Winter’s Coming to Council Bluff

Winter’s Coming to Council Bluff

Eastland County has added greatly to the archeology and paleontology epics spanning back beyond the dawn of man, at least in this part of the Americas. Newcomers have a hard time believing that Clovis tips and mastodon skulls were found here.

            This late in civilization, it’s rare for a seeker to be invited to a place and find most of the clues just as the People left them. Marker trees are still pointing. Massive volumes of tips, arrowheads lie about where they fell, though covered in some cases by the several feet of soil that time has placed atop them.

            A location I’ve begun calling Council Bluffs is such a place.

            In Eastland County.

            Go figure.

            Holding all of the puzzle pieces the Penetekah Comanches required for their societal affairs, this quiet chapter setting has been undisturbed by savaging Anglo collectors.

            I’ve waited many months to write this, to keep Council Bluff’s location safe.

            Or maybe last night, its whispers finally called me back to its mystery.

            With winter finally coming, I hope to go back and let the Native story speak to me, in the wild, where it happened.

            Let truth have its turn.

            Winter’s coming. The Comanche council fires will burn soon.

            Smoke will clear the trees, and lead me back finally to The People before first snow.

            There are Comanche marker trees, two for sure, two more probably, tips, arrowheads, spearpoints recovered that range from Penetekah back to Caddo and beyond Clovis. Our friends at Mansker were wanderers, it turns out.

            Caveman seems crass. Prehistoric peoples.

There’s the high lookout site, along the ridge, for smokes and surveillance, a place from which a known network node (Jameson Peak) can be seen. These folks, through four more southern-leading peak’s smoke relays could’ve talked to headquarters on the mount above Santa Anna.

            Below the lookout there’s a protected valley, walled in on three sides, towering native pecans along the back-then flowing water way. Several hundred could’ve wintered here.

            We are a 15 minute war horse ride from Old Owl’s main camp.

            Maybe Council Bluff was a retreat, or a camp, before or after our pantaloon-wearing friend stopped and stayed a little farther to the north. It is chilling, thinking of the blood-thirsty Comanches, then later Anglos, who surely knew this place.

What could’ve happened here?

Given the tips, so many, it was a place for hunters or warriors or men in charge of making life come true for their people.

            We are, if my information is correct, just up the hill from the old Comanche Road.

            It was later traveled by the Frontier Brigade, that road, though most of it is dim or lost now, save at the water crossings, or the one not far from this place. The one Carter Hart found something Spanish, Conquistadors, back beyond our first Great Depression.

            Given the sheer volume of archeological findings around our feet, we are at a crossroads, a Troy or Pompeii that held life, and a story that we long to get to.

            I took my younger daughter that first trip. Our guide was walking ahead, said excitedly, Come Here. We did. She pointed down. A tip, see the photo, was laying right where it had long-ago fallen. If we believed in such things, the DNA covering it would’ve been 11,000 years old, more or less.

            I saw that happen, as did my little girl.

Discovery.

Connection.

Invitation.

            I hope I get invited back.

            I’ve attached some photos.

            Winter’s coming.