A Tale of the Tucson Rangers

Fighting wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The enthusiasm to be civilian Indian militia usually evaporated about the same time as the whiskey they packed for the trail did. One example: the Tucson Rangers. In May 1882, ex-Army Captain Bill Ross, unhappy with the ineffective actions of the army, organized the Rangers, some 50 hard-riding frontiersmen to go on the offensive against Apaches. Funded by local merchants the rangers took no Apache guides and accidently strayed into Mexico where they were taken prisoner by the Mexican Army. They returned from the fiasco, red-faced, unarmed, humiliated, weary and worn from their unauthorized raid across the border.