Frontier Defense, 1848

“At the close of the Mexican war he was honorably discharged, but he did not seek rest, although he had nearly six years of service, for in 1848 he joined Ben Hill’s frontier company”

— “Custodian of the Alamo,” San Antonio Light, February 23, 1887.

Caricature of a Texas Ranger. This exaggerated, but mostly accurate, portrayal of an early Texas Ranger first appeared in Harper’s Weekly on July 6, 1861. Courtesy of The Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, Texas.

Indian raids into Texas and northern Mexico continued during the Mexican War.

The frequency and intensity of Native American raids into Texas and northern Mexico seemed to increase during the Mexican War. Northern Comanche raiders stole an estimated 10,000 horses and mules from the states of Durango and Chihuahua during the winter of 1845-1846.1 In 1849, when a survey party led by Captain Whiting reached the Pecos River, they were surprised to find a heavily used trail between Buffalo Gap and Comanche Springs. They surmised that it was, “a large Comanche warpath which filled us with much astonishment, close together, 25 deep worn and much-used trails made a great road, which told us that this was a highway by which each year the Comanche of the North desolate Durango and Chihuahua.”2

During this turbulent period, the line of settlement in south Texas continued to move westward. Before February 1843, there were no Anglo settlements west of San Pedro Creek (on San Antonio’s west side today), but between 1844 and 1852, fifteen small settlements were established west of the Medina River. All were in constant conflict with hostile Native Americans.3 Indian incursions south and east of Indian trails between Las Moras Creek and the Leona River were frequent until about 1857.4 Until 1846, Hays and his company of rangers protected Castro’s Colony. However, when the Mexican War began, Hays and most other Indian fighters left for the War; their departure left the frontier settlements unprotected.5

Settlers west of Castroville had troubles with Indians.

The European settlers at Quihi Lake were not armed and did nothing to threaten the Indians. However, they did occupy land around Quihi Lake that was previously used as an Indian campground.6 Luckily, the immigrants were destitute and had no horses or mules to tempt the Indian raiders.7 Nevertheless, a week after the settlers arrived at Quihi Lake, Lipan Apache men killed the Brinkhoff family and kidnapped two boys.8 Henri Castro, the impresario (land contractor), had an agreement with the Southern Comanche that provided a basis for peaceful relations between his settlers and the Indians. Unfortunately, in 1846, Texan freighters killed several Comanche Indians at Quihi Lake, and the Indians retaliated by attacking Castro’s settlers. On July 31, 1846, Captain John Conner’s ranging company was stationed on the Medina River above Castroville to prevent further incidents.

In September 1846, fifty families settled at Vandenburgh on Verde Creek, about five miles west of Quihi9, and in February 1847, twenty-nine families settled at D’Hanis, 25 miles west of Castroville.10 As early as October 1846, the Federal government recognized the need to provide some protection to settlers west of Castroville, but nothing was done that year.11 On August 11, 1847, Lieutenant-Colonel P. H. Bell and two companies12 were detached from Colonel Hays’ regiment of 1st Texas Mounted Volunteers13 with orders to protect settlers from Indian raids.14 These units were mustered into service as US volunteers and operated jointly under the supervision of Headquarters, US Army Post of San Antonio, and under the personal orders of Governors J. P. Henderson and G. T. Wood.15

In March 1848, Lipan and Kickapoo Indians raided the settlement at Quihi. They briefly kidnapped Mrs. Francesca Charobiny and killed her brother, Blas Meyer. That same month, Charles DeMontel’s ranging company was sent to the area and established their camp on Seco Creek, two miles from D’Hanis. Captain John Conner’s company was returned to the Medina River above Castroville.16 The Governor authorized the formation of four additional ranging companies in 1848.17

Rife enlisted in a ranging company operating west of Castroville in the fall of 1848.

Thomas Rife and the men of Major Lane’s battalion serving with the Army of Occupation in northern Mexico were mustered out of Federal service on June 30, 1848,18 at Ciudad Camargo.19 Rife probably returned to his uncle’s farm in Washington County for a few months. He was now 25 years old and had been a soldier for much of the last six years. It appears, however, that he decided that he was not yet ready to settle down to life on a farm. Like many other young men in his situation, he was restless.

