Site of Bird's Fort
Arlington, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(One mile east) In an effort to attract settlers to the region and to provide protection from Indian raids, Gen. Edward H. Tarrant of the Republic of Texas Militia authorized Jonathan Bird to establish a settlement and military post in the area. Bird's Fort, built near a crescent-shaped lake one mile east in 1841, was the first attempt at Anglo-American colonization in present Tarrant County. The settlers, from the Red River area, suffered from hunger and Indian problems and soon returned home or joined other settlements. In August 1843, troops of the Jacob Snively expedition disbanded at the abandoned fort, which consisted of a few log structures. Organized to capture Mexican gold wagons on the Santa Fe Trail in retaliation for raids of San Antonio, the outfit had been disarmed by United States forces. About the same time, negotiations began at the fort between Republic of Texas officials Gen. Tarrant and Gen. George W. Terrell and the leaders of nine Indian tribes. The meetings ended on September 29, 1843, with the signing of the Bird's Fort Treaty. Terms of the agreement called for an end to existing conflicts and the establishment of a line separating Indian lands from territory open for colonization. (1980) Supplemental: This marker was relocated to River Legacy Parks in 2003. The Bird's Fort site is about 1-1/4 miles north-northeast of this location.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1841 Gen. Edward H. Tarrant authorized Jonathan Bird to plant a fort and settlement near a crescent lake—the first Anglo-American colonizing attempt in present Tarrant County. Hunger and conflict scattered the Red River settlers, and in 1843 the disbanded Snively expedition, disarmed by U.S. troops, drifted through the abandoned post. That September, Republic officials and leaders of nine Native nations signed the Bird's Fort Treaty here, drawing a line between Indian lands and colonization.
Why it matters
The fort and its treaty mark the contested beginning of Anglo settlement in North Texas and a formal, fateful attempt to partition Native and settler country.
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Related people
- · Jonathan Bird
- · Edward H. Tarrant
- · George W. Terrell
Related events
- · Bird's Fort Treaty
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sloan-Journey Expedition of 1838
Arlington, TX
In the spring of 1838, Captains Robert Sloan and Nathaniel T. Journey led some ninety northeast Texas frontiersmen on a punitive raid against Indians who had struck their homes in present-day Fannin County. The trail carried them into what is now Tarrant County, where they attacked a small Native village. The episode was among the earliest recorded Anglo-American incursions into north Texas, part of the violent process that opened the region to white settlement.
Jesse Chisholm
Arlington, TX
Jesse Chisholm, born of a Scottish father and Cherokee mother, was a scout, trader, and interpreter fluent in dozens of Indian languages who negotiated for the Republic of Texas and Sam Houston, including a peace conference near here at Bird's Fort in 1843. He is remembered for the wagon route he marked across Oklahoma and Kansas, which cowboys adopted to drive Texas longhorns north to railheads. After the Civil War wrecked the state's economy, those drives sent five-dollar cattle to thirty-dollar markets, and the Chisholm Trail became the most famous of the great cattle roads.
Site of Bird's Fort
Arlington, TX
In 1840 Jonathan Bird raised a fort along the Military Road linking the Red River to Austin, part of the young Republic of Texas's effort to hold and settle its northern frontier. Nearby in 1843, Republic commissioners signed a major treaty setting a boundary line between Indian nations and white settlements, and the battered survivors of the failed Snively Expedition sought shelter here. The spot sat at the crossroads of diplomacy, migration, and conflict on the Texas prairie.
City of Arlington
Arlington, TX
Arlington grew up where the Blackland Prairie meets the Eastern Cross Timbers, on land once dotted with Native American villages along Village Creek. The 1841 Battle of Village Creek and the 1843 Bird's Fort Treaty — signed by the Republic of Texas with the Delaware, Caddo, Waco, Cherokee, and many other tribes — opened the area to settlement, and in 1876 a townsite and Texas and Pacific rail stop was surveyed and named for Robert E. Lee's Virginia home. From a cotton-shipping town it grew into an amusement destination and, wedged between Fort Worth and Dallas, into one of the anchors of a vast modern metroplex, home to UT Arlington, Six Flags, and the Texas Rangers.