Indian Camp Branch

The hunting parties that camped on this creek were living a hard version of plains life by the 1830s. The Tonkawas had followed the buffalo on foot and sometimes set the prairie afire to aid the hunt. As the herds thinned they ate fish, dogs, horses and nearly any mammal except wolves and coyotes, spared for religious reasons, and gathered roots, fruit, acorns and pecans; pecans became something to barter with Anglo settlers. Their short hide tepees gave way to brush arbors, then to flat-topped brush huts. Disease and raids by Comanches and Cherokees steadily cut their numbers.

What the plaque says

Indian Camp Branch Located along an old buffalo trail, this creek was once fed by a spring and was a favorite camping place for Indian hunting parties. It was named Indian Camp Branch by James Shaw (1808-1879), a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836), to honor the hospitality of a band of friendly Tonkawa Indians he encountered near this site in 1837. Shaw built a cabin in this area and was soon joined by other Anglo-American settlers. A teacher, surveyor, and postmaster, Shaw also served as a senator and representative in Congresses of the Republic and state of Texas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 19 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 20 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Bastrop State Park — 27 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 30 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.

More markers nearby

• Lexington Schools — 0.9 mi
• United Methodist Church of Lexington — 0.9 mi
• The First Baptist Church of Lexington — 0.9 mi
• Town of Lexington — 1.0 mi