Published: January 31, 2009 09:58 pm      

Bill Young: Indian villages skip Navarro County

What prevented the historical Native Americans from establishing a village in Navarro County? One Spanish explorer recorded an Iscanis village in Freestone County, a Tehuacana village in Limestone County, a Keechi village in Leon County plus one other historical village in Anderson County, but I cannot remember the particular name of the tribe at this moment, all in the early 1700s. But why wasn’t there a village in Navarro? Something locally caused them to avoid putting a permanent settlement in our area. My best guess is the absence of a good, dependable and easily accessible source of water. You would think we had all the water they needed either in the Trinity River, or in Richland and Chambers creeks. But we must remember just how fickle nature is with the rainfall locally. Look at today! Here we are in a drought at the end of January with all of the local lakes down more than four feet and no immediate signs of a good heavy rain in the near future.

Fairly large Native American villages were commonly located near dependable spring-fed streams which flowed all year long. And most villages were near a relatively flat section of a stream where water was readily accessible. On the other hand our local streams including the Trinity River have cut deeply into their respective floodplains which in turn made the stream banks steep and very difficult to get down to the water and get back out. Horses played a very important role with the historical Native Americans tribes who needed easy access to dependable water for their herds. I can say for sure most of the banks along Richland and Chambers creeks have steep inclines. Occasionally an old oxbow or slough holds water which is accessible but the water doesn’t flow and in turn may have some things growing in the sluggish water not suitable for a good horse herd.

I mentioned three sites in the first paragraph which I am familiar with: the Iscanis village in Freestone County, the Tehuacana village in Limestone County and the Keechi village in Leon County. All three have one thing in common, good flowing clear water springs capable of producing enough water to supply a complete settlement of Native Americans along with their horses and extra water available to water whatever they were growing as a food source. There is no documented evidence of any Native American group in this area watering their crops through a series of hand-dug canals like the Spaniards did near their early mission sites but I would think any Native American group who might have witnessed this tried to adapt some form of irrigation. The Caddos of East Texas were considered extremely good farmers who produced a lot of consumable food products such as corn and melons. So great were their annual harvests as to allow them to stockpile food to sustain them during the drought periods and the long, cold winters.

I have walked along most of the banks of Richland and Chambers creeks over the years and a fair amount on the Trinity either on our side or the Henderson County side looking for buried archeological sites exposed in the stream banks. Many times I might spot something which looked promising, washed out and hanging on the side of the bank but the bank was so steep, most of the time, I could not get down to the object knowing full well if I got there I might not get back up. Since many of my excursions were by myself, I knew if I should happen to slip and fall down the bank, all manor of things, none good, could happen leaving me hanging somewhere near the bottom with no telling what limb had broken. Being painfully aware of the fact the Trinity and even the two smaller streams are home to several species of animals such as the alligator and coyotes and red wolfs, I felt discretion might be the best approach in guiding me towards making the decision to stay at the top rather than risk get hurt falling down the slope. This usually kept me from trying to crawl up or down one of those steep banks. With all of this in mind I can understand why the Native American cultures avoided locating a permanent village along one of Navarro County’s streams. Good clean dependable water was foremost on the Native Americans’ minds just like it is today on our minds.

Several years ago, my wife Bobbie Jean and my oldest daughter Julie were looking at books for sale on the Internet. They ran into a set of books being offered by the University of Texas at Arlington titled “Papers Concerning Robertson’s Colony in Texas” compiled by McLean. The university was offering 15 volumes out of a total set of 19 books at a special price. We ordered the 15 books and then started looking for the four missing volumes. It took more than three years to finally get the full set but thanks to a good friend, I finally got the last missing volume. For those of you who don’t know, Navarro County was part of Robertson Colony, a large tract of land covering numerous counties located along both sides of the Brazos River and eastward to parts of the Trinity River. Texas history taught most of us about Stephen F. Austin being the father of Texas but there never was much mention about Sterling C. Robertson and his colonization efforts located along the Brazos. Robertson, just like Austin, petitioned the Mexican government to allow him to establish settlers on his land grant but Stephen F. Austin tried his very best to prevent Robertson from establishing his colony. Eventually, after Robertson was put in jail in Mexico and then freed, he established several settlements along the Brazos. Sarahville de Villesco and Nashville were two of those settlements. Old Franklin which was located near the present-day town of Franklin served as the county seat for all of Robertson County prior to Navarro County being split off in 1846. Anyone researching part of the early families who settled in Navarro County in the 1840s and early 1850s should try to look at some of these Robertson’s Colony books. A lot of the material printed in the volumes deals with primary documents such as deed records for many areas along the Brazos. Certain families such as some of those who settled around Spring Hill and the area north of Dawson came up from the Robertson Colony area and these books help with who was where at a certain period in time.

Next week: Other Archaic artifacts from this region