Georgetown’s First Peoples

Tonkawa people in 1898: Standing L-R: Winnie Richards, John Rush Buffalo, William Stevens, John Allen and Mary Richards; seated L-R: John Williams, Grant Richards and Sherman Miles

If you’ve ever enjoyed the trails that follow the San Gabriel River, take some time to remember and acknowledge the first peoples to this area. Over milllenia going back at least 10,000 years, Paleo-Indians traveled here following the mammoth, bison, and other large mammals, and settled along the river. Generation after generation of first peoples continued to come to this river and rivers around the county to enjoy the bounty of water and food plants and game that came to drink.

AND take time to acknowledge and celebrate that Native Americans didn’t disappear! They are still very much present in Williamson County, Texas, and all over the US. Over 5,500 Native Americans live in Williamson County, part of over 308,000 “American Indian/Alaskan Native” people in Texas. Keep reading to meet a Georgetown Lipan Apache family who’ve shared their traditions with Georgetown, Texas, and other states for decades. Plus you’ll want to see what’s up now with thriving Texas tribes whose ancestors once lived in the Georgetown area.

Plenty of evidence proves a storied history of Native Americans in Georgetown and Williamson County. Projectile points and arrow points made of rocks such as blue-gray Georgetown flint have been found at many spots along the San Gabriel, conjuring countless hunts for food going thousands of years back.

Residents and archaeologists also found metates and manos used for grinding grains, which recall women doing daily food preparations. Native settlements along the river continued until the mid-1800s.

Meet the Original Residents

The people who first called the Georgetown and Williamson County area home likely included the Tonkawa, Comanche, and Jumano peoples. Other tribes who gathered to trade and stay a while likely included the Lipan Apache, Sana, Wichita, and Kickapoo peoples.

One of the first peoples in this region call themselves Tickanwatic (pronounced Titch-kun-wha-titch). The name is often translated to mean “real people,” notes the Tonkawa Tribe. They’re better known by their Waco tribe name, Tonkawa, meaning "They all stay together.”

Learn more about the Tonkawas in a fascinating forthcoming documentary.

The Tonkawa were generally friendly to the whites who came to the land they lived on, notes the Historic Preservation Commission of Round Rock, who gave the Tonkawa tribe a Local Legend award in 2019.

The tribe was one of several seminomadic groups in central Texas. Many tribes such as the Mayeye, Yojuane, Sana, Ervipiame, Emet, Cavas, Toho, and Tohaha shared a similar language. In recent years, the Tonkawa language was given its own category as an isolate language that’s unique and not related to others. The Tonkawa people trapped and ate deer, bison, rabbits, squirrels, skunks, rats, tortoises, fish, and mussels. They gathered foods such as prickly pear tunas, pawpaws, acorns, pecans, and edible roots.

Lipan Apaches painting by Theodore Gentilz in the 1850s

Also considerably predating the arrival of Europeans in the area, the Lipan Apaches ranged through the western part of present Williamson County. After Spanish missions were established on the San Gabriel River in the eighteenth century, the Indians frequently raided the missions for horses, notes the Texas State Historical Association.

The missions were part of the Spanish colonization effort. The missions were often linked with a presidio or fort for military control of tribal homelands, notes the National Park Service in their look at the three Spanish missions built near Rockdale. The Spanish wanted to keep the French away from land and businesses such as mining, and they wanted to pacify Native Americans while they expanded their dominion.

Native American groups at times went to the missions or asked for them because it could offer them military protection from other tribes. But often the military personnel would brutalize the Indians or fail to protect them. Many Natives would die when they contracted diseases such as smallpox at the missions.

This horse-riding Comanche girl in north Texas is one of many photos taken by photographer Alice Snearly. Alice was an intrepid photographer who was dedicated to documenting Native Americans, along with her brother-in-law Lon Kelly.

Comanche people came through what became Williamson County in the 1700s, and some were noted as living periodically throughout the county in a map used by Stephen F. Austin in the 1820s. Women typically played a strong role in the tribes. Comanche women were reported to be as skilled in hunting and horseriding as the men, according to historical sources such as Comanches in the New West. Women could also dissemble, move, and erect new villages super efficiently as the tribe changed locations.

