#OTD in 1881, 21 Texas Rangers raided an Apache gathering in the early morning, where men,women and children were having breakfastnear the Sierra Diablo mountain range.

Lead by George W. Baylor, the Rangers killed 6 people that day and Baylor wrote in an official report: “[I] don’t think [the Indians] will sit down to eat breakfast again without looking around to see if theRangers are in sight.”

The Rangers, as a police force, sought to create this kind of terrorby pursuing and killing Indigenous people across so-called Texas. Historian Andrew Graybill points out that the public celebration of such murders was extreme even within the culture of policing at the time.

The Texas Rangers Hall of Fame, where Baylor’s career is glorified, claims that this raid, albeit small by their metrics, was “the last Indian battle.” Baylor had dedicated years of his life, at this point, to the state-sanctioned project of hunting “Indians.”

The Handbook of Texas entry on Baylor clarifies that he spent much of his career chasing, and failing to capture, a particular Mescalero Apache chief, Victorio. His career was not only built on violence and terror, but also on myths, rather than proof, of his “successes.”

When stories about the murders conducted by the Texas Rangers circulate with the Rangers as the heroes and the Apache, or any non-white Anglo settler, as the villains, it is worth stopping to consider why anyone should glorify this mythologized version of history.