In the faint light of dawn on a summer morning in 1841, thirty-five horsemen gathered on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas. Twenty were Mexican citizens, fifteen were Texas Rangers, and they rode alongside Lipan Apache guides. Through the previous spring, Comanche raiders had stolen their cattle and horses, burned their homes, and cut down their loved ones before their eyes. Now, Anglo-Texans and native-born Mexicans rode as brothers in arms, united by a single intent: retake the horses stolen from ranches around San Antonio, and kill or capture every Comanche they could find.
The Rangers, though the minority of the force, were assigned to lead the expedition. They had existed for only a little over half a decade, but they had already accumulated more combat experience against the Comanche than most men in Texas. Along with their native guides, they were among the rare few who had fought the Comanche on their own ground with any measure of success. Even so, they had not been able to stem the tide of violence washing over Central Texas.
The Comanche raids were unlike anything the region had ever seen. For centuries, the Comanche had suffered at the hands of more organized and wealthier tribes. Their ascent came only after they obtained horses through raiding and trading with the Spanish. Once that meeting occurred, their rise to power was more rapid and intense than that of any tribe on the North American continent.
They mastered horsemanship, selectively bred their animals, and fought from horseback, a practice most other tribes had not yet adopted. Raids often took place on nights of the full moon, so frequently that a full moon in Central Texas became known as a Comanche Moon. Unsuspecting settlers or rival tribesmen would wake to a cyclone of violence. Mounted warriors, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles from their base camps, would swoop down on their targets.
Men were killed on the spot or taken prisoner and tortured to death. Women were taken captive and used as slaves. Infants were generally killed outright, as their crying presented too much of a liability for a raiding party on the move. This pattern had repeated itself for decades, and for the most part, no one had been able to stop it.
The Spanish government had been exasperated by its inability to settle any consequential territory north of San Antonio since the city’s founding in 1718. The Mexican government that took power after the Treaty of Córdoba in 1821 found itself just as perplexed. They had found in the Comanche not merely another tribe to be exterminated or driven out, but a rival empire with which they were perpetually unable to compete. Seasonal attacks caused not only destruction but pervasive fear among Mexican citizens from San Antonio to the Yucatán Peninsula.
The Mexican government’s solution was to install a buffer zone of Anglo settlers on the Texas frontier to absorb the brunt of Comanche violence. This solution backfired. The settlers, thoroughly fed up with the lack of support from Mexico, fomented rebellion. The resulting Texas Revolution lasted from October 2, 1835, to April 21, 1836, and the Texans won their independence.
They then faced an even bigger challenge: stemming the tide of Comanche attacks that afflicted virtually the entire territory from the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Oklahoma. Their solution was to employ mobile companies of light cavalry to police the open ranges. This was the genesis of the Texas Rangers. In their earliest years, the Rangers struggled greatly.
Their ranks were composed mostly of young men in their early twenties, many of whom had come to Texas for the express purpose of fighting. They had fought Mexican troops, chased down cattle thieves, and dispensed their own brand of frontier justice. But it was the Comanche who inflicted the greatest losses. In some of their earliest years, ranger fatalities reached as high as fifty percent.
Those not killed outright were subjected to torturous fates. The survivors honed their skills as a mobile attack force capable of striking deep into enemy territory. They refined their techniques in riding and shooting, drilling recruits in firing from a galloping horse. They developed their weaponry, moving from single-shot pistols to five-shot revolvers with reloadable cylinders.
Constant intensive combat forged the Rangers into a highly experienced and highly motivated group of frontier fighters. By 1841, they were known as rough men who, without the outlet of their profession, would have found no place in civilized society. They wore whatever they found practical, often buckskin leggings and wide-brimmed hats. They were known to fight and kill each other in drunken quarrels.
They were, by most accounts, more analogous to a modern-day biker gang than a metropolitan police force. It was no small wonder, then, that they pledged their unwavering allegiance to a slightly built, well-kempt Tennessean who was scarcely twenty-four years old. His name was John Coffey Hays, better known as Jack Hays. Born in Little Cedar Lick, Tennessee, into a proud military family, he had come to Texas in 1836 hoping to join the Texas Revolution.
He arrived too late and instead found work as a land surveyor. This was perhaps the most dangerous job in the territory. It meant venturing into the vast expanses west of San Antonio that everyone knew belonged not to the new Republic but to the Comanche. That land was known as Comanchería.
The Comanche had long observed survey parties and knew their purpose: these were the men who snuck into their lands to divide them up and sell them off to their enemies. Many a surveyor met his end staked out to the Texas dirt. Hays was undeterred. He was recruited into the Ranger forces and worked his way up through the ranks quickly.
