Karnes County, TX
The area which now comprises Karnes County has been the site of human habitation for several millennia. Archeological evidence reveals that hunter-gatherer Indians of the Coahuiltecan linguistic family occupied the region for several thousand years prior to the arrival of Europeans. It was also in the hunting range of Comanche, Tonkawa, Karankawa, and Lipan Apache Indians. The region was also inhabited by the Pataguilla Indians, who lived in the San Antonio River valley between the sites of present-day Pann
Around 1770, the region became the nucleus of ranching activity between San Antonio de Béxar and La Bahía (now Goliad ). The Spanish established a fort called Fuerte de Santa Cruz del Cíbolo on Cibolo Creek near the site of present Czestochowa to protect the ranches in the area from raids by Comanches and other Indian tribes. In 1783, after repeated Comanche attacks, the fort and some twenty-five neighboring ranches were abandoned, and by the mid-1780s only six ranches and eighty-five Spanish settlers remai