The Frontier Partisans Podcast

The Mohawk Valley in western Upstate New York was a savage theater of war — a civil war within the larger Revolutionary War. It kicked off in earnest with the deadliest battle of the Revolution — in fact, one of the deadliest battles in American military history — the Battle of Oriskany, fought in a heavily wooded ravine at the western end of the Mohawk Valley on August 6, 1777. https://www.patreo...

The slow-burning powder train that led to the explosion of the American Revolution in 1775 is usually traced back to the Stamp Act of 1765. But there was another protest that took place in 1765 — in the Pennsylvania backcountry; land that had been a bloody battleground in the French & Indian War and Pontiac’s Rebellion. The conflict involved frontier settlers, traders, and British officials in...

The frontier theater of the American Revolution is often seen as a sideshow of a greater conflict that birthed a new nation and fundamentally changed people’s relationship to government. But in a very real sense, the frontier was the decisive theater, both in creating the conditions and circumstances of rebellion and war, and in determining what kind of nation would come out of the conflict.   htt...

Warren Angus Ferris spent six years as a Mountain Man — and left behind a vivid account of his days in the Rocky Mountains. Further reading: Life in the Rocky Mountains: A Diary of Wanderings on the Sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado, 1830-1835 Land is the Cry!: Warren Angus Ferris, Pioneer Texas Surveyor and Founder of Dallas County — Susanne Starling https://www.patreon.com/f...

In 1842, Texans staged a punitive expedition down to the Rio Grande, in retaliation for a Mexican incursion into San Antonio. Things went badly. Very badly. Further reading: Soldiers of Misfortune: The Somerville and Mier Expeditions, by Sam W. Haynes Intro music: Dead Man Walking, Justin LaPoint, Uppbeat https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius Graphics by L...

In 1932, Robert E. Howard created his most enduring and popular character — Conan the Cimmerian. Part of Conan’s DNA came from the legendary Texas Ranger Bigfoot Wallace. This episode explores that connection:  Further reading: Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard On An Underwood No. 5 — Bigfoot vs. Bigfoot: Biggest Bout of the 19th century! Or…The Four Deaths of Chief Bigfoot by Ben Friberg...

Captain Leander H. McNelly and 26 Texas Rangers crossed the Rio Grande to recover a herd of stolen cattle in November of 1875. They were defying the odds — and international law. McNelly had a mission, and he was willing to risk his own life, the lives of his Rangers, and war with Mexico to accomplish it. Further reading: Texas Seizes Large Sanctuary Island in Campaign Against Cartels Taming the N...

Leander McNelly — a “puny” consumptive with exceptional drive and martial prowess — recruited 41 men to form a Special Force of Texas Rangers to take on rampant banditry in the Nueces Strip in South Texas in 1875. It was more a counterinsurgency mission than a law enforcement operation, and it would make him and his men Frontier Partisan legends.   Further reading: Taming the Nueces Strip, by Geor...

In 1847, General Winfield Scott landed an American Army at the port of Veracruz and pushed west to take Mexico City. The Texas Rangers under Col. John Coffee Hays were tasked with counter-guerrilla operations to keep the vital supply line between Veracruz and Mexico City open. Sources: Mixed Blessing: The Role of the Texas Rangers in the Mexican War, 1846-1848, Masters Thesis by Major Ian B. Lyles...

Ben McCulloch was a Tier 1 Frontier Partisan — a highly capable scout and spy, and an outstanding combat leader. He was also an ardent pro-slavery Southern patriot, who died in battle in service of the Confederate States of America. All that makes him... complicated... for folks in the 21st Century, but he’s a man who should be remembered. (Note: I know that there’s a weird repeat at the end. Coul...

Mabry B. Gray — known to history and legend as Texas Ranger Mustang Gray — is the avatar of the dark side of the Ranging Way of War. If John Stark of Rogers Rangers represents the tough but honorable ideal of a Ranger, Mustang Gray represents the vicious, vengeful, natural-born killer element, giving rein to his darkest impulses in a deadly blood feud. Sources:  MIXED BLESSING: THE ROLE OF THE TEX...

Tougher than leather — that’s Cicero Rufus Perry. He started riding with the Texas Rangers in his teens, in the 1830s, when the new nation of Texas was locked in a two-front war with Mexicans along the border and Comanches to the west and north. He rode with many of the great men of that legendary Frontier Partisan force — Jack Hays, Ben McCulloch, Sam Walker. Support The Frontier Partisans Blog a...

