Home » Travel » The Great Plains » Parker’s Fort, Texas, part 1

Parker’s Fort, Texas, part 1

© Mary Trotter Kion

John Parker, a staunch and stubborn Baptist preacher, established Parker's Fort in 1836. Two years earlier, in 1832, Parker had led his clan of some 30 hardy frontier folk from Virginia. They left their civilized homeland far behind them, bringing with them those things most useful and important to them. Among those items were their devout belief in God, their strong backs and callused hands, and their determination to make a new home in this wild and uncivilized land called Texas.

Parker had led his clan along the Brazos River, in what would some day be called Limestone County. The land was open and beautiful. It abound with wildfowl, bear and deer. The soil was rich and gave abundant life to oak trees, lush grass and vast areas of bluebonnet flowers, as Scot pioneers called them.

On the Navasota River Parker built a stockade, naming it Parker's Fort. Here, the entire group lived. Outside of the fort his people established cornfields. In the nearby region there were only two or three other cabins. It was a wild and untamed land. Their other neighbors were mostly of the Native variety.

Thirteen years earlier, in 1821, Stephen Austin had selected a site on the Brazos River in Texas for a settlement. By the time the Parkers came to Texas Austin had brought more than 5,000 settlers into Texas. Five thousand settlers may seem like a large number until you consider that Texas was, and is, a vast area, totaling 268,601 square miles.

Texas, in the early 1800 and for many years later, was mostly an uncivilized and hostile land populated by roving and war-like bands of Indians. These various tribes lived off of the land, utilizing and eating what was at hand. Their diets varied from the different animals they could kill, insects, and plants of all kinds. The cuisine of the Atakapan tribes contained the strangest variety of all-other people they had killed. The Choctaw Indians called these eaters of human flesh 'Caddos,' meaning "man-eater." But the Caddos were not entirely unique in their dinning preferences. The Karankawa tribes of Texas had a formidable reputation as cannibals and early on acquired a reputation for savagery and bestiality.

Not all of the early tribes in Texas were war-like, though all would defend their separate territories. But two tribes invoked instant terror by the mere mention of their names. The Apache roamed the High Plains, the richest game area in North America. Here could be found vast herds of bison, as well as elk, deer and antelope. The Apache were the terror of the plains as, also, was another greatly feared tribe.