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Bandera Pass was the first time Colt’s revolvers truly showed their utility in battle. Around 50 Texans held their ground while being assaulted by hundreds of Comanche warriors. At Walker’s Creek, Colt’s revolvers were demonstrated to be particularly useful in running battles on horseback. The Comanches were used to fighting men with single shot firearms and could draw their fire and then descend upon them before they could reload or overwhelm them with fast firing bows. Captain John Coffee Hays and 14 of his rangers fought an estimated 40 to 200 Comanche in the battle. After avoiding being drawn into a trap, the Texans attacked the Comanche on horseback, fought off two counter attacks, and then pursued the Comanche in a running fight with Hays calling on his men to use their revolvers at close range yelling: “Crowd them! Powder-burn them!” Comanche losses are estimated to 20-50+ killed while the Rangers lost one killed and four wounded, including Samuel Walker who took a thrust from a lance to the body and was expected to die but lived on to fight in the Mexican-American
War. The Paterson revolvers were also used by the navy of the Republic of Texas during the Texas-Mexican Wars in the early 1840s. Patersons also saw limited use outside of Texas by the U.S. Army in the Seminole Wars, and, even after the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company closed, they appear in newspaper articles, including in an article about two men in Mobile, Alabama, dueling with “Colt’s pistols” and exchanging four shots in 1844. Colt’s Paterson, New Jersey, based Patent Arms Manufacturing Company failed in 1842, but the Texans kept on using their Colt revolvers, and they wanted more, especially with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War. The war broke out following the annexation of Texas by the United States. Samuel Walker based on his experiences with the Paterson revolvers spearheaded the genesis of the formidable Colt Walker revolver in collaboration with Samuel Colt. The revolver launched the rebirth Samuel Colt’s firearms business and his tremendous business success.
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