This Comanche family includes Paaduhhuhyahquertop at right and his children, with older daughter Utah holding the youngest.

Tonkawa Neighbors

The Tonkawas commanded a large central Texas indigenous homeland that ranged from south of what became Dallas to south of San Antonio, and from Fredericksburg nearly to Huntsville.

The Tonkawa homeland area is from a great site mapping the world’s indigenous peoples homelands, Native-Land.ca. Enter an address of places you’ve lived to see which peoples had a homeland there.

Natan Samox, Tonkawa homeland; photo courtesy of TonkawaTheMovie.com

As you can see, the Georgetown area is just left of the center of Tonkawa homeland. And just recently, the Tonkawa people have reclaimed their sacred origin mountain! In December, 2023, tribal officials took ownership of Sugarloaf Mountain, which they know as Red Mountain, or Natan Samox in the Tonkawa language. Natan Samox is located a bit north of Gause, about 70 miles east of Georgetown.

Donald Patterson documented the homeland. Photo courtesy of TonkawaTheMovie.com

Read the full story here. In brief, the decades-long effort spanned from research done in the 1980s by Donald Patterson, former Tonkawa chief and still the leading teacher of the Tonkawa language. He calls it “our Garden of Eden”; a place remembered from centuries ago to today when Tonkawas perform their Wolf Dance that depicts the first Tonkawa human coming out of the foot of the mountain.

Former chief Virginia Combrink; photo courtesy of the Tonkawa Museum

And when in the 1990s false rumors of buried Spanish gold resulted in gashes dug in Natan Samox by treasure hunters, then Tonkawa chief Virginia Combrink fought back—and won, stopping the destructive digs. Current Tonkawa chief Russell Martin did the work to seal the deal.

The El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association worked with the tribe, as this was also an important site on the thoroughfare developed during the 18th-century Spanish colonial era. The Camino organization will manage the site. With help from the National Park Service, the 60-acre area will in several years become a park, with lots of historical information.

Tonkawas helped the settlers and military

Throughout their typically peaceable interactions with the non-Native newcomers, the Tonkawas allied with the settlers and military more often than other tribes. Tonkawas served as scouts for Anglo settlers and soldiers and fought along with Texans in the war for independence from Mexico.

During the Civil War, they generally allied and fought for the Confederacy. Among the many Tonkawa scouts for the U. S. military was lead scout Sargeant Johnson. His name was Opay Ye Tah, but the military typically gave Native scouts an English name.

Some women fought along with men in wars with settlers and other Indians such as the Comanche and Kiowa. They served as scouts as well. Texas-the-Tonk, a short and stout mother of four, served as a cavalry scout and fought in several battles against the Comanche and Kiowa, according to the book The Texas Tonkawas.

She was found dead in 1872 near Ft. Griffin by Abilene. The grateful scout commander had her remains shipped to the Smithsonian Institution. (In recent years, the Smithsonian and other museums have worked to return human remains and many other belongings to the corresponding tribes; much still remains with museums.)

The settlers and Tonkawas were mostly amicable. The two groups would trade or sell goods such as buffalo jerky and animal hides, as they did with the Spanish and French before. John Berry, namesake of Berry Springs Park near Georgetown, regularly had Indian customers for his corn-grinding mill. The park has a sign that is noteworthy for being one of a few in the county recognizing the peoples who lived here and giving information about them.

This informative display features two images of Chief Placido. Tonkawa Tribe historian Bob O’Dell notes that the 1870s-era illustration was not based on an actual representation of Placido while the San Marcos statue is a more realistic depiction.

These Tonkawa dolls are on display at the Old Jail Art Center museum in Albany, Texas.

The Tonkawa tribe was organized by maternal clans. Children became members of their mothers' clans, and men lived with their spouses' clans.

Personal friendships developed at times between Tonkawas and whites. These Tonkawa dolls were given to a settler family in north central Texas around 1867.

