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...

Learning Cell Phone History Before Biking With The Village Creek Indian Ghosts Re-Living The Killing Of John B. Denton

Yesterday I was bum puzzled by Hawk Electronics and AT & T and my phone not working.

This morning after having myself a really fine time calling Hawk Electronics customer support to listen to music, interspersed with fascinating facts about cell phone history, with periodic interruptions to advise me that I could go to the Hawk Electronics website and click on 'contact us' to use the same contact options I'd already used to no avail.

When a live human finally got on the line I asked why any number I called went to Hawk Electronics. I was asked my name and number. Then I was told there was no problem with my account. I repeated the problem. The live human put me back on music, again, but was back in about 15 seconds, not 15 minutes, to tell me that OOOPS, there had been a service malfunction affecting my phone and that the live human would have it back working immediately.

I hung up after the live human profusely apologized for the inconvenience.

And then I was off to Arlington's Village Creek Natural Historical Area to get myself some stimulation via rolling my wheels.

Those are my bike handlebars, above, looking at one of the historical markers along the paved trail. This historical marker tells you, from the white man perspective, about Texans chasing Indians during the Battle of Village Creek on May 24, 1841.

General Tarrant of Tarrant County fame led 69 murderers, I mean, volunteers, on an early morning attack on the villages along Village Creek, destroying two large Caddo villages. Eventually, a short distance to the north of the location of the above historical marker, John B. Denton, of Denton County fame, was "ambushed and killed".

Ambushed and killed? I don't quite see how it is that one can be ambushed when one is busy attacking villages with the villagers rightfully trying to defend themselves against the attackers. Seems to me like it was the villages along Village Creek which were ambushed.

Today's Walk With The Keechi Creek Ghosts Of Indians & John B. Denton

Keechi Creek

Today I took a short walk with the Keechi Creek Indian Ghosts who haunt the Village Creek Natural Historical Area in Arlington.

The Keechi Creek walk was cut short by downfalling rain.

Keechi was the Indian name for what is now called Village Creek. Apparently I have blogged about this before, repetitive bore that I be. I was Googling for info about John Bernard Denton and found a previous blogging of mine near the top of the list.

Today I read an article about John B. Denton on a dentonwiki website.

That dentonwiki article took a more revisionist modern view of John B. Denton than some of the articles whose point of view is more rooted in the way the Anglo world viewed the Indian world a couple centuries ago.

Here's a blurb from the dentonwiki article...

The Death Of John B. Denton

John Barnard Denton (July 28, 1806 – May 22, 1841,  was a Methodist Episcopal Church minister, lawyer, soldier, and political candidate for whom both Denton County, Texas and the city of Denton, Texas were named. He converted to Methodism soon after meeting his future wife, Mary Greenlee Stewart, who also taught him how to read and write. He later became a captain and was known for his battles against Native Americans. He died in 1841 after an attack on a Keechi village in adjacent Tarrant County. Though once described as a "brave hero", he would now probably be known as a confused racist.

There were a lot of confused racists back in the days of Denton. His death is depicted in the picture. This took place a short distance north of the Village Creek Natural Historical Area. A Texas State Historical Marker marks the spot.

Denton sort of brought it on himself, getting killed by the natives. He joined General Edward H. Tarrant's Fourth Brigade. In April of 1841 the Ripley family was killed by some horse rustling Indians, likely Comanche, near what is present day Denton.

Tarrant's Texas militia took off to find some Indians to punish. Eventually they found the string of villages of peaceful agrarian Indians who lived along Keechi Creek, in current day Arlington. The militia destroyed two nearly empty villages, mostly deserted because the braves were gone hunting. The third village attacked was not undefended, which now had Denton in a real fight.

Soon Indians from other villages joined the fight and had Tarrant and Denton in full retreat. With Denton soon killed.

It is not known how many Indians were killed that day. But, this was the start of the final solution for this particular group of Native American tribes. Those who were not killed made their escape to Oklahoma, where there descendants live to this day. And operate a casino or two.

And have a Facebook page.