[The following legend (reference to which was contributed by Mr. E. W.
Winkler, Librarian of the University of Texas) is taken from the first
daily newspaper of Texas, the Morning Star, Houston, June 13, 1839,
Vol. I, No. 56, pp. 2–3, which in turn reprinted it from the Richmond
Telescope. A week after the Morning Star printed the legend, the
Telegraph and Texas Register reprinted it, June 19, 1839. A few
typographical errors have been corrected in this reprinting and some of
the original punctuation has been redistributed. The legend of how
Eagle Lake got its name has persisted down to the present day, but this
version is probably the oldest that we shall ever find.
A version with many changes was published in The American Sketch Book
(Texas Pioneer Magazine), Austin, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1881), pp. 99–102.
The article in which it is embodied is unsigned, but the legend itself
is said to be “fresh from the pen of Mrs. F. Darden” [Mrs. F. A. D.
Darden], and it is apparently quoted from some other publication.
According to this version, one of the lovers, Sonoto, was old and
fierce; the other, Gray Cloud, was youthful and bold. The tree that the
rivals climbed was a cottonwood. Gray Cloud reached the nest first and
had grasped one of the eaglets to bring it down when he was assaulted
by the fierce parent eagle. Sonoto seized the opportunity to hurl his
opponent to the ground a hundred feet below. Out in the lake were the
Indians, watching the contest from their canoes. When she saw her
lover’s fate, the maiden, Forest Flower, began the death chant; then
she leaped into the water and was drowned. Later the two lovers were
buried side by side at the foot of the tree.
The Eagle Lake Headlight, according to its editor, Mr. Bruce W.
McCarty, printed in 1903 a version of the legend written by Mrs. Emma
Duke, now dead. A year ago another version, in verse form, “written for
the Eagle Lake Chamber of Commerce” by Mrs. H. W. Carothers, formerly
of Eagle Lake but now of Houston, and printed on a folio leaflet for
popular distribution, was sent me by the mayor of Eagle Lake. It shows
all the crassitude of modern “boosting.” In it a smug young Indian gets
the eaglet and presents it to the maiden—his success an emblem of “the
spirit of endeavor” that characterizes the modern “progressive”
inhabitants of Eagle Lake! Mr. Louis Landa, who is Oldright fellow at
the University of Texas and whose home is at Eagle Lake, says that the
legend in one form or another is common in the vicinity.
Thus may be traced over a period of almost a century the progress of
what was originally a very simple, a very dramatic, and a beautiful
legend.—Editor.]
Eagle Lake is a beautiful sheet of water, about seven miles in
circumference, and is connected by a bayou bearing the same name—a kind
of outlet—with the Colorado. That body of land through which Eagle Lake
Bayou passes may be said to be without exceptions the most fertile in
the world. Besides its qualities of unsurpassed fruitfulness, there is
no part of the known western hemisphere where the common grape grows so
abundantly or abounds so spontaneously.
A large sycamore tree is shown on the west shore of the lake, where a
large eagle, the Falco Washingtonianis, built her nest. The remains of
the nest are there, consisting of branches of trees and tufts of grass,
which hang fully 110 feet from the surface of the earth below. The bird
was called by the inhabitants of the country the king eagle, and its
nest was considered inaccessible. The “king eagle’s nest” and “eagle’s
water’s wave” were proverbial phrases with the various tribes of
Indians in western Texas.
The daughter of an Indian chief—a beautiful, dark-eyed girl—was wooed
by two young warriors of equal pretensions to consideration among the
Indians. Each was anxious to obtain the hand of the fawn-like damsel of
the woods, and each, no doubt, loved with all the ardor and fervency,
simplicity and sincerity, of a rude youth of the forest. To say which
should become the husband of his daughter was a great perplexity to the
mind of the maiden’s father. He had his political interests to
strengthen and his views to carry out, as have greater men in greater
nations. After many cogitations he resolved upon the following plan by
which the suitors themselves could give a decision.
It was in the summer season, and the “great eagle” had hatched her
young. The old chief’s plan was no more nor less than that the young
man of the two in question who could bring him the young eagles alive,
by a certain time, without cutting down the tree, should have his
daughter. The proposition was accepted, and the rival lovers set out to
procure, if possible, the young eagles. Each prepared himself with a
raw-hide rope to throw over some limb of the tree, which could be
fastened and facilitate the ascent. They both arrived alone and about
the same time at the king eagle’s tree.
Each had precisely the other’s means to come at the young eagles, and
the other’s means seemed to each so sure to succeed that neither would
consent for the other to make the first attempt; whereupon arose a
dispute, a quarrel, and a fight, which terminated in the immediate
death of one, and the infliction of a mortal wound upon the other, who
died a few days after the combat upon the spot where they had fought,
being unable from debility to leave it.
Meantime the maiden, becoming anxious for their return, and
apprehending some such catastrophe, seized her father’s spear and
hastened to the place. She arrived there in the afternoon of the day on
which the last one of the two lovers breathed his last. Frantic with
frenzy and despair, she plunged the lance into her own breast, and died
as she had always lived, in the language of the Indian who related the
story, “the wife of no one.”
Ever afterwards the spot was regarded with a superstitious veneration
by every tribe of Indians to whom was related their hapless story. Once
in every seven moons the young men and maidens assembled to consecrate
the spot, and each time they erected a cenotaph of flowers to their
memory. Thus Eagle Lake took a name by which it is now known and will
ever be.