In a two-part duelist1954 video series, historian and shooter Mike Beliveau maps the Rangers’ arsenal from the 1820s through 1900. In part one he follows the force from its ad hoc birth under Stephen F. Austin through the Mexican War and Civil War; in part two he tracks the post-Reconstruction rearmament into the classic Winchester-and-Colt era. I’ll recount Beliveau’s story – with his models, dates, and battlefield vignettes – and add my own take on why particular weapons stuck, how budgets warped procurement, and how the Rangers’ gun choices helped create the Texas legend.
Flint, Fire, and Bowie Steel (1820s–1830s)
Beliveau starts at the beginning: 1823–24, when Austin scrawled that he would “employ ten men to act as rangers.” In those frontier years the men brought personal arms – flintlock rifles and shotguns, flintlock pistols, and the indispensable Bowie knife. The percussion cap system existed but hadn’t yet earned trust on the frontier, so many Rangers clung to spark and pan. Beliveau’s point is blunt: in a world of single shots, the knife is the only thing “never empty.” This is the last moment when a Ranger’s primary “system” is man-plus-blade; everything afterward is a race to put more lead in the air, faster.
From Flint to Percussion – and the First Standard Lists
By the 1830s percussion technology becomes the norm in Texas, and Texas presidents start trying to standardize the kit. Beliveau cites Mirabeau Lamar’s order after independence: each Ranger would furnish a good horse, a good rifle, and a pair of single-shot pistols. It’s not a depot issuing crates; it’s a shopping list handed to cash-strapped citizens. I read this as a theme that never quite dies: Texas prefers arming Rangers without fronting cash, which forces practical, not fancy, choices.
The Colt Patterson Changes the Frontier (1841–1844)
The pivot comes in 1841, when Captain Jack Coffee Hays learns that the decommissioned Texas Navy has a stash of Colt Patterson revolvers. Beliveau shows the five-shot .36 with its folding trigger – crude by our standards, but space-age then. Hays “wheedles” out two per Ranger, and the effect is immediate. In the 1844 fight that goes by many names (Walker Creek/Guadalupe Crossing among them), Hays has his men fire their single-shot rifles, drop them, and draw Patersons. The Comanche expect knives; they run into repeaters. Fifteen minutes later, twenty Comanche are dead and the legend of the armed Ranger is born. Beliveau’s verdict is crisp: the balance of firepower on the frontier flipped that day.
Designing a True Fighting Revolver: The Walker (1847)
When Texas Ranger Samuel Walker’s company is federalized for the Mexican War, he scavenges Patersons, impresses the U.S. Army, and is sent to find Samuel Colt. Beliveau walks through their co-design: the 1847 “Walker” – a six-shot .44 with a nine-inch barrel and a cavernous 60-grain powder charge. It hits like a short rifle, which is exactly what Walker wanted for mounted combat. A thousand are ordered; roughly 300 rupture (Beliveau explains poor metallurgy and bullets jammed backward into tight chambers), but seven hundred fight on – and the idea of a heavy, practical revolver is set. My opinion: the Walker is the American gun in adolescence – powerful, gangly, and changing the rules even while it breaks them.
Dragoon Refinements and the Reign of the 1851 Navy
Colt soon tones the Walker into the .44 Dragoon series – still hefty, now manageable – and then, in 1850, perfects what Beliveau calls the “ranger-sized revolver”: the Colt 1851 Navy, a six-shot .36 with the best-in-class grip that “points like an extension of your hand.” Beliveau cites Frederick Law Olmsted’s mid-1850s Texas travelogue: “for practical purposes, one Colt Navy revolver…worth a dozen of all others…there are probably in Texas about as many revolvers as there are male adults.” The Navy wins because it’s the first sidearm that balances fight-stopping power with all-day carry. In a mounted force that has to self-fund, ergonomics and cost matter as much as muzzle energy.
