A Brief History of the Llano Estacado

Dr. Mark A. McGinleyHonors College and Department of Biological

SciencesTexas Tech University

Migration Route of Native Americans

• Native Americans migrated from Asia via the Bering Land Bridge– From 40,000 to

11,000 years ago

Timeline of Texas Indians

• Paleo-Indians Period– 9,200 B.C. - 6,000 B.C

• Archaic Period – 6,000 B.C.-500 A.D.

• Late Prehistoric Period– 500 to 1,500

• Historic Period– 1,500 – Present

Learn About Texas Indians http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_p4000_0016.pdf

Paleo-Indians Period 9,200 B.C. - 6,000 B.C

• Texas Indians of this period follow and hunt the last of the big mammals of the Ice Age.

• Paleo-Indians have chopping and scraping stone tools, and they use spears.

Paleo-Indian Period Environment• During the Ice Ages (from about 2,000,000 to 8,000 years

ago), various large-sized mammals lived south of the vast ice-sheets covering the top half of the continent.

• In Texas, these Ice Age mammals included mastodons, mammoths, native camels, native horses, long-horned bison, giant armadillos and giant sloths, along with meat-eaters such as dire wolves, short-faced bears and sabertooth cats.

• More familiar creatures, like box turtles and burrowing owls, were also present.

• In Texas, the Paleo-Indians, or first Native Americans, lived alongside the giant mammals from about 11,000 to 8,000 years ago

Paleo-Indians

• The Clovis culture was a pedestrian, hunter–gatherer society that depended on indigenous flora and fauna for their survival.

• They traveled by foot in constant search of the woolly mammoth, bison, deer, elk, camel, horse and whatever else was available to consume for survival.

• Rabbit, snakes and birds of various types were abundant as well.

• They also gathered wild plants, berries and seeds to supplement whatever meat they consumed.

Paleo-Indians in Texas

• "For the Clovis and their probable Folsom and Plainview descendants, Pleistocene Texas was an extraordinary environment: full of dangerous species, paleosavannas noisy with game animals, high-quality lithic resources, plentiful rockshelters, and tremendous springlands. Though never numerous, perhaps a thousand or so on the great Llano mesa, the Clovis people explored Texas vigorously from a network of base camps, overlooks, kill sites, quarries, and hunting camps.“

• John Miller Morris, Professor of History, UT

Mammoth Hunting

• http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dxm01

Paleo-Indians

• Paleo-Indians• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Indians

• The Paleo-Indian Period: The Clovis Culture in the Texas Panhandle

• http://www.panhandlenation.com/history/prehistory/clovis.htm

What Caused The Extinction of the Large Mammals?

• During the late Pleistocene, 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, North America lost over 50 percent of its large mammal species. – including mammoths, mastodons, giant ground

sloths, among many others. • In total, 35 different genera (groups of

species) disappeared, all of different habitat preferences and feeding habits

What Caused The Extinction of the Large Mammals?

• There are a number of hypotheses to explain this extinction– Overhunting by humans– Removal of keystone species (e.g., mammoth and

mastadons) altered enviornment– Virus introduced by humans killed mammals– Climate change– Comet Impact or airburst

What Caused The Extinction of the Large Mammals?

• End of the Big Beasts• http://

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/end-big-beasts.html

• Mass Extinction: Why Did Half of N. America's Large Mammals Disappear 40,000 to 10,000 Years Ago?

• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091127140706.htm

• Deciphering North American Pleistocene Extinctions• http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/grayson--jar07.pdf

Archaic Indians

• By 8,000 years ago (or 6,000 B.C.), the giant Ice Age mammals had died out.

• Archaic Indians replaced the Paleo-Indian big-game hunters. – The Archaic Indians

depended on medium-sized game such as rabbits and deer. Rodents, turkey, lizards and snakes were also eaten, and edible wild plants filled out the diet.

Archaic

• The Archaic period was a long time span of hunting and gathering and is most notable for changes in projectile points from the previous Paleo-Indian period.– Paleo points were distinguished by their fluting, whereas the

Archaic period saw that style disappear in favor of the more parallel-sided lanceolate form.

• Other changes in this time period include the wider distribution of sites inhabited by the Archaic culture.