Nonetheless, the settlers wanted the Tonkawas and the other Indian tribes out. Some whites were killed by Indians in Williamson County; many Indians were killed by settlers or the military. The Indians were decimated as well, notes Clara Scarbrough in her Williamson County history, Land of Good Water (Takachue Pouetsu). They died, she says, through land encroachment, broken treaties, murderous attacks by military and settlers and opposing tribes, and disease.

The Tonkawa people endured eleven separate displacements in a span of almost 150 years, notes Deborah Lamont Newlin in her masters’ thesis on Tonkawa history. A few of the forced relocations: The Spanish made them go to their San Francisco Xavier Mission in 1748, one of several missions that were to Christianize and subdue Native peoples. They were forced to the Brazos Agency near Graham in 1855, and in 1859 they were moved to the Washita reserve in southern Oklahoma.

With the Civil War, the Confederacy promised to protect them, since the Tonkawas had fought for the Confederacy. But that promise didn’t help when the tribe was attacked in 1862 by tribes hostile to the Tonkawas. Over half of the tribe of 300 were massacred. The tribe were forced to Fort Griffin in 1867, where they were given 91,000 acres. They were deceived into selling 80,000 acres for a pittance for white settlement, reports the Texas Department of Transportation in its look at Tonkawa history, part of a series on Texas tribes. Each member and the tribe itself ended up with 160 acres in non-contiguous allotments.

The Oklahoma land rush brought 100,000 settlers grabbing up land surrounding the land reserved for the Tonkawas and other tribes. By 1890, only 50-some Tonkawa people survived.

Today, over 800 Tonkawas live on the Tribal Reserve. These young women are carrying on their traditions.

Keeping traditions alive: Lipan Apache people

Lipan Apaches were a part of a powerful constellation of Apache peoples who spoke similar languages and commanded a huge swath of land from the Rio Grande to the Grand Canyon several centuries before the Spanish arrived, reports Brian Baddour in The Texas Observer. They followed the buffalo to the plains of central and south Texas and into northern Mexico.

The Spanish sometimes offered tribes such as the Apache and Tonkawa refuge from their Comanche enemies in their missions. Some of the Lipan Apaches helped defend the settlers against the Comanche. But like the Tonkawas, their service was not rewarded; they were also forced out.

Settler encroachment pushed them south, and the U. S. Army, with its growing network of forts, stepped up the Indian Wars to free land for Anglos. Apache villages were destroyed, as well as other tribe’s settlements. Many Lipan Apaches fled to Mexico.

The U.S. Army enlisted a hot-tempered officer, Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, to pursue the Indians in Mexico using a “campaign of annihilation, obliteration, and complete destruction.” Some 400 soldiers did just that to the village of Lipan, Mescalero, and Kickapoo at El Remolino. Most of the victims were women and children.

As Baddour writes, many Apache remained in Texas, but most kept their identity hidden for many years after because of the terrifying reality and memories of the Indian Wars. With intermarriage, many assumed an Hispanic identity.

However, many Apaches learned of their Native American heritage and are thriving today in Texas. Unlike the Tonkawas who have a small tribal reserve in Oklahoma, the Lipan Apaches do not have land in Texas or elsewhere, though they were promised that from Texas in years past.

Lipan Apaches have gathered in two predominant groups: the Lipan Apache Band of Texas and the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. Between the two, they claim well over 5,000 members.

Georgetown has been fortunate to have the area’s Native roots kept alive through the efforts of Georgetown residents Ben and Lisa Nava and their family and extended family. Over many years, they’ve presented 15 powwows at Southwestern University, gathering people from their own Lipan Apache tradition and other tribes. They’ve educated many children and adults in schools, libraries, community events, and museum festivals and children’s camps about Indian traditions.

Ben Nava at a Southwestern University pow wow

The Nava children grew up doing pow wows and continue to participate. At the 2018 powwow, son Joseph Nava was the Head Man. Here he is with his cousin Cheyenne Hoskins, Head Lady for the powwow.

Listen to or watch a bit of the dancing by Joseph and others at the 2019 pow wow.

