But I have not forgotten; and, sometimes,
The things that I remember arise, and hover,
A sharper perfume in some April dusk.
Nacogdoches The Indian Town
For the beginnings of Nacogdoches we must go back to the shadowy times when heroic figures march with majestic tread across the stage of tradition, obscured by the mists of centuries. Having no written language with which to record the glories of their race, the Tejas Indians recounted the tales of their beginnings around their home fires, thus passing them down from father to son through the long centuries before the coming of the Europeans.
Thus it is recounted that in the days of long ago an old Caddo chief lived on the bank of the Sabine, the river of the cypress trees. To him twin sons were born: Natchitoches, swarthy of features with straight black hair and flashing black eyes; and Nacogdoches, fair of complexion with blue eyes and yellow hair. As the old man neared the end of his days, before being ushered into the happy hunting-grounds, he called his two sons into his presence to receive his final blessings. He commanded that immediately following his death, Natchitoches should gather his wife and children together, turn his face towards the rising sun, and after three days’ march should build his home and rear his tribe; while Nacogdoches was instructed to travel a like distance toward the setting sun, where he should rear his children and children’s children. Thus the twin tribes of Nacogdoches and Natchitoches were founded 100 miles apart, and thus Nacogdoches was the father of the Tejas, the white Indians of Eastern Texas.
The two tribes were a sufficient distance apart to prevent friction over their hunting-grounds, and thus through the succeeding centuries they were ever on friendly terms, the one with the other. This friendly communication and barter between the tribes was such that they beat out a broad highway between them and through their confines, which became El Camino Real, extending from Natchez, on the Father of Waters, to the Trinity river on the west, through Natchitoches, Louisiana, and Nacogdoches, Texas.
During the succeeding centuries the Tejas lived on the Redlands, building comfortable homes around the ceremonial mounds which they had erected, where they left their wives and children while they pursued the bison, the deer and the black bear. Then another figure of heroic mold emerges from the mists of the past, when Red Feather rules his people.