Battle Island

The accounts of this fight come from the settlers, and they name none of the Karankawa who died. In the winter of 1826 a raid on the Cavanah home on Live Oak Bayou killed Mrs. Cavanah, three daughters and a neighbor, Polly Flowers; two girls were wounded. Charles Cavanah raised about sixty men under Aylett Buckner. Jimmie Jameson shot a Karankawa chief, the warriors fled, and at Battle Island all but five or six were killed. The rest were hunted down upriver at Dressing Point. The plaque calls them Indians; they were Karankawa.

What the plaque says

Battle Island Here in 1826, a company of volunteers commanded by Captain Aylett C. Buckner almost exterminated a band of Karankawa Indians who had murdered several families on Lower Caney.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 26 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.

More markers nearby

• Major George Morse Collinsworth — 2.5 mi
• Sinclair David Gervais — 2.5 mi
• Dr. Albert Moses Levy — 2.5 mi
• Seth Ingram — 2.5 mi