Category Archives: Research

Land Health, Landwork, Research, Troubleshooting

A visit to Waco

For some time now, I’ve felt an impending time pressure regarding the Texas Problem. After some very simple divination, I took the hour-and-a-half drive up to Waco to see if I could learn anything new about the situation there.

I resolved to visit Proctor Springs, a group of natural springs in Cameron Park. I suspect these were near the settlement known as El Quisciat, which was described as being on a bluff with springs somewhere in the vicinity of the later, larger “Waco” settlement.

The springs are in the older part of the park. There is a distinct feeling of visiting ancient ruins. A large number of crumbling concrete stairs, streams, pools, and paths criss-cross the area, often disconnected from the newer trails. Anniversary Hill Park in Holyoke, Massachusetts has a similar “ruins” feel to it.

I left offerings of roasted corn, dried fruit, and nuts at the two main spring seeps and some significant trees. I picked up a bunch of trash. Typical stuff. Aside from a vague sense of “generally healthy park”, I didn’t have any particular experiences of note near the springs.

The springs flow into a creek, which I followed upstream through Lindsey Hollow. Aside from some additional Fae markers, nothing. The markers I noticed didn’t strike me as particularly unusual for a well-established woodland- trees forming arches and the like. Nor did I feel any particular menace or concern. A little harmless misdirection, like driving right past the turn I needed to take, but nothing that felt sinister.

This part of Waco basically felt more like what I expect woodlands to feel like, i.e.- NOT affected by the Texas Problem. Even the best experiences I’ve had around Austin felt “cloaked” or “sandbagged” by comparison.

On the way to wash my hands (I forgot to bring trash gloves!), I finally noticed a structure that I’d passed twice already during the day:

Yes, immediately after crossing a creek at the old entrance of the park, the road forks. More than that, someone decided to build it out as a triple crossroads. Even more than that, someone did this:

A ground view of the triple crossroads at the entrance of Cameron Park in Waco.

That is a miniature colonnade, surrounding a large urn inside a circle.  Perhaps the person(s) who built it didn’t really know what they were doing. Perhaps they did. Who knows? Either way, it might have taken me awhile to notice the shrine, but I certainly wasn’t going to ignore it now.

As soon as I washed my hands, I prayed and made an offering at the urn- to the vocal amusement of a pre-teen in a passing car. Whatever. You find an appropriate shrine where you weren’t expecting one, you pray at it.

It’s clear to me that the park is, as suspected, liminal.

What is less clear is whether the park is an Awakened landscape surrounded by a terribly mundane one; or, is it an exposed bit of REAL surrounded by hundreds of miles of dampening / glamour? I strongly suspect that the park is a place where the Texas Problem is very thin. So much so that I’m even wondering if it would be better to host Hearthingstone nearby instead of in Austin.

Probably not, but it might be good to at least have a working solution to the larger issue by the time it rolls around.

By this point, I was already pretty exhausted and dehydrated, having (for safety reasons) resolved to eat and drink only things from outside of Waco. Before I left, however, I did want to locate a mysteriously recondite historical marker- the Waco Village site.

Officially, the marker is located at 701 Jefferson Avenue. A quick Google Street View reveals nothing of the kind, though. I eventually figured out that it is under an immense tree next to the Taylor Museum, which appears to be all but closed.

A historical monument supposedly at the site of the Waco native village.

Obviously, the language of the marker is suspect, but it does provide at least a possible location. Adjacent to the marker and the museum is an African-American Baptist church. Across the street is the Grand Lodge of Texas- the central Masonic temple for Texas. I don’t know whether they consciously built it right there- but as with the shrine at the park, it might not be simple coincidence.

The city block in the lower center is (very roughly) about 2 acres in size. If reports from the early 1800s are accurate, the Waco village was about 40 acres in size and surrounded by an earthwork. The yellow square shows a vague approximation of what 40 acres looks like in modern Waco.

The approximate location of the historical marker in 1886 Waco.

If we transpose this location to the 1886 map, we can see that the site overlooks a creek that is largely invisible in modern Waco except for the mouth, which is undergoing some kind of construction. Notice that this location also appears to be on a bit of a bluff. It’s possible that El Quisciat might have been there all along, but I doubt it. I think the “bluff” in question would’ve been taller and closer to the river.

Anyway, I don’t yet have any really good answers, but hopefully something I gained from the trip will be useful in the future. If I’ve learned something actionable, I haven’t grokked it yet.

