He appears in few records until his 1841 arrest in Louisiana but later authors state he fled Tennessee as an outlaw before settling in Gonzales, Texas and taking part in the first battle of the 1835 Texian Revolution against Mexico's Centralist Republic.
[1] His fiancée was abducted, scalped, and killed by Lipan Apaches before or during his time with Stephen F. Austin at the siege of De Cos's forces in San Antonio.
[1] After the Battle of San Jacinto, President Sam Houston supposedly banished Glanton from Texas, although this was never enforced[1] and no record of such an order survives.
[1] Glanton was arrested in New Orleans on March 11, 1841 for assault, having tried to shoot a police officer with his pistol in the American Theatre, but he was dismissed with little or no punishment, since no one was hurt.
Glanton evaded the military police sent to arrest him[4] but then enlisted in John Coffee Hays's second regiment of the First Texas Mounted Rifles, also informally known as the Texan Rangers.
According to claims from competing ferry operators, the Glantons sometimes killed Mexican and American passengers returning from the gold-fields to take their money and goods.
At dawn on April 23, 1850, a band of Quechans led by Caballo en Pelo killed and scalped Glanton and most of his organization to establish the tribe's ferry monopoly.