Site of the Kickapoo Battlefield

Joseph Milton Nance's history of the Texas frontier after San Jacinto draws on Colonel Hugh McLeod's report to Mirabeau Lamar of October 22, 1838. In that account the Indians attacked Rusk's camp at daylight on October 16, and after a short, hot engagement the Texans charged and the attackers fled, pursued for some distance. Nance counts eleven Indians killed and eleven Texans wounded, none dead, and ties the fight to the followers of Vicente Córdova. The Handbook of Texas says the raid ended that year's fighting with Indians in eastern Texas.

What the plaque says

Site of the Kickapoo Battlefield Here General Thomas J. Rusk with 200 Texans on October 16, 1838, attacked a band of hostile Indians and allied Mexicans, molestors of frontier settlements, and routed them.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 20 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.
• Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center — 21 mi
  A Texas Parks and Wildlife hatchery and visitor center in Athens where visitors can borrow tackle and fish a stocked pond, watch native species in gallery tanks and ride a tram around the hatchery.
• Tyler Rose Garden and Rose Museum — 24 mi
  More than 38,000 rose bushes of about 600 cultivars in a free city garden, beside a museum of the Texas Rose Festival, which began in 1933, and of the rose industry.
• Goodman-LeGrand House and Museum — 25 mi
  A Tyler house begun in 1859 as four rooms, enlarged by the Goodman family over 73 years, and left to the city in 1939 with its furnishings, in a garden that fills a city block.

More markers nearby

• Frankston City Park — 2.1 mi
• Freeman Farm — 2.3 mi
• Cuney — 4.2 mi
• First Gravesite of Cynthia Ann Parker — 6.5 mi