Historical Marker
Chalk Bluff Indian Massacre
Uvalde, Uvalde County · Texas
Erected 1970
The Nueces, which crosses this part of Uvalde County, had many names. In 1691 Domingo Teran de los Rios accepted the name Rio de las Nueces but also called it San Diego, while Fray Damian Massanet, on the same expedition, named it San Norberto for the saint's day. In 1707 Governor Martin de Alarcon took it for a tributary of the Rio Grande and planned a canoe voyage that was never made. In 1747 Capt. Joaquin de Orobio y Basterra linked the upper and lower river, and the Nueces became the boundary between Texas and Nuevo Santander.
What the plaque says
Chalk Bluff Indian Massacre Here on May 29, 1861, two of southwest Texas' most feared Indian fighters were ambushed by a band of 20 hostile Indians. Henry Robinson-- tall and red-bearded-- was so well known to the tribes that they had painted his picture on a rock near the Llano River. He and his companion Henry Adams (also his daughter's fiance) were in route to Camp Wood when the attack came. The Indians, after they had killed the two men, took both their scalps and Robinson's beard, too; they then attacked Robinson's home, but his family fought them off successfully. 1970
Where it stands
29.37050, -99.96941 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Briscoe-Garner Museum — 15 miThe Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.
- Uvalde Grand Opera House — 16 miAn 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
- Fort Inge Historical Site — 18 miA county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
- Garner State Park — 21 miThe Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.