Walking With Ghosts In Arlington In The Old Caddoan Confederacy

That serene body of water you are looking at here is located in Arlington, Texas.

The body of water is known as Village Creek. Village Creek is so named because of the large Village of Native Americans which thrived in this area until early Texans used a primitive form of eminent domain to take the land away from its rightful owners.

The Village at Village Creek was made up of multiple tribes, bound together in what was known as the Caddo Confederacy.

The Tribes in the Caddoan Confederacy were agrarian. Which means they grew crops. Items like corn and squash. The Caddoan Confederacy extended to the east to what is now known as Louisiana.

The Comanche tribe was headquartered to the west and north. The Comanche were not an agrarian tribe. The Comanche often made raids into Caddoan Confederacy territory.

That is our local history lesson for today.

Today I had myself a mighty fine peaceful walk with the Indian Ghosts who haunt this location. And now it is time to fire up the wok and make some stir fry.

Searching For Local Oddballs Like Those In David Byrne's True Stories About Texas

On the left you are looking at a screen cap of a YouTube video of the intro to David Bryne's movie, True Stories.

True Stories is the best movie I've seen about Texas. And the funniest. With the best music.

In the intro you will hear reference made to the wiping out of the Caddo Confederacy.

Indians who were members of tribes which were in the Caddo Confederacy are some of the Indian Ghosts I am often mentioning walking with in Arlington's Village Creek Natural Historical Area.

Below is part of the Google description of True Stories which one sees when one Googles "David Byrne True Stories"....

Director David Byrne (of Talking Heads) takes an outside-looking-in glance at Texas and Texans in True Stories. Casting himself as the protagonist/narrator, Byrne adopts what he thinks is standard western garb and drives his red convertible into the small town of Virgil. Here he observes the town's preparations for celebrating Texas' sesquicentennial, taking time out to introduce us to several of the local oddballs.

I have never met any local oddballs in Texas like the local oddballs in True Stories. I wish I'd meet some funny local oddballs.

Below is the aforementioned YouTube video.........

Memorial Day Weekend's Sunday Thinking About A Proper Historical Memory Marker For The Caddo Indians Of Arlington's Village Creek

I had intended to roll my bike's wheels over Gateway Park's mountain bike trails today.

However, my intention was un-intentionally altered when I discovered rain had come to earth at my location on the planet at some point in time during the night.

Rain has a tendency to render dirt into mud on mountain bike trails. I am not a fan of rolling my wheels over mud. It can get messy.

So, I decided to head east instead of west, to a place where I can roll my bike's wheels with the Indian Ghosts who haunt Arlington's Village Creek Natural Historical Area.

Visiting Arlington's Indian Ghosts has become very popular on Saturday and Sunday. Today the parking lot was the closest to being full I have ever seen it.

In the picture above my handlebars are not in the Village Creek Natural Historical Area looking at a historical marker. My handlebars are a few feet off the Bob Findlay Linear Park looking at a historical marker.

This particular historical marker tells the tale of why this location is haunted by Indian Ghosts, with this tale told from the Texan white man perspective, not the Native American perspective. Or a balanced perspective.

Years ago, way back in the last century, a short time after I'd read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I was heading to Reno with a stop at Lava Beds National Monument on the way. The Lava Beds are in Northern California, a maze of lava tubes and caves. It is the location of Captain Jack's Stronghold.

Captain Jack and his band of Modocs caught the world's attention when they successfully defended their position in the Lava Beds from United States Army forces sent to capture  them.

At the turn off from the main highway, on to the road which takes you to the Lava Beds, there is an old historical marker, erected closer in time to the 1872-73 period of the Modoc War, than the present time. That historical marker tells the story of the Modoc War and Captain Jack from the white man's perspective. As in, I was sort of appalled at how slanted and biased that historical marker was.

However, inside the Lava Beds National Monument the history of the Modoc War and Captain Jack is told in the same enlightened way it was told in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Which brings me back to the historical marker you see above, located near where John B. Denton was killed during the Battle of Village Creek.

A  couple blurbs from the Battle of Village Creek historical marker....