-In Deos Confidimus

Research, Troubleshooting

Who Lived Here?

In researching the Texas Problem, and the seemingly contradictory Waco Problem, one significant question arises- who lived here before Europeans?

Specifically, which group or groups were indigenous- having inhabited Central Texas for the longest time before the Spanish and Anglos arrived?

Casual Internet searching delivers an absolute mess, such as this map on Wikipedia:

Digging deeper, there are a large number of errors with this map, which purports to describe the situation in Texas around the year 1500.

The Apache were present in the Texas Panhandle as nomadic bands by 1500, having migrated from the northwest in prior centuries. The Tonkawa, incorrectly represented here as Coahuiltecan, are now thought to have lived in much the same area as the Apache until forced out by the Commanche around the turn of the 18th Century.

The Jumano, upon further review, seem to have been a cross-cultural melting pot of people from various tribes who formed a diverse trading and diplomatic society at the meeting point of numerous linguistic traditions.

Other maps represent Comancheria as having been in existence pre-contact. However, there’s significant evidence that the Commanche were still living in the vicinity of Montana in 1500 and did not venture south until acquiring horses by trade after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico.

Part of the issue confusing pre-contact maps is the tendency, by Anglos and Spaniards to confuse bands, tribes, and nations. Imagine if a traveler met a group identified as “Round Rock” or “Austin” and decided that Austin was a great city of the Round Rock nation.

Students of European history should know better, as it was not that long ago when a single barony might sway back and forth between two, three, or even four kingdoms, any of which might later be considered counties or duchies in a still-larger kingdom.

The same applies with native peoples, who might share kinship and political cooperation with a sizeable number of other bands, collectively a tribe, and a group of tribes, sharing a common linguistic heritage and a more or less peaceful coexistence might be considered a nation.

To be fair, all of these distinctions are muddy, both for native peoples and European-style nations. For the sake of not bogging down too much in technicalities I am concerning myself with native nations in the sense of large linguistic groups who were allied with each other. That said, internecine conflict still occurred within nations, as it did between villages in Europe and still sometimes does here in the U.S.

This is the map I come up with:

Pre-contact borders by Keith's estimation.

As you can see, there is a huge area that is “international”. There were definitely important sites linked to various nations within that zone- for instance Aquarena Springs which is sacred to certain Coahuiltecan bands and Hueco Springs to the south, which by some accounts was used by people related to the Waco village at, well, Waco.

Similarly, the Jumano and Coahuiltecan areas seem to have been populated by a number of different peoples who spoke different languages. While the Coahuiltecan bands seem to have shared similarities in diet and lifestyle, historians are unsure about Jumanos. In some cases they are described as settled farmers and in other cases as nomadic hunters.

It is entirely possible that the Jumanos region was actually much larger and included both settled peoples and nomads who traded extensively. We have written accounts of the Apache and Pueblo peoples trading this way, and of Apache bands camping near the Pueblos in colder months.

Likewise, the Tonkawa probably moved about in the “international” zone until the Comanches forced them and the Apaches south around the turn of the 18th Century.

If I am even remotely correct, the indigenous peoples in the area of concern were a combination of nomadic Coahuiltecan bands and villages of Wichita-related folks like those who lived at Waco.

The area of concern compared with New England.

Survivors of the Coahuiltecan peoples remain a part of the local population, often considered “Mexican” because their ancestors were forced to speak Spanish and to convert to Catholicism.

The Wichita bands were largely driven out of the area in the early 1800s by both Anglos and eastern native peoples being pushed into the area by Anglos. The main village at Waco was apparently deserted sometime in the 1830s after being  sacked by another native people- either the Cherokee or Comanche.

By the 1870s, almost all the free native peoples in Texas were being forced onto reservations in Oklahoma. This included the Wichita-speaking tribes, their Caddo cousins to the east, the Tonkawa, and various other pockets that had survived earlier conquests.

Given the decentralized, nomadic lifestyle of the Coahuiltecan bands versus the more settled agriculture of the Wichita-speakers, I’m inclined to focus my research on the latter. I suspect that whatever happened at Waco in the 1830s is somehow connected to the larger issue I’m trying to solve.

-In Deos Confidimus

Landwork, Research

Help From Across The Pond?