Joseph Nava continues to practice the Lipan Apache traditions with drumming, singing, and dancing. If you would like to reach out for an educational program, go here.

Bringing Back the Buffalo

Lucille Contreras of the Buffalo Project

Lipan Apaches and many other native peoples relied on the buffalo as a vital food. They would dry it so it could last between hunts. Hides became clothing or a way to construct a warm shelter.

One way that the military and settlers ensured that Native Americans would leave coveted land was to kill the buffaloes that were so important to their survival. The buffalo herds that once blanketed many parts of Texas and other places in the U.S. were nearly exterminated.

Lucille Contreras, who is Lipan Apache, aims to bring the buffalo back. Her venture, the Texas Tribal Buffalo Project, resulted in a growing buffalo herd near Gonzales. Lucille is using the project to unite Apaches and other tribes, using the Iyanee’ (buffalo) to provide more healthy food and help educate people about the legacy and presence today of the First Peoples. Check out the Project’s buffalo meat for sale.

Contreras believes educating a new generation of Indians is critical. She holds a summer camp for kids to learn the traditional ways. She invites teachers from around the state—Georgetown’s Ben and Lisa Nava have taught at the camp. Here Richard Gonzalez of the Lipan Apache Band teaches kids to shoot arrows.

Learn more: Central Texas First Peoples

Three federally recognized tribes have reservations in Texas: The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas near Livingston in east Texas; the Tigua nation at Ysleta del Sur Pueblo; and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas.

Some of the other tribes that were once living in central Texas have reservations outside Texas, mostly in Oklahoma or New Mexico. Most Texas tribes unite despite not having lands, gathering together in their passion to keep their legacy alive and growing.

Here are links to central Texas Native American tribes who once lived here and who’ve never left. Find awesome resource centers that unite Indian groups and educate everyone about Native history and continuing growth. Check them out to see all the ways (highlighted are just a few of many awesome activities and events) our Texas Native neighbors are celebrating their connections and history and activism. Then read on to consider ways to enjoy and support tribes as they continue to flourish.

🪶 The Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma

Over 700 Tonkawas live in northern Oklahoma near the city of Tonkawa. Check out their Tonkawa language tutorials such as this one:

You can also download a coloring book to learn some Tonkawa words.

Explore the tribe’s Facebook to see past and upcoming events. Recently tribe members shared their skills with others to make traditional Tonkawa regalia.

Then they shared the clothing and information about the tribe with the city. An exhibit on Tonkawa culture is on display at the Justice Building in Tonkawa.

🪶 The Lipan Apache Band of Texas

Richard and Anita presented recently at a school.

Look on the homepage for a moving short film about the 1873 massacre of Lipan Apaches led by Ranald Slidell Mackenzie (see above for details). One of the few survivors was Juanita González Castro de Cavazos, great-grandmother of the Band’s vice chairman, Richard González.

Richard and his wife Anita Anaya have presented education about the Mackenzie massacre and Lipan Apache traditions with many schoolchildren and groups.

And see what’s up with the tribe on their Facebook page. Richard, a retired career police officer and Vietnam veteran, participated in the dedication for the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.

Members continued the practice Richard started years ago of setting up tipis and educating visitors to Ft. Clark Days, so that visitors would also know the purpose of the fort was to hunt and kill Indians. And members recently marked the season’s change with their Winter Solstice/Changing Woman gathering.

Gathering for Winter Solstice/Changing Woman

🪶 The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas

Learn some Apache history here plus info on pow-wows and the tribe’s yearly pow-wows. The tribe has an annual Nde Daa (Spring) Homecoming Pow Wow in March and the Dakee Si (Fall Gathering) Pow Wow in October.

And learn about how the Tribe is carrying on traditions with celebrations such as the annual Badger Run. Here’s an explanation of how the run illustrates part of the Apache creation story.

Find out more on Facebook about a success the Lipan Apaches achieved through long years of fighting to protect an ancient burial site. The state and city of Presidio turned over the land last year to the Tribe, who’d advocated on behalf of the elders who have been buried there dating back to the late 1700s.

