Dunbar-Ortiz
eradication of the Comanche nation and all other Native peoples in
Texas. Mounted and armed with the new killing machine, the five-shot
Colt Paterson revolver, they did so with dedicated precision.
Having perfected their art in counterinsurgency operations against
Comanches and other Native communities, the Texas Rangers went on
to play a significant role in the U.S. invasion of Mexico. As seasoned
counterinsurgents, they guided U.S. Army forces deep into Mexico,
engaging in the Battle of Monterrey. Rangers also accompanied General
Winfield Scott’s army and the Marines by sea, landing in Vera Cruz
and mounting a siege of Mexico’s main commercial port city. They
then marched on, leaving a path of civilian corpses and destruction,
to occupy Mexico City, where the citizens called them Texas Devils.
In defeat and under military occupation, Mexico ceded the northern
half of its territory to the United States, and Texas became a state in
- Soon after, in 1860, Texas seceded, contributing its Rangers to
the Confederate cause. After the Civil War, the Texas Rangers picked
up where they had left off, pursuing counterinsurgency against both
remaining Native communities and resistant Mexicans.
The Marines also trace half of their mythological origins to the
invasion of Mexico that nearly completed the continental United States.
The opening lyric of the official hymn of the Marine Corps, composed
and adopted in 1847, is “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores
of Tripoli.” Tripoli refers to the First Barbary War of 1801–5, when the
Marines were dispatched to North Africa by President Thomas Jefferson
to invade the Berber Nation, shelling the city of Tripoli, taking captives,
and blockading key Barbary ports for nearly four years. The “Hall of
Montezuma,” though, refers to the invasion of Mexico: while the U.S.
Army occupied what is now California, Arizona, and New Mexico, the
Marines invaded by sea and marched to Mexico City, murdering and
torturing civilian resisters along the way.
