Seminole Canyon State Park

Seminole Canyon 
State Historical Park

Eric runs "afoul" of a

Prickly Pear Cactus

 

The Visitors Center

There are extensive displays

 of man's impact on the

Lower Pecos River Valley.

Seminole Canyon has a long,

convoluted story.

Seminole Indians are the Florida 

Indian slaves who ran away from 

their masters & lived in the

the Florida swamps.

After Florida was colonized by

 whites, Negro slaves who ran

 away took refuge in the

 Florida swamps.

  They were accepted by the

 Seminole Indians.

A treaty under President Andrew Jackson relocated Florida Seminole Indians to Oklahoma.  The Creek Indians in this area had black slaves.  Refusing to return to slavery, Black Seminoles left for Mexico, where this practice was forbidden.

Black Seminole Indians went to work for the Mexican government, patrolling the Mexican border, to keep Americans and Europeans out.  In the late 1800s, Black Seminole Indians were recruited by the US Army to keep the Apache and Comanche out of Southwestern Texas.  A military base was named Seminole.  When Texans were naming areas in the state, they used old military designations as names.... And Seminole Canyon was named, for Floridian Indians who eventually were transplanted to Texas.






How did Indians survive here?
The Yucca root is edible, when
baked.

Our guide, David, shows us
a baked yucca with its
edible root ball.

The Visitors Center from

the floor of the canyon.

We go up the stairway to
one of the overhangs.

 

The pictographs are

2,000 - 4,000 years old.

No current tribes claim to
have lived in this area.

(Dalek, anyone?)

There are flash floods in
Seminole Canyon several

time each year.

Most of the time, the

canyon is dry.

Anthropologists have received
assistance in decoding the
pictographs from Huichol
Indians from Mexico.

According to the Huichol, this

pictograph is a creation story.

The people in the picture became

the sun, the moon, the planets,

water, mountains, the plains,

plants & animals....

This limestone is shiny
because it was used as
a butcher block, to cut
up deer, javelina.

Texas was originally a shallow sea.

This is one of the common fossil

shells int eh area.

Our tour of the canyon is
done.

Eric & I return to the
Visitors Center.