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The Jumano Indians, now believed to be extinct, were an indigenous tribe that occupied a significant part of Texas, New Mexico, and present-day Mexico. This Historyplex post gives you some interesting facts about the mysterious and fascinating Jumano Indians.

Did You Know?

Spanish explorer Antonio de Espejo has been credited with first using the term 'Jumano' back in 1582, when he came across the natives living at La Junta.

Very few Indian tribes are as mysterious and fascinating for historians and anthropologists alike, as the Jumano Indians. A distinctive tribe (rather, a people) living in what today is Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico, along with the Southern Plains, much is yet to be discovered about the Jumano Indians simply because they were always on the move when the Europeans arrived in the 1500s.

If some accounts are to be believed, it is even suggested that there was more than one group of Jumano Indians based upon where they lived, making identification even more difficult. Their nomadic nature and constant shifting from one place to another adds to the confusion. However, there is no doubt that these people played a significant role in shaping the history of the land. Facts about their culture, beliefs, traditions, clothing styles, food, weapons, and homes will be covered in the trailing sections of this Historyplex article.

History and Origin of the Jumano Indians

► There is much speculation and confusion about the origin of the Jumano Indians owing to their nomadic lifestyle and nature. They were known to frequently change their place of inhabitation, and thus it has become very difficult to determine their exact place of origin or homeland.

► Anthropologists and historians, based upon the accounts of European explorers of the time, have divided the Jumano Indians into three distinct groups.
◉ The group that lived in Texas, Mexico, and New Mexico
◉ The group that lived in the Southern Plains, and
◉ The group that was in between these two regions.

► The Jumano Indians adapted a lot to other cultures and traditions, and did not follow any one specific culture. This made determining their origin even more difficult. Some experts account their origin to the Apache tribe, while others relate them to the New Mexico Tompiro Pueblo Indians.

► Though the tribe is now primarily referred to as Jumano, it has been known by a variety of names in the accounts of early European explorers who penned the tribes' names down according to the pronunciation of the name. Hence, it has been known as Jumana, Xoman, Chomana, and Humana, among other names, in various accounts. This has made it difficult to determine the origin and culture of this tribe.

► Though this tribe was very large, the language spoken by the people hasn't been determined yet due to incomplete records of the early explorers. Some experts feel they spoke Uto-Aztecan, while others debate whether it was Tanoan or Athabascan.

Culture and Lifestyle of the Jumano Indians

This tribe is widely known for its mixed culture, which is apparent from the food habits, clothing styles, and the traditions of the people of this tribe.

Food and Shelter

► The Jumano Indians were known to grow their own food as well as hunt around for it. Though a large part of the tribe lived in the desert areas, they managed to undertake agriculture in the areas that were near the river.

► The tribe is known for being omnivorous in its diet. The Jumano Indians hunted and traded the meat for cultivated products and vice-versa. They were known to grow corn, beans, and squash to name a few, and hunted deer, wild buffaloes, and rabbits for their meat.

► The food habits of the Jumano Indians depended on where they lived, rather than any cultural beliefs or traditions. Those living near the major rivers could grow and raise their own food, while others depended on hunting, gathering, and trading for fulfilling their nutrition needs.

► The methods of preparation of their food were also known to be primitive. The Jumano Indians ate most of their food raw, or boiled and salted. Sometimes, meat was smoked or specially dried in order to preserve it for another time.

► The Jumano Indians living in the regions of present-day Texas and New Mexico used materials such as rocks, dirt, and straw to make their houses. In order to make the houses strong enough for several people to live in and stay protected, the Jumano Indians made their 'adobes' by mixing mud and straw, which resulted in a strong, brick-like material which could then be used to build walls. Though the houses were small, many people, almost always an entire family, lived together in the same house.

► The Jumano Indians living in the Southern Plains did not build their adobes as they stayed in one place for a very short time and were almost always on the move. These people built tepees from animal skin, like many other Native Indian tribes, to protect themselves from wild animals, insects, and the weather elements.

Clothing

► Some old accounts of European explorers have referred to the Jumano Indians as the Naked Indians, because often, the tribal people did not cover their genitalia, wore nothing above the waist, and often went without clothes, owing to the heat of the areas they lived in.

► Eventually, to protect themselves from the harsh elements as well as from wild animals and insects, the Jumano Indians began to wear long skirts and moccasins. However, even after they learned how to make their own clothes, a lot of them still preferred not to wear clothes.

► The men wore cloaks or capes made from tanned skins and animal hide to protect themselves from the cold. They also wore moccasins made from deer hide in their feet as shoes. They cut their hair short except for one long lock, colored their hair with paint, and wore bird feathers in the long lock.

► Women wore short tunics and long skirts made from deer skin or buffalo hide. They too, wore moccasins in their feet. Women wore their hair long and tied it in a braid on the side, which could be decorated with bird feathers. Women, like men, used cloaks and capes for protection from the cold.

► The Jumano Indians, both men and women, were known to cover their bodies with interesting tattoos. These tattoos, especially those on the facial area, made it easy to identify them as Jumano people. Research suggests that these tattoos may have been drawn using needles made from animal bones.

► The Jumano Indians traded their expertly-made garments from animal hide with other tribes for shells, copper, and feathers.

Tools and Weapons

► Until the European settlers arrived, the concept of using metals for tools and weapons was unknown to the Jumano Indians. They largely used bones of animals, wood, and stone to make their tools and weapons.

► The Jumano Indians were known for their distinctive and intricate tattoos. The tribal people used bone splinters to make the needles that were required for the tattoos, which were elaborate and an important part of their appearance.

► Jumano men were known to shave their heads and keep only one lock of hair, as a part of their style. In order to do this, they used scrapers made from flint, which were perfectly sharpened and did the job of shaving their heads.

► The Jumano Indians who practiced agriculture stuck to basic wooden tools for their work. Often, they used their own hands for digging and weeding, or sometimes used bent wooden sticks as hoes. For hunting, they used bows, arrows, and clubs which were often made from hardwood.

Culture, Religion, Traditions, and Lifestyle

► According to some studies, the Jumano Indians tattooed themselves as a mark of celebration. However, this is a debatable point as the tattoos are a distinguishing feature of the tribe.

► Not much is known about the religion practiced by the Jumano Indians, as they did not belong to any one particular culture, and picked up the culture and traditions of those around them. For instance, the faith introduced to them by the arrival of the Spanish explorers led to quite a number of the Jumano people to follow that.

► Some experts suggest that the Jumano tribe worshiped nature and celebrated during the cropping season, as is observed largely in the Native American culture. Their religious practices included special dances and similar kinds of celebrations during the farming seasons. Since the Jumano tribe was dependent on rain for their farming, these ceremonies were of particular importance.

► The Jumano tribe was said to be very good at trading. They traded a large variety of items with most tribes they met on their way whenever they shifted from one region to the other. The Jumano Indians traded different kinds of food, weapons, and tools with other tribes in exchange for different items, and this ensured that the culture of the Jumano Indians remained mixed and diverse. Not only did this trading help them have access to different items, but this also enabled them to introduce new and different items to other tribes.

► Even when the Spanish came to settle in the regions of the Jumano Indians, they were known to take painstaking efforts to adapt to the Spanish culture and accept their traditions and beliefs, which were largely different from those the native tribe was used to. Jumano Indians acted as the middlemen between the Spanish and the other tribes in that region.

► The Jumano Indians were also known to be friendly and interactive with the European explorers. Not only did they act as middlemen and interpreters between the explorers and other native tribes, but they also included the explorers in their daily lives. They were known to help the explorers with their food, drink, and shelter needs until they had established their own settlements.

The Jumano Indians were certainly an interesting group of people, who played a key role in the Spanish colonization in the region, but are now perceived to be extinct. A major reason for this was the invasion of the Spanish, who brought with them a host of European germs that wiped out a lot of the population with deadly diseases, the cure to which was unknown to the Jumano tribe. Similarly, clashes with rival native Indian tribes and later, the military, led to major human losses. The remaining population died in slavery and forced labor. Though there have been reports of people claiming to trace their ancestry back to the Jumano Indians, official records state that the tribe has certainly disappeared.

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Outstandingly Mysterious Facts About the Jumano Indians

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The Jumano Indians, now believed to be extinct, were an indigenous tribe that occupied a significant part of Texas, New Mexico, and present-day Mexico. This Historyplex post gives you some interesting facts about the mysterious and fascinating Jumano Indians.

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Indian languages Indian cultures Indian art
Native American Facts For Kids was written for young people learning about the Pueblo Indian tribe for school or home-schooling reports. We encourage students and teachers to visit ourPueblo language andculture pages for in-depth information about the tribe, but here are our answers to the questions we are most often asked by children, with Pueblo pictures and links we believe are suitable for all ages.

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What are Pueblo arts and crafts like?
Pueblo artists are famous for their beautiful

Pueblo Tribe

Pueblo is pronounced "PWAY-bloh." This just means "town" or "village" in Spanish, and was originally used to refer to the Indian cliff dwellings and large adobe house complexes of the Southwestern Indian tribes. Today, the word "Pueblo" (with a capital P) is also used to refer to these tribes themselves. There are many different Pueblos and each has its own name, including the Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Picuris, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Santo Domingo, San Ildefonso, San Juan, Santa Clara, Taos, Tesuque, Ysleta del Sur, Zia, and Zuni. TheHopi Indians are also Pueblo people, but they are culturally more distinct from the others, have a separate government, and are usually considered as a different tribe.

The Pueblo are natives of the Southwest deserts, particularlyNew Mexico. (The Hopi live inArizona, while the Ysleta del Sur Tigua live inTexas.) Unlike many Native American tribes, the Pueblo Indians were never forced to leave their homelands and are still living there today.

The nineteen Pueblos of New Mexico belong to a confederation called the All Indian Pueblo Council, which makes joint political decisions on behalf of all of them. Each Pueblo also has its own local government, with laws, police, and services just like a small country. However, the Pueblos are also US citizens and must obey American law.

In the past, the Pueblo Indians had atheocratic government. That means that the head priest or cacique (pronounced kah-seek) was also the town chief. Today, each Pueblo still has its own cacique, but he is primarily a religious leader. Most Pueblos are now led by an elected governor and tribal council.

Almost all Pueblo people speak English today, but most of them also speak one of the nativePueblo languages. Though the Pueblo Indians all have closely related cultures, they do not all speak the same language. TheHopi language is a Uto-Aztecan language, distantly related to the language of the Aztecs. TheZuni language is a language isolate, not related to any other living language. Seven of the remaining Pueblos speakKeresan languages, and the other twelve speakTanoan languages related to Kiowa. Speakers of these four language groups cannot understand each other at all. In the past, they needed to use interpreters to communicate with each other. Today, they use English for that purpose.

All four of these language groups are traditionallyoral languages, which means they were not written down. Caciques and elders in some Keres and Tanoan-speaking Pueblos don't want their languages to be written down at all, while other Pueblos encourage children to read and write their traditional languages today. If you'd like to know an easy Pueblo word, "k'ema" (pronounced k-ay-mah) means "friend" in San Juan Tewa (one of the Tanoan languages from a Pueblo community that has published a written dictionary.)

Here is the homepage of theAll Pueblo Council. On their site you can find information about the Pueblo people in the past and today.

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They do the same things all children do--play with each other, go to school and help around the house. Many Pueblo children like to go hunting and fishing with their fathers. In the past, Indian kids had more chores and less time to play in their daily lives, just like colonial children. But they did havedolls, toys, and games to play. A Pueblo mother traditionally carried a young child in acradle board on her back--a custom which many American parents haveadopted now.

Generally, Pueblo women were in charge of the home and family. Pueblo men were in charge of politics, agriculture and war. Women played important roles in Pueblo religion and clan governance, but caciques and warriors were traditionally always men. Both genders took part in storytelling, music and artwork, and traditional medicine.

Pueblo people lived in adobe houses known aspueblos, which are multi-story house complexes made of adobe (clay and straw baked into hard bricks) and stone. Each adobe unit was home to one family, like a modern apartment. Pueblo people used ladders to reach the upstairs apartments. A Pueblo adobe house can contain dozens of units and was often home to an entire extended clan. Here are some pictures ofPueblo houses and other Indian homes.

Unlike most old-fashioned Indian shelters, traditional Pueblo houses are still used by many people today. In fact, some Pueblo people have been living in the same adobe house complex, such as Sky City, for dozens of generations. Other Pueblo families live in modern houses or apartment buildings, just like you.

Originally, Pueblo men didn't wear much clothing-- onlybreechcloths or short kilts. Pueblo women wore knee-length cotton dresses calledmantas. A manta fastened at a woman's right shoulder, leaving her left shoulder bare. Missionaries didn't think this dress style was modest enough, so in the 1900's many Pueblo women started wearing blouses or shifts underneath their mantas. This style is still in use today. Men and women both woredeerskin moccasins on their feet. For dances and special occasions, women painted their moccasins white and wrapped white strips of deerskin calledputtee around their shins as leggings. Here is a site with photographs ofPueblo clothing styles, and some photos and links aboutNative wear in general.

The Pueblos did not traditionally wear afeathered headdress like the Sioux. Pueblo men usually wore cloth headbands tied around their foreheads instead. For special ceremonies, Pueblo dancers sometimes wore painted masks or crowns of feathers. Both men and women wore their hair gathered into a figure-eight shaped bun called achongo, but some Pueblo men preferred to cut their hair to shoulder length. Except for certain religious ceremonies, the Pueblos didn't paint their faces or bodies. But they are famous for their beautiful silver and turquoise ornaments, particularly their elaborate necklaces.

Today, many Pueblo people still wear moccasins or mantas, but they wear modern clothes like jeans instead of breechcloths... and they only wear puttee or kilts on special occasions like a dance.

No--the Pueblo Indians weren't coastal people, and rarely traveled by river. Originally they just walked. There were no horses in North America until colonists brought them over from Europe, so the Pueblos used dogs pullingtravois (a kind of drag sled) to help them carry heavy loads. Here's a website withtravois images. Once Europeans brought horses to America, the Pueblo Indians could travel more quickly than before.

What was Pueblo food like in the days before supermarkets?
The Pueblo Indians were expert farming people. They raised crops of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers, as well as cotton and tobacco. Pueblo men also hunted deer, antelope, and small game, while women gathered nuts, fruits, and herbs. Favorite Pueblo recipes included hominy, popcorn, baked beans, soups, and different types of cornbread. Here is a website with more information about theagriculture of Native Americans.

Pueblo hunters used bows and arrows. In war, Pueblo men fired their bows or fought with spears and war clubs. Here is some more information on thehistory of Indian weapons. Pueblo tools included wooden hoes and rakes for farming, spindles and looms for weaving cotton (and later wool), and pump drills for boring holes in shell and turquoise beads.

