When we think of the history of the settlement of the Texas Hill Country, we tend to focus on the differences between the communities here.
Take, for instance, the different paths settlers took to find their way to our hills. Fredericksburg and Boerne, of course, were settled by Germans. Bandera, by immigrants from Poland. Kerrville was settled, mainly, by people connected with the DeWitt colony, immigrants from the United States. Junction was an agricultural and ranching center which attracted settlers from many homelands; Mason sprang from an U. S. Army post.
Each of the communities of the Texas Hill Country has a unique story to tell, because they were started by immigrants who were often very different from the people who lived just a few miles away.
The earliest communities were separated from each other not only by miles of tough terrain, but often also separated by incompatible languages. Communications were slow in the 19th century; there was no Internet, no phone lines connecting towns to each other, no smooth highways to travel. Had there been an easy way for the towns to talk with each other, there is a great chance they would not have been able to understand what each was saying.
Travel between these early communities was difficult and slow. To get from one town to another, you either walked, rode a animal, or rode a vehicle pulled by an animal. This separation of towns from each other also contributed to differences between communities, because the distance between them was measured in days, not minutes. When it’s hard to visit a neighboring town, when there are obstacles between you and them, visits are few. That meant connections between the towns were harder to establish and maintain.
The biggest differences of all, without a doubt, were between the various settlers and the Native Americans who’d called the Texas Hill Country home for hundreds of generations.
Not only were these two groups separated by language, they were also separated by customs and intensely different world views. Settlers often had a common set of beliefs, a sense of justice and well-defined ideas about the responsibilities and rights of men; those who’d been here for thousands of years, the nomadic tribes of hunters and warriors, had a completely different set of ideas by which they lived. In many ways those two cultures were completely incompatible, often violently so. The terror and bloodshed each waged upon the other cannot be forgotten, and shaped the history of our region.
And while there was often conflict and rivalry between the different communities, especially between the settlers and the various Native American tribes in the area, there was also a lot each had in common.
Over the course of the next several weeks, I’d like to explore the common themes of our area’s history, the hardships endured by everyone who ventured here, some of the hopes they carried here from distant places, and how our hills shaped the people of those early communities.
There will be plenty of time later to explore the conflicts each faced: all stories benefit from a critical conflict between the characters, and our hills are filled with good stories. People in the Texas Hill Country have had many struggles with each other, battling over land, water, railroads, highways, and even the type of livestock to raise. But they also faced similar problems — no matter their background — and came up with ingenious solutions.
The story of our beloved hill country is a story worth telling.