Here’s the current site of El Cementerio Del Barrio de los Lipanes. Below is a rendering of the site of the future with protective walls and historical signage that will let the community and visitors know about this historical treasure.

🪶 The Delaware Tribe

The Delaware people are lauded in a marker near Round Rock for creating the Double File Trail that goes from Round Rock and curves north toward Bartlett. As the marker notes, the trail was wide—accomodating two horseriders abreast—and was used by Texas Rangers, Anglo settlers, surveyors, and explorers. A Round Rock elementary school is named for the Double File Trail.

Nora Dean of Oklahoma devoted her life to teaching Delaware culture and herbal medicine.

The Delaware, or Lenape in their language, were one of the earliest peoples colonists encountered in the Eastern states. Other peoples called them the “Grandfather tribe” for their negotiating for peace with Anglos and between other tribes. As this Texas Department of Transportation report notes, Delawares have served the U.S. in every major war, starting the American Revolution.

Nonetheless, they were pushed west and ousted by Anglos, including Williamson County residents who expelled them from their hunting grounds along Brushy Creek. The Delawares live in reserves in Oklahoma and Kansas.

🪶 Great Promise for American Indians

This organization helps educate others about American Indian traditions and also serves as a referral for groups and schools seeking that education. Their Red Voices in Schools offers diverse and culturally authentic information to schools at any level.

They also organize the annual Austin Powwow, one of the largest in the nation and held in November. Check out their Facebook page for a beautiful video from the last Powwow, plus more news on their projects.

And every September, they carry out a celebration of American Indian Heritage Day, designated by the state legislature. Partnering with the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the group illustrates for visitors the breadth and diversity of American Indians in Texas.

🪶 Indigenous Cultures Institute

The Indigenous Cultures Institute was founded in San Marcos on land once frequented by the Coahuiltecan people by members of the Miakan/Garza Band, one of the over six-hundred bands that resided in Texas and northeastern Mexico when the Spaniards first arrived. To learn the history of the Institute, founded by Maria Rocha and Mario Garza, watch this short video—and also hear the Coahuiltecan creation story and learn about traditions!

Mario and Maria (center) with Indigenous Arts summer campers and students

Since 2006, the Institute offers presentations and theater about indigenous stories; youth programs, including a free summer indigenous art program for kids; and a Coahuiltecan language program. Their Xinachtli Teachers Training gives Texas teachers the tools to incorporate Native American curriculum and activities in their classrooms.

What Sacred Springs—or Yana Wana—looked like before it became Aquarena Springs and the current Spring Lake

They’ve put the Native American presence out in the community. Each year since the San Marcos City Council declared the second Monday in October Indigenous Peoples Day, the group invites the community to a blessing at the Sacred Springs. The annual powwow is held there as well—look for it in October.

One of the largest artesian springs in the world, the springs are the font for the former touristy Aquarena Springs. Over several years, the site became Meadows Center for Water and the Environment and offers educational programs. The glass-bottomed boat of years past still helps with this purpose.

🪶 The American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions

Nearly 27,000 Native Americans live now in San Antonio, and some are descendants of some 300 Native families who lived in lands the Spanish took to build the now touristic Spanish Missions in San Antonio. The American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AIT-SCM) unites the descendants in the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation, peoples who were once all over south Texas and northeast Mexico.

Sharing the full story of the Native people who lived near the Missions and worked hard to build them is a top priority. AIT-SCM offers Mission tours telling that story. You can get a wonderful sense of the Mission story tour online. The tour is named for the Yanaguana people who were the first people in San Antonio. They gave the original name of Yanaguana to the San Antonio River that River Walk visitors know so well.

Members are also active in the effort to preserve and honor the estimated 1,400 Native Americans buried on land adjacent to the Alamo. Stay tuned about that on their Facebook page.

Like so many other tribal groups, AIT-SCM members give presentations to all kinds of groups. At a recent presentation on “The Women of Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation” at community colleges in the Alamo Colleges District , tribal elder Linda Ximenes gives a blessing with dancer Destiny Hernandez.