Rifles, Rip Ford, and a Frontier at War
Sidearms weren’t everything. Beliveau notes state-issued long arms, like the .58 Springfield 1855 rifled musket, used alongside pairs of Navies. In 1858, Governor Hardin Runnels unleashes Captain John “Rip” Ford to chastise hostile raiders; at Little Robe Creek, Ford’s men – many with twin Colt Navies – fight a six-hour battle that kills seventy-six Comanche for two Ranger dead. Beliveau reminds viewers that Texas was the bloodiest battleground of the Indian Wars for decades. My read: it’s tempting to romanticize the hardware; the reality was a grinding frontier conflict that forced incremental, sometimes brutal, adaptation.
The 1860 Army and a Wartime End-Run
During the Civil War, Ben McCulloch personally convinces Sam Colt to sell him one thousand Colt 1860 Army revolvers – “army caliber, navy size” – technically to guard the Indian frontier, not to arm a seceded state. Beliveau emphasizes how early “fluted” cylinders proved too thin and some burst, but enough 1860 Armies flowed to Ranger companies and, later, to federally controlled frontier patrols during Reconstruction. This episode shows two constants – Texas improvises supply chains, and the Colt brand keeps solving Rangers’ problems better than anyone else.
Rebirth with a Yellow Boy: Winchester 1866 and the Ammo Flood (1870–1871)
When Reconstruction ends in 1870, the legislature instantly raises twenty mounted companies. Beliveau says the state charges Rangers for rifles but provides ammo; surprisingly, the first issued long gun is the Winchester 1866 (“Improved Henry”) in .44 rimfire. The logic is sound: ten-to-fourteen rounds of fast fire in an Indian fight beats a single-shot thunderstick. For those without sidearms, the state hands out 1860 Armies.
Beliveau highlights the scale – 1.5 million rounds of .44 Henry ordered, plus hundreds of thousands of paper cartridges for the Colts – and the first fight of the reborn force, where a small Ranger detachment uses their 1866s to hold off a larger Kiowa party after maneuvering into a dry wash. This is the beginning of the Ranger “system” – lever rifle plus belt revolver – long before it becomes pop-culture canon.
Sharps, Peacemakers, and McNelly’s Hard School (1874–1876)
In 1874 Texas formalizes the Frontier Battalion under Major John B. Jones and issues Sharps carbines in .50-70 Government – cost docked from pay, of course – while requiring each man to furnish an “army-sized six-shooter.” At the same time, the state creates Leander McNelly’s Special Force and issues it fifty Sharps and fifty Colt Single Action Army revolvers with 3,000 rounds. Beliveau traces McNelly through the ill-fated Sutton-Taylor feud and then onto the Nueces Strip, where he springs border ambushes and even crosses into Mexico at Las Cuevas, tangling with rurales and bringing stolen Texas cattle home.
Asked why not swap to Winchesters for a faster second shot, McNelly replies (as Beliveau quotes him): a Sharps makes a man think about why he missed – and any man who misses twice has no business in his outfit. McNelly’s doctrine prizes deliberate hits over volume, a counterpoint to the lever-gun myth – and a lesson many modern carbine courses still teach.
Not Just Colts: Shotguns, Smith & Wessons, and Trapdoors
Beliveau notes the Peacemaker’s dominance but shows the variety: Company D orders a dozen breech-loading double shotguns for camp guards; in Company E, 41 privates ask the state to buy them Colt SAA revolvers on payroll deduction, while a dozen prefer Smith & Wesson Americans. Lieutenant Ira Long requests a Smith & Wesson Russian. Major Jones, never in love with the .50-70 Sharps, buys 150 Springfield “trapdoor” carbines from federal stocks and .45-70 ammunition follows. The SAA becomes the Ranger’s silhouette, but the institutional reality is mixed calibers, mixed actions, and a constant tension between what the state can supply and what a trooper trusts on his own belt.