• Larger populations during the Archaic period used local agricultural and animal resources which resembled Indians of the more modern Antelope Creek and pre-Columbian periods. Bison was the primary source of big game

Archaic Period

• Later in the Archaic period, from 2500 BC to about 1000 BC population increases were normal throughout the southwest and the local cultures became more specialized on a regional basis.

• Cemeteries with large numbers of dead began to appear which indicate that hunter-gatherer cultures of the past were beginning to be more semisedentary, allowing for specialized trade from cultures and groups from more distant locations.

Archaic Period

• Beyond Clovis: Archaic in the Texas Panhandle• http://www.panhandlenation.com/history/pre

history/beyondclovis.htm

Late Pre-Historic Period500 to 1,500

• Texas Indians of this period start to use the bow and arrow and to make pottery.

• In some areas, Texas Indians live in villages and grow maize (corn), beans and squash.

Late-Prehistoric Period

• The appearance of the bow and arrow and pottery marks the end of the Archaic Period and the beginning of what is called the Late Prehistoric Period of Texas Indian culture.

• The earliest dates for arrowpoints and ceramics are around 150 A.D.

• However, in most parts of Texas, the Late Prehistoric Period started around 500 A.D.

• In some areas, like East Texas and along the Rio Grande, crops started to be grown in Late Prehistoric times.

Late-Prehistoric Period

• Some Late Prehistoric Native Americans lived in pueblo-like villages in the Texas Panhandle near the Canadian River from about 1,100 A.D. to 1,400 A.D. – They grew corn and beans and also hunted bison.– They mined a colorful local stone, called Alibates agate, Highly

valued for its use in making beautiful arrowheads and other tools, this stone was traded to

• The pueblos along the Rio Grande were quite unusual in their construction. Wall foundations consisted of two parallel rows of slabs of rocks covered with adobe inside and out. Most of the houses were built in single-level apartment-like complexes, but some stood alone.

Late-Prehistoric Period

• By 1200 AD the hunter-gatherers of the southern Plains had advanced beyond the pedestrian culture that pursued game with flint-tipped spears and gathered the fruit of plants as they traveled from one campsite to another in their quest for survival.

• Around 700 AD the bow and arrow were introduced which gave more power and precision to hunters.

• Pottery was also more prevalent and signs of long distance trade with cultures west of the Llano Estacado shows that southern Plains cultures had become more settled in their daily environment by the end of the Archaic period

Late-Prehistoric Period

• From 1200 to 1500 AD the Texas Panhandle was dominated by the Antelope Creek Phase.

• The Antelope Creek Phase is the cultural designation assigned to a series of prehistoric sites in the upper Texas and Oklahoma panhandles utilized by semisedentary, bison-hunting, and horticultural groups during a period of aridity between AD 1200 and 1500.

Late-Prehistoric Period• Based on hunting-gathering, horticulture and bison hunting, the

Antelope Creek economy was both local and distant. The apparent abundance of bison and water resources provided a rich environment.

• With fossil springs and the Canadian River as water sources wildlife was plentiful regardless of the contemporaneous climate.

• Food sources would include a large array of antelope, deer and small mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, clams and waterfowl. Plant resources would include hackberry, mesquite, plums, cattail stems, persimmons, prickly-pear cactus, purslane, goosefoot, grass seeds, sunflower seeds, corn, squash and beans.

Late-Prehistoric Period

• One distinctive aspect of the Late Prehistoric was widespread, long-distance trade, best reflected in the distribution of obsidian artifacts in parts of Texas.– Artifact-quality obsidian (volcanic glass, usually black to

gray in color) does not occur in Texas. Yet at sites in deep South Texas, across Central Texas, and into the Panhandle, obsidian artifacts are often reported.

• Antelope Creek culture exchanged goods and services with almost all adjacent cultures in North America however, most materials from outside the Antelope Creek area are from the southwestern pueblo cultures.

Late-Prehistoric Period• The Antelope Creek phase of the Plains Village horizon was short

lived: it existed in the Texas Panhandle from 1200 to about 1500 AD and flourished because of the abundant local resources. Fossil springs from the Ogallala Aquifer provided fresh water for humans and the relatively salty water from the Canadian River attracted a tremendous variety of game.

