'Time seemed to stand still': View from sacred Red Mountain, slated for Tonkawa park

Yahoo

24-02-2025

GAUSE, Texas — "We're home," Tonkawa President Russ Martin said at a small Dec. 12, 2023 ceremony honoring the recovery of 60 acres of the tribe's ancestral lands in Central Texas around Red Mountain in Milam County. "The first time I got to the top of the mountain, I was overwhelmed.
"I'm not that spiritual a person, but that experience was spiritual. We're glad to be home in Texas."
During my 36-year tenure as a reporter who writes the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas for the American-Statesman, I have not been more moved by a public remark.
A close second place might go to Rachael Starr, secretary-treasurer of the Tonkawa Tribe, who talked to an Austin crowd on Sept. 12, 2024, which was proclaimed Tonkawa Friendship Day by the city and Travis County. This ceremony came four months after the American-Statesman urged Austin to thank the Tonkawa for saving the city from extinction during the 19th century.
"Every time I've come here over the last couple of years, you guys welcome us with so much warmth and love," Starr said. "And it's amazing to me to know that you guys have thought of us over all of these years. And to know that you want us here, and you want to be a part of us, and that just brings warmth and gratitude. I can't even tell you how that makes us feel, that you want us to be a part of your city."
Almost five months later on Feb. 8, 2025, I made my fifth trip to the base of Red Mountain, really a tall, conical sandstone hill embedded in the oak savannah ridges above the broad floodplains of the Little and Brazos rivers.
This time, accompanied by an authorized troop from El Camino Real de los Tejas National Trail Association, I climbed to the top.
The current informal trail, riven by erosion, is steep and rough. A younger, slimmer person could skip from rock to rock. My relatively short climb, however, eventually led to a cardiologist's intervention just three days later.
It was worth it.
As if borrowed from the movie, "Out of Africa," the valley spread out like some ancient, fertile homeland. The nearby jagged ridges that hang above the historical crossing of the Little River once housed members of numerous Native Texan tribes in an agglomeration known to the Spanish as "Ranchería Grande," one of the most populated parts of Texas during the 18th century.
"Spiritual" is the right word.
It will be a few years before the Tonkawa Tribe and the Camino Real folks open a history park here at Red Mountain, also known as Sugarloaf Mountain. Archaeological surveys are slated to begin this summer. Then the National Park Service will design access, amenities and interpretive elements. Backers will raise several hundred thousand dollars to pay for the construction material and labor.
Meanwhile, you could secure a possible preview of Red Mountain by volunteering for a dig, and can do so by becoming a member of El Camino Real de Los Tejas National Trail Association or the Texas Archaeological Society.
One thing to remember: Don't trespass.
The 60 acres around Red Mountain are now clearly posted with multiple signs that bear the seals of the Tonkawa Tribe and El Camino Association. For years, visitors ignored the previous landowners' warnings about what is still called Sugarloaf Mountain. As valuable research begins, a random, unauthorized trip to Red Mountain could — and indeed already has — come with a citation and a fine.
2000: "What is that thing?" asked two road trippers on the first of 52 mostly weekend outings dubbed "Texas River Tracings." My buddy Joe Starr and I traced Texas rivers from their sources to their mouths, or vice versa, by car, on foot and sometimes in the water. Why we chose the Little River for our first trip is lost to the mists of time, but a good guess was its relatively short length and its utter novelty. "The Little River is formed by the confluence of the Leon and Lampasas rivers near the town of Little River in central Bell County, and runs southeast for 75 miles to its mouth on the Brazos River, just south of Port Sullivan in Milam County," reads the Handbook of Texas Online entry. "Its third major tributary, the San Gabriel River, joins the Little River eight miles north of Rockdale." After driving gingerly on unpaved County Road 264, we crossed the Little from the north near its mouth by way of the Old Sugarloaf Bridge, a historic metal and wood structure, now intended for pedestrian use only. We spied Red Mountain, but did not know its name or its meaning at that time.
2016: ''Nobody will be out there,' Steven Gonzales predicted during a day trip to the earliest improvements to the Camino Real. 'Still, because we don't have specific permission from the property owner today, we won't trespass on Sugarloaf Mountain. We'll just drive by and then view it from the river.' So promised the director of El Camino Real de los Tejas National Trail Association during a day trip to Milam County, 80 miles northeast of Austin. Yet as we headed down narrow County Road 264 toward the rain-swollen Little River, we found cars, pickup trucks and SUVs lining the gravel base of this improbable mountain, capped with red sandstone rock, that was once part of a large Native American community known to the Spanish as Ranchería Grande de los Ervipiame. 'Someone has found the place,' Gonzales whispers as we near the spot. 'A lot of people.' We pull over to quiz some college-age kids preparing to ascend the small mountain, part of which has been razed because previous owners believed (Spanish) treasure was buried there."
2023: Attending the double land purchase ceremonies at the home of the Werzogs, who sold Red Mountain to the Tonkawa, and at the Old Sugarloaf Bridge, it was a good time to remember: "To the Tonkawa, Sugarloaf was known as Red Mountain, or 'Naton Samox' in the Tonkawa language. According to one historian, the Spanish called it Turtle Mountain, or 'La Tortuga.' It was a sentinel marker for the Spanish traveling along the braided Camino Real de los Tejas, which followed trails blazed by Native Americans from the Rio Grande to northwestern Louisiana. In 1884, the Tonkawa, once called 'the best friends of the Texans,' were removed from Fort Griffin in northwestern Texas to first one and then another reservation in Oklahoma as part of their own 'Trail of Tears.' They had been moved previously in 1855 and 1859. By the late 20th century, it was rumored that the Tonkawa had disappeared altogether." They had not.
