Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Comancheria

Same here Coss. I'm located between the Trinity and Navasota rivers. In the old days, so I am told, the upland prairies were much bigger in extent than they are now.
Just in my area the ones that I can think of the names for are/were running from east to west or Trinity to Navasota rivers are:
Mustang
Goose
Middleton
Leon
Rogers
Sand
Little Rock and Big rock
Wheelock
Buffalo

Each of them then several thousand acres in extent. Now so shrunken by timber and brush some of them are almost unreconizable.

They are thick up here, but are kept in check somewhat, by controlled burning and/or aerial spraying. I would make that map of the CT region much larger than it is. Certainly a lot of that country exists down around San Antone and northward much farther than the map shows. Up around the Emporia region there certainly are a lot of post oaks interspersed with native prairies. It exists on the western edge of my own county which isn't included in the map. My own immediate area resembles the area around Dallas and Sherman pretty much although there are rugged mountains between here and there that don't resemble either place they stand between.

Yup! There were seas of grass as well in the middle of the mott! The big one was around the site of the Rancheria grande campsite somewhere in the vicinity of where the Little River runs into the Brazos or a bit downstream. Maybe even as far downstream as the SH 21 crossing of the Brazos.

This site was a large campsite where natives met at a predetermined time for a trade fair. Henri Joutel recorded it in his memoirs with La Salle. Along with another site in the area of present monument hill south of La Grange Tx. I will also add these site are approximate, as they are reasonably good guestimates to their location.

Probably the one man who has done the best research on these locations along the Camino Real is former TxDOT archarologist Al McGraw. He is a wealth of information. And a fellow Mauser shooter!

My place in Erath Co. is too thick to walk through in many places.2-3 different kinds of oak. Some mesquite and cedar. They used to call it the Cross Timbers. Good hunting, better trapping. The towns of Comanche and Lipan are close, so I guess there is a reason for those names.

The Army was responsible for many of the errors in historical records.The confusion about the Salt Creek Massacre I mentioned earlier in this thread is because the Army referred to the area just West of Cox Mountain [where the Warren train was ambushed] as the "Salt Grass Prarie".There appears to be no reason for applying that name to it and I've found no other reference to it.They evidently also mistook a branch of Cameron Creek for Salt Creek in one report and Flint Creek in another.

Of course,nowadays, the Army always gets stuff right.

Doc,

My friend gave me my Nook back last night and of the 17 new books I downloaded,he liked your recommendation the best. Told me the next time he comes to Uvalde,he's going to look around a bit more than he did while at our dove hunt.

"For example those Keechais who stole Noah Smithwick's horses outside of Bastrop were technically Pawnees."

Only if by linguistics! Keechis were Caddoan..... Just like the Anadarko, Adai, Bedias, Nebadache, Nachito, and Neche etc........ They were recorded early on by both French and Spanish.

I believe Pawnee's were once refered to as the plains Caddo and were supposedly associated with the Quapaws of SE Arkansas. Another Caddoan linguistics group member.

One the subject of French exploration of what was to become this "Comancheria" , When Francois de la Harpe led his expedition up the Red river he was told by the Goveneur (I believe it was Cadillac at this time) they they would find "unicorns" in te upper reaches of the river.

Upon their arrival at the Nasoni village (another Caddoan group) just west of present Texarkana, the natives had prepared a feast in their honor. From the description given by de la Harpe, apparently the Nasoni had spitted a cooked a whole elk. However de la Harpe wrote in his journal that they "sauvages" had prepared a unicorn for their enjoyment. Just and the Gov had stated!!!!! This was 1710.

Mike have you ever run across the french phrase for the Comanche???

BN

Boggy,I'm thinking the practice of referring to areas as "Roberts Prarie"-to use an example from Jack County- was confined to that part of Texas along what is now the I-35 corridor and West to the confluence of the Clear and Salt Forks of the Brazos at present day South Bend Tx.

It stands to reason that the early settlers coming from the East would have been impressed by the large expanse of grassland.Once they moved further West,they discovered that the whole damned place could be called a "prarie",and I don't encounter many "prarie" place names West of Ft Griffin,for example.

Also, the praries in the Cross Timbers were short grass praries,unlike the country to the West which had the tall grass.They were also open range at that time.

In fact,I think it's likely that the "Salt Grass Prarie" rendered in the Army's reports probably should have been "Short Grass Prarie".It makes more sense.There are no local references to either term , as far as I know.

Quapaws were clear up in our area. Just south of Joplin is Quapaw, Oklahoma, near the infamous Spooklight.

