Linda Pelon calls her studies into Comanche history the “research that won’t go away.” She first researched Comanches during a course on ethnohistory while getting her master’s in med- ical anthropology, and later wrote about the Comanches for both her master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation.
An honorary ambassador to the Comanche Nation and former anthropology professor, Pelon spends her days researching historical Comanche sites and working to preserve those places and the stories they tell. In addition
to reconstructing smoke signaling routes from oral histories, forging agreements between Texas landowners and the Comanche Nation regarding historical sites on private property, and working to get Comanche historical
sites included on the National Register, Pelon trains research teams looking at similar places along the Colorado, Navasota, Brazos and Trinity Rivers. She also advocates using tourism as a way to protect historic sites by generating income and avoiding the destruction of land for profit, as through quarrying. Her most recent work, Comanche Marker Trees of Texas, describes how the Comanche Nation used marker trees.
Comanche Marker Trees, the book you co-wrote with Jimmy Arterberry and Steve Houser, was published last September. What motivated you to write it?
Many people report potential marker trees that are just oddly shaped. Steve is the arborist, and his part of the book is a field guide to how trees can become misshapen. He was hoping that if he went into a lot of detail, people could read that and then they wouldn’t be asking the Historic Tree Coalition to investigate trees that could easily be ruled out. Jimmy was the Historic Preservation Officer for the Comanche people, so he brings the tribal perspective. My part is as an ethnohistorian and an anthropologist. I’d like for people to learn to find things by letting the mesas and the marker trees and the rivers guide them as much as possible. I think we need to reintroduce that to people.
PRESERVATIONIST “People need to be able to connect with places important to them,” Pelon says. “Some need to understand that those places are important to others. They need to understand different kinds of values different people had.”
Why do you work so hard to conserve Comanche sites?
One thing I’m most passionate about is preserving historic landscapes of Texas and traditional cultural properties. If you don’t recognize them, then lots of times people will destroy them without knowing they’re destroying something valuable not only to Comanche history but to Texas his- tory, frontier history and U.S. history, too. And there are some sacred places I’d like to encourage people not to destroy.
What does Texas lose when these heritage sites are destroyed, ignored or left unfound?
Scenic beauty, diversity and the ability to tell the stories of the various people who occupied Texas. People need to be able to connect with places important to them. Some need to understand that those places are important to others. They need to understand different kinds of values differ- ent people had. That makes us all more tolerant people, when we can appreciate and understand the heritages of other people.
How can we preserve these places and ensure we don’t destroy people’s heritages?
We have to create economic engines for preservation. Like preservation tourism, where you accurately interpret sites with the assistance of the culture whose heritage it is, so that you make those sites too valuable to destroy. The Campbells at Paint Rock have been landkeepers of that place for generations — they let people come onto their land, and they give guided tours. Don’t destroy something valuable — share it with other people and maybe create a string of income for your ranch so you don’t have to quarry it or tear it up. I want to work getting people access to learning about other cultures, learning about the environment and conserving our historic landscapes while we’re doing that.
DEEP ROOTS A genuine marker tree, like this one in Austin’s Spicewood Springs area, is a rare find — only six of these cultural icons have been officially documented in Texas and recognized by the Comanche Nation.
What’s one heritage site you’ve had to work to protect?
In one section of Dallas’s Great Trinity Forest, there’s a sacred site called the Storytelling Place. Places that glow like snow in the moonlight can be sacred to the Comanche people, because you can see a storyteller’s face really well. When the full moon comes up, that place starts to glow and twinkle in the moonlight. It only happens under a full moon and only when the moon is almost overhead. But the DART [Dallas Area Rapid Transit] line went through our park land, and it was going to impact the Storytelling Place, so I worked with the Comanche Nation and community and environmental leaders. DART told us we had to prove that it was eligible for the National Register to get them to do anything differently. So we did, and they had to make accommodations. I’m working now to get Dallas to actually put that section of the Great Trinity Forest on the National Register.
What’s a place in Texas that’s benefited from learning about and conserving historical sites?
When the people in Santa Anna, near Santa Anna’s Peaks, built a friendship with the Comanche people based on the history there, the town went from being a place beginning to fade away to a wonderful little weekend destination town. They’ve got a visitor’s center that features the Comanche history there, and there are all kinds of archaeological sites and creeks named after Comanche chiefs all along there. Those Comanches are the people a lot of our frontier stories are about.
Stories like what?
Sometimes when the Texas Rangers and the Comanches weren’t fighting, they hung out together and did some pretty outrageous things. When they were waiting to meet with the Germans in Fredericksburg, the Indian guides — with Robert Neighbors, the Indian agent — and some of the Texas Rangers decided to go look at the old San Sabá mission. And they’d taken a pack mule that was carrying a lot of wine, and one of the Rangers said he felt sorry for the mule. And the more they drank, apparently, the sorrier they felt for that mule, because they kept right on drinking until the mule was fully relieved of its burden. So these Rangers and these Indians are getting drunk together on wine and then doing silly things, and that’s all recorded by Rip Ford.
What sort of research are you working on?
I’m looking at oral historical leads and trying to verify them. There’s enough information in those historical records that you can begin to reconstruct the smoke signaling system that was used across Texas. The histories claim they could get a message from the Chisos Mountains to Black Mesa in a day, so I’ve been trying to find out how they were doing that. I’ve been working on this for a long time, and I know some of the peaks that are important to it, but it’s a puzzle that isn’t finished.
You were named Honorary Ambassador to the Comanche people in 1997. What do you do in that position?
I figured if they were going to make me an ambassador, I should try to help them reconnect. I help to find places that are important to the Comanche people, and if it looks promising I contact them, and then usually the Nation sends a scouting group. In Santa Anna they first sent their education director and he saw a feature in the ground, a formation of rocks that’s manmade but had been there so long it looked like part of the landscape. He recognized it as a place where they would have had one of their sacred lodges — a ceremonial place. They were back within about a month to re-bless that site.
What’s your most important work right now?
I know where there are valuable and important sites. I want to see people appreciate and voluntarily protect them. I want to write about this history and why it’s important so that people will choose to save some of these places and share them with the Comanche people and with others. So I’ll do what I can, and I’ll encourage other people to do what they can do.
Now that you can devote yourself to your work, how are you going about preserving Comanche and Texas history?
Instead of trying to do it all myself, I’m training people who are interested in this history and have the passion for it, and have some time to find out about their own land or their own watershed. If we start local and build from there, we’ve got some real good possibilities of finding a lot of heritage sites and preserving enough of them to tell the story — and for the Comanche people to be able to not be strangers in their own homeland anymore.
