Author: Michael B. Collins
What is now the Moore-Hancock Farmstead lay under the waters of a great sea for some 70 million years. When the sea waters finally receded about 80 million years ago, the calcium-rich mud at the bottom of that sea began to harden into the abundant limestone rocks of this area. The nearly flat landscape of the former sea bed was rent 15 million years ago by an enormous fault that is seen today from near Del Rio, through San Antonio, Austin, and Waco to near Dallas. Locally it is called the Balcones Escarpment. Vertical displacement of the fault was some 700 feet and it produced a fracture zone a few miles wide along most of its length. The Colorado River and its tributaries have ceaselessly carved and sculpted the landscape to the familiar hills and valleys of the present. Shoal Creek picks its way among the great blocks of different rock types in the fracture zone associated with the Balcones Fault. Groundwater emanating from these rocks in and near Shoal Creek forms the several springs near this farmstead.
Archeologists have determined that the earliest ancestors of the American Indians were in Central Texas about 20,000 years ago and undoubtedly found Shoal Creek valley an attractive place. Horses, mammoths, and giant bison were still here. People hunted, fished, and collected a variety of edible plants, moving as their needs dictated. They had deer, turkey, other game, fish, and river mussels. Their numbers increased.
By 8,800 years ago, these resourceful peoples had perfected use of large earth ovens which when fired could bake or steam large quantities of food for up to 24 or 48 hours. With this and other techniques of processing (such as leaching), many abundant starchy foods could be made edible and nutritious. Acorns, wild onions, wild hyacinth roots, cattail stalks, and other starchy foods could be cooked with meat, fish, nuts, fruits, berries, and seeds. With this broad spectrum of resources, a substantial population could survive in this area in good times and lean. A drought began 8,000 years ago in Central Texas and lasted about 4,000 years. Desert plants (cactus, sotol, and lechuguilla in particular) spread into the area. These, like the starchy plants of earlier times, require long cooking times, a technology that was already in place.
After the drought waned, another 3,000 years of more moist conditions followed and the versatile earth ovens continued in use. Large heaps of fire-cracked rock from these ovens dot Central Texas and are known from sites along Shoal Creek and it’s tributary Hancock Branch. Archeological excavation done at the farmstead during restoration revealed a 3,500 year old campsite in the area under the porch. Even though the local Indians were well aware of farming peoples in Mexico, the southwestern pueblos, and the Mississippi Valley, and even though Central Texas was suited to agriculture, Indians in this area never adopted the practice. Archeologists interpret this to mean that their long-successful life way allowed them to look with disdain upon the labors and limitations of farming.
About 800 years ago, the first of three major waves of peoples from the north swept into this area. These first peoples were Buffalo hunters who had no need for earth ovens. Three hundred years later, the first Apaches began to push violently into Texas followed in another 100 years by the Comanches who came on horseback. First Spanish and then other Europeans found only vanishing traces of the Central Texas peoples who preceded the newly-arrived Apaches and Comanches. By 1849 when this farm was established, 20,000 years of Indian life in and near Shoal Creek and Austin had ended.
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