Battle of Plum Creek
Lockhart, Caldwell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The harsh anti-Indian policies of President Mirabeau B. Lamar and Mexican efforts to weaken the Republic of Texas stirred Indian hostilities. Hatred increased after the Council House Fight in San Antonio, March 19, 1840, where 12 Comanche chief were killed. After regrouping and making plans for revenge, 600 Comanches and Kiowas, including women and children, moved across central Texas in early August. They raided Victoria and Linnville (120 mi. SE), a prosperous seaport. About 200 Texans met at Good's Crossing on Plum Creek under Major-General Felix Huston (1800-1857) to stop the Indians. Adorned with their plunder from Linnville, the war party stretched for miles across the prairie. The Battle of Plum Creek, August 12, 1840, began on Comanche Flats (5.5 mi. SE) and proceeded to Kelley springs (2.5 mi. SW), with skirmishes as far as present San Marcos and Kyle. Mathew Caldwell (1798-1842), for whom Caldwell County was named, was injured in the Council House fight but took part in this battle. Volunteers under Edward Burleson (1793-1851) included 13 Tonkawa Indians, marked as Texan allies by white armbands. Texan casualties were light while the Indians lost over 80 chiefs and warriors. This battle ended the Comanche penetration of settled portions of Texas.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By 1840 the young Republic of Texas and the Comanche and Kiowa nations were locked in escalating violence, inflamed by President Lamar's aggressive policies and the deadly Council House Fight in San Antonio. In revenge, a large war party swept to the coast and sacked Linnville before turning inland laden with plunder. On August 12, 1840, Texan volunteers under Felix Huston, Edward Burleson, and Mathew Caldwell—joined by Tonkawa allies—intercepted them at Plum Creek in a running fight across the prairie.
Why it matters
Plum Creek marked a turning point in the struggle over central Texas, checking the great Comanche raids into the settled frontier and shaping the violent dispossession that accompanied American expansion.
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Related people
- · Mirabeau B. Lamar
- · Felix Huston
- · Mathew Caldwell
- · Edward Burleson
Related events
- · Council House Fight
- · Battle of Plum Creek
- · Raid on Linnville
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Isham Jones Good
Lockhart, TX
Georgia-born Isham Jones Good came to Texas in 1835 as a volunteer for the fight for independence from Mexico, narrowly escaping the 1836 Goliad Massacre that claimed Colonel Fannin's command. He returned to settle the frontier, fought in the 1840 Indian battle of Plum Creek, served as an early postmaster and Caldwell County's first sheriff, and helped organize the county in 1848 before turning to cattle ranching in Hays County.
William W. Moon
San Marcos, TX
William W. Moon, orphaned in infancy in Alabama, came to Texas in 1838 and rode with the Texas Rangers, first seeing the San Marcos Springs during a running Indian fight in 1843. Enchanted by the country, he brought his family to build a cabin here in 1845, making the Moons the first permanent Anglo-American settlers of what became Hays County. His cabin hosted the county's first sermon and first school, and he later served in both the Mexican War and the Civil War while running a hotel, stage stop, blacksmith shop, and freight line.
Caldwell County
Lockhart, TX
The land that became Caldwell County began as part of DeWitt's Colony in 1825 and was carved from Gonzales County when the county was created and organized in 1848, with early settlements along Plum Creek and the San Marcos River. It honors Mathew Caldwell — nicknamed 'Old Paint' — a soldier-statesman who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and commanded the Texas Rangers. Lockhart was named the county seat.
Thomas Osborn
Red Rock, TX
Thomas Osborn was one of the settlers-turned-soldiers who took up arms in the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836, the uprising that severed Mexican Texas from Mexico. The battles named here trace the war's arc: the early clash at Gonzales and the fight at Velasco, the grinding Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and the disastrous defeat at Coleto that led to the Goliad massacre. Texas erected the marker in 1962 to honor a veteran of that founding struggle.