DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at Chalk Bluff records — and friend, this one does not go easy. May 29, 1861. Southwest Texas.
Two men riding toward Camp Wood, and neither one of them would make it. The marker calls them two of southwest Texas' most feared Indian fighters. That's quite a thing to be known as in that country, in that time.
The first man was Henry Robinson — tall, red-bearded, and apparently so well known to the tribes of the region that they had painted his picture on a rock near the Llano River. Think about that for a moment. Whatever Henry Robinson had done out on that land, it had made enough of an impression that someone felt compelled to put his likeness on stone.
That's a kind of legend. Not always a comfortable one. Riding with him that day was Henry Adams — his companion, and also the man engaged to Robinson's daughter.
Two Henrys, one road, and somewhere out along the route to Camp Wood, a band of twenty hostile Indians had laid in wait. The ambush came. Both men were killed.
And then — and this is where the marker doesn't flinch, so neither will I — the Indians took both their scalps. They took Robinson's beard as well. That detail sits there on the marker plain as anything, and it tells you something about the weight of what Henry Robinson had meant to the people who ambushed him.
But the story wasn't finished. After the attack on the two men, the band turned toward Robinson's home. And here — here is where it turns.
His family was there. And his family fought them off. Successfully.
Two men lost on the road to Camp Wood. A family that held its ground. And somewhere near the Llano River, a face painted on rock — a man so known to that country that even his enemies marked him down before the land swallowed him up.
What the marker says
Here on May 29, 1861, two of southwest Texas' most feared Indian fighters were ambushed by a band of 20 hostile Indians. Henry Robinson-- tall and red-bearded-- was so well known to the tribes that they had painted his picture on a rock near the Llano River. He and his companion Henry Adams (also his daughter's fiance) were in route to Camp Wood when the attack came. The Indians, after they had killed the two men, took both their scalps and Robinson's beard, too; they then attacked Robinson's home, but his family fought them off successfully. 1970