"General Tarrant, for whom the County was later  named, led 69 Volunteers from settlements  near the Red River in an early morning attack on the villages of the Caddo and other tribes which were located along Village Creek."

Okay, digest the above paragraph and then read this sentence...

"Soon after entering the creek, they were ambushed and Denton was killed."

So, General Tarrant invaded from the north, deep into the Caddo Confederacy, in an early morning sneak attack on multiple villages, during which John B. Denton was killed by Caddo Indians defending their villages.

How can Denton's death be characterized as an "ambush" after he helped attack the Caddo villages which then resulted in Denton being killed? That'd be like the Japanese claiming one of their planes was shot down in an ambush by Americans on December 7, 1941, during the Japanese Sneak Attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Caddo Confederacy villages along Village Creek were in existence back when the Spanish first arrived in 1542. In other words, those villages had been the Caddo home for a long time. The Caddo Confederacy was mostly a peaceful, agrarian group of tribes. They were not warmongers like the Comanche.

I suspect a historically accurate Battle of Village Creek historical  marker would be something like this....

Acting on faulty intelligence that blamed Caddo Indians in the Village Creek area for attacks on settlers along the Red River, General Tarrant led a group of settlers in a sneak attack on peaceful Caddo villages, killing untold men, women and children. The Caddo fought back as best they could, killing several of the attacking invaders. 

However, the devastation to the Caddo villages, caused by General Tarrant and his army, was so great that the Caddo abandoned the villages they had inhabited for centuries.

___________________________________________

Attacking innocents based on faulty intelligence happens in modern times, even with all our modern information gathering and communication ability.

I imagine it was rather easy to whip the Red River settlers into a frenzy after some violent Comanche attacks. I also imagine it was likely an easy sell to convince the revenge seekers to attack villages of friendly Indians, who were basically farmers, rather than go after the Comanche, who were a fierce force with which to reckon...

Dodging Obstructions On A Muddy Walk With The Village Creek Indian Ghosts Thinking About Floating On Willow Boughs On The Trinity River

Is the City of Arlington Parks Department on strike?

It has been well over a week since I first came upon the obstruction you see in the picture, obstructing the Pioneer Trail that trails through the Village Creek Natural Historical Area.

Detouring around the obstruction put ones footwear in contact with mud. I do not like it when my footwear is in contact with mud. Unless my footwear, at the time, are my mud boots.

Today's mud was the result of this morning's brief downpour that poured down at the predicted time, but not of the predicted duration, and with none of the predicted hail or winds up to 60 mph.

The downpour started, at my location, about 5 minutes before I headed to the pool for my lately regular cool dip and quick retreat to the hot tub. When I got out from under falling rain protection I opened my bumbershoot. This did not seem counter-intuitive at the time, getting under an umbrella to walk to go swimming, but it does seem counter-intuitive now, though, I must say, the bumbershoot did come in handy, keeping my towel dry.

Changing the subject from me getting all wet, back to walking with the Village Creek Indian Ghosts.

I think I've made mention before of the historical informational sign that sits at the western entry to the Village Creek Natural Historical Area's Pioneer Trail. If I remember correctly, I have copied part of the text on that historical informational sign before. Today I decided to copy the first paragraph, for the enlightenment of those who do not know the nature of the Native Americans that the incoming Texans rudely evicted from this part of the country....

The Village Creek valley was home of the largest concentration of Native Americans in Texas. From prehistoric times native peoples practiced agriculture along the banks of Village Creek safe from the periodic floods of the Trinity River. Archaeological digs have revealed arrowhead points from 5,000 B.C. The first accounts of recorded history of settlement along Village Creek came in 1542 when royal Spanish map makers recorded a camp that explorers had made here at an Indian village named "Guasco". They described this area as being the western edge of a "corn belt," west of which were the grasslands of unfriendly Indian tribes. Several of the first European explorers to wander through the region recorded visits to villages of the Caddos, a leading tribe of the Caddo confederacy. These were peaceful tribes who grew corn along the creek, lived in conical-shaped dwellings thatched with grass or bark and navigated the Trinity River on rafts and in canoes made from skins stretched over a framework of willow boughs.