Another valuable program is the History Harvest program that holds events and does outreach to encourage Native American and Latino families to bring in old photos and family information to help all of us “see” history in its fullness. Here’s Antonia Munoz De Flores, known as “La Tlaxcalteca,” who was born in Mission Nadadores in the Mexican state of Coahuila; photo shared by the family of Mary Castro.

Central Texas Native Americans now elsewhere

Some of the tribes who lived or lingered here in the Georgetown and Williamson County area now live in reservations in neighboring states.

Of course, many Native Americans also stayed and live in places that aren’t tribal nations in Texas or other places. Check out the links to some of these tribes and see how they are preserving and growing their traditions.

🪶 The Comanche Nation is in Lawton, Oklahoma. The Comanche tribe currently has around 17,000 enrolled tribal members with another 7,000 residing in the tribal jurisdictional area nearby and in surrounding counties. Visit their Facebook to meet awesome Comanches such as elder Lena (above), who at 75 was honored for walking up nearby Mount Scott (nearly 2,500 feet high). She also does loads of volunteering for the school, her church, and other tribal projects.

🪶 The Jumano Nation is headquartered in Little Elm, Texas, by Dallas-Fort Worth. While the Jumano ancestral land is in west Texas, the tribe sometimes traded in central Texas.

In the past, many Jumanos lived near San Angelo. The city has honored their presence with two sculptures on the Concho River, including this Jumano brave. Find history and ancestor photos and activities at their webpage and Facebook.

🪶 The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes live in Anadarko, Oklahoma. The affiliated tribes are the Waco, Keechi, and Tawakoni. The tribe has an annual visitation ceremony with the Pawnee Tribe, which shares a language group. The tribe has a comprehensive language-learning program. Elder Doris McLemore was the last Wichita speaker, and for years before she died in 2016 she developed a Wichita language curriculum and taught the language. Listen to an interview with Doris here. Visit the Wichita Facebook page for more tribal news.

Take a walk along the San Gabriel River and take your mind way back in time to see the First Peoples who lived here for hundreds of years before settlers. Honor their presence as you go. Consider learning more about the thousands of Texan Native Americans thriving today. You’ll walk about 1.7 miles on this riverside walk.

Our LONG human history in Wilco

Native Americans lived and traveled all over Williamson County, especially along its riversides. The presence of high-quality flint for arrows and bountiful food sources from the rivers and rich soil made our area attractive going WAY back. Archaeologists at the Gault Site near Florence have found materials going back at least 20,000 years ago. By the way, you can contact the Williamson Museum to join regularly scheduled tours of the fascinating Gault site.

The area that became Georgetown was a favored spot of the Tonkawas and other tribes who settled to hunt and gather along the river. And one of the most favored spots along Georgetown’s stretch of the San Gabriel branches is where the South Gabriel and North Gabriel meet near and in what became our main city park.

Georgetown’s Blue Hole, a gathering site for our First Peoples

☛ Start the tour at our beautiful Blue Hole, near the intersection of Rock Street and 2nd Street. We know that Native Americans lived here at this spot. Look across the river at what is now Hat Creek Burger Company. Excavations for a swimming pool built in the 1920s at that location revealed a large Indian burial ground, reports Clara Scarbrough in her extensive look at Native American presence in Williamson County in Land of Good Water.

Scarbrough writes that a “pseudo-scientist” claimed that the buried people were Cheyenne Indians killed in a battle with Comanche Indians. She says that no scientific evidence exists lend truth to that story or the tribal identity of those in the burial ground. And she notes that the pseudo-scientist gathered enormous amounts of Indian artifacts from around the county, left the state, and sold them as souvenirs.

In more recent times, the skeleton of one prehistoric person has been documented and preserved. A skeleton thought to be 11,000 years old of what was a female of around 20 years old was found near Leander in 1982. Since she is one of the oldest and most complete human skeletons found in North America, she is well known around the world. Her skeleton is kept at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas’ J.J. Pickle Research Campus in Austin.