What other Native Americans did the Pueblo tribe interact with?

The Zunis traded extensively with other tribes of the Southwest. Pueblo trade routes reached into Mexico and to the California coast, supplying Pueblo craftsmen with shells, coral, and turquoise for their jewelry. TheNavajos andComanches were favorite trading partners, though they often fought with each other as well. Other enemies of the Pueblo tribes included theApache andUte tribes, who frequently raided their territory, and the Spanish, who forced many Pueblo Indians into slavery and violently suppressed their religion.What kinds of stories do the Pueblos tell?
There are lots of traditional Pueblo legends and fairy tales. Storytelling is very important to the Pueblo Indian culture. Here is a Cochiti Pueblo story about

Southwest Indian pottery andWhat about Pueblo religion?
Spirituality and religion were important parts of Pueblo life, and many people continue to practice traditional beliefs today. It is respectful to avoid imitating religious rituals for school projects since some Pueblo people care about them deeply. You can read and learn about them, however. You can visit this site to learn more aboutheishi jewelry. They also madebaskets,stone carving, and colorfulNative American rugs. All of these art forms are still flourishing today. Here is a good site on theCan you recommend a good book for me to read?
You may enjoyart of Pueblo pottery.

a custody fight between Crow and Hawk. Here's a website where you can read more aboutPueblo mythology.

How do I cite your website in my bibliography?
You will need to ask your teacher for the format he or she wants you to use. The authors' names are Laura Redish and Orrin Lewis and the title of our site is Native Languages of the Americas. We are a nonprofit educational organization working to preserve and protect Native American languages and culture. You can learn more about our organization Keres Pueblo religion or this site aboutIndian religions in general.

Pueblo Stories and Storytellers, which is a nice collection of Cochiti Pueblo legends and artwork. Younger children may like The Boy Who Made Dragonfly, a picture book of a traditional Zuni Pueblo myth.Children of Clay is an illustrated biography of a modern Santa Clara Pueblo girl which makes a great introduction to Pueblo life today. If you want to know more about Pueblo culture and history, two good books areThe Pueblo Native Americans andFirst Americans: The Pueblo. You can also browse through our reading list of the best American Indian books in general. Disclaimer: we are an Amazon affiliate and our website earns a commission if you buy a book through one of these links. Most of them can also be found in a public library, though!

here. Our website was first created in 1998 and last updated in 2020.

Thanks for your interest in the Pueblo Indian people and their languages!

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Related links about the Pueblo tribe past and present.

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Facts for Kids: Pueblo Indians (Pueblos)

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Information about the Pueblo Indians for students and teachers. Covers food, homes, arts and crafts, weapons, culture, and daily life of the Pueblos.

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American Indian languages American Indian tribes American Indian art
Native American Facts For Kids was written for young people learning about the Alabamas for school or home-schooling reports. We encourage students and teachers to visit ourAlabama Indian pages for more in-depth information about the tribe, but here are our answers to the questions we are most often asked by children, with Alabama pictures and links we believe are suitable for all ages.

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Alabama Tribe

Alabama is pronounced "al-uh-BAM-uh," the same as the state (which was named after the tribe.) No one knows exactly where this name came from. It could be an English form of the wordalbina, which means "campsite" in their own language and may have been the name of an Alabama town. Or it could be an English form of the Choctaw wordsalba amo, which means "clearing brush."

The Alabamas are original residents of the state of Alabama, which was named for them. However, the tribe was forced to move further west in the 18th century, and today most Alabamas live in Texas (sharing a reservation with theCoushattas) and in Oklahoma (sharing a reservation with theCreeks.) Other Alabama people joined theSeminoles and were absorbed into that powerful Florida tribe, and some live in Louisiana with the Coushattas there. The total population of Alabama Indians is about 2000. Here isone map showing the original location of the Alabama and Coushatta tribes in Alabama, andanother map showing how Alabama Indian communities were dispersed throughout the South after colonization.

In Texas, the Alabama and Coushatta tribes share a singlereservation. Indian reservations are lands that belong to Native American tribes and are legally under their control. In the past, each Alabama band was ruled by a chief called amiko, and the Alabama and Coushatta tribes had separate leadership. Today, the Alabama-Coushatta Indians are governed by a joint tribal council, with elected councilmembers that come from both tribes. In Oklahoma, the Alabamas are legally considered part of the Creek Nation, but they maintain their own traditional government independently of the Creeks.

Most Alabama people speak English today, but some people, especially elders, also speak their nativeAlibamu orAlabama language. If you'd like to know a few easy Alabama words, "chíkmaa" (pronounced chick-mah) is a friendly greeting, and "alila mo" (pronounced ah-lee-lah moh) is a phrase meaning 'thank you.' You can also read an Alabama picture glossaryhere.

Today Alabama is anendangered language because most children aren't learning it anymore. However, some Alabama people are working to keep their language alive.

Here is a link to theAlabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas,
where you can learn about the Alabama people and their way of life.

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They do the same things any children do--play with each other, go to school and help around the house. Many Alabama children like to go hunting and fishing with their fathers. In the past, Indian kids had more chores and less time to play, just like early colonial children. But they did havebeaded dolls, toys and games to play with.Lacrosse was also a popular sport among teenage boys as it was among adult men. Like many Native Americans, Alabama mothers traditionally carried their babies incradleboards on their backs--a custom which many American parents haveadopted now.

What were men and women's roles in the Alabama tribe?

Alabama men were hunters and sometimes fought wars to defend their territory. Alabama women were farmers and also did most of the child care and cooking. Both genders took part in storytelling, artwork and music, and traditional medicine. In the past, the chief was always a man, but today an Alabama Indian woman can participate in government also.

The Alabama people lived in square-shaped villages of houses and small farm plots. Alabama houses had plaster and rivercane walls with thatched roofs. These dwellings were about as strong and warm as a log cabin. Here are somepictures of Native American houses like the ones Alabama Indians used. The Alabamas also built a larger circular lodge for town meetings, and most villages had a lacrosse field with benches for spectators. An Alabama village was usually surrounded withpalisades (reinforced walls) to guard against attack. No one uses these old-fashioned houses for shelter anymore. Alabamas today live in modern houses and apartment buildings, just like you.

Alabama men wore abreechclout, sometimes with leggings to protect their legs, and women wore wraparound skirts made of woven fiber. The Alabamas also woremoccasins on their feet. Shirts were not necessary in Alabama culture, but men and women both wore poncho-style capes in cool weather. In colonial times, the Alabamas adapted European costume such as waistcoats and full skirts. Here is a webpage with pictures oftraditional Alabama dress, and here are some photographs and links aboutIndian clothes in general.

The Alabamas didn't wear long headdresses like theSioux. Alabama men often shaved their heads except for a singlescalplock, and sometimes they would also wear a porcupine roach. (These headdresses were made of porcupine hair, not their sharp quills!) Alabama women usually wore their long hair tied up into a bun. Both genders painted their faces for special occasions. They used different patterns for war paint, religious ceremonies, and festive decoration. Some Alabamas also woreWhat was Alabama Indian food like in the days before supermarkets?
The Alabama Indians were farming people. Alabama women did most of the farming, harvesting crops of corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Alabama men did most of the hunting, shooting deer, wild turkeys, and small game and fishing in the rivers. Alabama dishes included cornbread, soups, and stews cooked on rock hearths. Here is a website with more information abouttribal tattoos.

Today, some Alabama people still wear moccasins or a ribbon shirt, but they wear modern clothes like jeans instead of breechcloths... and they only wear roaches in their hair on special occasions like a dance.

Yes--the Alabama Indians madedugout canoes from hollowed-out logs. Most of the time, though, Alabama people usually just walked. There were no horses in North America until colonists brought them over from Europe, so the Alabamas used dogs to help them carry their belongings over land. Today, of course, Alabama people also use cars... and non-native people also use canoes.

American Indian food.

Alabama hunters primarily used bows and arrows. Fishermen generally used fish spears. In war, Alabama men fired their bows or fought with heavy war clubs. Here is a website with pictures and more information aboutWhat is Alabama music like?
The most important AlabamaNative American weapons.

The Alabama Indians were famous for theirwicker baskets,Native American pottery, andwoodcarvings. After Europeans introduced them to metalworking, Alabama Indian men became known for their beautifulsilver jewelry and other ornaments.

instruments are thedrum and theflute. Traditional Alabama flutes were made of rivercane, though today most flutes are carved from wood. Alabama drums are usually very large and are played by a group of men together at a pow wow or other community event. Here is avideo of tribal musicians singing and drumming as dancers in traditional dress enter the Alabama-Coushatta powwow in Texas.

What other Native Americans did the Alabama tribe interact with?
The Alabamas traded regularly with other Southeast Native Americans such as the Chickasaw, Creek, and Cherokee. These tribes communicated using a simplified trade language calledWhat about Alabama Indian religion?
Spirituality and religion were important parts of Alabama life, and some people continue to practice traditional beliefs today. It is respectful to avoid imitating religious rituals for school projects since some Alabama people care about them deeply. You can read and learn about them, however. You can visit this site to learn more aboutMobilian Jargon. The most important Alabama neighbors were theCoushatta Indians. The Alabamas and the Coushattas were close allies, and many of them still live together today. Other Alabama Indians banded together with theSeminoles or theCreeks to fight against Europeans who were taking their land.Did the Alabama Indians build the Indian mounds at Moundville?
Their ancestors built them. The city of Moundville was built around 1000 AD, by people archaeologists call "paleo-Indians" or the "Mississippian culture." The Mississippian civilization didn't have a written language, so our information about them is limited, but Native historians consider the Alabama, Koasati, and other Muskogean tribes of Alabama to be descended from the civilization of Moundville. Here is a website with some

There are lots of traditional Alabama legends and fairy tales. Storytelling is very important to the Alabama Indian culture. Here is a story about theCan you recommend a good book for me to read?
You may enjoyorigin of fire. Here's a website where you can read more aboutAlabama mythology.

Alabama Indian rituals and artifacts or this site aboutNative American religion in general.

more information about the archaeology of Moundville. Modern-day Alabama tribes hold a cultural festival at this site every year to celebrate their ancestors and their shared culture.

The Winding Trail, which is a history book about the Alabama-Coushatta tribe written for kids. Older kids could readThe Alabama-Coushatta Indians, an excellent book by a Native American author about Alabama Indian history and culture. If you like mythology, you could try this book of Myths and Folktales of the Alabama Coushatta Indians.Alabama Native Americans is a kids' book that provides a simple over view of the Alabama tribes in general. You can also browse through our reading list of recommendedAmerican Indian books in general. Disclaimer: we are an Amazon affiliate and our website earns a commission if you buy a book through one of these links. Most of them can also be found in a public library, though!

You will need to ask your teacher for the format he or she wants you to use. The authors' names are Laura Redish and Orrin Lewis and the title of our site is Native Languages of the Americas. We are a nonprofit educational organization working to preserve and protect Native American languages and culture. You can learn more about our organizationhere. Our website was first created in 1998 and last updated in 2020.

Thanks for your interest in the Alabama Indian people and their language!

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Alabama Indian Tribe
An overview of the Alabama people, their language and history.

Alabama Language Resources
Alabama language samples, articles, and indexed links.

Alabama History and Culture Directory
Related links about the Alabama people and their society, past and present.

Alabama Word List

Alabama Indian vocabulary lists.

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Facts for Kids: Alabama Indians (Alabama-Coushatta, Alabamas)

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Information about the Alabama Indians for students and teachers. Facts about Alabama Indian food, clothing, houses, villages, artifacts, legends, and customs of the Alabama people.

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Lipan Apache are Southern Athabaskan ( Apachean) Native Americans whose traditional territory includes present-day US states of Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas, prior to the 17th century.

Present-day Lipan live mostly throughout the U.S. Southwest, in Texas, New Mexico, and the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, as well as with the Mescalero tribe on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico; some currently live in urban and rural areas throughout North America (Mexico, United States, and Canada). On March 18, 2009, the Texas Legislature passed resolutions HR 812 and SR 438 recognizing the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. They are members of the National Congress of American Indians as a state-recognized tribe under courts of claims. The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas is headquartered in McAllen, Texas.

The name "Lipán" is a Spanish adaption of their self-designation as Hleh-pai Ndé or Lépai-Ndé ("Light Gray People") reflecting their migratory story. The Lipan are also known as Querechos, Vaqueros, Pelones, Nde buffalo hunters, Eastern Apache, Apache de los Llanos, Lipan, Ipande, Ypandes, Ipandes, Ipandi, Lipanes, Lipanos, Lipanis, Lipaines, Lapane, Lapanne, Lapanas, Lipau, Lipaw, Apaches Lipan, Apacheria Lipana, and Lipanes Llaneros. The first recorded name is Ypandes.

By 1750, the Lipan Apache were driven from the southern Great Plains by the Comanche and their allies, the so-called Norteños. The Lipan divided into several regional groupings/divisions comprising several bands - the Forest Lipan division ( Chishîìhîî, Chishį́į́hį́į́, Tcici, Tcicihi - "People of the Forest") or Western Lipan, and the Plains Lipan division ( Goãgahîî, Golgahį́į́, Kó'l kukä'ⁿ, Kó´l Kahäⁿ - "Tall Grass People", "High Grass People", "Prairie Men") or Eastern Lipan.

Eastern Lipan / Lipanes de Arriba / Upper Lipan / Northern Lipan / Plains Lipan

Tséral tuétahä, Tséral tuétahäⁿ ("Red Hair People"): merged later with the Tche shä and Tsél tátli dshä, lived south of the Nueces River in Texas, about 1884 extinct.

Tche shä, Tche shäⁿ ("Sun Otter People"): lived from San Antonio, Texas, south to the Rio Grande.

Canneci N'de, Connechi, Chawnechi Nde' ("People Of The Pines", "Red Clay People", "Tall sticks in a row stand"): made up of many bands and family groups that joined together after being forced into and escaping slavery. Lived from Louisiana to East Texas along the Red River.

Kó'l kukä'ⁿ, Kó´l Kahäⁿ, Cuelcahen Ndé ("Tall Grass People", "High Grass People"): lived on the Central Plains of Texas along the upper Colorado River and its tributaries southward to the Pecos River.

Tchó'kanä, Tchóⁿkanäⁿ ("Pulverizing People", "Rubbing People"): merged later with the Tcha shka-ózhäye, lived west of Fort Griffin, Texas, along the upper Colorado River towards the western side of the Rio Grande, about 1884 extinct.

Kóke metcheskó lähä, Kóke metcheskó lähäⁿ ("High-Beaked Moccasin People"): lived south of San Antonio as far as northern Mexico.

