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| Site of Fort Colorado (also called Coleman's Fort), 1936 Texas Centennial Marker |
In 1936 this Texas Centennial marker was located north of today's Martin Luther Kind Blvd (MLK), before MLK was constructed. In 1966 the Texas Highway Department relocated the marker to the south side of MLK to make way for a housing subdivision. With no pull-off, in time the increased traffic on MLK made access to the marker unsafe, and it was being vandalized. In the summer of 2023, working with Travis Audubon and the Texas Historical Commission, the Travis County Historical Commission, with additional grant funding from Preservation Austin, had the marker moved onto Travis Audubon's Blair Woods Preserve / Sanctuary, where Coleman Springs is located, as part of a larger project to interpret the history of Fort Colorado in conjunction with the National Park Service and El Camino Real de los Tejas Trail Association.
As part of the move of this marker we wanted to step-back and give an accurate historical interpretation of Fort Colorado beyond a narrative of protection from "savage Indians" as described on the marker. The history is indeed more complicated.
Putting Fort Colorado in Historical Context
The granite marker was produced in 1936, one of many "Centennial" markers, as Texas celebrated its 100th anniversary of independence from Mexico. For context on the racial stereotyping of Native Americans as “savages” it is useful to look at the 100 years of Texas history from 1836 to 1936.
While a defensive military fortification, Fort Colorado was established under Sam Houston, the Republic of Texas’ first elected president. Having lived with the Cherokee, his second wife Tiana Rogers being part Cherokee, and becoming a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in 1829, Houston's vision for the future of the Republic of Texas was one of peaceful coexistence with Native Americans, acknowledging their rights to lands.
This vision was not shared by all in Texas, most notably Texas’ second president Mirabeau B. Lamar (1838 to 1844). Lamar’s policy was one of extermination or driving Native American tribes from Texas, the antithesis of Houston’s. It was Lamar’s policy which eventually prevailed and is reflected in the racial stereotyping of Native Americans as “savages” on this 1936 centennial historical marker. The marker may better represent attitudes of 1936 when it was erected (for example some Indian boarding schools were still in operation) than those of 1836 when the fort was established and the future of Texas – that envisioned by Houston vs. Lamar – was still undecided.
In Houston’s two terms as president from 1836 to 1838 (the years Fort Colorado was in use), and 1841 to 1844, he pursued a policy of treaty making with tribes such as the Caddo, Cherokee, Comanche, Delaware, Lipan Apache, Tawakonis, Tonkawa, Wacos and others.
Native Americans too made attempts at peace, one here at Fort Colorado, the only peace treaty initiated in Travis County. In 1837 a band of Penateka Comanches (Nʉmʉnʉʉ) approached Fort Colorado to seek a treaty of peace. Texas Ranger and historian Noah Smithwick, stationed at the fort, lived with the Comanche as emissary for many months where he “was made the recipient of every attention known to their code of hospitality”.
Smithwick made notes on Comanche language, religion, culture, customs and established a friendship with the principal chief, Muguara[1]. Of the Comanche Smithwick wrote “… taking them all around they were the most peaceable community I ever lived in.” Smithwick went on to write “One of the Indian's principal grievances against the white men was the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo, which the Indians claimed were their cattle, placed there for them by the Great Spirit … I had many long, earnest talks with those old Comanche chiefs, and I could not but admit the justice of their contention.”
While Fort Colorado was indeed a fort, it was also the site of a rare attempt in Texas history at peace that led some Texans like Smithwick to view the Comanche as fellow humans.
Muguara was later killed in 1840 in what is called the Council House Fight, or Council House Massacre, during Lamar’s term as president. Muguara led a group of Penateka chiefs, warriors, women and children to San Antonio for mutually agreed upon peace negotiations with Texans. Talks did not go as planned and Texas troops, prepositioned and greatly outnumbering the Comanche, tried to take the Comanche chiefs hostage in the enclosed quarters of the Council House resulting in a bloody fight inside that then spilled into the streets of San Antonio. Thirty Penateka leaders and warriors, as well as some five women and children, were killed and as many imprisoned. The violation of peace talks under a flag of truce was viewed by the Comanche as treachery. While presented as a victory by Lamar’s supporters, it was criticized by others in Texas and the U.S. (Anderson p.34). It was viewed by some, including Houston, as a major blunder earning Texas a singular mistrust, not only among the Penateka, but the entire Comanche Nation and their allies. It thwarted Houston's future attempts at peace in his second term, and fueled frontier violence against Texas for the next 35 years.
Almost a prediction by Chief Muguara to Smithwick, it was the intentional slaughter of bison by the U.S. to near extinction, coupled with disease such as smallpox, and the on-going influx of European settlement, that would hasten the move of the last of the Comanche out of Texas and onto a reservation in Oklahoma in 1875.
Only three federally recognized tribes still have reservations in Texas: the Alabama-Coushatta, Kickapoo, and Tigua. Of these only the Tigua consider their current location, far west Texas, part of their ancestral lands pre-European contact. Still, their current reservation of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo near El Paso was established as a result of forced movement by the Spanish as part of New Mexico’s Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In addition to the federally recognized tribes, Texas recognizes the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas headquartered in McAllen. The Caddo, Cherokee, Comanche, and Tonkawa are officially headquartered in Oklahoma. Today TxDOT and the Texas Military Department collaborate with tribes in Texas and the adjacent states to identify and preserve artifacts and locations of tribal significance, including burials covered by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
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| Portrait of Penateka Comanche Chief Yellow Wolf ca. 1849 done by Capt. Arthur T. Lee while Commander at Fort Croghan in Burnet, Texas. Yellow Wolf is said to have been the cousin of Buffalo Hump who Smithwick mentioned as having been in the camp where he stayed with the Comanche in 1837. The two may have been nephews of Muguara (Schilz). After the Council House massacre in which Muguara was killed both rose to prominence among the Penateka. Photo courtesy of the Rochester Museum & Science Center (RMSC). |
Sources
Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land 1820-1875. University of Oklahoma Press, 2005.
Flanagan, Sue. Sam Houston's Texas. University of Texas Press, 1964.
Gwynne, S.C. Empire of the Summer Moon: 84-85. Scribner, 2010.
Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. Yale University Press, 2008
Handbook of Texas Online, American Indian Relations. Accessed March 17, 2023.
Handbook of Texas Online, Council House Fight. Accessed March 20, 2023
Handbook of Texas Online, Houston, Sam (1793–1863). Accessed March 17, 2023.
Historic Marker Database (HMDB), Site of Fort Colorado (Also called Coleman's Fort), https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=227723
Newcomb, W.W. Jr. The Indians of Texas. University of Texas Press, 1961.
Noyes, Stanley. Los Comanches. University of New Mexico Press, 1993.
Schilz, Jodye Lynn Dickson and Thomas Schilz. Buffalo Hump and the Penateka Comanches. Texas Western Press, 1989.
Smithwick, Noah. The Evolution of a State, or, Recollections of Old Texas Days. Gammel Book Company, Austin, Texas. 1st edition, 1900.
TxDOT Tribal histories project. Accessed March 19 2023. https://www.txdot.gov/business/resources/environmental/compliance-toolkits/historic-resources/tribal-histories.html
U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Affairs (bia.gov). Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, 2022.
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