Site of the Kickapoo Battlefield
Frankston, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Here General Thomas J. Rusk with 200 Texans on October 16, 1838, attacked a band of hostile Indians and allied Mexicans, molestors of frontier settlements, and routed them.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
During the years of the Republic of Texas, conflict between settlers and Native peoples flared repeatedly across the eastern frontier. On October 16, 1838, General Thomas J. Rusk led about 200 Texans in an attack on a band of Native Americans and allied Mexicans near this spot, dispersing them in what became known as the Kickapoo battle. The clash was one of many in the Republic's campaigns to push Indigenous nations from the settlement line.
Why it matters
The Kickapoo battlefield records the violent dispossession that accompanied Texas independence, when the young republic used armed force to clear Native peoples from land it sought for settlers.
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Related people
- · Thomas J. Rusk
Related events
- · Kickapoo battle (October 16, 1838)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
At this site was the camp of the Army of the Republic of Texas
Flint, TX
In July 1839 the army of the young Republic of Texas gathered at this site under commanders including Edward Burleson, Thomas J. Rusk, and Albert Sidney Johnston before marching against Chief Bowles and his Cherokee and allied warriors. The clash on July 16, 1839, ended the Cherokees' presence in East Texas as the Republic forced them from their lands. The battle was a decisive and bitter chapter in the Republic's Indian policy.
Mixon Cemetery
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Settlers from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas founded the Pine Springs community — later Mixon — in the 1850s, and in 1853 Josiah Thomas set aside land for churches and religious use. The cemetery's oldest marked grave dates to 1854, with many early burials marked by local red iron-ore rock, and tradition holds that members of local Indian tribes lie in unmarked graves. More than 125 veterans rest here, from the War of 1812 to the present, including twenty-two Confederate soldiers.
John Crane
Chandler, TX
A Virginia-born veteran of the War of 1812, John Crane joined Joseph Vehlein's colony and moved his family to Texas in 1834, fighting at the Siege of Bexar and serving through the Texas Revolution. In July 1839 he rode with Republic forces under Douglass, Burleson, and Rusk against Chief Bowles and the Cherokee at the Battle of the Neches, where he was killed. Bowles fell the next day, and his death led to the expulsion of the Cherokee from Texas.
Fort Houston
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Raised in 1835–36 as a stockade and heavy-log blockhouse of the fledgling Republic of Texas, Fort Houston protected the settlers who founded the pioneer town of Houston. Friendly Indians came to trade at its walls even as wary families slept inside the twenty-five-foot-square blockhouse, and the men who gathered here formed one of the first Ranger units in Texas. The fort guarded a wide stretch of frontier until it was abandoned about 1841, its ground later folded into the home of statesman John H. Reagan.