At this site was the camp of the Army of the Republic of Texas

Duane's take

The way the official marker tells it, here's what happened at this very ground. Somewhere under your wheels right now — or just off to the side of whatever road brought you here through Smith County — the Army of the Republic of Texas once pitched its camp. Not some ragtag outfit, either.

This was a command heavy with generals. Edward Burleson. Thomas J.

Rusk. Albert Sidney Johnston. Hugh McLeod.

Kelsey H. Douglass. And Colonel Willis H.

Landrum. Five generals and a colonel, all in one camp, all pointed at the same moment on the calendar: July 16, 1839. Now, when you see that kind of brass gathered in one place, you know something decisive is coming.

And it did. From this campground, those men led their forces against Chief Bowles of the Cherokees and their associated tribes. The marker calls what followed the decisive battle — and decisive it was, by any measure.

The result was that the Indians were driven from East Texas, and the marker does not soften that word: forever. That word carries weight. Forever.

The Cherokees and their associated tribes had made their lives in East Texas, and after July 16, 1839, they would not do so again. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, staking a claim in stone and iron that this ground mattered — that the camp sitting quiet before a battle is part of the story just as much as the battle itself. Right here is where the army waited, where the generals conferred, where the morning of July 16th began.

And then it began.

What the marker says

At this site was the camp of the army of the Republic of Texas under Generals Edward Burleson, Thomas J. Rusk, Albert Sidney Johnston, Hugh McLeod, Kelsey H. Douglass and Colonel Willis H. Landrum just before they engaged Chief Bowles of the Cherokees and associated tribes in the decisive battle on July 16, 1839, by which the Indians were forever driven from East Texas Erected by the State of Texas 1936