Tsél tátli dshä, Tsél tátli dshäⁿ ("People of the Green Mountain"): merged later with Kóke metcheskó lähä, lived east of the Rio Grande along the lower Guadalupe River and Nueces River in Texas.

Ndáwe qóhä, Ndáwe qóhäⁿ, Ndáwe ɣóhäⁿ ("Fire People", "Camp Circle People"): lived southeast of Fort Griffin, along the Colorado, San Saba and Llano Rivers towards the upper Nueces River and its tributaries the Frio River and Atascosa River in Texas.

Shá i'a Nde, Shá'i'ánde, Nde 'Shini, Shä-äⁿ ("Northern People"): most northern group of the Lipan, sharing contacts with the Kiowa-Apache. They were forced to relocate 1884, when 300 people were moved to the Washita Agency in Oklahoma)

Tsés tsembai ("Heads of Wolves People", "Bodies of Men People"): lived between the upper Brazos River and the Colorado River towards the west.

Te'l kóndahä, Te'l kóndahäⁿ ("Wild Goose People"): lived west of Fort Griffin in Texas, along the upper Colorado River and its tributaries, were renowned and fierce warriors.

Western Lipan / Lipanes de Abajo / Lower Lipan / Southern Lipan / Forest Lipan

Tu'tssn Ndé, Tùn Tsa Ndé, Tú sis Ndé, Kúne tsá, Konitsaii Ndé, Kónitsàà, Kónitsàà-hîî ("Big Water People", "Great Water People"): formerly a Natage band, they lived in the Gulf Coastal Plains towards both sides of the Rio Grande into Coahuila; in 1765 the greater part of them left San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz mission (near Camp Wood in modern-day Texas) and went into Mexico. Their territory stretched deep into Coahuila, and was called Konitsąąįį gokíyaa ("Big Water People Country"). Magoosh's band Tú sis Ndé would later merge with the Mescalero as the "Tuintsunde".

Tsésh ke shéndé, Tséc kecénde ("Painted Wood People"): perhaps lived former along the upper Brazos River, later moved down to live near Lavón, Mexico, about 1884 extinct.

Tindi Ndé, Tú'e Ndé, Tüzhä'ⁿ, Täzhä'ⁿ ("People of the Mountain", "Uplanders"): lived along the upper Rio Grande, in southern New Mexico and in northern Mexico; about 1850 they were in close contact with the Mescalero.

Tcha shka-ózhäye, Tchaⁿshka ózhäyeⁿ ("Little Breech-clout People"): lived along the eastern shore of the Rio Pecos in Texas, were close allies of the Nadahéndé or Natage (who later became the Mescalero and Salinero).

Twid Ndé, Tú'é'diné Ndé ("Tough People of the Desert", "No Water People"): moved north and therefore away from the gulf area, later they lived between the Rio Grande and the Pecos River, near the juncture of the two. There they became much mixed with the Mescalero and merged later as Tuetinini with the Mescalero. The Tú sis Ndé ("Big Water People"), who tried to remain nearer their old territory on the Gulf but who were finally driven over into Mexico, are sometimes quite critical of the Twid Ndé because of their apostasy and mixture and classify them as a Mescalero or part-Mescalero group.

Zit'is'ti Nde, Tséghát'ahén Nde, Tas steé be glui Ndé ("Rock Tied to Head People"): wearing a red turban-like headdress like the neighboring Mescalero, lived in the deserts of northern Mexico.

In addition, these bands were recorded:

Bi'uhit Ndé, Buii gl un Ndé ("Many Necklaces People"): lived in the deserts and high plains of New Mexico and northern Mexico.

Ha'didla 'Ndé, Goschish Ndé ("Lightning Storm People"): lived from the lower Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas into the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, today Dene Nde' descendants are still living in the Lower Rio Grande area (El Calaboz Rancheria)and a branch re-settled in British Columbia, Canada.

Zuá Zuá Ndé ("People of the Lava Beds"): lived in the lava beds of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas and their descendants live today in Mescalero as well as South Texas.

Jumano Ndé, Suma Ndé (Jumano Apache - "Red Mud Painted People"): have continued to live in the lands of the Lower and Middle Rio Grande, the Nueces River, the Frio River, and the Conchos River watersheds; today descendants live in the Middle-Upper Rio Grande, West Texas (El Polvo (Redford), El Mesquite, El Conejo, El Mulato Chihuahua).

Indantųhé Ndé, Nakaiyé Ndé ("Mexican Clan People"): Mexicans who intermarried with Lipan bands who sought refuge in Mexico.

The Spanish associated these groupings with the Lipan:

Lipiyánes (also Lipiyán, Lipillanes): a coalition of splinter groups of the Nadahéndé, Guhlkahéndé and Lipan of the 18th century under the leadership of Picax-Ande-Ins-Tinsle (Strong Arm), who fought and withstood the Comanche on the Plains.

Natagés (Nah-tah-hay, also Natagees, Apaches del Natafé, Yabipais Natagé, Natageses, Natajes, from Nadahéndé - "People of the Mescal"): original Apachean group who would become the Mescalero and Salinero; were often called by the Spanish and Apaches themselves true Apaches, which had had a considerable influence on the decision making of some bands of the Western Lipan in the 18th century.

Ypandes (Ypandis, Ipandes, Ipandi, Lipanes, Lipanos, Lipaines, Lapane, Lipanis, Lipan): they once travelled from the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico to the upper Colorado River, San Saba River and Llano River of central Texas across the Edwards Plateau southeast to the Gulf of Mexico, were close allies of the Natagés, therefore it seems certain that they were the Plains Lipan division (Golgahį́į́, Kó'l kukä'ⁿ - "Prairie Men"), not to be confused with Lipiyánes or Le Panis (French for the Pawnee). They were first mentioned in 1718 records as being near the newly established town of San Antonio, Texas.

Llanero (Spanish meaning "plains dweller"): the name was historically used to refer to several different groups who hunted buffalo seasonally on the Great Plains, also referenced in eastern New Mexico and western Texas. (See also Carlanas.)

Pelones (Bald Ones): lived far from San Antonio and far to the northeast of the Ypandes in the Red River of the South country of north central Texas. Although able to field 800 warriors, more than the Ypandes and Natagés together, they were described as less warlike because they had fewer horses than the Plains Lipan. Their population was estimated between 1,600 and 2,400 persons. The Forest Lipan division (Chishį́į́hį́į́, Tcici, Tcicihi - "People of the Forest"): after 1760 the name Pelones was never used by the Spanish for any Texas Apache group. The Pelones had fled the Comanche south and southwest, but never mixed up with the Plains Lipan division, retaining their distinct identity, so that Morris Opler was told by his Lipan informants in 1935 that their tribal name was "People of the Forest".

Their kin, west and southwest of them, sometimes allies and sometimes foes, the Mescalero, called them after their location and living conditions:

Tú'édìnéõde or Tuetinini ("The People of No Water", "No Water People"), called by the Lipan Twid Ndé, Tú'é'diné Ndé ("Tough People of the Desert", "No Water People"), "Western Lipan", because they lived most of the time in deserts, steppes and Mountains.

Túntsaõde or Tuintsunde ("The People of Big Water", "The Big Water People"), called by the Lipan Kónitsàà, Kónitsàà-hîî ("Big Water People", "Great Water People"), "Eastern Lipan", because they lived in the river valleys of the southern Texan Plains against the Gulf of Mexico.

The Lipan are first mentioned in Spanish records in 1718 when they raided Spanish settlements in San Antonio. The Lipan likely had become established in Texas during the latter half of the 17th century. They moved southward during the 18th century; a Spanish mission for these people was built in Coahuila in 1754 and another on the San Sabá River in 1757. Both missions were burned and deserted; the San Saba mission was destroyed by the Comanche and their allies. During 1757, the Lipan Apache were involved in fighting with the Hasinais. The Lipan participated in a Spanish expedition against the Wichita and Comanche in 1759, but were defeated in the Battle of the Twin Villages.

Their territory ranged from the Colorado River of Texas to the Rio Grande. Two Lipan local group chiefs had a total of 700 people in 1762. Since at least 12 other local groups existed, Morris Opler estimated that the population was around 3,000-4,000. He estimated a total of 6,000 in 1700.

The Spanish and Lipan frequently were in conflict, as Spain tried to invade and colonize the Texas territory. The Spanish tried to thwart the Lipan through alcohol, provoking conflict between the Lipan and Mescalero, making them economically dependent on Spanish trade goods, and converting them through missionaries. If the Lipan ever lived on the Spanish missions is uncertain, but by 1767, all Lipan had completely deserted them.

In the same year, Marquis of Rubí started a policy of Lipan extermination after a 1764 smallpox epidemic had decimated the tribe. Shortly after that, the Lipan entered an uneasy alliance with Spain in the fight against their traditional enemy, the Mescalero. The alliance fell apart before 1800. Another serious enemy of the Lipan was the Comanche, who were also opposing Spanish colonists. Many historians cite Comanche aggression as a factor leading to the Lipan's southerly migration. At the beginning of the 19th century, by contrast, the Lipan formed an alliance with the Comanche to attack the Spanish.

In 1869, Mexican troops from Monterrey were brought to Zaragosa to eliminate the Lipan Apache, who were blamed for causing trouble. Troops attacked many Lipan camps; survivors fled to the Mescaleros in New Mexico.

From 1875 to 1876, United States Army troops undertook joint military campaigns with the Mexican Army to eliminate the Lipan from the state of Coahuila in northern Mexico.

In 1881, a large campaign by Mexican Army's Díaz division (assisted by US troops) forced all Lipan out of Coahuila and into Chihuahua.

Bigotes (="Mustached One") (middle of the 18th century) (1751 he left Texas and crossed with his Kuné tsa the Rio Grande into Coahuila. About this date they lived along the Rio Escondido and Rio San Rodrigo in Coahuila)

Poca Ropa (="few or scant clothes") (ca. 1750 - ca. 1790) (Chief of the Tcha shka-ó´zhäye along the lower Pecos River)

Cavezon (="Big Head") (ca. ? - ca. 1780) (Chief of the Ndáwe qóhä, one powerful band of the San Saba River towards the upper Nueces River)

Casimiro (18. Jhd.) (Chief of one band in southern Texas, perhaps of the Ha´didla`Ndé)

Yolcna Pocarropa (ca. 1820 - ca. ?) (Chief of several bands of the Tcha shka-ó´zhäye in western Texas, in 1830 he led them across the Rio Grande into Tamaulipas in Mexico downriver of Laredo)

Cuelgas de Castro (ca. 1792 - ca. 1844) (Chief of the Tche shä in the territory of San Antonio across the Rio Grande in Tamaulipas)

Flacco (ca. 1790 - ca. 1850) (Chief of the Kóke metcheskó lähä east and southeast of San Antonio)

Costalites (ca. 1820 - 1873) (Chief of one band, that was wandering from Coahuila into southwest Texas)

Magoosh (Ma´uish) (ca. 1830 - 1900) (Chief of the Tu' sis Nde of southeastern Texas, because of a severe epidemic one part of this band went to Zaragosa in Coahuila, the other part of Magoosh took refuge by the Mescalero and accompanied them in 1870 onto the Mescalero Reservation)

Coco (Chief of the Cannesi N'de of Louisiana, ca.1810-1860)

Lipan Apache is a Southern Athabaskan language. Two people in 1981 living on the Mescalero Apache reservation are to be native speakers. As of 2013, a concerted effort by Lipan-speaking members living off reservation throughout North America strives to keep the language and traditional culture alive.

In Spanish: Lipán para niños

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Learn Lipan Apache people facts for kids

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Indigenous languages Native American Indian tribes Native American Indian art
Native American Facts For Kids was written for young people learning about the Kickapoos for school or home-schooling reports. We encourage students and teachers to visit our mainKickapoo website for more in-depth information about the tribe, but here are our answers to the questions we are most often asked by children, with Kickapoo images and links we believe are suitable for all ages.

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The Kickapoo Tribe

Kickapoo is pronounced "KICK-a-poo." It comes from a Shawnee word for "wanderer." In Mexico the tribal name is spelledKikapu, which is the Spanish way of representing the same pronunciation. Sometimes it is also spelledKikapoo.

The Kickapoo Indians originally lived in theMichigan andOhio area. They fled south and west to get away from British and American aggression, settling briefly in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. Eventually the Americans forced some Kickapoos onto Kansas and Oklahoma reservations. Others escaped, and their descendants now live in Texas and northern Mexico. Few Kickapoos still live in their original homeland. Here is amap showing Kickapoo and other Indian migrations.

There are four Kickapoo tribes today, located in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Mexico. In the United States, the Kickapoos live onreservations or trust land. An Indian reservation is land that belongs to the tribe and is under their control. Each Kickapoo reservation has its own government, laws, police, and services, just like a small country. In Mexico, Kickapoo Indians live in two villages with no special status. The Mexican Kickapoos p reserve close relations with the American Kickapoo bands, but have their own tribal leadership.

In Mexico and Oklahoma, many Kickapoos still speak their traditionalKickapoo language. In fact, the Kickapoo tribes need this language to communicate with each other, because most Mexican Kickapoos do not speak English. Very few Kickapoo Indians in Kansas or Texas still speak their native language, but some young people are working to learn it.

Kickapoo is atone language, like Chinese. That means the pitch of a vowel can change a Kickapoo word's meaning. Because of this, Kickapoo can sound very musical when it is spoken. If you'd like to know some easy Kickapoo words, "ho" (pronounced like the English word "hoe") is a friendly greeting and "kepiihcihi" (pronounced keh-pee-chih-hih) means "thank you." You can see a Kickapoo picture glossaryhere.

Here is the home page of the Kansas Kickapoo tribe. There you can find information about the Kickapoo people in the past and today, with many photographs. Another good source is theTexas Indians website. They have information on the culture and history of the Texas Kickapoos and their neighbors.

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They do the same things any children do--play with each other, go to school and help around the house. Many Kickapoo children like to go hunting and fishing or camp outdoors. In the past, Indian kids had more chores and less time to play, just like colonial children. But they did have toys and games, and Kickapoo women madecornhusk dolls for their daughters. Like many Native Americans, Kickapoo mothers traditionally carried their babies incradleboards on their backs. Here is a website with baby board pictures.

What were men and women's roles in the Kickapoo tribe?

Kickapoo Indian men were hunters and sometimes went to war to protect their families. Kickapoo women were farmers and did most of the child care and cooking. Both genders took part in storytelling, artwork and music, and traditional medicine.

The Kickapoos didn't live in tepees. They lived in small dome-shaped houses calledwickiups. Here is a photograph of aKickapoo wickiup and some more information aboutwickiups and other Native brush shelters. Kickapoo Indians in Mexico still live in traditonal homes like these today, but most American Kickapoos live in modern houses and apartment buildings now.