Rife traveled to San Antonio and, on October 27, 1848, was mustered into Benjamin F. Hill’s Company of P. Hansbrough Bell’s Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers.20 The mission of the company was to protect the frontier. He enlisted as a Sergeant. His horse was valued at 80 dollars and his horse equipment at 15 dollars.21 The company was composed of men recruited in Bastrop and San Antonio but was mustered into Federal service at San Antonio22 and served less than two months. The company was mustered out of Federal service on December 1723 at San Antonio.24

After receiving supplies, the company left San Antonio for the settlements to the west. In November 1848, a squad of probably three rangers25 led by Sgt. Rife (A.J. Sowell mistakenly gave his rank as Captain) arrived at the settlement of D’Hanis to protect the isolated Anglo settlers living there. The rangers camped on Seco Creek (then called Arroyo Seco) two miles from the settlement at what was already called Ranger’s Camp.26 They provided game for the Alsatian-born settlers in addition to protecting them from Indians.27

Rife’s unit killed Delaware Bob.

After their arrival at D’Hanis, the rangers under Sgt. Rife arrested an Indian man for kidnapping Mrs. Charobiny and killing her brother earlier that year.28 The rangers understood that this man was a Lipan Apache. They took their captive to Mrs. Charobiny, who was fourteen and newlywed, to see if she recognized him as the man who had kidnapped her eight months earlier. She replied that “all Indians looked the same to her” and that she could not identify him.

Instead of returning to camp, the rangers went to a house where whiskey was sold from a barrel. They ended up staying in the settlement all night drinking whiskey, and during the night, their captive was killed. Some of the settlers said he was Old Delaware Bob, a harmless and friendly Indian. In the morning, the Rangers dragged his body to an empty field near the settlement. They left him there for hogs to eat.29 (The two rangers with Rife may have been named Allen and West.)30

Residents of South Texas remarked that, while the Lipan Apaches were friendly before 1847, they “went on the war path” after the young chief Flacco was killed, and Anglo settlers occupied their camping grounds west of San Antonio.31 Others said that the Lipan Indians “became bitter foes of the white race” after a drunken ranger killed a Lipan.32 They may have been referring to the murder of Rife’s captive at D’Hanis.

The ranging companies were disbanded in December 1848.

Shortly after that, General Twiggs ordered that all ranging companies still in Federal service be disbanded.33 Before December 9, 1848, a company of US Dragoons replaced Hill’s Company on the Medina River. US Army Dragoons also replaced the ranging companies commanded by Captains Ross, Conner, and McCulloch.34 In July 1849, the US Army built Fort Lincoln at the site of the rangers camp on Seco Creek; two companies of US Army troops were stationed there.35

On December 17, 1848, Rife mustered out of Federal service along with the rest of Benjamin Hill’s Company.36 He was due all his pay accrued since enrollment. The ordinance officer deducted $2.50 from his pay for lost equipment: i.e., one dollar for a cartridge box, 75 cents for a carbine sling, and 75 cents for a sling swivel.37 Nine days later, on December 26, 1848, Benjamin F. Hill was elected without opposition as Sheriff of Bexar County.38 Perhaps as a result of his service in the Mexican War, Rife received a bounty from the State of Texas.39 He promptly sold his bounty land claim for an unknown sum to Vance and Bros., a large San Antonio merchant and banking firm.40

  1. Carlysle Graham Raht, The Romance of Davis Mountains and Big Bend Country: A History, (El Paso: The Rahtbooks Company, 1919), 49-51 ↩︎

  2. Clayton Williams, Never Again, Texas: 1848-1861, (San Antonio: The Naylor Co., 1969), 9,39; Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean, 1857-1867, (Hartford, Conn: American Publishing Co., 1867), 233 ↩︎

  3. August Santleben, A Texas Pioneer, (New York and Washington: The Neale Publishing Co, 1910), 258 ↩︎

  4. Darren L. Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 2010), 75 ↩︎

  5. Santleben, A Texas Pioneer, 256 ↩︎

  6. Bobby D. Weaver, Castro’s Colony: Empresario Development in Texas, 1842-1865, (College Station, Texas: Texas A&M Press, 1985), 77-8 ↩︎

