George Durham - Taming the Nueces Strip: The Story of McNellys Rangers

TAMING THE NUECES STRIP

The Story of McNellys Rangers

The Story of McNellys Rangers

by GEORGE DURHAM
as told to CLYDE WANTLAND

Foreword by Walter Prescott Webb

Copyright 1962 by the University of Texas Press, renewed 1990

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America
Tenth paperback printing, 2010

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ISBN 978-0-292-78048-4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-9795

TO

PATRICK IRELAND NIXON, M.D.

A friend of humanity

A lover of Texana

This singular little book, Taming the Nueces Strip, is a true adventure story with so many unusual features that it is sure to be prized by collectors of Texana. In it George Durham tells of his experience as a Texas Ranger serving under Captain L. H. McNelly for a period of about two years, 1875 and 1876. George Durham did not write the story, but told it to Clyde Wantland, a trained reporter and writer, and Wantland put it down as Durham told it more than fifty years after the event. One feature of the story is its simplicity. It is about George Durham, the youngest man in the Ranger Force, and his captain, L. H. McNelly, and what they did in restoring some semblance of law and order to that part of Texas lying between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, the Nueces Strip. Of course, other characters appear, but their role is not important. Durham is concerned with what he did, what he saw, what he thought in following the Captain, the leader whom he worshipped, with good reason.

The time of the action recorded is brief, less than two years, and the years themselves are important, 1875 and 1876. The acts of McNelly, and his little McNellys, as his followers proudly called themselves, can be better appreciated, understood, and justified when we see them against the backdrop of the general conditions existing in the state during these two critical and tumultuous years. Without some knowledge of this background the reader might have difficulty in understanding how a peace officer could be as ruthless as McNelly was.

It was in the period between 1874 and 1880 that the Texas Rangers did their greatest work. They had then their finest opportunity, because the state was full of things requiring their attention. The Comanche Indians were still raiding in the western half of the state. The interior was plagued with lawless men, often organized into mobs, engaged in feuds which terrorized whole counties, such as the Sutton-Taylor feud in DeWitt County and the Horrell-Higgins feud in Lampasas. Horse thieves and train and stage robbers were numerous and elusive.

The Nueces Strip stood out as something special in the way of brigandage, murder, and theft. It had more than its share of domestic criminals led by King Fisher and his friends, and it had besides an international band of cow thieves under the leadership of Juan N. Cortinas, who had been operating from Mexico since 1859.

This was the condition after the Civil War, when Texas was going through the ordeal of reconstruction. The government, imposed by a combination of military rule and political disfranchisement, was breaking down, and the best element in the state was doing all in its power to contribute to the debacle, which came in 1874 when Richard Coke was elected governor in place of E. J. Davis, the carpetbagger. Governor Coke took immediate steps to restore some semblance of order in Texas, Under his leadership the Legislature created the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers, which went west to drive the Indians back, and then turned its attention to the outlaws of the interior. This famous band was under the command of Major John B. Jones.

The Nueces Strip, being an exceptional case, was given separate treatment. A Special Force of about thirty men was organized and placed under the command of Captain L. H. McNelly. No better man, probably, could have been found for this assignment. He was a frail man, then dying of tuberculosis, but he managed to live a little more than two years, and to make a record unmatched among Texas Rangers of all time. He was a natural partisan fighter if there ever was one. He entered the Confederate service at about the age of seventeen and was soon operating mainly within the Union lines. Equipped with an iron will and totally unacquainted with fear, he acquired the art of taking care of his minority in the presence of a majority. It is a tribute to him that he was given any command in Texas at all, because he had served for a short time in the hated State Police during reconstruction.

George Durham, a green kid from Georgia, joined McNelly at Burton and followed him to the end of McNellys career. Durham then entered the employ of the King Ranch, which lies in the Nueces Strip, and remained there until his death. It is often stated that the historian cannot depend on accounts, such as Durhams, given long after the event. This is generally true, but I think there are exceptions and I think two of the exceptions can be found among McNellys men: George Durham is one and William or Bill Callicott is another. When I was writing the history of the Texas Rangers I found McNellys official reports to the Adjutant General of the events narrated by Durham. Also I had the recollections of Bill Callicott, and now we have George Durhams story. A comparison of their accounts with McNellys reports indicate that the memoirs of both men are remarkably accurate. There is no doubt that the experiences these young men had with their intrepid leader were the most dramatic and exciting events they ever knew. They had something to remember, something to live over and over, and to talk about with their comrades. The story burned itself into their brains so that they remembered it when they had forgotten many later but far less exciting incidents. McNelly is, of course, better on dates, but his little McNellys are better on side events and episodes. Bill Callicott had the gift of making himself the center, if not the hero, of many episodes; George Durham was more self-effacing. Both men had one thing in common, and they must have had this in common with all their companions, the worship of the frail man who knew how to take them into danger and bring them out alive. They justified everything he did, including the unvarying execution of prisoners thought to be from a foreign country.

It was McNellys misfortune that he was not at the Alamo or Goliad, or at some other place where his courage, ingenuity, and audacity could have been exercised in a patriotic cause. Had he performed the remarkable feats there on behalf of freedom that he performed in the Nueces Strip, mainly on behalf of a few stolen King cattle, he would have been a heroic figure in Texas history, but he would not have been any greater than he was in the eyes of the young men who have done all they could to perpetuate his memory.

WALTER PRESCOTT WEBB