Because the Kickapoo tribe moved so many times, their style of dress changed frequently. Originally, Kickapoo men worebreechcloth and leggings and Kickapoo women wore wraparound skirts. Shirts were not necessary in the Kickapoo culture, but both men and women did wear deerskin mantles in cool weather. The Kickapoos also woremoccasins on their feet and fur caps or a beaded head band on their heads. Sometimes Kickapoo warriors wore aWhat was Kickapoo food like in the days before supermarkets?
The Kickapoo tribe's staple food was corn. Kickapoo women raised corn and baked cornbread calledroach headdress instead. (These roaches are made of porcupine hair, not their sharp quills!)

Later, the Kickapoo Indians adapted clothing from other tribes they met during their travels, including feather headdresses, fringed deerskin dresses and shirts, bandoliers, and silver jewelry. Also, though the Kickapoos ignored many European-American customs, they did start using cloth for clothing, particularly calico blouses and tiered skirts. Those styles are still popular among Kickapoo women. Men dress even more traditionally, especially in Mexico. Some Mexican Kickapoo men still wear soft leather breechcloths and leggings. Here is a link to our page onNative American clothes in general, where you can find photos and more links about these traditional clothing styles.

Not usually. The Kickapoo Indians were farming people, and when they needed to travel, they usually walked overland. There were no horses in North America until colonists brought them over from Europe, but the Kickapoos adapted to the new animals quickly, and became known as excellent riders. Most of the Kickapoo tribe's long migrations were on horseback.

pugna. They also planted squash and beans. Kickapoo men hunted deer and small game, and sometimes went fishing in the river. Here is a website with more information aboutIndian corn traditions.

Kickapoo hunters and warriors used bows and arrows, spears, and clubs. Here is a website with pictures and information aboutIndian bows and other traditional weapons.

Kickapoo artists were known for theirIndian pottery, andwood carving. Like other eastern American Indians, the Kickapoos also craftedwampum out of white and purple shell beads. Wampum beads were traded as a kind of currency, but they were more culturally important as an art material. Thedesigns and pictures on wampum belts often told the story of an important incident or represented a person's family. After moving south, some of these traditional crafts disappeared in favor of arts like beadwork and silverwork.

What other Native Americans did the Kickapoo Indian tribe interact with?
Originally, the Kickapoos were allies of theChippewa,Ottawa, andFox tribes. Together these tribes fought against theIllini and the British. After they were forced to leave their home land, the Kickapoo Indians traveled across the country, picking up customs from many different tribes along the way. The Kickapoos in Oklahoma have been especially good friends with thePotawatomi, and the Kickapoos in Texas were trading partners of theComanches and wore some Comanche-style jewelry and clothing.
Can you recommend a good book for me to read?
There's a nice photo-essay on the Kickapoo Indians called
There are lots of traditional Kickapoo legends and fairy tales. Storytelling is very important to the Kickapoo Indian culture. Here is a story aboutWisaka, the Trickster.

Spirituality and religion were important parts of Kickapoo life, and some people continue to practice traditional beliefs today. It is respectful to avoid imitating religious rituals for school projects since some Kickapoo people care about them deeply. You can read and learn about them, however. You can visit this site to learn more aboutKickapoo traditions or this site aboutAmerican Indian tradition in general.

The Texas Kickapoo, Keepers of Tradition. You can learn a lot about the Kickapoo tribe from this beautiful book. If you want to know more about Kickapoo culture and history, two interesting sources areThe Mexican Kickapoo Indians andKickapoos: Lords of the Middle Border. You can also browse through our reading list of recommended Native American literature for kids. Disclaimer: we are an Amazon affiliate and our website earns a commission if you buy a book through one of these links. Most of them can also be found in a public library, though!

You will need to ask your teacher for the format he or she wants you to use. The authors' names are Laura Redish and Orrin Lewis and the title of our site is Native Languages of the Americas. We are a nonprofit educational organization working to preserve and protect Native American languages and culture. You can learn more about our organizationhere. Our website was first created in 1998 and last updated in 2020.

Thanks for your interest in the Kickapoo Indian people and their language!

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Kickapoo Indian Tribe
An overview of the Kickapoo people, their language and history.

Kickapoo Indian Language
Kickapoo language lessons, articles, and indexed links.

Kickapoo Culture and History Directory
Related links about the Kickapoo tribe past and present.

Return to Native American Kid Links
Return to our Native American Indian cultures home page

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Would you like to help our organization p reserve the Kickapoo Indian language?

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Facts for Kids: The Kickapoo Indians (Kickapoos)

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Information about the Kikapoo or Kickapoo Indians for students and teachers. Covers traditional clothing, homes, food, and daily life in the Kickapoo Indian tribe.

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During the month of June, an assortment of pottery shards and projectile points from Galveston's earliest inhabitants - the Karankawa Indians - was on display. This collection of Native American artifacts was donated by Dr. J. O. Dyer, a local physician and historian, between 1916 and 1926.

The term "Karankawa" refers to a now-extinct group of Native American peoples who resided along the Texas Gulf Coast from Galveston Bay to Corpus Christi Bay. Though they shared a common language and way of life, there were actually three distinct tribes of Karankawa Indians: the Coaques, the Copanes, and the Carancaquacas.

Archaeological evidence shows that the Karankawas were nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in round thatch huts, or wigwams. They traveled in bands of thirty to forty people led by a chief, and their principal mode of transportation was the dugout canoe.

During the winter, the Karankawas would set up camps around the coastal bays. They subsisted on fish, shellfish, and turtles. In warmer months, the tribes would move inland to hunt deer and bison and to gather berries, nuts, and roots. Karankawa men were expert hunters and fisherman. The Karankawas crafted pottery, baskets, and weapons, including the long bow. The bow and arrow was their primary weapon for hunting and warfare.

Karankawa men were reported to have been unusually tall and heavily tattooed. They pierced various parts of their faces and bodies. Karankawa women also tattooed their skin and wore body paint. Their clothing was fashioned from animal skins or Spanish moss.

While many accounts allege that the Karankawas held elaborate cannibalistic ceremonies, this claim has been disputed by some scholars. While ritual flesh-eating of one's enemies was not uncommon among Indian tribes in Texas and Louisiana, there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that the Karankawas were among those groups which practiced cannibalism.

The Karankawa Indians first appeared on the historical record in 1528. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer, was among the shipwrecked survivors from the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition. These men landed on a small island west of Galveston that was inhabited by Karankawas. Cabeza de Vaca lived among the native peoples for several years, and much of what we know about the Karankawas comes from his written accounts.

In 1685, Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, led a French expedition along the Texas Coast. Near Matagorda Bay, he established a colony for France and named it Fort St. Louis. Soon after, the Karankawas attacked the settlers, killing all but several children whom they took captive. These children were later rescued by Spanish explorers in the early 1690s, and their accounts of life among the Karankawas provide a great deal of insight into the customs and culture of these people.

France and Spain continued sending explorers along the Texas Coast, and by the early 18th century, the Spanish had organized a number of missions to Christianize the native tribes and to make them loyal subjects. The missionary system created hostility between Spaniards and Indians, and conflicts often erupted. By the early 1800s, however, epidemic diseases introduced by the Europeans had greatly reduced the population of native peoples in the New World. The Karankawas also suffered from settlers invading their lands and competing for resources.

The Karankawas in Galveston faced a detrimental blow after a confrontation with Jean Lafitte's commune at Campeche in 1819. After Lafitte's men kidnapped a young Karankawa woman, 300 warriors from her tribe attacked the privateer's fort. Although they were far outnumbered by the Karankawas, the men at the commune were armed with two cannons. The bows and arrows of the Karankawas were no match for this deadly arsenal.

After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, Anglo-Americans were encouraged to immigrate to Texas, then a sparsely populated province. Colonists were frequently attacked by the Karankawas, and efforts were made to "exterminate" the native peoples. During the 1840s, only a few scattered tribes of Karankawa Indians remained along the Texas coast. Disease, colonization, and genocidal warfare proved to be a lethal combination. By 1858, the Karankawas were considered an extinct group of people.

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Galveston's First Settlers: The Karankawa Indians

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During the month of June, an assortment of pottery shards and projectile points from Galveston's earliest inhabitants - the Karankawa Indians - was on display. This collection of Native American artifacts was donated by Dr. J. O. Dyer, a local physician and historian, between 1916 and 1926.

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Hey, Kids!
I'm Dr. Dirt, ready to help you explore Texas Beyond History.

Just like the state of Texas, this website is really BIG! In fact, there are more than 1000 pages in here, and it's easy to get lost.

So I've put together this handy guide for you to use, whether you're doing a research paper for class or just prowling the site for fun. Happy trails!

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Hey, Kids! I'm Dr. Dirt, ready to help you explore Texas Beyond History. Just like the state of Texas, this website is really BIG! In fact, there are more than 1000 pages in here, and it's easy to get lost.

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Infotopia Presents: Texas Indians-The Alabama Coushatta

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Infotopia Presents: Texas Indians-The Alabama-Coushatta. Learn about the history and culture of the Alabama-Coushatta Indians of Texas in this continuing series on Texas Indians for 4th grade or 7th grade, or anyone who wants to learn about Texas history. Check out http://www.infotopia.info/texas_history.html for more information on Texas history.

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Mud People: The Tigua Tribe from the Pueblo of Ysleta del Sur | Only In El Paso | KCOS

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View the interactive image by Carrie McCaffrey

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Quanah Parker Trail: Follow the Arrows into History

The Comanche Indians once dominated vast areas of North America-and yet, forced onto reservations, they left little record of their...

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American Indian Heritage | Texas Time Travel

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Quanah Parker Trail: Follow the Arrows into History The Comanche Indians once dominated vast areas of North America-and yet, forced onto reservations, they left little record of their...

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Ethnologists have identified hundreds of groups of Texas "Indians," as the first European explorers to arrive called the peoples they found. Some of these were true tribes, accumulations of families or clans with social customs, traditions, and rules for order; these were occasionally quite large. At the opposite extreme, some were merely small family groups whose names or ethnic designations were taken for "tribal" names by the Spanish and French and in subsequent secondary literature. The extant names of Texas Indian groups present a dazzling array of variants, partly because the Spanish, French, and English heard the newly "discovered" peoples differently and recorded their names differently. Some names in the historical records are mistakes for groups that never existed.

Spanish period. The variety of the peoples and cultures whom Europeans first found in Texas and the different histories of each group make generalizations about Indians hazardous. Texas was not simply a Spanish-Indian or Anglo-Indian frontier, but rather a multisided frontier, a Spanish-Anglo-Comanche-Wichita-Apache-etc. frontier, where multiple groups acted for their own reasons. A few generalizations, however, apply to all Texas Indian groups. First, diseases introduced by the Europeans decimated them, especially after mission and military institutions brought people in contact so that they could be infected ( see HEALTH AND MEDICINE). More broadly, anthropologist John C. Ewers has identified no fewer than thirty major epidemics -mainly of smallpox and cholera-between 1528 and 1890 that wiped out perhaps 95 percent of Texas Indians.

Texas also became a "horse-and-gun" frontier for Indians located between competing European powers. French and English traders from the East introduced firearms to the Indians in order to purchase peltry from them and win them as allies in both trade and war. The Spanish introduced horses. Groups able to obtain these two important items had a powerful advantage over others. The introduction of the horse, especially, produced nothing less than a cultural, technological, and economic revolution, enabling groups to move their habitats, intensify their raiding and trading activities, and hunt buffalo more effectively. When the French gun trade met the Spanish horse trade in the late 1600s, the situation impelled the Spanish to settle Texas in order to block French efforts to move southward and westward toward the Spanish provinces of Mexico and New Mexico. Texas, in effect, was of little importance except as a buffer to be occupied for the protection of more important Spanish possessions.

In the late 1680s, Spanish soldiers and missionaries ventured far beyond existing Spanish settlement to the woodland home of the Caddo Indians. The Caddos were twenty-five to thirty distinct groups that shared the same language, political structure, and religious beliefs and ceremonies. In the 1690s they assembled themselves into three loose confederacies-the westernmost Hasinai Indians (including the Tejas Indians or Tay-sha, from whom Texas got its name; see TEXAS, ORIGIN OF NAME) settled on the Angelina and Neches rivers, the Kadodachos along the bend of the Red River at what is now the Texas-Louisiana-Arkansas border, and the eastern Natchitoch Indians. The Caddos were an agricultural people who lived in stable villages and were not especially warlike except for their traditional conflicts with Osages to the north and Tonkawa bands to the west over hunting grounds. Franciscans and Spanish soldiers settled among the Hasinais in 1689. Caddos resisted Spanish efforts to "reduce" them to compact towns; instead, they preferred to live in small clusters stretching through fertile river valleys. The missionaries had little success in converting them to Christianity, and resorted in frustration to ridicule of Caddo beliefs in the effort. A smallpox epidemic swept through the area in the winter of 1690-91, killing 3,000 Caddos, whose religious leaders blamed the friars for the pestilence. Aside from disease, Caddo tenacity in holding onto their religion, and the disrespect offered by the missionaries, other problems smoldered as well. The Caddos invited the Spanish into their villages mainly to get trade advantages, especially a steady supply of firearms with which to defend themselves against Osage raids, but trade was meager and the Spanish refused to supply weapons. Furthermore, Spanish soldiers committed such outrages as molesting Caddo women. Finally, in 1693 a caddi (chief) informed a soldier that "all of his people were very annoyed with the Spanish and it would be better if the Spanish went and left his lands"; then he told a priest ("with much ridicule", the priest said) that his people often spoke of throwing out the Spanish. When the Spanish left the next year, four soldiers deserted and joined the Hasinais. Although the Spanish reestablished their presence among the Caddos twenty years later, few Caddos accepted Christianity, and the Spanish never supplied goods with the quality and regularity that the French provided. Caddo agriculture thrived and, combined with the hunt and a strong trade with other tribes, enabled them to withstand Spanish efforts to control them.

The Spanish entry into Texas altered regional trade networks and led the Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa Indians to migrate into the South Plains to be nearer the supply of Spanish horses. The Spanish also established missions among smaller groups that needed protection from more powerful northern invaders. The Jumanos, who lived on the western tributaries of the Colorado River and along the Pecos River and the Rio Grande, were targets of Spanish slave raids to obtain laborers for mines in Chihuahua. By the mid-1600s, however, they had positioned themselves as middlemen, trading Pueblo Indian textiles and turquoise, Caddo bows, Spanish metals and horses, and their own buffalo hides. This advantageous situation ended with the entrance onto the South Plains of the Apaches, who cut off the Jumanos from the New Mexico pueblos. Many small tribes sided with the Spanish in campaigns against the aggressive Apaches, but by the decade after 1710 the Jumanos had been so severely defeated that they lost their distinct cultural identity. Some merged with their former enemies, the Apaches, while others became wage laborers in Chihuahua and gradually blended into the Mexican populace.

