The Easter Fires

Duane's take

The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the voice carrying it down the road. Now settle in, because this one starts with something that could've gone a whole different direction. It's March of 1847, out in the hills around Fredericksburg.

Comanches and whites have just signed a major peace treaty, and to mark it — to signal it across the land — the Indians light huge fires on those hills. Big, blazing signal fires climbing into the night sky. Picture the scene from down below, from inside a settler's home.

The children are watching those flames licking the hilltops, and they are scared. What do those fires mean? Who lit them?

What's coming? And here is where one mother earns her place in this story forever. She looked at her frightened children, and she reached back — all the way back to her native Germany — and she found something soft to lay over something fearsome.

She told them the smoke curling off those hills? That was coming from pots. Pots in which the Easter Bunny was busy dyeing eggs with flowers.

Now. You have to appreciate the architecture of that story. She took signal fires on a treaty night and turned them into the Easter Bunny doing craftwork on a hillside.

The children believed her. Of course they did. Children want to believe the gentle version.

The tale spread. And here's what makes it stick — in each year of peace with the Indians, pioneers kindled fires on those same hills. The fires kept going up.

The story kept getting told. And out of that, a local yearly celebration arose. Every Easter Eve, the fires blaze on the hills around Fredericksburg still, combined now with a pageant, carrying forward a moment when one mother's quick thinking wrapped a whole community's hope in something warm enough to last.

That's the Easter Fires of Gillespie County. Born of a treaty, tended by a tale, and still burning.

What the marker says

Blazing on the hills around Fredericksburg each Easter Eve, combined with a local pageant, these fires recall an old tale. In March 1847, when Comanches and whites signed a major peace treaty, the Indians lighted huge signal fires on these hills. To calm her children's fears, one mother-- recalling Easter fires in her native Germany-- told them the smoke came from pots in which the Easter Bunny was dyeing eggs with flowers. As the tale spread and pioneers kindled the fires in each year of peace with the Indians, the local yearly celebration arose.