Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 6, Number 1, January 1996 Page: 3
58 p. : ill., maps ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Consider the Lily:
The Un gilded History of Colorado County, Texas
by Bill Stein
Part 1
For most of time, the area that is now known as Colorado County, Texas was
under water. When it emerged from the receding ocean at an imprecise moment some
centuries ago, dinosaurs had long since disappeared from the earth. As far as we know, the
history of human habitation of the area begins with the people that we still, though with
declining frequency, refer to as Indians. Before the Indians, there were numerous other
creatures in the area, none of which, in our wisdom, we regard as intelligent. We know
these animals as glyptodons, sloths, capybara, wolves, bears, sabertooths, horses, deer,
camels, tapirs, peccaries, antelopes, bisons, mastodons, and mammoths. Though some of
these animals have relatives, and some descendants, living in Colorado County today, most
have long since disappeared, leaving only their fossilized bones to alert us of their former
habitation.
Many of these animals were no doubt hastened to extinction by the arrival of
man in the form of the Indians. Ironically, like the extinct animals, the Indians, in their turn,
also disappeared from the area, and also left in the ground traces of their residency. In their
case, these traces were artifacts, mostly of stone, that they used in their daily lives. The vast
majority of these artifacts that have so far turned up have been found along the Colorado
River, Cummins Creek, and Skull Creek. The Indians who left them apparently were
nomadic. No vestige of any structure built by Indians in what is now Colorado County has
ever been discovered.
These Indians, if they were aware of them at all, probably did not foresee the
impact the visits to the area by a few French and Spanish explorers, on missions then
considered vital, would have on their lives. Had they known, perhaps they would have
resisted them more vigorously. In any case, they could not have succeeded, for once the
fact became known that there were large tracts of arable land that no one officially
possessed, some representative of some government would certainly declare ownership;
and once the land became accessible to subjects of that government, the Indians, who of
course had no title, and who had insufficient military power to secure one, would shortly
be chased away. Though they were certainly important to their friends and relatives, and
to the larger histories of Texas and the United States, neither the early Indians nor the early
explorers left more than the most modest imprint on any aspect of the present political entity
known as Colorado County; and so, at the risk of seeming ethnically or chronologically
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Nesbitt Memorial Library. Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, Volume 6, Number 1, January 1996, periodical, January 1996; Columbus, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth151396/m1/3/?q=nesbitt%20memorial%20library%20journal: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Nesbitt Memorial Library.