A similar fate befell the Coahuiltecan Indians, who lived in small bands between the San Antonio River and the Rio Grande and along the Balcones Escarpment. Their only defense against Apache attacks was to congregate in the newly formed Spanish missions. San Antonio, in fact, was founded primarily as a cluster of missions with a presidio serving the small Coahuiltecan, Jumano, and other bands who needed protection from the Apaches. By the early nineteenth century, these peoples had intermarried and become so acculturated among the Spanish Mexicans that their ethnic identity as "Indians" was lost and they entered the lower strata of Hispanic society. San Antonio was a mixed blessing to both the Indian bands and the Spanish. While affording some protection from Apaches, the growing settlement also attracted Apache raids. In 1723 Spanish forces battled a large Apache camp in what is now Brown County, killing thirty-four warriors, including the chief. Such decisive victories were rare, however, and San Antonio and nearby missions continued to be plagued by Apache raids.

The Apaches themselves had a problem more severe than the Spanish. Just as they had displaced weaker bands from the South Plains, they too resisted dislocation at the hands of a more powerful newcomer to the region-the Comanches. Since the Apaches practiced some agriculture, their seasonal settlements were ripe targets for the completely nomadic Comanches. Eventually, the Comanches ousted the Apaches from the South Plains buffalo range. Some Apache groups moved westward into New Mexico, but others-Lipan Apaches-moved southeasterly to the area between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Relations with the Spanish were strained. On the one hand, the Apaches needed to ally with them against the Comanches; on the other, Lipan Apaches continued to raid San Antonio, and their recent displacement had brought them closer to the town. The Comanche sweep into the area was facilitated, like the Apache migration earlier, by the horse. Horses not only gave greater mobility and revolutionized Indian culture; they also became the primary measure of wealth and status. At the time the Comanches decisively defeated the previous South Plains inhabitants, they also established connections with French gun traders through Caddo and Wichita bands and thus became the most formidable opponents the Spanish ever faced.

The term tribe should be used with caution in regard to the Comanches. Though they had a common language and way of life, they had no political institutions or social mechanisms by which they acted as a unit. Comanche families formed bands that acted autonomously from each other. Bands have generally been delineated geographically-as "northern," "middle," "southern," and "Llano Estacado"-but Comanche bands did not really adhere to any distinct territorial boundaries. Furthermore, Comanche bands were not fixed institutions; they broke apart, reformed, and merged over the years. A man's connection to a band was one of free association, and he moved from one to another at will. Band populations fluctuated with the popularity of their leaders, mainly based on success at procuring horses and defeating enemies. Because of this type of social organization, no band leader could really control the behavior of individuals, as the Spanish (and later the Americans) learned. Comanche rank and social status were determined by war honors and the accumulation of horses taken from enemies. Horses were the most important type of property, a medium of exchange, and the measure of one's worth. Horse culture promoted decentralized and nomadic living arrangements because of the pasture needed by large horse herds. Horse raiding and trading characterized the Comanche role in Texas. It was not in the Comanches' interest to destroy or drive away Europeans; by using the margins of Spanish (and later Mexican and Anglo) settlement as sources of plunder, they enriched themselves while retarding colonial expansion into their region. In their middleman role, Comanches supplied horses and goods derived from buffalo hunting in exchange for the agricultural surplus of other groups, such as the Wichita bands, and firearms from European-American traders.

A similar maximization of power through the horse-and-gun trade occurred for the Wichitas, another group that migrated from the north in the early 1700s. A confederation of several linguistically related bands ( Tawakoni, Taovaya, Iscani, Wichitas, Toweash), these people moved southward to get away from the more powerful and European-armed Osages. The Wichitas eventually lived on both sides of the Red River, a prime location where they stood between the Comanches and the French and profited accordingly. The Wichita bands subsisted by farming and hunting buffalo. They traded surplus crops to the Comanches for horses, then supplied horses to the French and Caddos living to the east. This trade system-from the French through the Caddos through the Wichitas to the Comanches-defined the diplomacy, economy, and general issues of war and peace from the early 1700s until the early years of Anglo-American settlement near the South Plains. The Wichitas originally made peace overtures to the Spanish in San Antonio, but the Spanish could not compete with the French trade. Also, the Spanish had established amicable relations with the Lipans in the early 1750s, much to the dismay of the Wichitas and everyone else who fought the Lipans in competition for hunting grounds. The Spanish were seen as protectors of the Lipans, for whom they established Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission on the San Saba River. The Lipans could not settle at San Antonio because the mission Indians and Spanish settlers feared them. Spanish officials believed San Sabá Mission would serve as a buffer between the Comanches and San Antonio and perhaps begin a chain of settlements between San Antonio and Santa Fe, New Mexico. They had not realized, however, that the mission would also become an attractive target for enemies of the Lipan Apaches. In March 1758, 2,000 warriors surrounded the mission, firing their French muskets into the air. This force, a conglomeration of Comanches, Wichitas, Tonkawas, Caddos, and others, told the Spanish soldiers not to fear them, that they only wished to attack some Apaches who had been raiding them. At the end of the day, thirty-five Apaches and Spaniards lay dead as the warriors looted and burned the mission. The meager Spanish military force, numbering fewer than sixty, had no choice but to remain barricaded in the nearby presidio.

The destruction of the mission was a severe blow to the Spanish and Lipans, but the larger meaning of the event swept fear through the province-2,000 warriors representing several groups had united in a concerted attack, displaying large quantities of firearms and notable skill in using them. The Spanish forces scattered through the various presidios of Texas were no match for such formidable opponents. Mission Indians in San Antonio fled southward to escape a predicted onslaught. Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla, commander of San Sabá Presidio ( see SAN LUIS DE LAS AMARILLAS), organized a punitive campaign against the attackers with more than 600 men, including Lipans, the next year. The objective Ortiz chose was a cluster of Wichita villages on the Red River anchored by the Taovayas. The Indians had constructed a split-rail fort with spaces between the rails for warriors inside to fire their guns. Outside the stockade (for which present-day Spanish Fort is named, although it was actually a Taovaya fort) they made a steep embankment, and beyond that dug a deep moat to prevent horsemen from nearing the walls of the fort. Inside the 130-by-80-yard fortress, the Taovayas had dug four large underground rooms to shelter noncombatants. Ortiz encountered this imposing structure in October 1759. The Taovayas, who had skirmished with Ortiz earlier, protected themselves in the fort, laughing at the Spanish and daring them to try to enter. Indians opened fire from behind the walls, and mounted warriors charged out of the fort at the Spanish line. The battle lasted four hours before Ortiz fell back after nightfall. The fort's defenders obviously had an unlimited amount of ammunition, and Ortiz's Apache scouts could find no approach to the walls. The Taovayas showed greater discipline under fire than his own militiamen and outnumbered him as well, as other Wichita groups sent warriors to aid their kinsmen. Ortiz left the battlefield so quickly that he abandoned two pieces of artillery, which the Wichitas kept as trophies.

The failed assault on the Taovaya fortress demonstrated the limits of Spanish power on the frontier. The Spaniards could make isolated forays into the South Plains and inflict light damage, but they could never get the upper hand against Wichitas and Comanches and had to treat them practically as diplomatic equals. The battle also represented the high point of Wichita strength. Within a few years the Wichitas made peace with the Spanish, mainly because the Seven Years' War between France and Great Britain caused the French in Louisiana to cut back on the trade goods sent to western tribes. Likewise, at least one Comanche band, under a chief named Povea, made peace in San Antonio in 1772, but the chief reminded the Spanish that he could speak only for his own band, not for all Comanches. Spanish relations with the Lipans, never good, deteriorated after the San Saba-Wichita campaign fiasco. Lipans abandoned the missions for good and increased their stock raids on San Antonio. Trade and common enemies influenced Spanish efforts to establish friendly relations with Comanches, Wichitas, and Caddos, who were encouraged by Spanish officials in the early 1770s to finish off the Lipans. Although by 1779 the Lipans had once again made peace with San Antonio, hostilities between them and the other tribes continued for decades.

The Lipans sought allies, but found few. One group, the Tonkawas, formed an alliance with them that lasted more than a century, during which both groups dwindled. The Tonkawas were another small group shoved out of the South Plains buffalo range by the Comanches. Unlike the Lipans, they practiced no agriculture. Though originally known to the Spanish as four distinct bands, the Tonkawas unified in the mid-1700s as a response to epidemics and war losses. They were despised by other Indians not just for their raiding and competition for hunting grounds but also because they had a reputation for cannibalism. Tonkawa warriors ceremonially cut off the hands and feet of slain enemies and ate them; this practice, described first-hand by a few white witnesses (such as John S. "Rip" Ford in the 1850s), led enemies to seek even greater vengeance for the desecration of their dead kinsmen's bodies. The Tonkawas were even more outcast than the Lipans. The Lipans also allied briefly in the 1780s with groups of East Texas Indians, mainly to establish a source for guns and ammunition other than San Antonio. They made contacts with the small Atakapa bands on the lower Trinity River, who had been given two meager Spanish missions in an attempt to block French expansion. The missions never successfully reduced these hunter-gatherers, who had French contacts through the Caddos. At a trade fair held on the Guadalupe River in 1782, Lipans met Tonkawas, Atakapas, and Caddos and traded 1,000 Spanish horses for 270 guns. Such trade continued for four years, and the Caddos, although friendly to the Spanish, were oblivious to Spanish warnings to end it. By the end of the decade, the Caddos were forced to abandon the trade with the Lipans, as the Spanish again turned all the other tribes (including the Tonkawas, briefly) against the Lipans.

The Spanish policy of Indian alliances depended upon trade. Their failure to supply goods, especially firearms and ammunition, regularly or in abundance caused peaceful relations to stop and start and never be firmly established. The Spanish colonial bureaucratic structure also contributed to Wichita and Comanche disillusionment, as the viceregal authorities in Mexico City did not adequately understand the situation on its northern margins and communication was slow. Finally, increased Comanche raids led Mexico City to conclude that peace treaties were useless. Only one or two bands of Comanches had actually made peace with the Spanish, and their social structure had no way of preventing bold young men from going off to attain wealth and war honors. Raiding enabled the Comanches and other groups to circumvent Spanish attempts to control trade and regulate access to horses. Spanish power in Texas further unraveled in the beginning of the nineteenth century due to events in elsewhere in the empire. The Napoleonic Wars in Europe made Spain and Portugal battlegrounds for several years, and the crown had to attend to matters on its doorstep. At the same time, the wars of independence swept through the Americas, including Mexico. In 1821, the Republic of Mexico became independent after the eleven-year Mexican War of Independence, and Texas was included within its boundaries. In the end, the Spanish were no longer able to supply adequate trade to Indians or to station a respectable military presence on the frontier. Always an area of marginal importance in the large imperial scheme, Texas was the neglected fringe of a collapsing empire.

Republics of Mexico and Texas. The problems associated with the final years of Spanish rule and Indian relations were inherited by the government of the new Republic of Texas. Most missions had been abandoned; the only active ones were in the vicinity of San Antonio and Goliad. Political upheavals in Mexico City caused virtually annual changes of government and contributed to the neglect of the frontier. As during Spanish rule, the frontier communities of Texas had little to attract settlers from other parts of Mexico. Raids by Comanches, Apaches, and others also checked Mexico's frontier development, and the increase in such raids reflected the changing conditions of the region. At the time of Spanish decline and Mexican independence, traders from the United States began to venture onto the Plains and establish contacts with Santa Fe and the Indian groups between the United States and New Mexico. Mexico was unable to repair broken trade alliances or impose order militarily. Because the American trade gave the Indians a new, strong market and steady source of firearms, raiding increased in the northern states of Mexico. The Republic of Mexico responded to these changes on its frontier by encouraging immigration from elsewhere.

Most significantly for the Indians of Texas, two new types of immigrant entered the province-Indian bands from the eastern United States and Anglo-Americans. Indian migration from the east began in the 1790s as Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama-Coushatta, and Creek hunting parties, reacting to the decline of game in their traditional homelands, seasonally and temporarily entered Texas. Over time, eastern bands found it more convenient to trade deerskins locally than to carry them back east. Expanding white settlement also pushed them westward. By the first decade of the 1800s, the Alabama Indians had established a town on the Neches River above its junction with the Angelina River, and the Coushattas had settled on the Trinity. Relations between the Caddos and these newcomers were generally friendly, although the Caddos occasionally clashed in the early years with Choctaw hunting parties. For the most part, however, the Caddos welcomed the immigrants as allies against the Osages. A second and larger wave of Indians from the east occurred after the War of 1812, as the United States removed the British influence on its frontier and established its unilateral control over frontier tribes. Several tribes, such as the Shawnee and Delaware Indians, had sided with the British in the war, and individual bands moved into Texas. The Creek confederacy had been badly splintered by a civil war during the War of 1812. One faction was soundly defeated by Gen. Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama in 1814, and many of its refugees moved west. Even some groups that had peaceful relations with the United States, such as the Cherokees, moved because of their role in the fur trade and the pressure of white expansion on their traditional lands. By 1820, the concept of "removing" eastern Indians westward began to be discussed by United States politicians; although the policy was not enacted until 1830, many groups understood the implications and left the United States by moving to Texas. The Mexican government welcomed the immigrants and promised them land titles in East Texas, but no titles were ever formally secured.

The Indian migration into East Texas in the 1820s coincided with another important influx-that of Anglo-American immigrants, both legal and illegal. During the Texas Revolution the independence forces sought conciliation with nearby Indians to keep them from allying with the Mexican army. Most bands were neutral, and some, such as the Shawnees, were willing to join in the fight against Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna. Sam Houston planned to raise a 300-man force of Cherokees, Delawares, Shawnees, and Kickapoos with payments of cash and plunder, but this plan never materialized. The fear that Indians might side with Santa Anna seems to have been greatest during the period between the fall of the Alamo and the Texas victory at San Jacinto. It does not appear to have been grounded in the Indians' behavior but on a general fear that the entire rebellion was falling apart. Nevertheless, the specter of potential Indian hostility remained even after the crisis had ended, and it remained important in the new republic's policies. Certainly, the tribes did listen to Mexican agents who visited them, but on the whole they remained neutral out of doubt about which side would win. The Indian scare had one very significant effect on Texas independence: the widespread rumors of Indian hostility persuaded United States troops from Louisiana to cross into Texas and occupy Nacogdoches in 1836, thus ending the Texans' eastward flight at the same time as the battle of San Jacinto.

