Site of Waco Indian Village

The Waco, or Wi-iko, were a Wichita people who farmed melons, pumpkins, beans and corn beside the Brazos. Accounts of how the village ended differ: the plaque's 2014 addition names a Cherokee siege from 1829 to 1837, while Waco History notes versions citing a Cherokee raid or a smallpox epidemic, and says no permanent village remained after 1830. Descendants later lived in Oklahoma. In 1912 Cotton Palace organizers brought some of them to Waco for a staged village built to entertain white visitors. In 2014 Wichita leaders returned for the rededication of this marker.

What the plaque says

Site of Waco Indian Village On this site stood the village of a semi-civilized tribe, the Waco Indians who made a treaty with Stephen F. Austin in 1824 but were driven out by Comanches about 1837. From them the city of Waco, laid out by Major George B. Erath in 1849, takes its name. Erected by the State of Texas 1936, marker added in 2014: This marker, placed by the McLennan County Historical Commission on October 10, 2014, corrects an error on the original centennial marker. Further research has shown that it was the Cherokees, rather than the Comanches, who besieged the Wacos/Huacos Indians in 1829-1837, causing them to disperse gradually and move on to other areas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dr Pepper Museum — 0.6 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 0.6 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 1.1 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 1.5 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• Grand Lodge of Texas, A.F. & A.M. — steps away
• Sheppard "Shep" Mullens — 0.2 mi
• The Courthouses of McLennan County — 0.3 mi
• The Waco Tornado — 0.4 mi