In relation to this project, as inspired by a surprise presence, I’ve been reading through some of the Irish quasi-historical narratives. I say quasi-historical, as they are generally older oral narratives that were later recorded (and changed) by persons holding a colonized, Abrahamic worldview.

I’m studying these texts, despite their questionable provenance, because the UPG I received suggested that the ancient Irish possessed a form of the spiritual technology necessary to address (or at least begin to address) the Texas Problem.

Furthermore, I got the impression that this method was pretty darn fast-acting and that echoes of it had survived in “the lore” even beyond the depredations of Patrick and Cromwell.

To that end, I’m looking for examples of ceremonial actions related to the establishment of working relationships between a group of invaders and the local land deities (and by extension, spirits). We have lots of partial records of Gaulish, Irish, and Welsh kingmaking ceremonies (the Wiccan “Great Rite” is based on these), but I’m pretty darn sure that’s not what I’m looking for. Similarly, there are other purported rituals that I’m certain I can discount- these display their authors’ obvious biases and are typically wildly impractical and/or highly illegal.

On the other hand, there are hints of other rituals that are less well recorded and which were likely no longer in use well before these stories were recorded. While the kingmaking ceremonies were in use in historical times and occasionally commented on by outside observers, the techniques I’m looking for would have been used very early in the Celtic conquest of an area.

That’s the key difference, in my mind. The later kingmaking ceremonies appear to have been undertaken after an area was settled- i.e., by generations following the conquest. By contrast, when the Celts first entered an area, they had to establish diplomatic relations with the local land deity (or deities) and spirits. Doing that of course required establishing a mode of communications- which is normally a job for shamans (which is to say, not me).

But in the case of conquest, it meant doing so over the objections of (and esoteric sabotage by) the indigenous people. It meant esoterically “blowing up” or “burning down” those other peoples’ connection to the land and figuratively sticking a giant “this is mine” flag into the crater.

Yeah, that sounds pretty brutal.

My modern, Westernized mind recoils from it, but it’s clear that humans worldwide seem to have known how to do this from ancient times. By the early Middle Ages, though, Europeans appear to have lost this knowledge- at least on a conscious level.

By the 1800s, European-Americans in Texas almost certainly did not even know they needed that capability, let alone have the knowledge of how to do it. Why are certain parts of the United States more “awake” than Texas, despite Anglos’ lack of land-bonding technology? I have a theory about that, but it’s much too long to deal with here.

Back to the Irish.

Here is an example of the sort of thing I’m looking for, in this case from the Lebor Gabála Érenn (“The Book of the Takings of Ireland” – Book of Leinster version) as translated by R. A. S. Macalister:

§74. As he set his right foot upon Ireland, Amorgen Glúingel s. Míl spoke this poem—

I am Wind on Sea,
I am Ocean-wave,
I am Roar of Sea,
I am Bull of Seven Fights,
I am Vulture on Cliff,
I am Dewdrop,
I am Fairest of Flowers,
I am Boar for Boldness,
I am Salmon in Pool,
I am Lake on Plain,
I am a Mountain in a Man,
I am a Word of Skill,
I am the Point of a Weapon (that poureth forth combat),
I am God who fashioneth Fire for a Head.
Who smootheth the ruggedness of a mountain?
Who is He who announceth the ages of the Moon?
And who, the place where falleth the sunset?
Who calleth the cattle from the House of Tethys?
On whom do the cattle of Tethys smile?
Who is the troop, who the god who fashioneth edges
in a fortress of gangrene?
Enchantments about a spear? Enchantments of Wind?

This is implied by the text to be a powerful, ritual poem related in some way to the Milesians laying claim to Ireland. It’s essentially a fancy and esoterically potent version of “We claim this land for Spain”. Side note- the Milesians are said to have been Iberocelts (or Celtiberians)… Celts from Spain.

Clearly, the translation is corrupted. The name “Tethys”, for instance, refers to the Hellenic titan Goddess of fresh water- not an Irish deity at all. It’s possible that this is the result of a poor transcription of the translation, or a messy translation. Either way, it’s unclear.

Going back to the Irish, we see:

Ic tabairt a choisse dessi i nHerind asbert Amairgen Glúngel mac Miled in laídseo sís.

Am gáeth i mmuir. ar domni.

Am tond trethan i tír.
Am fúaim mara.
Am dam secht ndírend.
Am séig i n-aill.
Am dér gréne.g

Am caín.
Am torc ar gail.
Am hé i llind.
Am loch i mmaig
Am briandai.

