Was Austin’s Barton Springs sacred to Indigenous people before Europeans showed up?

This story was originally part of KUT’s ATXplained Live show at Bass Concert Hall on October 29, 2025. Get tickets to our next show on May 21 here.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love Barton Springs. It feels like the water has magical properties. Even sacred properties.

So when Brendan Cavanagh asked about the it, I knew I needed to look into it.

“Why were the springs sacred before Uncle Billy showed up?” he asked. “And what was the Indigenous population’s relationship with them?”

By Uncle Billy, he means William Barton, the man who laid claim to the springs in 1837 when he settled there with his family and the people he enslaved.

I assumed Brendan’s question came from a place of love for the springs and general curiosity. But when I talked to him about his question, he mentioned the White Shaman mural, a piece of rock art that sits in the desert about 220 miles west of Austin.  Archaeologists say the White Shaman was painted around 400 B.C. It’s really big — 26 feet long and 13 feet high.

“I learned that the springs are actually part of that mural,” Cavanagh said. “Which was astonishing to me.”

Archeologists think the mural shows a creation story. But some people think it’s even more than that.  

Gary Perez is the chief of the  Coahuiltecan/Pakahua Nation. He has come to believe that it not only tells a creation story, but that it’s also an ancient map of Central Texas.

A pictograph on the mural shows a curved line with four matching symbols that look like knives with gray handles and white blades coming off of it at regular intervals.

Chester Leeds

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Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Perez says that this pictograph represents four sacred springs: San Antonio Springs, San Marcos Springs, Comal Springs and Barton Springs. All of these springs are connected to the Edwards Aquifer, an underground network of caves and porous limestone.

Perez overlaid this part of the White Shaman mural out on a modern map with the help of a mapping expert.

“Then they did. And that was it,” Perez said. “Then we knew we were looking at a map for sure.”

Perez doesn’t think the White Shaman mural just a map, but also a calendar. He said it’s like the Mayan calendar, but for hunter-gatherers.

“These calendars exist everywhere, but this particular one is specific to Central Texas,” he said.

Perez sees the mural as a scientific tool.

There are people who agree with that interpretation of the White Shaman mural. But there are people who disagree, including Harry Shafer, a former curator of archeology at the Witte Museum, which manages the White Shaman site.

“We have a really good handle on the archeology of the Lower Pecos region and Central Texas,” Shafer said. “There’s no tie in Lower Pecos to Central Texas.”

So does the White Shaman mural depict four springs in Central Texas — including Barton Springs? Depends on whose science you believe.

Ancient history

What we do know for sure is that people have lived around Barton Springs for millennia. The archaeological record at Barton Springs goes back 13,000 years.

People were drawn to the area for its abundant water and the plant and animal life. But the people who lived around the springs back then weren’t the same people who lived at the springs when William Barton arrived.

We don’t even know the names of these ancient peoples. Did they have a sacred relationship with the springs? Maybe. We may never know the exact details.

But we do know something about the Indigenous people who came later.

In 1837, we know there were the Comanche, Tonkawa, Caddo, Lipan Apache and Coahuiltecan people in the area, among others. We know some of those people had a sacred relationship with the springs, but the accounts we have are from colonists.

These were all very different cultures who spoke different languages and believed different things.

By the time William Barton showed up, Europeans had already been in the area for 100 years. The Spanish had missions near Barton Springs in the 1700s. Their arrival brought sickness and death to the Indigenous population.

Barton lived in Austin during the Texas Republic, when many of the tribes that lived here were killed or forcibly removed.

Then, there were other ways that Native Americans were erased. At one point, a law was passed legally redesignating Native people as Mexican.

This campaign to erase Indigenous people in Texas worked, at least in our collective imagination as a state.

“In Texas there’s this sort of as assumption there’s no more Indians here,” said Craig Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “When, in fact, we have this absolutely huge population of Indigenous people that rarely gets recognized.”

Texas has the fifth-largest population of Indigenous people in the country. According to the U.S. Census, there are over 700,000 people in Texas who identity, at least in part, as Indigenous.

Barton Springs are still sacred

Some modern-day Indigenous Texans have their own sacred relationship with Barton Springs. Every August, a group of mostly women makes a pilgrimage to the four sacred springs, led by Gary Perez’s wife, Matilde Torres.

At each site, they commune with the water and offer prayers. They start at San Antonio Springs at dawn and end up at Barton Springs in the afternoon.

Diana Dos Santos has gone on the pilgrimage for the last three years.

She said it’s a long day, but it doesn’t really feel long.

“The whole day feels like it just merges into a short moment,” she said. “It’s like the whole world — the past, the present, everything — just merges into one moment. And when you’re present there — with your prayer, with your medicine, with the other sisters — it’s incredible. It’s magical.”