• Since the local economy found its staple in horticultural products that they themselves cultivated, attempts at maintaining an agricultural economy became increasingly difficult with constant drought.

• Wandering bands of nomadic tribes such as the Apacheans were instrumental in adding unbearable pressure to the Antelope Creek pueblo-type lifestyle

Late-Prehistoric Period

• By 1500 AD the Apaches had completely displaced the local Antelope Creek culture.

• It is believed that the local Panhandle culture moved eastward and perhaps merged with similar Caddoan plains tribes such as the Pawnee or Wichita.

Late-Prehistoric Period

• The Antelope Creek Focus: Advanced, Pre-Columbian Civilization in the Texas Panhandle

• http://www.panhandlenation.com/history/prehistory/antelope_creek.htm

Historic Period1,500 - Present

• Texas Indians of this period are in contact with various Europeans: the Spanish, the French and, finally, the Anglos.

• The Europeans introduce horses and guns as well as cloth and metal pots, knives and axes.

• Conflicts with whites are continuous and, by 1875, all of Texas' original Indian groups have been killed or forced to move to Oklahoma.

Apaches

• The Apaches were the dominant Native American group in the Llano Estacado region – Migrated down from Canada

Apaches

• At first the Apache farmed on the south plains. They probably were semi-sedentary. – When the crops were in they would switch to a

nomadic lifestyle and hunt and gather for food. – They farmed corn, beans and squash like the other

Indians around them. In fact, they probably learned to farm and got their first corn from the Pueblo Indians.

– Hunted buffalo on foot, pretty difficult.

Arrival of the Spanish

• Christopher Columbus– Born in Genoa, Italy– Led Spanish voyage to find a western route

to the orient. Instead…….

He “Discovered” the “New World”

4 Voyages of Christopher Columbus

The Spanish in America• In 1481, the Pope drew a line in the

Atlantic ocean and gave Portugal claim to all lands to the east of that line (Africa) and Spain all lands west of the line (N. and S. America).

• First Spanish colony set up in Hispanola (now Dominican Republic)

• Spanish did not explore the new world to set up new settlements– Instead they explored looking for

riches (e.g., gold and silver) and searching for people to convert to Catholacism

Cabeza de Vaca

• In 1528, a Spanish Expedition exploring Florida was stranded there. They built barges and sailed along the southern coast of the US and landed near Galveston.

• Cabeza de Vaca was one of the "four ragged castaways," who were among the first non-Indians to set foot on Texas soil.

Cabeza de Vaca

• In 1534 Cabeza de Vaca and a small group took off on a journey that took them along the Rio Grande and ultimately to the Sea of Cortez before returning to Mexico City and ultimately to Spain.

Coronado Expedition

• Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was appointed to lead an expedition to conquer to Seven Cities of Cibola– included 1,000 men, 1,500 horses and mules, and

cattle and sheep for the expedition commissary.

Coronado Expedition

Coronado’s Description of Llano Estacado

• The Llano Estacado was first described by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in a letter to the king of Spain in October 20, 1541:

• "I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I travelled over them for more than 300 leagues . . . with no more land marks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea . . . . there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by."

Coronado and Llano Estacado

• The country the buffalo traveled over was so smooth that if one looked at them the sky could be seen between their legs.

• Men and horses became lost in the featureless plain and Coronado felt like he had been swallowed up by the sea.

• On the Llano, Coronado encountered vast herds of bison. “I found such a quantity of cows...that it is impossible to number them, for while I was journeying through these plains...there was not a day that I lost sight of them.”

Coronado

• Francisco Vázquez de Coronado• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_V%C3

%A1squez_de_Coronado

• Coronado Expedition• http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/

articles/upcpt

Reintroduction of Horses Into North America

• North American horses disappeared around 8,000 - 10,000 years ago.

• In 1519, Conquistadors re-introduced horses to North America. – Fifteen horses were brought by the Cortez

expedition and were imported by Spanish homesteaders to Mexico and New Mexico.

• The re-introduced species made their way north through the western U.S. west of the Rocky Mountains to the coast, following the expansion of the Mexican/Spanish. Within 150 years of the first colonizers, herds of millions roamed the plains

A brief history of the horse in America• http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazin

e/ma05/indepth/

Apaches• Started using horses which

made it much easier to hunt bison

• Hunters with horses could also follow herds for several days and travel long distances to find herds.

