The Clash Of Cultures And The Webster Massacre

Historically, the Comanche did not make many friends, even among fellow Native Americans. The Comanche were a force to be reckoned with, however, for hundreds of years in what is now the American West and Mexico.

Skilled with horses, the Comanche were both proficient traders and brave warriors. The Comanche traded and fought with a host of diverse people and political powers from around 1700 until the late 1800’s, but were finally overwhelmed by the expansion of the United States as it pushed west.

One of the most famous and bloody clashes involving the Comanche occurred in Texas in 1839 (the exact date is disputed). The Webster family, along with some traveling companions, left Virginia for a new life in the West. While heading through Texas, they were attacked by Comanche warriors along Brushy Creek, in what is now Williamson County, just east of present day Leander, Texas.

The attack left all the men in John Webster’s party dead. Webster's wife and two children, one boy and one girl, were captured. The wife and daughter later escaped, and his son was safely ransomed. This was a happy ending, perhaps, to a not so happy confrontation between two very different cultures.

Although John Webster lost his life in the Comanche raid in 1839, his daughter, who survived the attack but was captured, lived until the age of 93, before passing away in California in 1927. The last Comanche warriors finally surrendered to authorities in the 1870’s.

While many pioneers continued to move west to eventually establish the western boundry of the United States in California, most of the remaining Comanche eventually settled in Oklahoma. During World War II, like the Navajo code talkers who befuddled the Japanese military, and made such an important contribution to this country in the Pacific, the Comanche code talkers were equally important in Europe confusing the German military.

The violent struggles in Texas of long ago, which helped produce events like the Webster Massacre, emanated from collisions of much different cultures. Today, the victims of the massacre lie peacefully in a common grave in a cemetery along the eastern edge of the hill country, a mile or so due east of Leander.

Round Rock, Texas, And The Chisholm Trail

Extending along the eastern edge of the Texas Hill Country was the famous Chisholm Trail. Although some purists insist that the Texas portions of the trail were merely feeder routes, and the “official” Chisholm Trail only began in Oklahoma, the purist view, taking into account the broad view of history, makes little sense.

The historical significance of the trail, by whatever name, comes from the fact that Texas Longhorn cattle were driven by the millions up specific stretches of land to the railheads in Kansas. Without the cattle coming up out of Texas into the Oklahoma Territory, Jesse Chisholm’s Oklahoma trading trail would have become but a very small footnote in history. The historical meaning of the trail in the history of our country is not about its name, but about the fact that Texas cattle came from the southern regions of Texas to be sold in the north, and the cowboy legends, folklore, and myths it inspired. The cattle did not magically appear on the Oklahoma border, but walked up trails in Texas to get there.

The ranching of cattle in Texas began prior to the American Civil War, but ebbed during the war itself, as Texans went off to fight, and the markets were disrupted. After the war’s conclusion, however, ranching began in earnest. Texas Longhorn cattle were originally driven north, and east, through Arkansas and Missouri, but eventually it was discovered that the Texas Longhorns, who were immune to its effects, carried a tick which caused “Texas Fever,” that decimated local cattle. As a result, laws were passed in those states to prevent the passage of Texas cattle. In addition, the cattle bosses and their herds were often met with armed citizens to prevent access through their land.

Given these setbacks, the cattle were driven further west away from onerous laws and hostile landowners. But the movement west, was not without a price, where, drier conditions, and unwelcoming Native-Americans, caused different problems. Nevertheless, the cattle drives continued up the Chisholm Trail until the late 1880’s, when a combination of factors (laws in Kansas, farmers, barbed wire, and railroads in Texas) brought it all to an end.

The Chisholm Trail, and the cowboy lore it created, has captured the imagination of many generations since the time it was relevant, but, it really only lasted twenty years or so. It was an important part of the “Old West,” because it created the cowboy. In this country, because of movies, television, and myth, the cowboy best represents this period of history in the American West, and in some places around the world, the cowboy represents our country itself. In our thoughts today, the time period of the "Old West" was long-lasting, but, in reality, it only took place from just before the beginning of the American Civil War until the early 1900’s.

Round Rock, Texas, which lies along the eastern boundary of the hill country, was right on the Chisholm Trail, and gets its name from a round rock in the middle of Brushy Creek, where Native-Americans and the cattle drivers alike, knew, marked a spot of low water where passage for people and cattle was safe.

Today, Round Rock’s Chisholm Trail Road crosses Brushy Creek. On the west side of the road is Chisholm Trail Crossing Park, which commemorates the historic trail drives with sculptures of Texas Longhorns and early Texas pioneers. And, in the creek itself, just east of the bridge, is the round flat rock which was such an important marker during the trail drives, and which gave the city its name.