Okay, that ends your history lesson for today....

Today I Visited The Indian Ghosts Who Haunt The Village Creek Historical Area Then Went For A Walk In The Natural Area

That is Village Creek in Arlington you are looking at in the picture. Since that is Village Creek you might correctly guess I went to the place I call the Village Creek Natural Historical Area today for one of my frequent walks with the Indian Ghosts who inhabit this area.

I walked with the Indian Ghosts in the noon time frame. Prior to the noon time frame I drove north to Hurst to ALDI because I needed fat free refried beans and some other things.

The freeway construction that I drive through en route to ALDI, and back, makes me nervous.

Anyone else made nervous by the construction in the juncture of 820/121 zone? The road support beams have been laid on the support columns. It looks very flimsy. Some of the beams look as if they are barely touching the support columns.

It looks like a good wind could wreak havoc. Good thing earthquakes don't happen here.

Above, I said that today I went to the place I call the Village Creek Natural Historical Area. I realized today, and may have realized this previously, but forgot, but at the entry to this area the sign indicates you are at Village Creek Historical Area. No mention made on the sign about anything being Natural. That is the sign to which I refer, below.

So, you park in the Historical Area's Parking lot and walk towards the paved trail that leads to Village Creek. At the trailhead of the paved trail there is an historical marker. Having an historical marker in an historical area seems to make a lot of sense to me.

On the historical marker one learns why this area is called Village Creek, that reason being that one of the biggest Indian villages in America was located at this location, until the Texan evicted them using a primitive version of eminent domain to remove the Caddoan Confederation of tribes that made their home here.

The people of the Anadarko, Bidais, Caddo, Keechi, Kickapoo, Tawakoni, Tonkawa, Waco, Waxahachie and Wichita tribes were forced to leave their town, either by being run out of it. Or by being killed.

Like I said, you come to this Village Creek Historical Marker in the Village Creek Historical Area, you then walk past the historical marker (below) to the paved trail, to suddenly see new signage that indicates you have left the Historical Area, to enter a new area.

The sign one sees as one walks past the Historical Marker informs the walker that one is now in the Village Creek Natural Area.

All this time I've been saying I went for a walk with the Indian Ghosts who haunt the Village Creek Natural Historical Area, erroneously.

I do not know how I could have so carelessly made such a dumb mistake.

Walking Softly While Wielding A Big Stick With Yoga & The Indians At Village Creek

A Man With His Club Heading Towards A Yoga Group

Is the moon full? Is it the lunatic time of the month?

I could not see the moon, even if it were dark and possibly visible, because we are under a thick cloud cover, currently, in this sort of parched part of the planet.

Rain was predicted for today. But, so far, none has fallen on my location.

It is currently 61 degrees. I tested the temperature of the swimming pool this morning. I deemed it not swim-worthy. Tomorrow morning I suspect it will be.

Back to today's walk with the Ghosts of the Caddoan Confederacy, the Native Americans who made up the Anadarko, Bidais, Caddo, Keechi, Kickapoo, Tawakoni, Tonkawa, Waco, Waxahachie and Wichita tribes, who used to live in a huge village that has now been reduced to being made note of via the existence of Village Creek Natural Historical Area in Arlington.

Today there were a lot of people haunting Village Creek. In the picture, above, you see a club wielding man heading to a group of women doing yoga, led by a giant of a man of what looked to be of African-American distinction.

I met a couple dressed in what looked to be Middle Eastern garb, with the female of the couple wearing a head scarf and the man of the couple speaking on a smart phone in what sounded to be Arabic. I am almost 100% certain they were not on a terrorist mission. They greeted me in a very friendly manner, as I passed by, with the man taking a time out from speaking on the phone, in Arabic, to give me a very nice Texas accented "Howdy."

A family of 5, with a baby in a wobbly stroller, pushed by a dad wearing droopy drawers, which he cinched up as I approached, greeted me with a nice Mexican accented "Howdy."

I love how multi-cultural going on a walk in Texas in Village Creek Natural Historical Area is at times. Like today.