Sisterdale is always a favorite destination of ours–right down the road from Luckenbach.
On June 9 tiny Sisterdale, TX quietly remembers the anniversary of the Battle of Walker’s Creek…or Sisters Creek…or Asta’s Creek…or Pinta Trail Crossing.
There are many names for the same spot, and it was more appropriately a skirmish than a battle, so why am I writing about it? Because sometimes little things are very, very important, and the Battle of Walker’s Creek was one of those things.

The Battle of Walker’s Creek was the first time the Texas Rangers used Colt revolvers against the Comanche warriors who roamed West Texas. Because they had the revolver and the Comanche warriors did not, the much smaller contingent of Texas Rangers won that encounter. Indeed, the Colt Revolver proved to be such an advantage that it came to be called “the Gun that Won the West.”

One of the things I LOVE about home schooling is that it teaches learning as a lifestyle. Learning never ends, and while learning about the Battle of Walker’s Creek, I was excited to learn THREE NEW THINGS:

• The cylinder of an 1837 Colt Patterson revolver held 5 (not 6) bullets. So if you’re thinking “Six Shooter” like I was–not quite.
• The gun came with a couple of extra cylinders that could be pre-loaded. In the heat of battle, you could take the barrel off the gun, swap out the empty cylinder for a new one, and resume firing. A little awkward, maybe, but still a vast improvement over having to dismount and ram new rounds in a front-loading black powder rifle.
• As you may have noticed in the illustration, the Colt Patterson seems to have “had no trigger,” but actually it did! It would be more accurate to say the Colt Patterson had no trigger guard (the round part that keeps you from shooting yourself in the foot by accidentally depressing the trigger). When the hammer was cocked, an unguarded trigger dropped down, ready to be pressed back into the body of the gun as you fired it.

Before the Texas Rangers placed an order for the Colt Revolvers, Samuel Colt had been unable to sell anyone on his new gun designs. He actually went broke before finally making a sale to relatively obscure clients, and this first skirmish has been mostly forgotten by history…yet almost two centuries later, everyone remembers “the Gun that Won the West.”
Just goes to show that failure is temporary.
It only becomes permanent if you give up. 😉