In an effort to maintain good relations with the Indians, the provisional government declared in November 1835 that the East Texas bands had just claims to their land and that definite boundaries should be drawn for them. Indian land rights would be respected, explained the General Council, "so as not to compromise the interest of Texas." In February 1836, Sam Houston made a treaty with the Quapaw, Choctaw, Biloxi, Alabama, Coushatta, Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and Kickapoo Indians and with various Caddo bands, which established a reservation where all would live, bounded by the Angelina, Neches, and Sabine rivers and the Old San Antonio Road. According to the treaty, the land could not be sold or alienated to any entity but the Republic of Texas, Indians could have their own laws as long as they were not contrary to Texas law, and the republic would regulate all Indian trade. This first treaty of the Republic of Texas was never ratified by either the provisional government or the Texas Senate. Later, the Texas government realized that no Indians had been granted land titles by the Mexican government, and used this as justification for expelling most of them from Texas.

Texans knew little about the Indians within the borders they claimed, and they had to figure out the proper policies to be followed. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs tried to delineate the various groups in October 1837 by identifying bands, estimating their length of residency in Texas, and evaluating their relations to others. The Coushattas, Alabamas, Biloxis, and Creeks were identified as living near Nacogdoches and resident in Texas for fifty years. The Choctaws were reported to have lived in Texas for only ten years and thus to have "no pretensions to the soil." The committee distinguished several Caddo bands, identifying them as friendly to the hostile "Prairie Indians" (the confederacy of Wichita bands that had raided white settlements since the establishment of Stephen F. Austin's first colony). The "Prairie Indians" were described as hunters and horsemen living high up the Brazos and Trinity rivers and friendly with the Comanches. Since the Comanches did not live near the white settlements of East Texas, members of the new government knew little about them except that they were "the natural enemies of the Mexicans whom they contemptuously denominate their stock keepers and out of which nation they procure slaves." The committee believed a treaty of friendship-and alliance with them against Mexico-was possible. Other groups were identified as current residents of Texas but not the government's responsibility. The "Northern Indians" (Kickapoos, Shawnees, Delawares, and Potawatomis) had migrated a decade earlier from the United States and consequently were deemed that nation's responsibility. The Lipans and Tonkawas, on the other hand, were considered by the committee to be part of the Mexican nation, even though the Tonkawas' tenure in Texas predated the Europeans' and the Lipans had arrived a century and a half before Texas independence. The committee made a few errors in its analysis of Texas Indians, as indicated by its description of the Tonkawas and Lipans, but it did trace the Caddo-Wichita-Comanche connection and the Comanches' raiding activities against Mexicans. It also identified and located most of the bands that had migrated from the United States and tried to establish their length of residency in relation to the arrival of Anglo-Americans. Generally, the committee identified as "native" any group that lived in Texas before Stephen F. Austin; the Alabama and Coushattas, for example, were considered natives of Texas despite their migration from Alabama because they predated Austin's colony. The Shawnees, on the other hand, were classed as "emigrants" for having moved to Texas at approximately the same time as Austin. In reality, the "native-emigrant" division was fluid and inconsistent, and it meant relatively little in terms of the republic's policies and actions.

The Indian policy of the Republic of Texas was for the most part defined by the president, especially Sam Houston and Mirabeau B. Lamar, whose divergent policies defined the spectrum of debate about how to handle the Indians. Houston advocated a policy of fairness and friendship toward the Indians because "natural reason will teach them the utility of our friendship," he explained in his 1836 presidential inaugural address. He believed Indians, as rational human beings, would find it in their best interests to maintain peace with Texans. On a more practical level, Houston understood that trade connections and the recognition of reservation lands were less costly than war, that they would gradually foster Indian dependency on the government, and that the more mobile horse tribes would be very difficult to find and defeat decisively. Lamar took a far more bellicose position. "The proper policy to be pursued towards the barbarian race, is absolute expulsion from the country," he said in 1839. "The white man and the red man cannot dwell in harmony together. Nature forbids it." The republic's Indian policy was greatly influenced by considerations of how the various Indian groups figured into the ongoing conflict between Texas and Mexico. The apprehension that they would join the Mexicans so permeated public attitudes and government policy that this fear was exploited to justify dispossession of the Indians. The Mexican forces in Matamoros did hope to win Indian alliances and to reoccupy Texas, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. Texans, however, saw the hand of Mexico in several violent clashes between whites and Indians, and this fed the popular belief that Houston's conciliatory policy was a failure. The campaigns against East Texas Indians in the late 1830s are illustrative. When some Mexican residents of Nacogdoches led by Vicente Córdova rebelled in 1838, individual warriors of several tribes joined them. Córdova first camped on Cherokee land, and although Cherokee chief Duwali (commonly known as Bowl or Bowles) never cooperated with him, the chief held discussions with both sides, an astute move unappreciated by Texans. Gen. Thomas J. Rusk led troops into Cherokee country and chased Córdova to the Kickapoos, who had already been suspected of frontier raids. Rusk assured the Kickapoo chief that he had no intention of attacking the Indians, but he privately believed that an opportune moment had come to expel them. Several weeks later he attacked the Kickapoo village and, after a sharp fight in which eleven Indians were killed, burned it. Days later, Texans destroyed a Caddo village on the West Fork of the Trinity, killing six, even though they had no apparent connection to Córdova.

Aside from the fear of Indian alliance with Mexico, questions of national sovereignty also made Texans want to erase Indian enclaves in regions filling up with white settlers. Recognition of Indian land rights, Lamar insisted, would be "parcelling out our territory to strangers and intruders, and introducing into the very viscera of the body politic an alien, independent and innately hostile people." Most Texans agreed with Lamar that whites and Indians could not live as neighbors, although Houston maintained that a reservation with well-defined and enforced boundaries could exist peacefully surrounded by whites.

Examples of skirmishes in East Texas abound in this period. Whites did suffer from raids, and they sought retribution. In some cases, Texans did not bother to discern which Indians had committed offenses and punished any Indians they found. In 1840, for example, a small party of Indians killed two whites near Nacogdoches; a white party in pursuit found the raiders' camp, but the culprits had fled. Instead of continuing the pursuit, reported a Houston newspaper, "the party fell back upon a village of Choctaws, and after killing eleven of them returned home." Two years earlier, a man who had lost some horses believed Caddos had taken them, so he went to their village and attempted to kidnap several women and children; three Indians and two whites were killed in the skirmish. The man later found his horses, which had only strayed from his farm. These skirmishes occurred at a time when East Texas was filling up with both white settlers and Indian refugees from the United States. At the time of the Texas Revolution, the Caddos living in Louisiana had signed a treaty agreeing to move out of the United States-so they crossed the border to join their kinsmen in Texas and greatly alarmed white settlers. During this tense period the Texas Senate renounced the treaty Houston had made in 1836, thus provoking encroachment on Indian land by surveyors and squatters and retaliatory raids by exasperated Indians. As always, the fear of an Indian alliance with Mexico was prevalent.

The impetus for offensive action against the Cherokees and others came in 1839, when Texas Rangers killed Manuel Flores, a Mexican agent sent to recruit East Texas Indians. Among his effects was found a letter from a Mexican general proposing an alliance. Since the courier had been killed before delivering the message, obviously the Indians had not seen it; nevertheless, this incident was all Lamar needed to link the Cherokees to the Mexicans. He offered to pay the Cherokees for any improvements they had made on their land but not for the land itself, in accordance with his position that they had no title. As General Rusk succinctly told Cherokee, Shawnee, and Delaware leaders, "The wild Indians and Mexicans & we are enemies. It is impossible for you to be friendly to both of us....You are between two fires & if you remain will be destroyed." Chief Bowl agreed to leave, but insisted on remaining until his people's corn could be harvested. He also refused to surrender his warrior's gunlocks, perhaps because the Cherokees had no consensus for removal and he did not want to cause dissent among his people. He declined a Texan escort to the Red River, stating he "had come to this Country by himself and wished to return in the same way." These negotiations accomplished nothing, however, because Texans believed the Cherokees were only stalling until the Mexicans invaded. So they attacked the Cherokee town, destroyed it and the cornfields, killed Duwali, and sent the refugees north of Red River ( see CHEROKEE WAR). Two weeks after the Cherokees' defeat, the Shawnees and Delawares, who had been among the friendliest Indians to the whites and had not been implicated in the documents found on Flores, agreed to virtually the same removal terms. Unlike the Cherokees, they surrendered their gunlocks and accepted the escort out of the country. Pecan, a Shawnee leader, "apprehended that times could be worse" and said "he did not like a fuss[,] that he was going away to avoid it."

The campaigns chased the Caddos westward onto the prairies, wiped out the Kickapoo and Cherokee settlements, and intimidated the Shawnees and Delawares into leaving the republic. Caddos, Shawnees, Delawares, and others had been so splintered by warfare and dislocation that they combined into one multitribal town near the Three Forks of the Trinity. There they traded buffalo robes, tended livestock, and planted 300 acres of corn until 1841, when a force of Texas Rangers destroyed the town, burned the fields, and took the buffalo robes and cattle as prizes. Viewed as a whole, the Republic of Texas waged a successful campaign to clear East Texas of Indians, to rid the area of an undesirable race, and to open it to economic development. The Alabamas and Coushattas, however, present an exception. Though subjected to the same treatment as other Indian groups, they did not retaliate (and thus provoke more white attacks) and looked instead to the government for satisfaction. The fact that they rendered aid to the cause of independence in 1836 worked in their favor; at that time, Alabamas and Coushattas helped retreating white families cross the Trinity River and cared for them while Texans under Houston met Santa Anna at San Jacinto. In recognition of this, the republic assigned the Alabama-Coushattas two leagues of land along the lower Trinity River.

The republic's relations with the Comanches changed drastically in the late 1830s. As mentioned earlier, whites knew relatively little about them at first; Anglo-American settlers lived far enough away from them not to be victimized by Comanche raids but close enough to be considered by the Comanches as a market for horses taken from Mexico and buffalo robes. But the relentless advance of white settlement, the new government's refusal to recognize Comanche territorial sovereignty with established borderlines, and the fact that white Texans took a much harder line against the Comanches than the Mexicans previously had taken resulted in unyielding warfare by 1840. With the westward advance of white settlement, the Comanches had new communities to raid. In the summer of 1836, Comanches took more than 100 horses from settlements, taking advantage of the unstable state of affairs during the war for independence. The first serious counterblow occurred in February 1839, but with mixed results. A company of rangers assisted by the Comanches' Lipan Apache enemies penetrated the Comanche heartland, something that had never been done before. The Lipans, who originally proposed the expedition, found a Comanche camp on a creek in the San Saba valley, and they and the rangers charged into it at dawn, "throwing open the doors of the wigwams or pulling them down and slaughtering the enemy in their beds," reported the commander, Col. John H. Moore. The Comanches regrouped and counterattacked as the Texans reloaded their firearms, and Moore was forced to pull back. Soon the Texans found themselves surrounded by hundreds of Comanches, who rode up with a white flag and proposed a prisoner swap. Later, as the rangers rode toward home, the Comanches stole their horses, and they had to walk home the last 100 miles, carrying their wounded.

The incident that most irreparably altered Texan-Comanche relations was the Council House Fight of 1840. The Comanches went to San Antonio to negotiate a land treaty and return white captives. Secretary of War Albert Sidney Johnston, however, instructed negotiators not to make any promises that would compromise the republic's ability to decide unilaterally the conditions of residence of any Indian tribe, and further to hold the Comanche delegation hostage until all "American Captives" were surrendered ( see INDIAN CAPTIVES). At the Council House in San Antonio, a traditional meetingplace for Indian negotiations, the Comanches delivered up a teenage girl, who told the Texans that she had seen many other white captives in the large Comanche camp outside of town. Muke-war-wah, the main Comanche spokesman, claimed, "We have brought in the only one we had; the others are with other tribes." Given the decentralized Comanche society, the girl may indeed have been the only captive in Muke-war-wah's band, and he had no authority to deal in captives held by others. Whatever the truth may have been, the Texans assumed he was lying and told the Comanche delegation that they were going to be hostages until more whites were brought in. The delegation rushed the door, stabbing soldiers, and all twelve Comanches in the Council House were shot to death. The gunfire prompted the warriors outside the building to take up the fight, and a general melee ensued through the streets of San Antonio. When the battle ended, thirty-five Comanches and seven whites had been killed, 100 horses and a great number of buffalo hides had been taken by the whites, and some twenty-nine Comanche women and children had been taken prisoner. In turn, the fight provoked the largest Indian raid since the attack on the San Saba mission eighty-two years earlier. Five hundred Comanches sacked Victoria and Linnville and raided all the way to the Gulf of Mexico ( see LINNVILLE RAID OF 1840). On their return to their own territory, however, they were cut off by militia companies from the Colorado River counties and defeated at the battle of Plum Creek.

Later that year, Colonel Moore conducted another campaign well into Comanche territory, much more successful than his attack a year earlier. Once again, he took his troops far from white settlements and attacked a Comanche camp discovered by his Lipan allies. The villagers fled the attack by running into the river, but the steep banks on the other side proved difficult to climb. Texan marksmen killed them as they slipped and scrambled on the banks. Twice as many Indians were killed in the river than in the initial attack on the village, and approximately 120 bodies littered the site.

The Council House Fight loomed in the memories of Comanches; government officials often found themselves negotiating with men who had lost family members in the battle. Comanches were leery of sending representatives to meetings because they did not want to prominent leaders to be taken hostage. They declined to send a delegation to one council unless four whites were sent to them as hostages guaranteeing the safety of the four chiefs who would attend. Though bitter warfare seemed unavoidable, Sam Houston, upon regaining the presidency in 1841, continued to pursue peace overtures. He wanted to establish territorial boundaries for the Comanches, but Congress always voted down such provisions. The 1844 treaty of Tehuacana Creek ( see TEHUACANA CREEK COUNCILS), for example, drew a line from the Cross Timbers to Comanche Peak (now in Hood County) to the ruins of the San Saba mission, then southwesterly to the Rio Grande, but this boundary provision was deleted from the ratified version. Even when treaties were made, the Republic of Texas learned what had plagued Spain and Mexico earlier-that an agreement with one Comanche band had no bearing on the half dozen or so others that continued to raid. The Comanches learned that white settlers would continue to encroach on their territory, and that the government could not stop them even if it was so inclined.

