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If you have opened up this book and are reading it with your third grade classmates you are about to take an interesting and amazing journey into the past. Not the past of a place far away but the past of the very area where your school and your own home is located – our town of Boerne. Every footstep that you take in Boerne may have also been walked by early native people, Spanish explorers, or the very first German immigrants who arrived to settle this area. As you walk through our scenic old town and scuff your feet in the dirt of the school’s playground, think about the people who walked here before you. This area of the Texas Hill Country looked very different than it does now for most of its history. Can you imagine what Boerne looked like without roads, houses, stores, or stop lights?
Boerne is located in an area of the Texas Hill Country called the Edwards Plateau. We have natural springs, creeks, limestone caves, a mild climate, and plenty of wild game. These natural resources are the reasons why many people besides us have wanted to live in the area.
The first people to live in Hill Country migrated here about 12,000 years ago. Historians call these early native people Paleo-Indians. Paleo-Indians hunted large animals with spears. They also ate plants, nuts, and berries. They followed the animal herds and lived in different places in different seasons of the year.
Over many centuries of time, native people changed. They began to grow crops, developed languages and cultures, and formed into clans or tribes. By the time that the first German settlers arrived in this area, Lipan Apaches, Tonkawa, and Penatekas Comanche were living here and using the area as a hunting ground. There were already many trails through the Texas Hill Country. Early Spanish explorers had followed them into Texas from Mexico and they were used by native people for trade and hunting.
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