While stationed near San Antonio, he became good friends with a Lipan Apache chief named Flacco, who taught him the tactics of the Comanche in detail. Unlike other tribes, the Comanche attacked in cyclonic formations, a ring of riders rotating toward the target. Every time a warrior reached the point nearest the target, he loosed his arrow before his path carried him to the rear of the formation. Hays used Flacco’s intelligence to hunt down raiding parties on their own terms.
His reputation grew among Texans, Mexicans, and Comanche alike. They called him Captain Jack, or Capanyaka, meaning too brave. Many bounties were placed on his head by Comanche war chiefs and Mexican officers who called him an irascible devil. He was described as affable and genteel in manner, but his dark eyes would turn icy cold at the first call to arms.
He was intensely concerned with the well-being of his men, but nearly suicidal in his disregard of his own safety. These traits earned him promotion and the unwavering loyalty of those under his command. On this hot summer morning, Hays led his band of Rangers and Mexican gunmen out of San Antonio, tracking the raiding party west. On July 1, they came within sight of the Comanche at the mouth of Uvalde Canyon, just over eighty miles from San Antonio.
Knowing they had to maintain the element of surprise, Hays and his men attacked immediately. The band was roughly a dozen strong. The Comanche, despite their offensive prowess, often preferred discretion in the face of a surprise attack. This case was no exception.
The warriors, along with one of their women, scattered into a nearby thicket. Hays brought his horse to a stop and stepped off its back, charging into the thicket without breaking stride. Two other Rangers followed. A volley of arrows flew toward them, most sticking into tree trunks or bouncing off limbs.
All three men were hit. One was grievously wounded, another seriously wounded, and Hays suffered a painful but minor wound to a finger. Hays directed the most seriously wounded Ranger to take cover, then got their mobile comrade back to the battle line. He returned to the thicket with a double-barreled shotgun to retrieve his critically wounded companion.
Of the twelve Comanche warriors in the thicket, only one was armed with a rifle. The rest carried bows, tomahawks, and knives. Against one wounded man with a shotgun and another nearly dead man with a pistol, this would normally have been an unremarkable challenge. The Comanche gathered into a battle line and began their attack, ripping through the brush to swoop down on Hays’s position.
Jack Hays waited until the charge was within fifteen feet, then rose and fired two shotgun blasts into the two closest warriors. The damage done to their comrades dissuaded the Comanche from continuing the assault. Hays used the moment to drag his fellow Ranger to safety. He directed his men to encircle the thicket and shoot any Comanche who attempted to flee.
Hays obtained a rifle and several freshly loaded cylinders for his revolver, then sprinted back into the thicket alone. For the next three hours, he picked off the Comanche one by one as attack after attack was driven back by the accuracy and rapidity of his fire. As the late afternoon sun descended, only two men remained alive in the thicket: Hays and one Comanche warrior, along with one Comanche woman. Ten of their tribesmen lay dead, their lifeblood drained into the dirt.
The last warrior, knowing he was surrounded and escape was all but impossible, resigned himself to his fate. He sang his death song, its refrains echoing off the canyon walls. He informed the woman she would be taken prisoner soon and that she must conduct herself honorably and stay strong. Then he took a deep breath, knocked an arrow, and moved toward Hays’s position.
Hays, sweat-soaked and covered in dust and blood, waited. When the last warrior came within fifteen feet, Hays rose and took aim. The Comanche loosed his arrow at the same instant Hays’s revolver retorted. The arrow grazed Hays’s shoulder and knocked him to his back.
The warrior was struck in the torso but continued his attack, knife in hand. Hays sprang to his feet and, with the warrior mere feet away, emptied his remaining four shots into him. The woman was taken prisoner. The horses were recovered.
The Comanche bodies were left to the wolves and coyotes. Hays would go on to fight many more battles, not only against the Comanche but against the Mexican Army, the Apache, and even the Paiute. He would eventually move to San Francisco, where he was named sheriff and amassed a substantial fortune through ranching and real estate. He retained the respect of many of his staunchest former enemies; upon hearing of the birth of Hays’s first son, the Comanche chief Buffalo Hump sent the ranger captain a golden spoon as a gift.
Hays became one of the original members of the city of Oakland, and at the age of sixty-six, he passed away. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. The Comanche, though they had borne the brunt of this engagement, continued to live as lords of the southern plains until the 1870s, when they were finally relegated to the discontent of reservation life.