2024: Heading toward Nacogdoches on smooth U.S. 79 for a long weekend, another road trip buddy, Lawrence Morgan, and I detoured to Red Mountain. We drove out into the cotton fields on the flatlands below to catch its silhouette above the encroaching trees. Later, we explored the Camino Real in East Texas. "The reason El Camino passed through Nacogdoches and this stretch of East Texas is the presence of sandstone. To ford the region's many rivers, creeks and bayous, travelers needed riverbeds with hard surfaces. This need remains true for the rest of the trail's course, but was especially essential in wet, sandy East Texas. Researchers can locate potential large ruts, or 'swales,' of the trail through aerial or drone detection that 'lines them up' with known routes of the Camino. This extraordinary — if obvious — strategy, in addition to historic and archaeological inquiries, excludes the possibility that these formations are simply the result of natural erosion, the first thing that a skeptic like myself might think. The pathway essentially knitted the most populated parts of Texas together for hundreds of years. Routed between the swampy coasts and the rugged Hill Country, it was not just a resource for trade and exploration, but it also made a larger community out of smaller communities. Fortuitous, then, that it was named 'Tejas' after the Caddo word for 'friend,' which evolved into the name of our state." We visited the small El Camino park with giant ruts called Lobonillo Swales outside San Augustine.
2025: Gonzales invited a mix of El Camino backers from Austin to meet at a historic Travis Heights house for a merry day trip. Brian Beattie, Amy Annelle, Valerie Fowler and Will Andrews made up the rest of the crew. We visited Apache Pass — a historically significant crossing of the San Gabriel River — then rolled through Rockdale, Milano and Gause. After climbing Red Mountain, we lunched with Mike and Joyce Conner, the latter an El Camino board member, both formerly of Austin, who own land nearby. They have cleared and improved a trail that illustrates evidence of the Camino Real and Ranchería Grande on their land for public use, and Mike filled us in on the long term efforts to keep yaupon from dominating the land (who knew yaupon could be so insidious?). Apparently, the underbrush becomes so thick — without the natural or human clearing by fire — virtually nothing else can thrive.
Just to emphasize the impact of a first visit to the summit of Red Mountain, allow me to include remarks made by my road trip companions from Feb. 8.
Steven Gonzales: "The first time I was able to visit Red Mountain was very special. Along with probably 20 others on an authorized tour in 2019, we reached the climax of the peak, and I was astounded to see the vast views from its summit. I had not expected the beauty that one can experience from that vantage point. Turkey and black vultures soared in the air currents above us and seemed to signal the majesty of the place. Below, the floodplain of the Little River sat at the foot of the mountain, and the river itself flowed by silently and slowly. Time seemed to stand still, and I could envision that this was the way things have always been with that special place, and I felt that is the way it always should be, and I felt lucky to be one of many who have been able to experience it's moving power!"
Valerie Fowler: I felt privileged to be there, having access to that vista, that light, the expanse of land viewable for such a distance. The thought that perhaps thousands of people, over thousands of years, had stood where we stood to view the valley below put my existence into humbling perspective. And, for me, the local flora was as exciting as the mountain itself. I was wondering how much it had changed over the centuries or if it had changed much at all.
Brian Beattie: The company was amazing, and the general spontaneous timing and routing of the trip was totally stimulating, but Red Mountain is a unique experience. The view from the top is far more expansive than I could have imagined. It makes you feel like you're in the very middle of everything. I know, as a view, as a "mountain", it's humble, compared to the "Big West," but my imagination was struck by the idea of village after village on the ridges and hilltops, for miles and miles. Tens of thousands of people living near this known landmark for thousands of years, speaking an isolate language, and passing down the story that this mountain is their place of origin. And now those same people own it, and we get to come visit? The whole experience had a "gently mind-blowing" quality. I'm still absorbing it.
Amy Annelle: As we climb Red Mountain, the landscape below opens up, from the Little River to the Brazos and on to the horizon, with little evidence of modern day life. The line between the past and present melts away. And in the surrounding hills, I can almost see the smoke from campfires of countless generations of Indigenous peoples who gathered and passed this way before. This beautiful environment full of fresh water and materials and wild game and people, Indigenous people who have called this land home for 20,000 years. Eons before anyone called this land Texas, they were here. They are still here. I think of the triumph and perseverance of the Tonkawa Tribe, who have in a few generations come back ... to rebuild their numbers and reclaim this Red Mountain, the place of their origin story, as their own. How lucky our group is to experience this sacred place. The steady breeze as we ascend, the sandstone boulders warmed by the sun, the birds of prey soaring high above, the rivers and the hills and the trees, and all around, the artifacts from indigenous campsites, the old missions and remnants of El Camino Real; they are all telling the story of Red Mountain.
Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at [e-mail]. Sign up for the free weekly digital newsletter, Think, Texas, at statesman.com/newsletters, or at the newsletter page of your local USA Today Network paper.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: 'Spiritual' is a word often used for Red Mountain, sacred to Tonkawa