Life of "Big Foot" Wallace: The Great Ranger Captain

A.J. Sowell

• Publisher: Paeroa House
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781779798725
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

He stood six feet two inches tall, weighed over two hundred pounds, and earned his nickname not from legend but from living it. William Alexander Anderson Wallace, known to all as "Big Foot" Wallace, carved his name into the untamed wilderness of Texas with the edge of a Bowie knife and the barrel of a long rifle. A.J. Sowell's riveting biography, first published in 1899, brings to life one of the most extraordinary frontiersmen America ever produced, a man who fought Comanche raiders, survived Mexican imprisonment, and rode the brutal trails of the Texas Rangers with a ferocity that made enemies tremble and allies grateful to stand at his side. This is not a sanitized portrait of frontier life. It is raw, immediate, and alive with the dust, danger, and desperate courage of a man who refused to yield to a world that demanded nothing less than everything he had. Sowell paints Wallace against a backdrop of vast and unforgiving Texas wilderness, where death arrived without warning and survival demanded not just strength but cunning, endurance, and an almost supernatural will to persist. From the harrowing days of the Texas Republic through the violent years of Ranger service along the Rio Grande, the narrative pulses with authentic detail drawn from the era itself. Readers are pulled deep into ambushes on moonlit prairies, desperate hand-to-hand struggles, and the quiet, lonely stretches of trail where a man had only his instincts and his God to rely upon. Wallace emerges as something more than a hero of dime novels. He is fully human, fiercely independent, darkly humorous, and shaped by tragedy and triumph in equal measure. Sowell captures the rhythm of frontier speech and storytelling, giving the account a voice that feels immediate and genuine rather than historical and distant. What makes this book endure nearly a century and a quarter after its publication is the truth at its center. Wallace represents something readers still hunger for, a life lived without compromise on the very edge of civilization, where character was tested daily and built from the testing. For lovers of American history, frontier adventure, and biography that reads with the momentum of great fiction, this is a portrait worth every page. Sowell gives modern readers a window into a world that shaped a nation, told through the extraordinary life of the man who helped shape that world himself.

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I—ANCESTORS
• CHAPTER II—BROTHERS AND SISTERS—ON THE WAY TO TEXAS—HAD A FIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS—ARRIVES IN GALVESTON.
• CHAPTER III—FIRST FIGHT WITH INDIANS, CAPTURED BY INDIANS
• CHAPTER IV—FIRST TRIP TO SAN ANTONIO. VIEWING THE RUINS OF THE ALAMO.
• CHAPTER V—GOING TO AUSTIN—THERE GETS THE NAME OF “BIG FOOT,” TRAILING THE BIGFOOT INDIANS
• CHAPTER VI—HUNTING IN THE MOUNTAINS—KILLING AN INDIAN AT MT. BONNELL
• CHAPTER VII—SEVERE SICKNESS OF WALLACE—LIVING IN A CAVE—WILLIAM FOX KILLED BY THE BIGFOOT INDIANS.
• CHAPTER VIII—INDIAN RAID AND BATTLE OF BRUSHY CREEK—A BRAVE BOY.
• CHAPTER IX—CAPTURE OF SAN ANTONIO BY THE MEXICANS.
• CHAPTER X—BATTLE OF SALADO—WALLACE FIGHTS FOR A PAIR OF PANTS—RETREAT OF THE MEXICANS—FIGHT ON THE HONDO.
• CHAPTER XI—THE SOMERVELL EXPEDITION.
• CHAPTER XII—BATTLE OF MIER.
• CHAPTER XIII—THE CAPTIVE TEXANS—FIGHT AT SALADO—ESCAPE OF THE PRISONERS
• CHAPTER XIV—RECAPTURED BY THE MEXICANS—MARCHED BACK TO SALADO
• CHAPTER XV—DRAWING THE BEANS FOR LIFE.
• CHAPTER XVI—MARCHED TO THE CITY OF MEXICO.
• CHAPTER XVII—WORKING THE CAPTIVES.
• CHAPTER XVIII—RELEASED FROM PRISON.
• CHAPTER XIX—RETURN TO TEXAS.
• CHAPTER XX—MEXICAN WAR OF 1846—FIGHT WITH THE LIPAN INDIANS.
• CHAPTER XXI—CHOLERA IN SAN ANTONIO. CARRY THE MAIL TO EL PASO.
• CHAPTER XXII—INDIAN FIGHT ON DEVILS RIVER.
• CHAPTER XXIII—WESTFALL KILLS THE BIGFOOT INDIAN.
• CHAPTER XXIV—A NIGHT ATTACK ON THE STAGE—A TERRIBLE GUN FIRED BY THE INDIANS.
• CHAPTER XXV—CAPTAIN OF RANGERS—FIGHT A BATTLE WITH THE INDIANS AT BLACK HILLS.
• CHAPTER XXVI—WESTFALL WOUNDED BY INDIANS.
• CHAPTER XXVII—TAKES A TRIP BACK TO THE OLD HOME—JOHN BROWN’S RAID ON HARPER’S FERRY.
• CHAPTER XXVIII—INDIAN FIGHT ON SECO.
• CHAPTER XXIX—THE CIVIL WAR—GOING TO MEXICO AFTER COFFEE.
• APPENDIX