I think you've got the prairies turned around. I can't speak for Texas for sure, but up here, the farther west you go the more you get into the short grass. Where I live was considered Tallgrass, unless I'm mistaken. An educated guess would put the Cross Timbers as a pretty good boundary between the two probably being mixed country. I can't imagine there being much difference between here and there. As to the Salt Grass, I always thought that referred to the "piedmont-ish" areas close to the coast.

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Henri de Tonti had built a post (Askansas Post) amongst the Quapaw, close to where the Arkansas runs into the Mississippi. His post was established when he came down the Mississippi with La Salle in the 1670's!

The Quapaws were known to build high towers for sleeping to catch the breezes that would keep the mosquitos off of them in the warmer months! It was Tonti's Arkansas Post that the remnants of La Salle's party (led by Henri Joutel) was trying to reach (and they eventually did) after La Salles assassination by Archleveque in 1685.

The irony of this was that Tonti was also looking for them as he had heard from Les Sauvage of "lost white men" looking for him. Unfortunately de Tonti caught a fevr on this journeyr and died before he could return to his post.

Tonti was an interesting sort. He had a hand blown off by a grenade while serving as a mercenary in Sicily. In it's place was a brass ball. The Sauvage called him "Iron Hand".

Nope,the "Cross Timbers" is one of the ecological regions of Texas.I know that the term is also used to describe a much larger area extending into other states,but I use it as a clearly defined geographic area in Texas.To this day ,the Post Oak pastures have little blue stem[a tall grass] and the mesquite pastures have buffalo grass or mesquite grass.

The stirrup high grass was in the Rolling Plains,just West of the Cross Timbers , and up on the Caprock.

The Monte Grande that I refered to is an extremely thick oak "encinal". A vast tangle of vines, yaupons, etc.... It is in essence, almost jungle like. There are still large areas of this in existance. Boggy Creek Ranger knows exactly what I refer to!

One Spanish journada did attempt to cut thru a portion of it. In several years the forest soon reclaim it.

One of the prime directives of the Viceroy in New Spain was that any journada entering the lands north of the Rio Grande were NOT to establish new routes, but were to utilize existing native trails. The Viceroy was very serious about this.

We have heavy areas of blackjack and post oak up here but it is not as thick as the Texas Cross Timbers country...

I've seen that and we have nothing like it in N Central Texas.One of my hunting campaneros has a ranch near Austwell-in fact it joins the Aransas Pass Wildlife Refuge - and much of it looks like what I see up around James' place from I-45.

I also believe this to be true. I was born and raised in Caddo Co. Oklahoma nestled among the Keechi hills south of Anadarko. The Keechis are a small group of unique hills a little north and east of the Wichita Mts. Blackjack oak country on the edge of the plains.

That's what I'm talkin' about!!!!!! Ol' rancher I know said as a young man he worked on a ranch at Gause Tx. south of Hearne Tx. Said he ruined a levi dungaree jacket first day out in that stuff on horseback. The stuff is bad.

Speaking of Gause. It lies close to one of the islands of grass in the Monte. West of Bryan/ College Station. A local geographical landmark there is a hill known as Sugarloaf. Many think this may be the location of one of the Native villages of "Tortuga" on the Camino Real.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie

http://www.nps.gov/tapr/index.htm

I have all those grasses on my property. The Tallgrass is to the east. The Shortgrass is to the west. Again, I'm guessing and don't know exactly what the Cross Timbers is as far as short vs. tall, but it's probably a pretty good demarcation between the two prairies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortgrass_prairie

http://www.radford.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/biomes/tempgrass/prairie.html

I don't think that map is totally accurate, but as you can see, the Caprock is clearly in the short-grass region.

You know,I often wonder about the Indian names given to things.There is a Keechi Creek I cross down in Palo Pinto County , and another one further West , but I can't recall just where.

Lake Kickapoo is 10 miles or so from where I sit,but there is a Kickapoo Creek down below San Angelo and I saw "Kickapoo" applied to a creek or something just NW of Houston a couple weeks ago.

My point is that I woder if some of the places were named for tribes that actually had nothing to do with the area.

Tonk Valley in Young County was named because of the reservation that was established there,not because it was in the tribe's territory.

Along that same line,all the population estimates of the tribes are suspect.My Great Grandmother was half Comanche and half Cherokee and is enrolled as such in the Gov't Registry but drew her rations with the Wichitas.She claimed that most Comanches got in a line for one of the other tribes [that's how they registered them;form lines according to tribe to draw rations] because the blankets given to the Comanches were purposely infected with smallpox.

My Grandfather-being half white- was enlisted as an Indian Policeman and stayed one until they were dis-banded.