Lower Keechi Creek, which Interstate 45 crosses north of Centerville, is named for the Keechi, also written Kichai, who kept a large farming village on its banks north of the site of Centerville. The creek rises near Jewett in west central Leon County and flows thirty-seven miles to the Trinity River on the Houston County line. The Kichai spoke a Caddoan language and were most closely related to the Pawnee; French explorers met them on the Red River in 1701, and by 1772 their main village stood near the site of Palestine. In 1809 Peter Samuel Davenport reported their principal village, sixty warriors and their families, six leagues west of the Trinity in the vicinity of present Leona. Anglo-American settlers arrived in the late 1830s and early 1840s, and conflict followed.
In 1841 a band of Keechis killed the son of Stephen Rogers as he swam in the Trinity, and Texas Ranger captain Thomas N. B. Greer was killed in the settlers' retaliatory raid. By the end of the 1840s the Keechis and Kickapoos had been driven out of the county. In 1855 the Kichai were assigned to the Brazos Indian Reservation, and in 1858 they fled north to Indian Territory and joined the Wichita, with whom their descendants are enrolled today.
In the late 1860s the creek was the site of the only gristmill in Leon County. Jewett was founded near its headwaters on a new railroad in 1871, and the U.S. Geological Survey keeps a stream gauge on the creek at the Interstate 45 bridge.
Getting there
31.3102, -96.0022
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