Am bri danae.
Am gai i fodb. feras feochtu.
Am dé delbas do chind codnu.
Coiche nod gleith clochur slébe.
Cia on cotagair aesa éscai

Cia dú i llaig funiud grene.
Cia beir búar o thig Temrach.
Cia buar Tethrach. tibi.
Cia dain.
Cia dé delbas faebru. a ndind ailsiu.

Cáinté im gaí cainte gaithe. Am.

Here, the same name is written as “Temrach” or “Tethrach”. While neither of these terms has an easy translation provided by Dr. Google, there are a couple of interesting hints.

Firstly, Temrach appears to be a poetic reference to Tara, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland- a central point of esoteric significance. Tethrach, on the other hand, appears to be a possessive or adjectival form of words that can mean “crow”, “champion”, or “sea”. In some versions I’ve found, “Tethrach” appears on both lines.

In other words, either way, we are likely dealing with a poetic name for Someone or someone. In all likelihood, many of the lines refer to a specific deity, person, or entity.

On the surface this appears to be part of an invocation to the ruling deities of Ireland, the Túatha Dé Danann. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the account deals with Amorgen and the Milesians fighting the Túatha Dé Danann for control of the island. So, is this an invocation in pursuit of a blessing, or a mockery intended to provoke conflict?

Is the source even useful to my search, or am I chasing down the rabbit hole of a cargo cult? The entire story could be purely a medieval fantasy with no ancient basis at all.

There is a lot more to go through, and it is not exactly stimulating reading.

-In Deos Confidimus

Research, Troubleshooting

The Waco Site & Its People

From some earlier point through sometime in the 1830s, a particular site along the Brazos river near the mouth of the Bosque was home to a group of people who spoke a dialect of the Wichita language.

The Spanish recorded two villages in the vicinity, El Quiscat and Felchazos, both assumed to be Tawakoni (another Wichita dialect). El Quiscat was named after a leader- Quiscat, who met with the Spanish at San Antonio in 1772. His village was said to sit west of the Brazos atop a bluff near springs and to house some 750 people.

This village is recorded again in 1779, in 1786, and in 1795.

In 1824, official reports to and by Stephen F. Austin claim a village  some 40 acres in size of between 33 and 60 grass houses enclosed by a defensive earthwork and farming an estimated 200-400 acres of fenced cornfield. The earthwork was recorded again in 1829 and was apparently visible to Anglo colonists for many years after they settled in the area.

This number of houses was echoed by Jean Berlandier around 1830, who added that the Waco ranged widely on bison hunts in the cooler months.

There is some suggestion that the Waco, Wichita, and Tawakoni were themselves invaders to Texas, based on Coronado’s account of a Wichita city in Kansas that he called Quivira. Here’s the thing, though- Wichita is a Caddoan language, meaning that these people were linguistically tied to the Caddo, who we know lived in in Arkansas, Louisiana, and eastern Texas for hundreds of years before Coronado.

Furthermore, Coronado describes the people of Quivira as having settled towns with substantial populations and large-scale agriculture. This is in contrast to their western neighbors, the Apache and Teyas, whom he claimed lived in wandering bands and ate raw meat.

That’s because the Caddoan peoples, including the Wichita, Tawakoni, etc. were connected to the Mississippian Empire. This was a multicultural, hierarchical society that ruled the central Mississippi basin for more than half a millenium. Amongst its distinctive features were massive earthworks, social hierarchy, intensive maize (corn) agriculture, widespread trade networks, and certain pottery techniques.

While it’s not clear if the Caddo were subjects of Cahokia or not, they were clearly connected with the Mississippian culture, as they began building complex earthworks in a similar style. This was actually true of native peoples from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and as far east as North Carolina (Cherokee country, if you’re keeping track).

What all of this tells us is that while the Caddoan peoples did move around, they displayed a preference for establishing long-term bases of operations. Bases of operations with earthworks. Earthworks that sometimes took centuries to construct. Earthworks that were tied into a complex set of spiritual technologies of which we have no written record.

Earthworks like the one at Waco.

Sure, the Waco wall wasn’t very big by Mississippian standards- but 40 acres is nothing to sneeze at. Even if the wall surrounded only part of the village, say a ceremonial center or fortified granary- we’re still talking about a village that planned to stay put.

