SITE OF FORT COLORADO
(ALSO CALLED
COLEMAN’S FORT)

JUNE, 1836 – NOVEMBER, 1838
ESTABLISHED AND FIRST
COMMANDED BY
COLONEL ROBERT M. COLEMAN
SUCCEEDED BY
CAPT. MICHAEL ANDREWS
AND
CAPT. WILLIAM M. EASTLAND

AN EXTREME FRONTIER
OUTPOST OCCUPIED BY
TEXAS RANGERS
TO PROTECT
ANGLO-AMERICAN
CIVILIZATION FROM SAVAGE
INDIANS IN THIS VICINITY

ERECTED BY THE STATE OF TEXAS
1936

The “Site of Fort Colorado” historical marker is just one among many markers placed around the state in the mid-1930s to celebrate the Texas Centenary.[1] In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, Texas held a grand party to celebrate one hundred years since a group of Anglo-Texans declared their independence from Mexico. One of its enduring legacies was the massive public history project mandated by the Texas State Legislature that resulted in hundreds of grey granite historical markers being created and placed across the state.

What were Texans celebrating in 1936 and what kind of stories do the centennial markers tell? The markers were principally focused on events, people, and places associated with Texas Independence.[2] By the 1930s, the collective memory surrounding the brief existence of the Republic of Texas had become heavily mythologized. The founding myths of the Texas Republic were crafted over a hundred years with the 1836 revolutionary victory becoming a defining moment for Anglo Texans.[3] With little concern for the experience of others, their story became synonymous with Texas itself.[4]

In the 1930s, there was considerable debate over how to remember the Republic’s commitment to the institution of slavery and Texas’ role in the Civil War.[5] But when it came to Native Americans, the theft of Indigenous land and the attempt to forcibly remove them from Texas in the later part of the 19th Century was generally accepted as an inevitable outcome of Anglo Texan, colonial progress. While colonial policies relating to Native Americans in the Republic varied over time, eventually Texas adopted explicit policies of removal and even genocide, outlined in legislative documents that were aimed at eliminating Indigenous peoples from the territory.[6] Popular attitudes of the day, which became entrenched in both the historical record and state mythology, held that the colonial project in Texas was a necessary outcome of civilization, progress, and manifest destiny. These beliefs assumed that Native Americans had no legitimate claim to the land, would eventually disappear, and that their resistance to the theft of their land was unjustified. Eventually these ideas, which reflected the biases of the Anglo men who continued to dominate cultural and political life well into the 1930s, became inscribed in granite across the state of Texas.

Biases in the historical record, such as the language we see in the Fort Colorado centennial marker, obscure a far more complicated story. Though Fort Colorado was created with the intention of securing and expanding the Texas Republic’s control over Indigenous territory, Native Americans resisted that effort in a variety of ways. Sometimes their resistance turned violent, such as in the well documented examples of Comanche led attacks on Fort Colorado that were characterized as “savage” in the language of depredations being used at the time. These same attacks, however, can be better understood as Indigenous efforts to defend their homelands. One such example took place in February of 1939, when the Comanche forged an alliance with the Caddo, Waco, and Kichai in an effort to repel Anglo-Texan settlement by attacking the Coleman encampment.[7]

Native Americans also tried more diplomatic measures. An important example took place here in 1837, when a band of Penateka Comanches approached Fort Colorado in the hopes of negotiating a peace treaty. Noah Smithwick, a Texas Ranger who was stationed at the Fort, took detailed notes on the encounter and helped with translation during the negotiations. Smithwick was fluent in Spanish, as were Comanche leaders who had been surviving and resisting Spanish and then Mexican colonization efforts. Previously, Smithwick had lived with the Comanche as an emissary for many months, learning not only about their language, religion, and culture, but also about their codes of hospitality, honor and justice and their specific grievances against Anglo-Texan settlers.[8] This is the only known peace treaty ever initiated in Travis County, and although it was never ratified, the endeavor still marks a significant historical moment when peace and diplomacy were considered in the state’s policy towards Native Americans.