The Model 1873: The Rifle That Made the Ranger a Cultural Icon
By 1876 the Winchester Model 1873 in .44 Winchester Center Fire (.44-40) hits Texas. Beliveau tells a wonderful story: ten men in Company D pool $50 apiece (a fortune) and send three Rangers to Austin to buy brand-new ’73s. King Ranch’s Richard King gifts McNelly thirty more – an investment in keeping raiders off 500,000 acres. In 1877, General Order No. 15 shifts the Rangers from Indian fighters toward a law-enforcement mission, and the state begins issuing ’73s at a cheaper $28, while providing .44-40 ammo free and even nudging Rangers toward .44-40 Peacemakers to simplify logistics. Still, as Beliveau stresses, .45 Colt remains the favored sidearm round. My opinion: this is the gold-standard pairing that lives on in Westerns for a reason – it worked.
Caliber Chaos and Frontier Ingenuity
Beliveau relates one of those “only in Texas” anecdotes: in an 1881 fight, Ranger George Lloyd jams his ’73 by ramming a .45 Colt revolver round into the .44-40 rifle. Under fire he calmly removes the side plates with a pocketknife, pries out the cartridge, reassembles the gun, and gets back in it.
The episode captures the strengths and weaknesses of the era’s mix-and-match armories: affordable, redundant, easy to keep running with a blade and grit – but vulnerable to human error when two similar-looking cartridges live on the same belt. My two cents: modern shooters obsess over “same-caliber rifle and pistol” for convenience; Beliveau’s sources suggest Rangers often favored the best tool in each role, even if that meant two ammo types.
The Last Decades: 1892, 1894, and 1895 Carry the Flag
In the 1890s, Beliveau shows the toolkit broadening again. The Winchester 1892 makes inroads but never outshines the beloved ’73 in Ranger hands. Then John Browning’s 1894, chambered in flat-shooting smokeless .30-30, becomes a long-lived favorite – so much so that 20th-century Rangers often paired 1894s with 1911 pistols. For heavy work, the box-magazine Winchester 1895 appears in .30-40 Krag, .30-03, and .30-06, giving the force true rifle-class reach. By century’s end the Rangers had bridged from cap-and-ball and rimfire to smokeless power – without losing the practical, horse-borne ethos that shaped their choices.
So, What Did the Rangers Actually Carry?
Pulling Beliveau’s two episodes together, the checklist looks like this: early flintlock rifles/shotguns/pistols and Bowie knives; percussion single-shots; Colt Paterson .36; Colt Walker 1847 .44; Colt Dragoon .44; Colt 1851 Navy .36; Springfield 1855 .58 rifled musket; Colt 1860 Army .44 (including early fluted models); Winchester 1866 .44 rimfire; Sharps carbines in .50-70; Colt Single Action Army (mostly .45 Colt, some .44-40); Smith & Wesson American/Russian variants; breech-loading double shotguns; Springfield “trapdoor” carbines (.50-70 and then .45-70); Winchester 1873 (.44-40); Winchester 1892; Winchester 1894 (.30-30); and Winchester 1895 in high-power military cartridges.
That’s not just a catalog – it’s a timeline of how a frontier force evolved from militia to modernity. Credit to Mike Beliveau for assembling the hardware and the human stories that make the list come alive. My closing thought: the Rangers didn’t chase “cool”; they chased advantages – first shots, follow-up shots, carry weight, ammunition supply – and the guns that earned a place on their saddles are the ones that solved real problems under dust, sweat, and incoming fire.
UP NEXT: “Heavily Armed” — See Which States Are The Most Strapped
Image Credit: Survival World
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Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John developed a love for the great outdoors early on. With years of experience as a wilderness guide, he’s navigated rugged terrains and unpredictable weather patterns. John is also an avid hunter and fisherman who believes in sustainable living. His focus on practical survival skills, from building shelters to purifying water, reflects his passion for preparedness. When he’s not out in the wild, you can find him sharing his knowledge through writing, hoping to inspire others to embrace self-reliance.