• Hunting buffalo became an easier way to get food than hunting– the Apache quit farming and

became nomadic hunter gatherers.

Texas Apaches

• By the mid–seventeenth century Apaches had acquired enough horses that their raids became a major concern for Spanish authorities in New Mexico.

• Colonial governors tried various policies to subjugate them. Military expeditions against scattered autonomous bands produced limited results.

• Spanish alliances with Pueblos and Comanches were more productive.

Texas Apaches

• After 1700 the Comanches swept the Apaches off the plains of Texas and eastern New Mexico.

• Spanish territorial governors at times attempted to concentrate Apaches near Pueblo communities through dispersal of trade goods, including guns and alcohol.

• Some bands accepted Spanish annuities and settled under Spanish rule. Most did not.

• Spain failed to bring Apache bands in the Plains under control. Mexico fared no better.

• Apache raids, along with Comanche inroads, became the bane of existence in newly independent Mexico between 1821 and 1846.

Apaches

Texas Apacheshttp://www.texasindians.com/ap2.htm

Apacheshttp://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.na.004

Comanches

• Before the Comanches arrived, the Jumano Indians, some Pueblo Indians, and Apache Indians had lived in the Southern Plains.

• To move into this area, the Comanches first had to drive these other tribes out.

• By the middle 1700s they had extended into central Texas near Austin.

Comanche Migration

Comanches

• The Comanches remained a nomadic people throughout their free existence.

• Buffalo, their lifeblood, provided food, clothing, and shelter. Their predominantly meat diet was supplemented with wild roots, fruits, and nuts, or with produce obtained by trade with neighboring agricultural tribes, principally the Wichita and Caddo groups to the east and the Pueblo tribes to the west.

• Because of their skills as traders, the Comanches controlled much of the commerce of the Southern Plains. They bartered buffalo products, horses, and captives for manufactured items and foodstuffs.

Comanches• The familiar Plains-type tepee

constructed of tanned buffalo hide stretched over sixteen to eighteen lodge poles provided portable shelter for the Comanches.

• Their clothing, made of bison hide or buckskin, consisted of breechclout, leggings, and moccasins for men, and fringed skirt, poncho-style blouse, leggings, and moccasins for women. Buffalo robes provided protection from cold weather.

Comanches

• By the mid-eighteenth century, the armed and mounted Comanches had become a formidable force in Texas.

• Spanish officials, lacking the resources to defeat them militarily, decided to pursue peace with the Comanches.

• A peace policy that utilized trade and gifts to promote friendship and authorized military force only to punish specific acts of aggression was inaugurated and remained in effect, with varying degrees of success, for the remainder of Spanish rule in Texas.

Comanches

• The Texas Comanches• http://www.texasindians.com/comanche.htm

• Comanches• http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia

/doc/egp.na.020

• Comanche Indians• http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/

articles/bmc72

English Come to the New World

• In 1620 the Pilgrims sailed from England and landed in what is now Massachusetts

• http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/History/voyage_secondary.php

English Come to the New WorldVoyage of the Mayflower

Westward Expansion

Anglo-American Colonization of Texas

• Anglo-American colonization in Mexican Texas took place between 1821 and 1835. Spain had first opened Texas to Anglo-Americans in 1820, less than one year before Mexico achieved its independence. Its traditional policy forbade foreigners in its territory, but Spain was unable to persuade its own citizens to move to remote and sparsely populated Texas.

• Spain expected the new settlers to increase economic development and help deter the aggressive and mobile Plains Indians such as the Comanches and Kiowas. Mexico continued the Spanish colonization plan after its independence in 1821 by granting contracts to empresarios who would settle and supervise selected, qualified immigrants.

• First settlements in Central and Southern Texas

• http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/uma01

Texas Comanches• When Texans won their independence from Mexico in 1836 the

Comanches and their allies were still in absolute control of the Texas plains. They frequently conducted raids on frontier settlements from San Antonio to northern Mexico.

