Published: August 14, 2007 10:44 am      

Mention of Chief Placido brings to mind Burleson

Window on San Marcos

San Marcos — Mention of the Cherokee Indian Chief Placido brings to mind a little of the very early history of our patron father of this town Colonel (General, Senator) Edward Burleson.

He knew well even during the earliest days of the Republic the advantage of locating on the San Marcos River and was instrumental in bringing about the settlement of the town in 1845-46.

Way back there when he was just a boy, both Burleson and his father James were Tennessee volunteers with Andrew Jackson in the Wars with the Creek Indians at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. Burleson and his father James were Tennessee volunteers with Andrew Jackson in the Creek Wars.

Burleson was “a gallant boy soldier” in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend which signaled the end of the Creek Indians in Alabama. The young Burleson, as well a Sam Houston, was in the War of 1812 under Andrew Jackson.

The Burleson family had a bloody history with the Cherokee Indians. It was the Cherokee tribe that had scalped one of his father’s sisters. Later during a parlay a Cherokee Chief had killed his Uncle Joseph. Edward grabbed a pistol from his uncle’s saddlebag and shot the chief through the heart. Family tradition has it that this is the reason for the family exodus and the consequent move on westward.

Much later after Texas was a Republic, Burleson was the source for raising a force throughout the settlements, for this frontier he was ordered to take his regiment to East Texas where the Cherokees had been resettled. Due to Mexican duplicity, for Mexico did not acknowledge the new Republic even though San Jacinto was a fait accompli, the Indians, including those at Nacogdoches, had been maneuvered into an uprising on the settlers.

The scheme was to incite all Indians to war concentrated on a line from Bexar at the Guadalupe and from Leon River to the mouth of the mouth of the San Marcos River.

They were to harass the Texans in every conceivable manner, from burning habitations, laying waste to the fiends and stealing horses. The intent was that when hostilities between Mexico and France ceased, the Mexican Army would then proceed to recover Texas.

Burleson intercepted messages to the northern Indians from the Mexican government, one addressed to Bowles, chief of the Cherokees, and sent it on to Albert Sidney Johnson, his friend and superior, at that time Secretary of War for the Republic of Texas. In July of 1839, President Mirabeau Lamar ordered troops out against the Cherokee Indians.

Colonel Burleson was collecting a force on the Colorado River to add to his 1st Regiment to operate against the Comanches. Instead, Burleson was directed to march his force, which included about 400 men recruited in the settlements between the Guadalupe and the Colorado and the Brazos Rivers, to do battle in East Texas. In Burleson’s command were 24 Tonkawa Indians led by Chief Placido. During the historic battle, the renowned Cherokee Chief Bowles was killed.

Noah Smithwick in his old age wrote of very early Texas days. He said “General Burleson, as all his friends knew, was in wise partial to the Cherokees, but he had a strong sense of justice and he himself told me that it made him furious to see those white reprobates, who were doubtless to a great extent responsible for the trouble, following the wake of the military that had been appointed to dispossess the Indians, locating their lands as fast as the rightful owners were driven off.”

Anyway, at the defeat of the Indians on the Neches by Burleson troops, who incidentally were also accompanied by Albert Sidney Johnston and David G. Burnett (Vice President of the Republic} as well as Placido, Burleson later penned a note to Col. Hugh McLeod.

In it he said he was sending “the cocked hat of the distinguished friend of General Sam Houston, Colonel Bowles, and as it first emanated from him, I specifically request you present it to him with my compliments.” The correspondence was signed, Edward Burleson, Colonel, Commanding, 1st Regimental Infantry.

To tell you the truth, these nuggets of information are a reprise from Clear Springs and Limestone Ledges, a History of San Marcos and Hays County. The book has very recently been reprinted.