Unlike the other groups discussed earlier, the Tonkawas and Lipans allied early with the Republic of Texas. They did so for the same reasons they had previously sought the friendship of Spain, Mexico, and the Caddos-they were small, shrinking groups, and they needed allies to defend themselves against the Comanches when they ventured onto the buffalo range west of San Antonio. They resided between the Colorado and San Antonio rivers in the 1830s and 1840s. They assisted Texans in retrieving horses taken by raiding Wichitas and Caddos, and they joined Texas Rangers in campaigns against the Comanches, as noted earlier. Unfortunately for them, such assistance did not make the Texans treat them differently from other Indians. In one case, a group of Texans and Mexicans in Goliad stole horses from a Tonkawa camp while the warriors were serving with the Texas army on the Nueces frontier. Though many Texans recognized the injustice of the incident, too many potential jurors in the Goliad area were involved in it for the authorities to prosecute the thieves. The Tonkawas responded by robbing and killing some whites, thus arousing residents of Goliad to talk of exterminating them. Thereupon the Tonkawas moved and by the 1840s were living near Bastrop, begging for food, hiring out as cottonpickers during the harvest season, and buying liquor from unscrupulous storekeepers. Members of the Texas Congress attempted to recognize their service to the republic by reserving for them two fourteen-square-mile reservations on the Brazos and Colorado rivers beyond white settlement, a location where they could serve as a buffer against Comanche raids; this proposal, however, was defeated, as were all other similar measures.

Statehood. Texas entered the United States in 1845-46 ( see ANNEXATION), and the situation for Indians was altered. For one change, raiders such as the Comanches, Kiowas, and Wichitas had to learn that the Americans and Texans were one people now, and that they could not rob one and sell the loot to the other, although unscrupulous frontier traders did this for a while. For another, the United States was obligated by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to block Indian raids into Mexico, a part of the agreement that the Comanches did not respect because they had not been consulted. The United States army built forts along the border and tried to maintain a forceful presence in the area. Ecological and demographic changes also took place in the late 1840s and 1850s. With entry into the Union, immigration to Texas rose considerably. The state's population tripled between 1850 and 1860, the country west of San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas filled up with settlers, and the new army forts attracted settlements that sprang up near them. The influx of newcomers and the passing caravans of Forty-niners on their way to the goldfields of California also brought a new wave of disease that laid waste the Indians. The Comanches were hit by smallpox in 1848 and cholera in 1849, when by some estimates half their population died, including such leaders as Santa Anna and Mopechucope (Old Owl), who had been influential advocates of peaceful relations. If this were not enough, the buffalo population began declining during the same period. Partly, the expansion of white settlement and the federally sponsored "Indian removal" program that put 50,000 eastern Indians on the margins of the South Plains reduced available buffalo range and increased the number of people hunting them. But the Indians' hunting style also contributed. They preferred to hunt buffalo cows because their meat was more tender and their hides easier to process into finer robes; the overhunting of breeding-age females contributed to the decline of the buffalo. As the herds shrank, Comanches took to eating their horses, and this depletion of their most important form of property impelled them to increase their cattle raids on both sides of the Rio Grande. They also attack outsiders who hunted buffalo.

The most important change affecting Indians when Texas joined the United States, however, had to do with relations between the state and federal governments. The federal government, constitutionally mandated to be in charge of Indian affairs, took over that role in Texas, but the new state retained control of its public lands. In all other new territories, Washington controlled both public lands and Indian affairs and so could make treaties guaranteeing reservations for various groups. In Texas, however, the federal government could not do this. The state adamantly refused to contribute public land for Indian reservations within the boundaries of Texas, all the while expecting Washington to bear the expense and responsibility of Indian affairs. Since federal Indian agents in Texas understood that guaranteeing Indian land rights was the key to peace, no peace could be possible with the intransigent attitude of state officials on the land question. Furthermore, Texans in the decade before the Civil War were highly critical of the inability of the army to defeat the Indians decisively and prevent raids; many believed that Texas protected its white citizens better when it was independent. This attitude regarding frontier policy became important when Texas seceded from the union in 1861.

Only once did the Texas legislature relent in its opposition to reservations. In 1854 state officials gave in to federal requests and established two small reservations on the Brazos River near Fort Belknap ( see BRAZOS INDIAN RESERVATION, and COMANCHE INDIAN RESERVATION). On one, remnants of Caddo and Wichita bands and the Tonkawas, with a few Shawnees and Delawares who had married into the Caddos, established themselves. On the other the Comanches were supposed to settle. Only a small group of Comanches, elements of the Penateka band, came to the reservation, while their kinsmen continued to live freely and raid the frontier. The reservation plan might have worked had the area not filled up with white settlers almost immediately. Since the whites established horse and cattle ranches, the area naturally became a target for Comanche, Kiowa, and Kickapoo raids; whites believed the proximity of the reservations had something to do with the raids, and blamed the reservation population for either conducting or abetting them. There may be some justification for accusing the reservation Comanches, since they entertained nonreservation Comanche visitors and their social structure could not prevent young men from leaving the reservation to live with other bands. The Indians of the other reservation, however, had also been the victims of stock raids. They even contributed to two important Texan victories north of the Red River. In May 1858, Rip Ford led a force of Texas Rangers and Brazos reservation warriors to the heartland of Comanche country, and the reservation Indians supplied more men than the rangers. The reservation Indians found a Comanche trail, hunted buffalo along the way to feed the expedition, and found two large Comanche camps. In the ensuing battle, seventy-six Comanches, including the celebrated Chief Iron Jacket, were killed. A year and a half later, Indians of the Brazos reservation participated in a similar campaign led by Maj. Earl Van Dorn of the United States Army. Waco and Tawakoni scouts learned the location of a Comanche camp through their Wichita kinsmen and attacked the Comanches, killing fifty-six and burning 120 lodges. "If it had not been for [the Indians' help], Major Van Dorn would not have seen a Comanche, nor would Captain Ford," explained army lieutenant William Burnet.

Regardless of their service on the frontier, however, the reservation people continued to be accused of stock thefts by frustrated ranchers in Jack, Palo Pinto, and Young counties. A few days after Christmas 1858, a party of Caddos with official permission to hunt off the reservation were attacked in their sleep by a group of whites; seven were killed. Federal Indian agents insisted that state authorities prosecute the killers, but nothing came of these requests. An organized movement led by John R. Baylor and other local residents formed to expel the reservation Indians from the state; armed parties of citizens patrolled the reservations' boundaries, and in a few instances killed Indians found outside the line. The United States Army entered the reservations to defend the Indians from vigilante violence, a move that enraged Texans and further fed their belief that the federal government's frontier policies were detrimental to the state. At one time, Baylor led armed citizens onto the reservation to force the Indians' expulsion, but the Indians (armed by the United States Army) fought back and chased the Texans away. In August 1859 federal officials negotiated the removal of the reservation Indians to new land north of the Red River on the Wichita reservation. Feeling ran so high against the Indians and their white defenders that federal Indian agent Robert Simpson Neighbors was murdered by a local white man near Fort Belknap after having removed the Indians from the state ( see RESERVATION WAR).

The expulsion of the reservation Indians did nothing to lessen the frequency or intensity of Comanche and Kiowa raids. Texans had their opportunity, beginning in 1861, to prove their earlier assertions that Texas could defend the frontier and pacify Indians better than the United States could when the state seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. They accomplished little more than federal efforts had, although it must be taken into account that the needs of the Civil War took priority in manpower and spending. Raids continued as before and even increased in some counties. The growth of cattle ranching added a new target for raiders, who drove off cattle for resale to the Comancheros, traders from New Mexico who ventured onto the Llano Estacado to buy from the Comanches.

With the defeat of the Confederacy and the length of time it took United States troops to return to the frontier, Indians noticed the unorganized status of the frontier and increased their raids in late 1865. Federal officials tried to settle frontier affairs in the traditional manner-with a land treaty. In October 1865, the Kiowas and a few Comanche bands signed the treaty of the Little Arkansas, in which the federal government promised them a large reservation comprising the Panhandle and most of West Texas (from the southeastern corner of New Mexico to the junction of the North and South forks of the Red River). But the war had not changed the unique legal situation of Texas or the attitudes of its officials. The state still controlled its own public land, and even Republican lawmakers in the Reconstruction state government, heavily influenced by military occupation, refused to cede any land to Indians. In 1867 the Kiowas and Comanches negotiated another reservation treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek, which secured for them less land in the Indian Territory. Although ten Comanche chiefs signed the treaty, as was customary, they spoke only for the people they represented (less than half of all Comanches) and could not speak for all bands. Therefore, even with the establishment of a reservation, the government still had to use force on the recalcitrant bands.

The final subjugation of the South Plains Indians involved a combination of economic and military measures, in which the destruction of the Indians' trade and subsistence base became primary to their acceptance of reservation life. The suppression of the Comanchero trade in the early 1870s removed an important market for raiders. The arrival of increasing numbers of white buffalo hunters all but destroyed the great South Plains herds; the newly constructed railroads brought not only more hunters but sent hides to eastern markets faster. Furthermore, William T. Sherman, commander of the United States Army, and Philip H. Sheridan, commander of United States troops in Texas, understood from their experiences in the Civil War (Sherman's march through Georgia and Sheridan's campaigns in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia) that victory comes not just from the defeat of enemy armies but from breaking the people's will to resist by destroying their ability to feed and supply themselves. With this strategy in mind, the generals looked to the buffalo. Sheridan encouraged commercial hunters and even tourists to hunt buffalo, and he trained new recruits in marksmanship with buffalo targets. Buffalo meat also supplemented the poor food at many army posts. These attacks on the Indians' economic base coincided with inducements to get them to accept reservation life. The government promised to provide food and shelter. Food shipments to the reservation, however, were sporadic, and on one occasion bureaucrats in Washington ordered the reservation agent to withhold food until the Comanches surrendered some suspected raiders to authorities. The uncertainty of rations therefore failed to make the reservation as attractive as the government would have liked, and actually provoked some Comanches to leave the reservation and continue raiding for subsistence.

Militarily, the army conducted winter campaigns, something not previously done. The Indians learned they had no sanctuary and could find their tepees and food stocks destroyed during the harshest time of the year. Frequently this was done with the help of Indians working for the government, most notably Tonkawas and Lipans working out of Fort Griffin. They received pay and rations as regular cavalrymen while on duty and were allowed to live near the fort for their own protection. The Tonkawas benefited from this relationship because they had no where else to go-all other Indian groups except the Lipans despised them for helping the whites and for their ritual cannibalism. Their arrangement with the military was mutually advantageous; they could be safe only with army protection, and the army needed their scouting skills. A great breakthrough for the army came in 1872, when Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, with a captured Comanchero from New Mexico leading the way, crossed the Llano Estacado, the final redoubt of the Comanche resistance. He noted the trails and areas with abundant grass, wood, and fresh water to support cavalry movements through the area. He put his new knowledge to work immediately by locating and destroying a Comanche camp on McClellan Creek in October 1872; more than twenty Indians were killed, and 124 women and children were captured and subsequently held prisoner at Fort Sill to induce others to surrender ( see BATTLE OF THE NORTH FORK OF THE RED RIVER). Mackenzie tried to return to his fort with the Indians' 3,000 horses, but the Comanches harassed him so severely while he was driving them off that afterward his policy was to shoot all captured horses. In this additional way, more a result of exasperation than planning, the Comanches found their ability to survive outside the reservation fading away. The next year, Mackenzie's focus turned to the Mexican border, the scene of raids by Kickapoos and others who took advantage of the international boundary to live in Mexican territory and raid in the United States. With 400 troops he crossed the Rio Grande and destroyed three villages of Kickapoos, Potawatomies, and hostile Lipans; Black Seminole Scouts supplied important scouting work ( see REMOLINO RAID). Mackenzie took Indian captives back to the United States to force the rest of the Indians to move from Mexico to the Indian Territory. Eventually, 250 Kickapoos and all the Potawatomies agreed to return to the United States. Communities of Kickapoos and Lipans, however, remained in Coahuila and live there today; some Kickapoos received a reservation in Texas in the 1980s.

The last large military campaigns, and the Comanches' last sustained effort to continue their old way of life without government dependency, occurred in 1874. In the early summer, a medicine man named Isa-tai had a vision in which he learned that Comanches must resist whites or else be reduced to the dependent state of nearby groups like the Wichitas and Caddos; the performance of a Sun Dance was to be the means by which Comanches would be delivered from white domination. Comanches from all bands attended the dance, a ceremony previously unknown to the Comanches and probably learned from the Kiowas. It took place at the time when women and children were being held prisoner to compel good behavior by Comanche men, and when rations at the reservation were being withheld as punishment. At the gathering, the Comanches determined to take action. Their two main problems were military pressure and the destruction of the buffalo herds. First they considered attacking the Tonkawas at Fort Griffin to make an example of them that might compel the government to renegotiate the conditions under which the Comanches would live, but this idea was rejected in favor of an attack on buffalo hunters. These were a far more important target, given the economic crisis the Comanches found themselves in with the loss of trade opportunities, the loss of customary subsistence, and the specter of dependency on the government. As the Kiowa leader Kicking Bird explained, "The buffalo was their money[,] their only resource with which to buy what they needed and did not receive from the government. The robes they could prepare and trade. They loved them just as the white man does his money, and just as it made a white man's heart feel to have his money carried away, so it made them feel to see others killing and stealing their buffalo." In June 1874 the Comanche war party, led by Quanah Parker, chose to assault a gathering of buffalo hunters encamped at Adobe Walls, the ruins of an abandoned trading post in the Panhandle. The hunters managed to get behind the walls before the attackers could inflict serious damage and return fire with their new, long-range rifles. The Comanches charged repeatedly but could not breach the walls or withstand the hunters' accurate marksmanship. At the end of the day, the Comanches withdrew, having killed three hunters and lost thirteen warriors. This second battle of Adobe Walls slowed only temporarily the ingress of commercial buffalo hunters. After it, events were increasingly determined by the army rather than any initiative on the part of the Comanches. Military pressure on the bands outside the reservation increased during the summer and fall of 1874 and caused greater destruction of the Indians' subsistence base. On the Salt Fork of the Red River cavalrymen burned 500 Comanche lodges, and although only one Indian was killed, the destruction of their supplies compelled many Comanches to turn themselves in at Fort Sill. Colonel Mackenzie led his command into Palo Duro Canyon in late September and destroyed five Comanche villages; although there were few casualties on either side, the cavalry captured 1,400 horses, which Mackenzie ordered shot (after his Indian scouts selected some as prizes). Most Comanches off the reservation surrendered by the onset of winter, and by 1875 the last small bands came in ( see BATTLE OF PALO DURO CANYON. The Lipans and Tonkawas who assisted the government in the final subjugation of the groups resisting reservation life were themselves moved out of the state and put on reservations in the early 1880s.

