Texas is a vast place, full of acres of nothingness, unless you learn to see beyond the open expanses and let the landscape tell you its secrets or better yet find the keeper of the landscape's secrets. I have been seeking the keepers of the secrets of Texas and I keep getting the sense that they are near.
For the past few years, I've spent time "Behind the Piney Veil" of Deep East Texas which includes Nacogdoches. The woods of Deep East Texas that surround the area conjure up images associated with past. These forests have found their way into a few childhood nightmares. One hunter even spotted Bigfoot a few years back.They're the forests of whispers among "grown folks" heard between hand over mouth hushes at family gatherings.
The region is unsettling, as it is one of the most distinctly southern areas of Texas. The landscape borders the edge of Louisiana where one might find more catfish farms than gas stations. Driving through Polk and Tyler County is to pass though the lungs of the southeast, the sacred grove of Texas, the Big Thicket whose 106,305 acres span more than five counties and two states. Once you reach the Alabama Coushatta reservation, where Polk borders Tyler County, you cannot help but feel as if the trees are in charge.
From 1870 to 1890, former slaves founded more than 500 "Freedom Colonies", Freedmen's Towns, or settlements across Texas. Since then, a variety of factors facilitated Freedom Colony descendants' movements. They've often left behind intangible geographies where structures and populations associated with early African American have disappeared.
However, more than 20 of them are clustered throughout Jasper, Tyler, and Newton Counties. Jasper and Newton to its east, and Tyler County to the west, are filled with history not widely celebrated in local culture. However Deep East Texas is still home to a past of Freedom Colonies and settlements founded by ex-slaves.
Behind the Piney Veil, formerly enslaved Africans made small towns, some of which still have a large population nestled in the marshy bottom land along the edge of forests. Clearings with white wooden churches at the end of long winding farm roads are still found. Some vibrant and alive, others latent rhizomes, sprouting only during reunions and homecomings. Where many see a whole lot of pine trees, I have begun seeing more of Texas' beautiful and diverse history.
By Sherry Lynn Daniel
Article Source: Behind The Piney Veil
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