DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about Clinton Lafayette Smith, right here in Edwards County. Now, most folks pass through Rocksprings without knowing they're in the same town where a man once lived who had seen things most Texans only heard around a fire. His name was Clinton Lafayette Smith — Clint, to the people who knew him — and the marker that carries his name starts at the beginning, which is the only honest place to start.
Clint was the son of Henry M. and Fanny Short Smith, born out in Kendall County, Texas. In 1871, when Clint was eleven years old and his brother Jeff was nine, the two boys were out herding sheep near their home. That's ordinary enough — boys, sheep, a stretch of land.
But that ordinary afternoon did not stay ordinary. Lipan and Comanche Indians kidnapped both of them. Nine and eleven years old.
Now, the marker tells us what came next for Clint. He was adopted by Chief Tasacowadi and lived among the Comanche. Not for a season.
Not for a year. For five years. Whatever those five years held, whatever a boy becoming a young man inside that world looked like — the marker doesn't elaborate, and I won't invent it.
What it does tell us is how it ended. Clint gave himself up. In a trade.
Indians who had been imprisoned at Fort Sill, Oklahoma were on one side of that exchange, and Clint Smith walked back toward his family on the other. That is a sentence worth sitting with for a moment. He returned to his family.
And then — because life in Texas has a way of moving forward even when the ground shifts under you — Clint Smith became a trail driver. He became an Angora goat breeder. He built a life with his wife, Dixie Dyche Smith, and their children, and in 1910 he moved the whole family to Rocksprings.
That's where the marker stands. That's the town Clint Smith chose. A man who had been taken from his ordinary life at eleven, who had lived five years in a world most couldn't imagine, who traded himself back into freedom — and who then spent his years driving cattle and raising goats and raising children in the Texas Hill Country.
Some stories end with thunder. This one ends with a man putting down roots. And somehow, that landing is its own kind of remarkable.
What the marker says
Clinton (Clint) Lafayette Smith, son of Henry M. and Fanny (Short) Smith, was born in Kendall County, Texas. Clint, age 11, and his brother Jeff, age 9, were kidnapped by Lipan and Comanche Indians while herding sheep near their home in 1871. Clint was adopted by Chief Tasacowadi and lived with the Comanche for five years, until he gave himself up in a trade for Indians imprisoned at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After returning to his family, Smith became a trail driver and Angora goat breeder. He moved to Rocksprings in 1910 with his wife, Dixie (Dyche), and children. (2001)