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Political

Family bands loosely organized under a chief

Chief proved himself by age, skill, and wisdom

Economic

Hunted buffalo, deer, and wild turkeys

Small gardens used to trade

Geographic

Great Plains and some in Mountains and Basins of west Texas

Social

Tepees and some lived in lodges

clothes of buffalo & deer

Superstitious

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Clothes
Living in a hot humid climate that does not get very cold very often they did not wear very much. Men wore simple breach cloths and women wore grass skirts.

Physical environment
The Karankawa lived along the "coastal bend" of Texas. Look at this map first. The coastal bend starts at the west end of Galveston Island and extends southwest down to Corpus Christi.

Houses
The houses were small huts made of long sapling tree trunks or limbs bent over and tied together.

Food
The oysters and clams are not safe to eat in hotweather. So, to find food the Karankawa would break up into smaller groups or bands and go inland to hunt and gather. In the summer there are lots of berriesand edible plants and plant roots.

Traditions

They sacrificed people by eating them.

Characteristics

We are learning more about the Karankawa social organization. While Cabeza de Vaca seems to describe bands or maybe even just groups, the new evidence from archeological excavations seems to indicate large villages. Large villages usually require a tribe level of organization. If you do not know what the heck I am talking about with all this band, tribe, group stuff you should read the Read Me First part of this site. These are the groups, or tribes, recorded in the histories.

# data[].attributes.body
Political

Family bands loosely organized under a chief

Chief proved himself by age, skill, and wisdom

Economic

Hunted buffalo, deer, and wild turkeys

Small gardens used to trade

Geographic

Great Plains

Social

Tepees made of buffalo hides

clothes too

Fierce warriors

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Political

Each village led by a chief who settled problems

Don’t know how traders governed

Economic

Group 1: hunter-gatherers & traded

Group 2: farmed in large villages - along the Rio Grande

Geographic --> West Texas

Social

Lived in homes called pueblos, made from adobe

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Political

Small bands that moved loosely to find food

No overall chief

Economic

Fish, hunters and gatherers, trade

Geographic

East Texas, West Louisiana

Social

Lived in small lodges made out of grass and reeds

Oyster legend: man said to have been cast up from sea in an oyster shell

European diseases led to extinction

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Political:

One big tribe was broken up

into small nomadic tribes

Shaman as their medical

and spiritual leader

Economic

Hunt and forage

Geographic

Gulf Coast, Southern Texas, Northern Mexico

One of the poorest regions

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Clothes
Caddo Indian men wore breechcloths, sometimes with leather leggings to protect their legs. Caddo women wore wraparound skirts and poncho tops made of woven fiber and deerskin.

Physical environment
The Caddo lived in east and northeast Texas. This part of Texas is the western end of a pine forest that goes from the Atlantic ocean across the South and into East Texas.

Houses
The Caddo lived in tall cone shaped grass huts.

Food
They raised corn, beans and squash. They also hunted the deer, turkey, rabbits, squirrels and other animals in the pine woods around them.

Tradions

When a great leader dies we burn down a house.

Men hunting is an important tradition because if they didnt hunt the tribe or family would starve.

Characteristics

Farmers have larger and denser populations. The Caddo formed confederations to protect and defend themselves from other tribes with their large numbers. They were friendly with most of the tribes to the west and south of them. To the north the Osage Indians were enemies. They also traded goods all over Texas, the Mississippi river valley and the southeastern United States.

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Aug 28, 2018
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