Native American female skeleton found near Leander

As Texas Beyond History reports, “Leanne” (named after Leander) was placed in her grave along with a grindstone tool. A shark tooth found near her neck may have been an ornament hung on a necklace. Her grave was covered with a limestone slab.

Leanne was found at the Wilson-Leonard site, which was uncovered during construction of the highway RM 1431. This site is famed for the very long history it shows. Archaeologists found layer after layer of evidence of ancient peoples who hunted and gathered there throughout nearly 13,500 years. “Middens” or rock groupings that included earth ovens had been used for the past 8,500 years of that time.

This midden or earth oven was one of 200-some cooking tools found at the site.

It’s unlikely we will know the tribal identity of the skeletons found near Blue Hole and other Indian remains and possessions found or remaining buried around the city and county. But we can personally honor the presence and many contributions of these First Peoples to our area, as well as acknowledge the many factors that led to their demise or forced departure.

Many cities and institutions are recognizing this history with “Land Acknowledgement” or “Territorial Acknowledgement” statements that are made public and announced at many occasions. Here’s one from Texas A & M:

“We acknowledge that Texas A&M University (College Station) is situated on the land of multiple Native nations, past and present. These original homelands are the territory of Indigenous peoples who were largely dispossessed and removed. We specifically acknowledge the traditional stewardship of this land by the Tonkawa, Tawakoni, Hueco, Sana, Wichita, and Coahuiltecan peoples. We pledge to support and advocate for the histories, cultures, languages, and territorial rights of historic Indigenous peoples of Texas and the Indigenous people that live here now. This statement affirms continuous Indigenous presence and rights, acknowledges the ongoing effects of settler colonization, and supports Indigenous struggles for political, legal, and cultural sovereignty.”

Texas A & M also celebrates the Native Americans still very much alive in Texas, including their many Native students. See a virtual tour of the exhibit at A & M of Native students over time: HERE: Faces and Voices of Native Aggies. Here’s a 2022 Native grad, Cadet George Hass.

Those who choose to acknowledge here in Georgetown might honor the Tonkawa, Comanche, Jumano, Lipan Apache, Sana, Wichita, and Kickapoo peoples, as does a Land Acknowledgement Statement under consideration by Southwestern University.

☛ After absorbing all the history that took place in the Blue Hole area by all members of our community (the nearby African-American community and others held baptisms in the Blue Hole), head to your right along the South Gabriel River Trail.

Our Indian forebears were drawn to the beautiful river just as we are today.

As you walk along the trail, imagine life as it once was. Way, way back, mega-fauna roamed this area. We know that from the rich lode of animal remains found at what became Inner Space Caverns.

During excavations in 1963 for the then-new Interstate 35, remains of extinct mammoth, scimitar-toothed cat, glyptodon (a Volkswagen-sized armadillo), camel, horse, ground sloth, short-faced bear, peccary, bat, and other species were unearthed. Dating of bones show they lived from 13,00 to 25,000 years ago. Perhaps a scene like this one painted in the late 1800s by German painter Heinrich Harder happened here.

Painting of an ancient glytodon and Native hunters

By the way, if you love wooly mammoths, visit the Waco Mammoth National Monument to learn all about the amazing remains of a nursery group of babes and mamas found there. Mamas stood 14 feet high and weighed 20,000 pounds.

We don’t know exactly when humans showed up in what would become Georgetown, but we know that they lived near Lake Georgetown. At the John Ischy Archaeological Site at Booty’s Road Park in northwest Georgetown, hundreds of artifacts such as dart points, arrows, scrappers, milling stones that date back 7,000 to 1,750 years ago were uncovered. As the marker there indicates, those materials are gone; taken by looters. We can only acknowledge the presence of the people who lived at this spot.

The presence of the burial ground on the San Gabriel and other artifacts found near Lake Georgetown makes it clear Paleoindians came to the stretch of the San Gabriel that you’re walking now. Imagine people using dart points for small game such as rabbit and turtles; netting or spearing fish; using traps to catch rodents and birds; and grinding seeds and grains on stones. Visualize them gathering roots such as lilies and wild onions, and picking pecans and sweet ripe tunas and pads from the prickly pear cactus.