  7. Santleben, A Texas Pioneer, 9 ↩︎

  8. Weaver, Castro’s Colony, 77 ↩︎

  9. Weaver, Castro’s Colony, 80 ↩︎

  10. Weaver, Castro’s Colony, 81 ↩︎

  11. Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, 61 ↩︎

  12. Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, 71 ↩︎

  13. Stephen B. Oates, ed., Rip Ford’s Texas by John Salmon Ford, (Austin: University of Texas Press, Austin, 1963), 60 ↩︎

  14. James Kimmins Greer, Colonel Jack Hays: Texas Frontier Leader and California Builder, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1952), 159 ↩︎

  15. Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, 73 ↩︎

  16. Weaver, Castro’s Colony, 107 ↩︎

  17. The Corpus Christi Star, (Corpus Christi), November 14, 1848; Texas Democrat (Austin, Tex.), November 4, 1848 ↩︎

  18. Mexican War pension records, Thomas Rife File, Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo, San Antonio; C.D. Spurlin, [Texas Veterans in the Mexican War, (Victoria, TX: C.D. Spurlin, 1984), 151 ↩︎

  19. Frances R. Pryor, “Tom Rife, An 1890’s Custodian of the Alamo”, STIRPES 35, Quarterly Publication of the Texas State Genealogical Society, No. 3, (September 1995), 44; Statement of Service, Records of the Bureau of Pensions, Mexican War Pension Application Files, 1887-1926, Records of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, RG 15, National Achieves and Records Administration, Washington, ↩︎

  20. Mexican War pension records, Thomas Rife File, DRT Library at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas; Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, 73; Thomas Rife Record, Hill’s Company, Texas Mounted Volunteers, CMSR of Volunteer soldiers who served during the Mexican War in organizations from the State of Texas, 1845-1848, M278, Roll 17, Records of the United States Army Adjutant General’s Office, 1780-1917, RG 94, NARA ↩︎

  21. Thomas Rife Record, Hill’s Company, Texas Mounted Volunteers, CMSR of Volunteer soldiers who served during the Mexican War in organizations from the State of Texas, 1845-1848. ↩︎

  22. Mexican War pension records, Thomas Rife File, DRT Library at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas; Pryor, “Tom Rife, An 1890’s Custodian of the Alamo”, 45; Thomas Rife Record, Hill’s Company, Texas Mounted Volunteers, CMSR of Volunteer soldiers who served during the Mexican War in organizations from the State of Texas, 1845-1848. ↩︎

  23. Spurlin, Texas Veterans in the Mexican War, 125 ↩︎

  24. Pryor, “Tom Rife, An 1890’s Custodian of the Alamo”, 45; Thomas Rife Record, Hill’s Company, Texas Mounted Volunteers, CMSR of Volunteer soldiers who served during the Mexican War in organizations from the State of Texas, 1845-1848. ↩︎

  25. Greer, Colonel Jack Hays, 24. ↩︎

  26. Dallas Morning News, October 8, 1933. ↩︎

  27. A. J. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, (Abilene, Texas: State House Press, McMurry University, 1986), 447. ↩︎

  28. Dallas Morning News, October 8, 1933. ↩︎

  29. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters, 321,372,447. ↩︎

  30. Sowell, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters, 372, 447. ↩︎

  31. Mrs. S. J. Wright, San Antonio de Bexar: An Epitome of Early Texas History, (Austin: Morgan Printing, 1916), 94. ↩︎

  32. Santleben, A Texas Pioneer, 256. ↩︎

  33. The Corpus Christi Star, (Corpus Christi), November 28, 1848 ↩︎

  34. The Texas Democrat (Austin), December 9, 1848 ↩︎

  35. Weaver, Castro’s Colony, 107 ↩︎

  36. Ivey, The Texas Rangers: A Registry and History, 73; Spurlin, Texas Veterans in the Mexican War, 125 ↩︎

  37. Thomas Rife Record, Hill’s Company, Texas Mounted Volunteers, CMSR of Volunteer soldiers who served during the Mexican War in organizations from the State of Texas, 1845-1848. ↩︎

  38. The Western Texan, (San Antonio), December 29, 1848 ↩︎

  39. Thomas Rife Application, Military Bounty Land Application Files, Records of the Bureau of Land Management, RG 49, NARA ↩︎

  40. Declaration of Survivor for Pension, Records of the Bureau of Pensions, Mexican War Pension Application Files, 1887-1926, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs RG15, NARA ↩︎