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Maverick County was traversed by many early Spanish expeditions including: Fernando Azque in 1665, Bosque-Larios in 1675, and the Alonso de Leon Expedition in 1688. The Old San Antonio Road, an important 16th century trade route, crossed the Rio Grande just south of present day Eagle Pass at the San Juan Bautista Mission. This was the first in the chain of Spanish missions established in Texas. Anglo settlement began in 1849 with the founding of the U.S. Army Fort Duncan. The community of Eagle Pass was founded in 1850 under the protection of the Fort. Maverick County was organized in 1871 and named for the colorful Texas pioneer Samuel Maverick. Eagle Pass is the county seat, and other communities include Quemado, Normandy, Darling, Paloma and El Indio. The county is also the home of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas.
The Kickapoo are an Alogonquin-speaking people who settled in present- day Wisconsin and Illinois. The 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were marked by foreign invasions into the tribal heartland by the French, British, and finally, the Americans. Then, as today, the Kickapoo were resolute in their refusal to submit to outside cultures. Their skilled and fierce warriors engaged in a protracted military effort to resist the advancing tide of settlement. Ultimately, the Kickapoo acceded and were forced to relinquish their homelands, totaling some 13,000,000 acres, for minimal payments in a series of federal treaties signed in 1903, 1809, and 1819.
The 1819 treaty promised a permanent and substantial reservation in Missouri, but the forced removal caused deep policy disputes within the tribe. Two bands refused to leave Illinois and conducted a series of raids on white settlements. Another band moved to the Missouri lands and then was pushed further west to Kansas as a result of the 1832 Treaty of Castor Hill. Yet another band eventually went south to Texas, in the vicinity of Eagle Pass. Complex hostilities developed and the Kickapoo sided at various times with the United States, the Republic Texas, and Mexico. Finally, due largely to conflicts with non-Indian residents of Texas, the band migrated still further south, below the United States-Mexican border. This band is variously referred to as the “Texas Band of Kickapoo,” the “Eagle Pass Kickapoo,” the “Traditional Kickapoo,” or the “Mexican Kickapoo.”
In the Mid-19th century the band negotiated an agreement with Mexico for a land base and hunting grounds near Nacimiento, Mexico. Some Kickapoo from Kansas joined their fellow tribal members in Mexico. Hostilities continued with citizens of Texas, now admitted as a state.
In 1871, the United States, seeking to end the border raids and to clarify the status of the Kickapoo, sent a State Department delegation to Eagle Pass to conduct an investigation. Before the State Department could negotiate a peaceful settlement, The Department of War took independent action. In 1873, with no authority from Mexico and in violation of international law, Col. Randal S. Mackenzie led his Fourth Cavalry in the infamous “Mackenzie's Raid” on a Kickapoo village in Mexico. Most able-bodied men were on a hunting expedition and elders, the ill, women, and children inhabited the village. All were killed or taken prisoner. The prosperous village was utterly destroyed: “ruin and desolation now marked the spot - a cyclone could not have made more havoc or a cleaner sweep.”
The hostages taken at Mackenzie's Raid were used to entice other traditional Kickapoo to remove to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Again the Kickapoo were split, as some 300 were marched to an Indian territory while about the same number remained in Mexico. Thus by the 1880's various Kickapoo lived in Oklahoma, Mexico, and Kansas. The government continued its efforts to consolidate the tribe in one location. In 1883, a reservation of approximately 200,000 acres were established by President Arthur in Oklahoma for the Kickapoo. Although the land was designated in the executive order as being “set apart for the permanent use and occupation of the Kickapoo Indians,” the familiar pressures for Kickapoo lands began to build. In 1891 an agreement was negotiated that purported to provide for 80 acre allotments from the Oklahoma reservation for individual Kickapoo; all other tribal lands would be opened for settlements by non Indians. Although two-thirds of the tribe disavowed the agreement, Congress enacted it into a law in 1893 and surplus tribal land was opened for through a major land rush in 1895. In fact, the “surplus land amounted to 90% of all tribal land and was among the richest timber land and bottom land in Oklahoma.
The breakup of the reservation caused many Oklahoma Kickapoo to leave Oklahoma in disgust and join a band in Mexico. A few years later after the government had lifted restrictions on Kickapoo allotments, a major scandal occurred when traditional Kickapoo in Mexico were swindled out of their Oklahoma land. Professor A. M. Gibson, the leading historian of the traditional Kickapoo, has decried the Kickapoo land scandals as “a monument to evil genius and deceit.”
During the early 20th century, the Kickapoo kept their ties alive in spite of being dispersed in Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The communities visited back and forth. There was a considerable amount of intermarriage among the bands.
The Mexican Kickapoo continued to live year-round at Nacimiento during the first several decades of the 20th century. In the 1940’s, however, events irretrievably altered their existence at Nacimiento. There was a long and severe drought. A mining company's use of groundwater lowered the water table. Subsistence hunting was decimated by fencing of nearby ranches and by overhunting on adjoining lands. The Kickapoo received no support from the Mexican government, whose officials did not consider them as Mexican citizens. With Nacimiento no longer capable of providing a viable homeland, the traditional Kickapoo were forced to migrate again and return to Eagle Pass, Texas.
Since World War II, the Texas band of Kickapoo has resided for the greater part of the time in Eagle Pass, Texas. They use their land at Nacimiento primarily for religious ceremonies. Eagle Pass itself has religious significance to the Kickapoo because several tribal burial sites are located in the area. In the summer months, many of the Kickapoo are migrant workers; because of the lack of jobs in Eagle Pass, they travel to northern states in order to follow the harvests.
Reprinted from the 2nd Edition of “90 Miles on Highway 90” compiled and published by the Kinney County Chamber of Commerce |