Bison and deer were plentiful here. There were even plenty of bear and alligator, according to Spanish explorers.

☛ When you reach the spot on the river trail where you look left and see the pedestrian bridge that crosses the river, do so. As you cross the bridge, stop and look left at the tip of the land where the two rivers converge. Think about the Native Americans who prized this spot between two rivers, enjoying all the resources afforded by plentiful water and lush riverside vegetation.

Turn right and continue east along the river trail. As you watch the many San Gabriel Park visitors fishing and playing and barbequing and picnicking, visualize Native Americans doing the same. Perhaps our earliest residents used burnt rock middens to cook here. To create the oven, a very hot fire would heat up rocks brought to the fire. The hot rocks would be covered in vegetation, and the food placed there with vegetation on top. Then earth would be placed on top.

Midden earth oven display at Goldthwaite’s Legacy Plaza

Here’s a recreated midden that’s part of the Legacy Plaza in Goldthwaite, about 85 northeast of Georgetown. When they began their Texas Botanical Gardens and Native American Interpretive Center, Center leaders sought and incorporated traditions given by the Comanche tribe. Tribal members come for periodic celebrations, such as spiritual Elder Rita Coosewoon and some of her family from the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma during their Heritage Days.

☛ Continue on the San Gabriel River Trail as it leaves the park and continues east to its current trail ending at the Katy Crossing neighborhood. As you walk, consider the contributions the Native Americans made toward educating the white newcomers. There was plenty of conflict as the settlers and government took over lands where Indians lived, but also times of cooperation and intermarriage, and settlers borrowed much wisdom from the Native Americans.

That legacy of wisdom continues to this day, with the trails honed by the Indians as the best way to navigate the landscape becoming roads we travel today. As Scarbrough notes in Land of Good Water, settlers and the military relied on Indians to track enemies and criminals, since they had known the land so long and well.

Settlers noted and imitated how Indians used animals such as the buffalo and deer for clothing, housing, and canoes. The settlers used the Indian technique of making fertilizer with ashes and dead fish, and nurtured the native plants that gave food and medicine.

Benjamin Thomas Crumley, with third wife Lula Thomas Riffe, used Indian medicine.

Benjamin Thomas Crumley, who had Cherokee heritage, used Indian medicine he learned from the Cherokees to doctor many central Texas people during the late 1800s. The “Old Indian Doctor” lived and was postmaster near Cedar Park. A greatgrandson, Jim Sims, recalls stories of him using horehound for sore throats and sassafras for stomach upsets. He gave willow bark for pain and Johnson grass for kidney problems.

☛ As you come up the hill toward the Katy Crossing neighborhood, look for the round resting spot with benches for observation near the summit of the hill. Look down: it’s a long drop to the San Gabriel here. Take a seat!

This may be the Tonkawa Bluffs recounted in old articles in Williamson County Sun articles and on the map accompanying Scarbrough’s book. It is possible that it was once a bluff where Tonkawas drove buffalo over the cliff to their death and harvesting.

A long way down to the river from on top of what may be Tonkawa Bluff

This practice was common among many Indian tribes when buffalo covered the land. Spanish colonizer Alonso de Leon wrote of meeting Tonkawas in 1690, living in 150 villages between the Colorado and Brazos rivers and following the buffalo.

Scarbrough writes that the Indians found many, many uses for the entire buffalo. The meat was dried for jerky or for pounding into a powder and mixing with dried crushed berries, pecan meal, fat, and other ingredients. Buffalo horns made spoons and cups; bones formed digging and clearing tools; tendons made thread and bow strings; hooves produced glue to feather arrows. Hides were used for not just clothing and shelter—they made shields, helmets, containers, saddles and tethers; tails made whips.

Was this a site for buffalo harvest? Like much of the past when Native Americans lived here, that knowledge remains lost or buried. For now, keep alive what we do know about our First Peoples of the past and present by including them in the history we share with others in our circles and beyond.