Cherokee Chief Bowles
Edom, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On this site the Cherokee Chief Bowles was killed on July 16, 1839 while leading 800 Indians of various tribes in battle against 500 Texans * * The last engagement between Cherokees and whites in Texas. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On this ground on July 16, 1839, Cherokee leader Chief Bowles was killed leading some 800 Native fighters of allied tribes against roughly 500 Texan troops. The clash marked the climax of the young Republic of Texas's campaign to expel the Cherokees and their allies from East Texas, the last major engagement between Cherokees and Texans. Bowles, an aged chief who had sought a permanent land guarantee, died on the field.
Why it matters
It records the violent removal of Native peoples from Texas under the Republic — a decisive, tragic chapter in the dispossession that accompanied American expansion.
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Related people
- · Chief Bowles
Related events
- · Cherokee War of 1839
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cherokee Exodus from Texas
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Pushed out of their eastern homelands by white settlement, Cherokee people migrated into East Texas and were established in the region by 1820, seeking in vain to secure legal title to their land from Mexico. The uneasy coexistence that followed collapsed in 1839 when Republic of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar ordered the tribe expelled. In a two-day battle northwest of here on July 15–16, two Texans and eighteen Cherokees fell, including the aged Chief Bowles, and the survivors were driven north into present-day Oklahoma.
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