• In an effort to stop Comanche destruction on the Texas frontier, Sam Houston, first duly elected president of the Republic of Texas, instituted a policy aimed at establishing peace and friendship through commerce. Houston's peace efforts were hampered because the Texas Congress refused to agree to the one Comanche requirement for peace-a boundary line between Texas and Comanchería.

• When Houston left office in late 1838, Texan-Comanche relations were rapidly deteriorating and depredations were being committed by both sides.

Anglo-American Settlers in the Llano Estacado

• A critical shortage of water restricted the early exploration and settlement of the Llano Estacado, which is at best a semiarid region with a very high evaporation rate.

• Minerals left behind by the process render most surface water in playas unusable.

• The only reliable source of groundwater has been the Ogalalla Aquifer. – Its southern extension under the Llano Estacado has been cut off

and sealed mainly by the drainage of the Pecos River and, to a lesser extent, by the Canadian River and their tributaries. That isolation prevents any recharge from Rocky Mountain runoff, making the groundwater under the Llano Estacado a finite resource that is being rapidly depleted

Last Days of the Comanches

• Last Days of the Comanches

• http://www.texasmonthly.com/2010-05-01/feature4.php

Last Days of the Comanche• By 1870 settlers had begun moving up

towards the Llano Estacado, but many had moved out because of danger from Comanche raids.

• “If the Indian marauders are not punished,” wrote Colonel Randolph Marcy, “the whole country seems in a fair way of becoming totally depopulated.”

• In 1871 Ranald Slidell Mackenzie led a group of 600 soldiers to fight the Quahadi group of Comanche who hunted in the Llano Estacado and liked to camp in the depths of Palo Duro Canyon

Last Days of the Comanche

• Not only was the army unable to find the Indians but, at Blanco Canyon on the morning of October 9, 1871, the troopers lost a number of horses when Quanah and his followers raided the cavalry campsite. Afterward, the Indians seemingly disappeared onto the plains, only to reappear and attack again. Mackenzie gave up the search in mid-1872.

Quanah Parker

• The Quahada were led by Quanah Parker, son of Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, who was born about 1845. – His mother was the celebrated

captive of a Comanche raid on Parker's Fort (1836) and convert to the Indian way of life

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpa28

Last Days of the Comanche

• As buffalo hunters poured onto the plains, decimating the Indians' chief source of subsistence, Parker and his followers were forced to take decisive action

• The Quahadas formed a multitribal alliance dedicated to expelling the hunters from the plains. On the morning of June 27, 1874, this alliance of some 700 warriors—Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches—attacked the twenty-eight hunters and one woman housed at Adobe

• In the end the hunters suffered just one casualty, while fifteen Indians died and numerous others, including Parker, were wounded.

Defeat of the Comanches

• Defeated and disorganized, the Indians retreated and the alliance crumbled. Within a year Parker and the Quahadas, under relentless pressure from the army and suffering from hunger, surrendered their independence and moved to the Kiowa-Comanche reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.

Settlement of the Llano Estacado

Development of the Llano Estacado did not begin until the 1870s. By the end of 1886 the area and adjacent lands had at least thirty large ranches recognized by name and cattle brand, grazing thousands of cattle on free grass and water on mostly unappropriated public lands. Innovative farmers learned techniques to make the rich, dry land productive; they also drilled into the Ogalalla Aquifer. Development of animal, windmill, and engine-powered pumps led to massive irrigation programs. Cotton, corn, wheat, sorghum, and a great variety of melons and vegetables are now grown on the Llano Estacado.

Settlement of the Llano Estacado• Natural gas was discovered in

Potter County in 1917 and oil in Carson County in 1921.

• These initial discoveries led to the development of the vast West Texas oilfields, which by 1981 had yielded a total of 46,691,878,324 barrels of crude oil. The discovery and development of the oil and gas fields brought large-scale industry to the Llano area in the 1930s.

Settlement of Llano Estacado

• Thus within a relatively short period the Llano witnessed the most rapid development of any section of the state, progressing from an economy based on unfenced public grazing land to a modern industrial economy within half a century.

• The total population of the Llano in 1880 was only 1,081. By 1980 the total was over 900,000 with approximately 23 percent living in rural areas and 77 percent in urban centers– Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, and Odessa.

Llano Estacado

• Llano Estacado• http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/

articles/ryl02