John Stark was a badass — a real-deal American hero, born and bred on the New England Frontier. He served as second-in-command of Rogers Rangers in the French and Indian War, led a frontier-bred contingent of New Hampshire militias to Boston, where they hammered the British Army with devastating volleys of accurate musket fire in the battle of Bunker Hill, and he beat a German contingent of the Br...

The first in the series Tales of the Rangers recounts a savage firefight between a party of New England rangers led by Captain John Lovewell, and Abenaki warriors led by their renowned war captain, Paugus, in the Maine woods on May 8 or May 9, 1725.  Sources: Lovewell’s Fight: War, Death and Memory in Borderland New England — Robert E. Cray The Maine Story: Lovewell’s Fight by Pat Higgins The Whit...

Behind my office chair at The Nugget is a large poster portrait of Emiliano Zapata. The Mexican Revolutionary’s hard eyes gaze out over the snowdrift of papers on my desk, his magnificent mustache bristling, haloed by his massive sombrero, a bandolier of cartridges across his chest. Most folks who come into my office don’t pay much attention to him; those who do often mistake him for Pancho Villa....

In 1920, after a decade of revolutionary struggle, Pancho Villa surrendered. He retired to the hacienda of Canutillo in Durango, Mexico, with a bodyguard of his faithful Dorados. For three years, he lived a peaceful life. That life came to an end on July 20, 1923, when a hit squad shot up his 1919 Dodge Roadster as he drove through the city of Parral. Head Games by Craig McDonald — mentioned in th...

In December 1914, Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte were the mightiest force in Mexico. By the summer of 1915, the Division del Norte had been smashed and Villa was reduced to guerrilla warfare against his hated rival Venustiano Carranza — and against the United States.   Support The Frontier Partisans Blog and Podcast through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans Music: Blue Fr...

When Victoriano Huerta staged a coup and murdered President Francisco Madero in February 1913, Pancho Villa crossed the border with eight men, bent on revenge. Within weeks, he had built a powerful army that would storm down the rail lines and sweep Huerta from power.   Support The Frontier Partisans Blog and Podcast through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans Music: Blue Frontier b...

Pascual Orozco led Francisco Madero’s forces in the decisive 1911 victory at the Battle of Ciudad Juarez — a battle the vacillating Madero didn’t want to fight. The victory ensured the fall of the regime of Porfirio Diaz and the ascendency of Madero to the presidency of Mexico.   Support The Frontier Partisans Blog and Podcast through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans Music: Blue...

In 1910, Porfirio Diaz turned 80 years old. He had ruled Mexico for three decades, and had modernized his country and centralized political power. But “progress” had come ate the expense of massive social discontent — and a storm was brewing that would sweep the Porfiriato away. Support The Frontier Partisans Blog and Podcast through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans Music: Blue F...

Wrapping up the Frontier Partisans Podcast Series on King Philip’s War, it is apparent that the war was a catastrophe for Puritan New England — and an apocalypse for the native peoples of southern New England. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War is highly readable and worthy. Flintlock & Tomahawk by Douglas Leach remains a key history. Support The Frontier Partis...

In the summer of 1676, Metacomet fled south from central Massachusetts, back to his homeland in Rhode Island’s Mount Hope Peninsula. Captain Benjamin Church, sidelined by wounds, got back into the fight, leading a contingent of native warriors and English soldiers in a strategic manhunt that would end King Philip’s War. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War is high...

As the spring 1676 campaign season gets underway, the Puritan settlements of New England are reeling — but the fundamental weaknesses of the native insurgency are starting to show. Source material: Flintlock & Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War, by Douglas Edward Leach. Despite a clear bias toward the Puritan settlers’ POV, and the use of archaic and pejorative language that jars modern se...

The United Colonies attack a fortified Narragansett camp deep in a frozen swamp in Rhode Island, in a preemptive wintertime 1675 strike.  Support The Frontier Partisans Blog and Podcast through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

The Nipmuc jump into the fray and lash the Massachusetts Bay Colony furiously. Ambush tactics play hell with the colonial militias through the summer and fall of 1675, and settlements up and down the Connecticut River are attacked, abandoned and destroyed.   For further reading: “Flintlock & Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War, 1675-78,” by Douglas Edward Leach Support The Frontier Partisan...