DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, out on a head branch of Kickapoo Creek in Archer County, Texas. Now, the land out here has a long memory. You're rolling through what looks like quiet ranch country, but stop and listen a moment, because in the summer of 1859, this ground was anything but quiet.
The Comanche had been living on a reservation set aside by the State of Texas near Camp Cooper — about thirty miles southwest of where you are right now — from 1854 to 1858. Then came the removal. Their goods packed, their lives uprooted, the Comanche were moved north to Oklahoma.
And the route they traveled passed right through here. On August the third, 1859, near this very spot on a head branch of Kickapoo Creek — a creek that had already been named, back in 1830 — the exodus camped. They weren't traveling alone.
A company of 1st United States Infantry under Captain C. C. Gilbert rode as escort, along with the Indian agent Matthew Leeper.
That's a column of people carrying everything they owned, moving away from land they had known, under armed guard, in the Texas summer heat. And here's the thing that gives you a sense of the scale of what was happening that same day — just twenty-five miles to the east, another column was moving. Major George H.
Thomas was escorting the supervising Indian agent, Major R. S. Neighbors, along with one thousand and fifty-nine Lower Brazos Reserve Indians, also bound for an Oklahoma reservation.
Two separate processions, tens of miles apart, happening on the same August day. The whole southern reservation system folding up and moving north, all at once. Time passed the way it does out here.
The land sat quiet. Then, in 1910, a town called Megargel was founded right on this ground where that August camp had been. Two moments, one place — a going and an arriving, more than half a century apart.
This marker was erected by the Archer County Historical Survey Committee in 1971, making sure neither one gets forgotten.
What the marker says
After living 1854-58 on the reservation set aside by State of Texas near Camp Cooper (30 mi. SW), the Comanche Indians with their goods were removed to Oklahoma. Near this spot on a head branch of Kickapoo Creek (so named, 1830) the exodus camped on Aug. 3, 1859, with its escort, a company of 1st United States Infantry under Capt. C. C. Gilbert, along with the Indian agent Matthew Leeper. At same time (25 mi. E), Maj. George H. Thomas escorted the supervising Indian agent, Maj. R. S. Neighbors, and 1059 Lower Brazos Reserve Indians to Oklahoma reservation. Megargel was founded here, 1910. Erected by Archer County Historical Survey Committee. (1971)