Early Texas Rangers used weapons similar to these. The surveyors from the Texas Republic town of Franklin were armed but were more adept with compasses than with firearms.

Badly outnumbered and surrounded by mounted warriors, the surveyors had no choice but to retreat. They managed to fight their way back to the head of the ravine.

The surveyors set to work on the morning of October 8, 1838, ignoring both a Kickapoo warning that they might be attacked and the advice of one of their own not to begin until he and a companion had fetched a new compass. As the 25 workers reached a ravine east of Battle Creek in what is now southwestern Navarro County, Texas, 40 warriors rose up and attacked them, wounding several men and killing some of their horses. The surveyors’ elected captain, J. Neil, acted decisively, ordering his men to charge.

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“We did,” recalled surveyor Walter Lane, “and routed them out of the ravine, when they fell back on a small skirt of timber 50 yards off, from which up sprang 150 Indians.”

The Indians’ trap was the kind successfully sprung on soldiers many times. But that was small consolation for the surveyors; they retreated under intense fire and soon found themselves surrounded by well-armed warriors on horseback.

The Battle of Battle Creek, also known as the Surveyors’ Fight, was hardly the first confrontation between whites and natives in the 2-year-old Republic of Texas. Settlers, particularly those far from population centers, lived in constant fear of Indian attacks. A farmer did not dare work his fields without a rifle at his side for protection. But as dangerous as it was to farm the land, it was even more dangerous to survey it. The Indians were well aware what the surveyors’ work led to—more settlers. They were as threatened by the surveyor’s compass as they were by a rifle, calling the compass the “thing that steals the land.” In 1838 the Kickapoos, Caddos and other tribes weren’t about to give up their buffalo-hunting grounds without a fight.

The Caddos, who traditionally relied more on farming than hunting for survival, had dominated northeast Texas for centuries before the Spaniards arrived in the mid-1500s. Generations of Caddos (including people of the Hasinai and Kadohadacho confederacies) had founded many permanent towns surrounded by fields of corn and other crops. When Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, the Caddos remained a powerful force in the area, though over the next two decades their influence decreased, due to disease and attacks by other Texas tribes. The Kickapoos, on the other hand, were relatively new to the area. Originally from the Great Lakes region, they were resettled to a Kansas reservation in 1832. Some soon migrated to Texas, settling along the Sabine River, from which they mounted horse-stealing raids on surrounding ranches.

For the Caddos, Kickapoos and other Texas tribes in the 1820s and ’30s, coexistence with white immigrants from the United States was never easy. Because few Mexican citizens wanted to live in Mexico’s northernmost province, the government also admitted Indian and American settlers, who took an oath of loyalty and at least pretended to be Catholic. The white colonists had an advantage over the Indians, as they could acquire Mexican land titles by paying a small fee and having the land surveyed. By 1834 some 15,000 colonists and 5,000 slaves had settled in east Texas. Although there were only about 4,500 Indians in the area, they lived on some of the most desirable land.

When conflict between Mexico and the white Texans (also known as Texians) seemed inevitable, each side sought the support of the Indians. On February 23, 1836, the Texas provisional government sent Sam Houston, an adopted son of the Cherokee Nation, to establish a treaty with them and associated tribes, including the Caddos and Kickapoos. Houston promised the tribes land, hoping to ensure their neutrality in the coming revolution. But on March 2, 1836, only days after the treaty was signed, a convention of Texan delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos rejected the treaty and the idea of granting land to the Indians. Understandably, many of the tribes switched their allegiance to Mexico and began raiding settlements in northeast Texas.

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