Chief Bowles' Last Homesite

The Handbook of Texas traces Duwali's path to Texas. He was born in North Carolina around 1756, to a Scottish father and a full-blooded Cherokee mother, and led a village at Little Hiwassee. He signed the Treaty of Holston in 1791. His band crossed the Mississippi in 1810 and settled in Missouri, then northwestern Arkansas, before moving on to southwestern Arkansas and then north of Nacogdoches. In 1822 he sent Richard Fields to Mexico to seek a land grant, and in 1827 he aided the Mexican government against the Fredonian Rebellion.

What the plaque says

Chief Bowles' Last Homesite In 1836, General Sam Houston negotiated a treaty with the Cherokees in Texas allowing possession of the lands they occupied in east Texas. The leading figure among the Cherokees at that time was Duwali (also known as Bowl, Chief Bowles and Bold Hunter). After the Texas Revolution, the Senate of the Republic of Texas declared the treaty invalid. Near this site in 1839, Chief Bowles learned of Texas president Mirabeau B. Lamar's orders to remove the Cherokee from Texas. Bowl mobilized his people to resist the expulsion, but they were defeated and the chief was killed at the Battle of the Neches on July 16, 1839, in what is now Van Zandt County. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 6.8 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• Robert F. Mitchell — 2.2 mi
• Camp Alto, World War II Prisoner of War Camp — 2.2 mi
• A. Frank Smith United Methodist Church — 2.5 mi
• Site of the Delaware Indian Village — 3.1 mi