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Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier, 1875-1910. By Andrew R. Graybill. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8032-6002-3. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 277. $24.95.
This is a deeply researched comparison of two world-renowned constabularies, the North-West Mounted Police (later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the Texas Rangers. Despite the title, it addresses only the Canadian Plains and the Texas Plains, although interior Texas, east of the Balcones Escarpment, is black-soil farmland that does not qualify as plains. Graybill examines the roles of the Rangers and the Mounties in four major themes: Indians, ethnic minorities (such as Canada's Métis and Texas's Hispanics), cattlemen, and labor unions.
Graybill's treatment of the Mounties in all four themes is judicious and well interpreted. By contrast, the Ranger role in all four is open to criticism. One is that the Rangers never mustered the strength implied, reflecting the wide gulf between legislative authorization and legislative appropriation. Funding,...