We also know from first-hand accounts, dating to the first half of the 19th century, that the Comanche were not the only Native Americans in the area who were fighting for their survival. In his memoirs, Major George B. Erath, who served at Fort Colorado with Colonel Coleman, describes the challenges the harsh winter months and the many tasks that Indigenous people in the region undertook to survive. Erath describes how they had to “guard, hunt, cook, dress deerskin, and make clothes of it, particularly moccasins,” adding that they also used buffalo hide to make carpets.[9] Erath also describes two of the largest and most influential Tribes in the area, the Comanche and Caddo. He compares the two, noting that the Comanches sometimes used force against both White settlers and other Tribes, while the Caddo typically avoided war, because they “were much better informed” as a result of their extensive trade networks that included “tribes from farther east.”[10] Yet, even the relatively peaceful Caddo were subject to Anglo settler aggression. Major Erath describes an event in 1835 when Anglo settlers indiscriminately killed a small party of Caddo, inciting racial conflict in the region, forcing those who had previously been on good terms with the Caddo to side with other Anglo settlers against them.[11]

Though the Comanche and Caddo tend to dominate historical narratives about this region of Texas during the early 19th century when the fort was most active, we know there were many other Tribes living in the vicinity. In the late 1830s, Texas Ranger Noah Smithwick also identifies the presence of the Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, and Delaware in the area.[12] Much earlier records from the 18th century Spanish colonial missions note the presence of Sana, Coco, and other Coahuiltecan-speaking bands, residing along the Colorado River.[13] Both Spanish colonial and archaeological records describe a large half-moon shaped Coahuiltecan village dating to the first decade of the 18th century, which may have provided a precedence for the location of Fort Colorado along the historic El Camino Real.

Fort Colorado played an important role in contests between Anglo settlers and Native Americans, as they vied for control of this territory now known as Texas. Indigenous people fought to preserve their homelands and rights to self-determination, resisting Anglo Texan incursions through both violent and diplomatic means. Individual Tribes used different strategies, engaging in armed resistance, or forming alliances with other tribes or with Spanish, Mexican and Anglo Texas settlers as needed. Despite these conflicts, the failed diplomacy, and the fact that many of these Tribes were forcibly removed from their homelands, they still endure today. The Comanche, Caddo, Tonkawa, Waco and Delaware all reside in present-day Oklahoma as federally recognized Tribes, and all still look to Texas as their homeland. Other Tribes with ties to Fort Colorado, such as the Coahuiltecans and Lipan Apache, do not currently have federal recognition but they continue to reside in and around Austin, maintaining an active Indigenous presence in the state.

OTHER INFORMATION

TEXAS RANGERS. In early 20th century history, Texas Rangers were mythologized by Anglo Texans, often being considered noble protectors of white civilization. They were, in fact, a para-military outfit that served the interests of the Texas Republic and then State. Much despised by Spanish-speaking Tejanos who called them “Rinches,” Native Americans generally had an even more negative view of the Rangers, who were often tasked with carrying out genocidal state policies of indiscriminate violence and retaliation against them. Despite the fact that some individual tribes collaborated with the Rangers and there were many different Ranger units, some worse than others, they all served Texas in its overall colonial policies and specific efforts to eliminate Native Americans from these lands.

ANGLO-AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. In 1836, Anglo-Americans became the dominant cultural and political force in Texas. Representing the interest of “civilization,” the laws of the Texas Republic supported slavery, the elimination of Native Americans, the domination of all other peoples as well as the intolerance of languages other than English, particularly Spanish. The rhetoric of civilization based on assumptions of Anglo-American superiority (or white supremacy) was used to justify what has been called “racial terror,” as well as Anglo political authority. The language of civilization was also part of a larger discourse in the Western world that imagined a racial hierarchy, with Europeans and European descendants at the top. The historical narrative of “Anglo-American Civilization” was conceptualized as a triumph over what was then considered to be a “less civilized” Spanish-American Mexico and “uncivilized” Native Americans.

SAVAGE INDIANS: From the Texas Revolution in 1836 to its commemoration a hundred years later in 1936, the myth of Native American savagery was consolidated. It was counterposed to the imagined superiority of “Anglo-American Civilization.” Popular notions in the state of Texas believed in the idea of a cultural-evolutionary hierarchy, which implied that the Native Americans they encountered in Texas had no legitimate claim to the territory because they were not farming and ranching, held a different system of land tenure, were not Christians, and for many, because they were simply perceived to be racially inferior. The language of “savagery” was used to delegitimize any claims to Indigenous sovereignty and to reframe acts of resistance in a negative light. In scholarship, we call this a “civilizational discourse.” The purported savagery of Native Americans cast them as ungovernable “others,” and was then used to legitimize their violent extermination and expulsion.

