DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Upshur County, there is a rock. Not just any rock — a rock that called out to a people so ancient we don't even know what to call them.
Their tribal name is lost to time, and the marker doesn't pretend otherwise. It simply says: an ancient Indian people, their tribal name unknown, found this rock and saw something in it the rest of us might have walked right past. They saw potential.
They saw a kitchen. Now think on that for a moment. No metal tools.
None. Just patience — and the marker specifically calls out patience, so you know there was a lot of it — and skill, which doesn't come without long practice and careful hands. With those two things alone, they fashioned stone-age mortars right into the face of that rock.
Mortars for grinding corn. Hollows worn into stone by sheer human will and steady, steady work. You want to talk about industry?
That's industry. The State of Texas thought so too. In 1936, the Texans of that year looked down at those mortars in that ancient rock and did something kind of remarkable — they said, out loud, in stone and bronze: we salute you.
The original inhabitants. The unnamed, the ancient, the patient ones who shaped this place before anyone was keeping written records of who shaped what. That rock outlasted their name.
But it didn't outlast their work. And that, right there, is its own kind of legacy.
What the marker says
An ancient Indian people, their tribal name unknown, located this rock suited to their need and caused it to serve them in preparing food. Without tools and with great patience and skill they fashioned these stone-age mortars in which to grind their corn. Their successors in the land -- the Texans of 1936 -- salute the industry and skill of these original inhabitants. Erected by the State of Texas - 1936