Nor do we find accounts of earthworks at all of the sites associated with Wichita, Tawakoni, Waco, or other Caddoan villages. There are accounts of settlements here, there, and everywhere- almost as far south as San Antonio. Yet, in Central Texas, I’ve only found an account of the village at Waco having earthworks.

And this is nearly two centuries after the Mississippian Empire collapsed. However, the post-contact Kadohadache (a major Caddoan tribe somewhere around the Oklahoma/Arkansas border) appear to have maintained the hub-and-spoke village organization of the Mississippian culture.

What does that tell us about the Waco people? Chances are they are, as many claim, an offshoot of the Tawakoni. It appears that by the late 1700s, one of those villages (probably “El Quiscat”) was important and influential enough to become the hub of its own group of satellite villages, including one along the Guadalupe River near New Braunfels.

The ancestors of the Waco tribe probably lived in Central Texas for centuries before that, but on a more mobile basis. However, by the early 1800s, they’d invested substantial effort into establishing a permanent, fortified stronghold in the style of their downstream cousins- the Caddo.

During this same period, massive change was going on in other parts of North America. The Spanish were invading from the south and west. Anglo-Americans were pushing eastern native nations west. The Mississippian culture’s core had collapsed, but certain traditions continued on along the former empire’s frontier. Finally, plains tribes like the Apache, Comanche, Osage, and others were pressing down from the north- many on horseback.

The result seems to be that sometime around 1820, Waco became one of the last strongholds of the beseiged Caddoan peoples. The eastern groups, such as the Kichai and Hasinai were swamped with refugees from displaced Caddo villages in Louisiana and Arkansas- as well as members of other nations.

The Texians debated war with the Wacos for much of that decade, but generally prefered to negotiate because of the tribe’s perceived strength and agricultural nature. Alliances between settlers, tribes, and nations seem to have waxed and waned at the drop of a hat, with Tonkawas, Apaches, Comanches, Caddos, Tawakoni, Karankawas, and about fifty other groups all alternately offering to fight each other and the Wacos.

Suddenly, but unsurprisingly- things went sideways. At some point between 1829 and 1839 (possibly 1837),  the primary Waco village was sacked by Comanches, Cherokees, or perhaps even a joint force. Within a short span of years, the Wichita-speaking peoples in Central Texas relocated much further upstream, in the vicinity of the Wichita River. The river got that name from the ill-fated Sante Fe Expedition which marked the location of a “Waco village” along the river in 1841.

History, by which I mean Americans, were not kind to the Wichita peoples thereafter. Even after moving west, conflicts between settlers and tribes continued to escalate, and by the late 1800s the natives had pretty much all been forced onto reservations in Oklahoma.

So here’s the question- what happened at Waco between 1829 and 1839?

Was it simply a violent attack and the locals decided to leave for greener pastures after years of escalating tensions?

Possibly.

Or did someone do something at Waco that seriously messed up the surrounding region on a spiritual level?

If so, we’re talking some extremely powerful working(s) to affect an area hundreds of miles across. At the same time, it wouldn’t be the first case in history of someone “salting the earth” to deny land to their enemies.

Is it possible that the Waco, finding their position untenable, self-destructed the spiritual framework that allowed people to bind to that land? Could the Cherokee (who likely also understood Mississippian spiritual technology) have blown it up to drive out the Waco- only to themselves have been forced out by Anglo-Americans before they could rebuild it?

Why am I blaming the natives?

Well, to be clear- I’m not. I’m speculating- casting about for answers in a sea of questions.

On the other hand, while the Spanish missionaries likely had, via Catholicism, the spiritual tech to blow up said framework- we don’t have a lot of evidence that they did tried to do so in Central Texas north of San Antonio. So, while Spanish missionaries are likely a contributing factor, the damage they did was probably secondary to (or a compounding factor to) the primary cause.

Protestants of the time, which most of the Anglo-Americans were, tended to reject spiritual technology altogether. They almost certainly did not possess the mojo to do something esoteric on this scale.

Which leaves either:

  • A purely natural or divine event in which humans had no agency beyond their own foibles; or,
  • A deliberate or accidental act by some organized and spirit-technologically-advanced group of people.

While I suspect some divinities were involved in what transpired, I believe that humans catalyzed it.

If I’m correct, the question now becomes- exactly what actually happened and how do we repair the damage?

-In Deos Confidimus