Support Provided by:

Travis Audubon would like to thank Dr. Circe Sturm and Dr. Craig Campbell from the University of Texas at Austin Department of Anthropology for their assistance with the compilation of this reinterpretation. This project was made possible by the Travis County Historical Commission.

This project was funded in part by a grant from Preservation Austin in support of its mission to empower Austinites to shape a more inclusive, resilient, and meaningful community culture through preservation.

 

 

Bibliography:

Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land 1820-1875. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005.

Becton, Daniel. “From Settlements to Gentrification in East Austin,” Unpublished StoryMap class project, Created for Mapping Indigenous Texas, Department of Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin, December 2, 2021.

Birdwell, A. W. “The Texas Centennial (Educationally Speaking.” Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 16, No. 6, 1936.

Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations. Monuments Erected by the State of Texas to Commemorate the Centenary of Texas Independence. Edited by Harold Schoen, 1938.

Cutrer, Thomas W., “Fort Colorado”, TSHA, Texas State Historical Association: 1952, updated October 22, 2022, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/fort-colorado.

Erath, G. B. & Erath, L. A. The Memoirs of Major George B. Erath, 1813-1891. Waco, TX: Heritage Society of Waco, 1956.

Glasrud, Bruce A., and James Smallwood, editors. The African American Experience in Texas: An Anthology / Edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and James M. Smallwood. Texas Tech University Press, 2007.
González, John Morán. Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature, Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2009

Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. Yale University Press, 2008

Newcomb, W.W. Jr. The Indians of Texas. University of Texas Press, 1961.

Smithwick, Noah. [1900], Evolution of a State, or, Recollections of Old Texas Days, Austin: Gammel Book Company.

Wilbarger, J.W. Indian Depredations in Texas. Austin, TX: Hutchings Printing House, 1889.

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[1] There were over 1,100 in total. The marker is one of four types of historical markers made for the Texas Centenary. It is a “block of Texas gray granite, five feet three inches in center height, declining five inches on each side, two feet ten inches in width and ten inches in depth, set in a concrete base. The face or faces containing the sand-blaseted inscriptions in Roman classic letters are axe-finished; all other faces are rustic. The center of a bronze wreath and star nine inches in diameter is set twelve inches from the apex” (Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations 1938: 123)
[2] 2022 letter from the Historical Commission – RQ-0491-KP
[3] A 1936 article about the Texas Centenary in the Peabody Journal of Education plainly states: “Here [in Texas] is to be found one of the struggles that made the English-speaking race dominant on the North American continent” (Birdwell 1936: 277).
[4] While there are many articles and books that outline this, John Morán González’s Border Renaissance (2010) is particularly important for its focus on the Texas Centennial itself as a consolidation of Anglo-Texan racial triumphalism.
[5] Cf. Glasrud and Smallwood eds. 2007.
[6] Anderson 2005.
[7] Colonel Edward Burleson’s report of an “Engagement with a party of Northern Indians, near Bastrop,” March 2, 1839, Journals of the Fourth Congress, Volume 3: pp. 112-113. Brown, John Henry. Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas. 1880. Reprint State Hour Press: Austin, 1988, p. 61.
[8] Smithwick, Noah. The Evolution of a State, or, Recollections of Old Texas Days. Gammel Book Company, Austin, Texas. 1st edition, 1900.
[9] G.B. Erath & L.A. Erath, The Memoirs of Major George B. Erath, 1813-1891 (Waco, TX: Heritage Society of Waco, 1956, p. 47.
[10] Erath & Erath, p. 22; Becton 2021.
[11] Earth & Erath, p. 22.
[12] Smithwick, pp. 153 – 176, 200; “Newspapers, Galveston News, 1897,” Box 2G267, Noah Smithwick Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
[13] Johnson, LeRoy and T.N. Campbell, “Sanan: Traces of a Previously Unknown Aboriginal Language in Colonial Coahuila and Texas.” Plains Anthropologist, August 1992, 37 (140): 185-212; Castañeda, Carlos E., Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519-1936, Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Company, 1936.