abilenet November 18th, 2008
In the summer of 1854, General Randolph B. Marcy, under orders of the United States Department of War and Interior and in accordance with an act of the Texas Legislature dated February 6, created two Indian reservations in West Texas. The Brazos Reservation originally comprised four leagues, or 18,576 acres, twelve miles south of Fort Belknap, where the Brazos River makes three big bends. The size was doubled when an adjacent tract of equal size, intended for the western Indians, was added to it. The main building was three miles east of the site of present-day Graham.
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abilenet August 29th, 2008
The Texas legislature passed a law on February 6, 1854, that established the Brazos Indian Reservationqv for the Caddos, Wacos, and other Indians, and also provided four square leagues of land, or 18,576 acres, for a Comanche reserve to be located at Camp Cooper on the Clear Fork of the Brazos in Throckmorton County. In compliance with the treaty of August 30, 1855, about 450 of the Penateka or southern Comanches settled on the reservation and were to be taught farming. The location had good hunting and water and had been selected by Maj. Robert S. Neighbors. The principal Indian village, established in a bend of the river, consisted of several hundred Indians and their chief, Ketumsee, who lived there with his wives and many children.
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abilenet August 22nd, 2008
The Tonkawa Indians were actually a group of independent bands, the Tonkawas proper, the Mayeyes, and a number of smaller groups that may have included the Cava, Cantona, Emet, Sana, Toho, and Tohaha Indians. The remnants of these tribes united in the early eighteenth century in the region of Central Texas. The Yojaune Indians, who were actually a Wichita tribe, were absorbed by the Tonkawas in the second half of the eighteenth century. The name Tonkawa is a Waco term meaning “they all stay together.” Traditionally, the Tonkawas have been regarded as an old Texas tribe, but new evidence suggests that the Tonkawas migrated from the high plains as late as the seventeenth century. In addition, the Tonkawas proper might have been only a small element of the fragmented tribes that migrated to Texas.
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abilenet August 15th, 2008
Changes in Texas vegetation during the past 30,000 years offer us clues about climatic changes, about the animals that once lived here, and about the hardships the earliest Texans, the Paleo-Indians, had to face in their daily quest for food and shelter.
The years 30,000-22,500 B.C. were an interlude between two major glacial periods in North America. During this time conditions in Texas were stable and favorable. Pollen records from deposits in West Texas reveal that at first most of the area north and west of Austin was covered by a large prairie and few trees. Grasses dominated the land, and pine, juniper, Douglas fir, and spruce trees were restricted mostly to the higher elevations of the Guadalupe, Davis, and Chisos ranges. The probable climate of West Texas in this period was cooler and wetter than today, with fewer temperature extremes. Pollen evidence suggests that minor climatic fluctuations occurred. These are reflected in the fossil record by cyclical increases and decreases in the proportion of tree pollen when compared to pollen from other plants. Some cycles lasted several thousand years and suggest that at times large islands of pine and juniper invaded the grasslands. The prairie grasses remained dominant in West Texas for this entire period, however, and provided grazing for many species of now-extinct animals.
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