Manchaca Springs, Frank Brown's Recollection of the the "Manchaca Fight"

A transcription from the Texas State Archives copy of Annals of Travis County and of the City of Austin: From the Earliest Times to the Close of 1875, years 1844-1845, Chapter 11, p.10

• Manchaca Fight. In the spring of this year, a party of savages came down from the upper Colorado. They followed the valley until they reached Hill’s prairie, where they stole a number of valuable horses, and then turned about and retreated to the mountains. Capt. Wiley Hill organized a company of sixteen men and followed the savages. The latter went up the divide west of the Colorado, leaving a plain trail, which was easily followed. At night the Indians encamped at the Manchaca springs, twelve miles south of Austin, at the foot of the mountains. They believed that they were beyond the reach of successful pursuit. In this they were mistaken. The whites overhauled them, and attacked them in camp early next morning. The Indians fought a short time, and then broke under the deadly fire that was poured into them, and sought safety in flight. They were followed into the hills for some distance, where they scattered and, owing to the rugged nature of the country, it was found impossible to again come up with them. The victors returned to the camp at Manchaca spring. Here they took possession of the stolen horses and all the camp equipage.

Where was "Hill's Prairie"? From the Handbook of Texas Online:

• HILLS PRAIRIE, TEXAS. Hills Prairie, four miles south of Bastrop in central Bastrop County, had its origins when Elisha Barton and Edward Jenkins settled in the area about 1830. In spring 1833 John Gilmer McGehee explored the prairie, and in 1835 he returned with a colony of 140 people from Alabama and Georgia. Their settlement near the Jenkins homestead was called Hill's Prairie after Abram Wiley (Wylie) Hill, a settler who bought 2,220 acres from Edward Jenkins's widow, Sarah, and established his home on the prairie. The community built a private school, and Methodist religious services were conducted in the Hill and McGehee homes. In 1843 Wiley Hill built a cotton gin. In 1877 a post office was established at Hills Prairie with John McDonald as postmaster. The community's population in 1884 was thirty. Four years later the post office was renamed McDonald's Store, but the name was changed back after two years, when Sarah Hill became postmaster. With the extension of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad through Bastrop County in the 1880s, Hills Prairie became a railroad station. In 1896 the community had fifty residents, a drugstore, a general store, and a swine dealer. By 1914 the population had risen to seventy-five, and the site had a combination general store and cotton gin, as well as second cotton gin. By 1925 the population had fallen to six. The Hills Prairie school was abandoned in 1928, and the post office was discontinued in 1930. In the late 1930s the population rose to twenty-five and in the late 1940s to fifty. After reaching a peak of sixty-two in the late 1960s, Hills Prairie population estimates stabilized at thirty-five,