fear the men supposedly sent to protect them even more.
Heintzelman also made distinctions among the Rangers. He considered John “Rip” Ford’s later company far more disciplined and militarily capable than Tobin’s. That matters because it shows that Heintzelman was not simply an Army officer who disliked every Ranger on principle. He judged the men he saw, and his judgment of Tobin’s command was particularly severe. (citeseerx.ist.psu.edu)
Eventually the balance changed. Heintzelman brought regular Army troops, Ford arrived with another Ranger company, and the combined force had artillery. On December 27, 1859, the combined Army-Ranger force defeated Cortina at Rio Grande City. (tshaonline.org) Later Texas memory could reduce that story to something much simpler: the Texas Rangers defeated Juan Cortina.
Heintzelman left behind a considerably less heroic account. Before the United States Army arrived, Cortina had already defeated Texas forces. When the Army joined the campaign, Heintzelman found some Rangers reluctant to scout ahead, saw them destroy the property of friends as well as enemies, and recorded violence against Mexican and Tejano civilians. After fighting beside them, the American officer sent to defeat Cortina concluded that, at least on one important expedition, the United States Army might have been better off without the Texas Rangers at all.