Texas had been a cultural crossroads where varied groups of Indians met, traded, and fought long before the arrival of Europeans. Spanish settlement and French trade greatly altered the trade networks, alliances, and demography of the area. Some native groups lost their distinct cultural identity through population loss and intermarriage with other groups; others thrived, taking advantage of new opportunities to strengthen their positions in regional diplomacy and trade. The Spanish, though influential, were unable to dominate the Indians of Texas or dictate to them. Spanish immigration to Texas was slight, and politically the province was a marginal, neglected backwater of the empire. The Indians' ability to secure goods, especially guns, from French and later United States sources-and thus play European and American powers off against one another-strengthened their relative independence until the early years of the nineteenth century. The Anglo-American migration into Texas changed trade and diplomacy, to the Indians' detriment. Texas filled up with immigrants who threatened tribal hunting prerogatives and land bases. Attempts to keep the settlers in check, such as stock raids and murder, not only failed to stop the spread of white settlement but angered the newcomers into effective retaliatory strikes. As a result, the Indians were destroyed or chased out of the state. Today in Texas there are only three reservations, populated, ironically, by Indians who migrated to Texas after European colonization. Though many older historical narratives of Texas portray the Indians as enemies and obstacles, the reality was far more complicated than the civilization-versus-savagery schema so frequently employed in the past. In 1995 the Alabama-Coushatta reservation in East Texas near Livingston, the Tigua Reservation in El Paso, and a projected 125-acre Kickapoo reservation near Eagle Pass were all that remained of any organized Indian settlement in Texas. See also INDIAN RELATIONS, SPANISH TEXAS, MEXICAN TEXAS, ANTEBELLUM TEXAS, LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY TEXAS, ANGLO-AMERICAN COLONIZATION, and MUSTANGS.

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Ethnologists have identified hundreds of groups of Texas "Indians," as the first European explorers to arrive called the peoples they found. Some of these were true tribes, accumulations of families or clans with social customs, traditions, and rules for order; these were occasionally quite large.

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A story told for thousands of years.

More than 14,000 years ago, peoples arrived to what we now call the Americas. Over thousands of years, diverse American Indians built empires on this land, constructing sophisticated cities, and developing elaborate trade networks and complex social systems.

But in the 16 th Century, when Europeans arrived on the shores that would become the Texas Gulf Coast, these longstanding American Indian civilizations were disrupted. Control over resources, including food and land, was taken from them, displacing and devastating many powerful American Indian tribes-and destroying many others.

We must be wary... Naguatex Caddi

Coastal Inhabitants

What is now known as the Texas Gulf Coast was home to many American Indian tribes including the Atakapa, Karankawa, Mariame, and Akokisa.

They were semi-nomadic, living on the shore for part of the year and moving up to 30 or 40 miles inland seasonally. They adapted well to life on the coast, fishing, hunting, and gathering roots and other plant foods. They invented resourceful ways to solve everyday challenges, including fending off mosquitos by covering their bodies in shark and alligator grease.

Karankawas

Karankawas were the first people Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca met when he washed up on the Texas shore near Galveston Island in 1528. Their meeting was the first documented encounter between American Indians and Europeans in present day Texas. While the Karankawa fed and sheltered Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, the tribe responded very differently to the French and Spanish colonizers who arrived later. Karankawas initially greeted René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and the members of his expedition when they arrived in Matagorda Bay in 1685. However, after La Salle's men stole a canoe from the Karankawa, relations soured and the two groups fought against each other frequently. After several hostile acts on both sides, Karankawas attacked La Salle's settlement, Fort St. Louis, in 1688, leaving no survivors except for the children, who were adopted into the tribe.

When the Spanish began establishing a presence in Karankawa territory in the 1700s Karankawas resisted the Spaniards' efforts to convert them to Christianity and confine them to missions. When Franciscan priests built Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga at Matagorda Bay, the nearby Karankawas refused to relocate there or accept the priests' teachings. Within just four years, the Spanish relocated the mission elsewhere to serve other tribes.

While Karankawas withstood initial contact with the Spanish, their fortunes changed in the early 1800s. Comanche attacks, disease, and conflicts with European-Americans all took a heavy toll on the tribe and their numbers began to decline sharply. In 1858, the few remaining Karankawas were living near Rio Grande City when a group of men led by Juan Nepomuceno Cortina attacked and killed them all, decimating the tribe.

Farmers and Traders

While some American Indians, such as Karankawas, moved seasonally to fish, follow wild game, and gather plants for food, others stayed in one place and built large cities and farms.

Caddos living in East Texas and Jumanos living in West Texas were both farmers and traders who developed wide-ranging trade networks and relationships with other American Indian tribal groups and Europeans.

Caddos

Since their arrival in present day Texas more than 1,200 years ago, Caddos built large village complexes, created elaborately designed ceramics, and traded in networks that spanned thousands of miles. Caddos lived in settlements of several hundred people. They lived in a matriarchal society, meaning they traced their descent and inherited leadership positions through the female line. They built earthen mounds at the center of their villages for their religious ceremonies and burials of social elites. They farmed corn and other crops, and hunted deer, rabbits, and bison.

Around 1500, Caddos developed a complex political system made up of alliances between different bands and tribes, and reached a peak population. Located between the Great Plains, Eastern Woodlands, and present-day Arizona and New Mexico, Caddos were in an ideal location to trade with tribes all over the continent. They maintained vast trading networks, exporting salt, pottery, and bois d'arc wood for making bows, and importing seashells, copper, and flint.

When French and Spanish merchants arrived in Texas and the surrounding area, Caddos began trading with them as well. This contact brought new diseases that had a devastating impact. Between 1646 and 1816, the Caddo population dropped by 95%. In 1859, the United States government forced 1,050 Texas Caddos to relocate to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma, removing them from the homeland they had occupied for more than 1,000 years.

Jumanos

Deep in present-day West Texas, Jumanos developed their own complex political alliances, trading networks, and farming practices. They lived along rivers and near springs, where they raised corn, squash, and beans. They traded with other tribes for things like pottery, animal hides, salt, and piñon nuts. Jumanos developed good relationships with Europeans, serving as guides to Spanish explorers and sometimes even acting as middlemen between other tribes and the Spanish government. In the early 1700s, Apaches began moving into Jumano territory. Unable to fend off the invaders, Jumanos eventually joined the Apaches. Within 100 years, the Jumano no longer existed as a separate tribe.

People of the Plains

Comanches and Apaches ruled large regions of present-day north and west Texas on horseback, hunting bison and raiding villages with remarkable effectiveness.

Pushed out of their homelands on the Great Plains, these tribes arrived in Texas looking for new territory. They found a land already occupied by Jumanos, Coahuiltecans, Cocoimes, Chisos, Tobosos, Tawakonis, Wacos, Kiowas, and other tribes, creating conflict over who would control the land.

Comanches

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, multiple, independent bands of Comanches migrated south from present-day eastern Colorado and western Kansas. They waged war on the other tribes in their path, including the Apache. Within a century, they controlled a vast territory called the Comanchería. Comanches roamed this territory where they hunted bison and deer, traded with their neighbors, and raided their enemies' settlements.

While Comanches displaced Apaches and other tribes when they moved into the region, they soon found themselves threatened with the same fate. Comanches were able to make relative peace with the Spanish and Mexican governments. However, after Texas won its independence in 1836, Texas leadership began a process of extermination. Increasing numbers of Anglo Americans poured into the Republic of Texas, creating conflict with the Comanches, who had controlled the land and its resources for nearly 150 years.

The conflict escalated when Texas joined the United States and more Anglo settlers moved in, squeezing Comanches into a smaller and smaller territory. The systematic slaughter of the bison herds by new Anglo settlers, stressed Comanches even further. By the 1870s, Comanches had been weakened by disease and decades of war. Unable to fight any longer, Chief Quanah Parker surrendered and led his people to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma in 1875.

American Indians in Texas Today

American Indians from diverse tribal nations continue to live and work in Texas today. Regardless of their tribal affiliations, many keep their ancestors' memories, traditions, cultures, and languages alive.

Only three federally recognized tribes still have reservations in Texas, the Alabama-Coushatta, Tigua, and Kickapoo. The state recognized Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas has its headquarters in McAllen. The Caddo, Comanche, and Tonkawa are officially headquartered in Oklahoma.

Banner image Comanche Feats of Horsemanship, 1834-1835, by George Catlin. Image courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.487

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The American Indian Story | Texas State History Museum

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Thousands of native people lived in Texas for at least 16,000 years before the first Europeans arrived. There were hundreds of groups, their lives shaped by the distinct landscapes and climates in which they lived.

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The Alabama-Coushatta Indian Tribe of Texas, Incorporated, occupies a 4,593.7-acre reservation on U.S. Highway 190, seventeen miles east of Livingston in Polk County. In 2005 the names of more than 1,000 Alabama-Coushattas were recorded on the tribal roll, of whom approximately 500 lived on the reservation. Although recognized as two separate tribes, the Alabamas and Coushattas have been closely associated throughout their history. Both are of Muskhogean language stock. Both lived in adjacent areas in what is now Alabama, followed similar migration routes westward after 1763, and settled in the same area of the Big Thicket in Southeast Texas. Culturally, these two tribes have always been one people in spite of minor differences. Their languages are mutually understandable, although some differences occur in individual words. Their closest tie has been that of blood as intermarriage between the tribes has been practiced since earliest times. An early interpretation of Alabama indicated that the name meant "Here we rest." This explanation was generally accepted until T. M. Owen, director of the Alabama State Department of Archives and History, pointed out in 1921 that the name is derived from a combination of words meaning "vegetation gatherers." Coushatta is a popular form of "Koasati," which probably contains the words for "cane," "reed," or "white cane."

The first written references to the Alabamas, dated 1541, relate the contacts of the explorer Hernando De Soto with these Indians, probably in the future state of Mississippi. After De Soto, the Alabamas were lost to view until the appearance of the French in the region bordering the Gulf of Mexico. The Alabamas, who had migrated eastward during the intervening century and a half, then lived near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, the two main tributaries of the Alabama River. The Coushattas also moved to this area and established villages among those of the Alabamas. Beginning north of the site of present Montgomery, Alabama, the villages of the Alabamas and Coushattas extended southward for forty miles on both sides of the Alabama River. Both tribes were members of the Upper Creek Confederacy-the name given to a loose organization built around a group of dominant tribes called Creek or Muskogee in what is now Alabama. One of the principal objectives of the Creek Confederacy seems to have been to achieve a defensive alliance against certain enemies-including the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians in what is now Mississippi and western Alabama and the Cherokee Indians in Tennessee.

While the French were establishing themselves at Mobile, they became involved in skirmishes with the Alabama and Mobile tribes. Peace was soon established, however, and thereafter the Alabamas remained loyal to French interests. This friendship was cemented in 1714 by the establishment of Fort Toulouse in the heart of the Alabama-Coushatta homeland. When it was built in 1714, the fort became a cause of great anxiety to the English in the region. It was also a depot for exchange of French articles for skins and other products, brought by the Indians from their hunting grounds and then floated down the Alabama River to the sea at Mobile. Papers of French governor Sieur de Bienville provide information relating to the French-Alabama friendship and the rivalry between the English and French for the loyalty of the Alabamas, Coushattas, and other Indians in the vicinity. Bienville wrote that "the Alabamas have the reputation among all nations of being people of intelligence and of good counsel...of all the Indians...most attached to the interests of the French." The Alabama River and the state of Alabama were named for the Alabama Indians.

In 1763 Alabamas and Coushattas began migrating from the Fort Toulouse area for several possible reasons. The development of a "deerskin economy" among North American Indians, brought about by trade with Europeans, had led to shortage of animals and conflict over hunting territories, resulting in a constant search for improved hunting conditions. In the short run, trade with Europeans helped the Indians obtain supplies and equipment. But they became dependent upon traders to furnish many items they needed, and their increased skin-hunting brought a disastrous shortage of game comparable to the disappearance of the buffalo on the plains. Moreover, settlers were pressing inland along the Atlantic coast. In 1763 the struggle between England and France for supremacy in America ended, and control of formerly French territory-including the Alabama-Coushatta homeland-passed to the English. When English administrative officials and settlers began arriving in the Fort Toulouse area, substantial numbers of Indians in this region began moving westward. In this movement they followed their French friends to Louisiana, where they expected better treatment from the Spanish. According to Charles Martin Thompson, chief of the Alabama-Coushattas from 1928 to 1935, it is unlikely that the Indians moved in a mass exodus; rather, they probably traveled in family or clan groups and left Alabama sporadically after 1763. Thompson also stated that they most likely traveled down the Alabama River to avoid the country of the Choctaws, their bitter enemies in western Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana. One small group attempted to detour by the Tombigbee River but was driven back by the Choctaws. After descending the Alabama River to Mobile, the Alabamas and Coushattas probably used a well-known protected route along the coasts of Alabama and Mississippi, across lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, up the Amite River, and finally through the Iberville or Bayou Manchac to a spot on the Mississippi River about fourteen miles below Baton Rouge. After entering Louisiana about 1766 the mainstream of Alabama and Coushatta movement was westward across the southern part of the future state of Louisiana. However, small groups of both tribes established villages along the Red River and in other sections of Louisiana. In the early nineteenth century Governor William C. C. Claiborne reported that in 1766 a small group of Alabamas had settled near Opelousas but that a larger number had established homes on the Sabine River.

The Coushattas settled first on Bayou Chicot. In the 1780s some of them moved across the Sabine River and settled on the Trinity River in Texas. Others moved to a site on the Sabine River eighty miles southwest of Natchitoches, Louisiana. A small group of Coushattas settled on the Red River north of Natchitoches. The Pakana branch of the Muskogee or Creek Indian tribe had lived among the Alabamas and Coushattas in the Fort Toulouse area and migrated westward after 1763. In 1797 the Pakana Muskogees were located on the Calcasieu River about fifty miles southeast of the Coushatta village on the Sabine River.

In the 1780s Alabamas and Coushattas began moving across the Sabine River into Spanish Texas. There they found a welcome since the Spanish considered Texas the outer cordon standing guard against first the French and then, after 1803, the Americans. In 1800 Napoleon attempted to reestablish the French empire in America. Three years later he sold Louisiana to the United States. Immediately after the Louisiana Purchase, the United States began to pursue a policy of friendly relations with the Indians in the new territory. On February 4, 1804, Edward Turner was given a commission for the District of Natchitoches. A few months later he informed Governor Claiborne that certain Indians in the vicinity had visited him and said the Spaniards had given them presents. They now wished the same from the Americans. Turner recommended the establishment of American factories at Natchitoches to lure the Indians' allegiance away from Spain. From the Spanish point of view, maintenance of the Texas defense line depended substantially upon the loyal service of friendly Indian tribes between the Trinity and Sabine rivers. Only about thirty cavalrymen, operating from Nacogdoches, were usually available to patrol the long border between Texas and Louisiana as well as the Old San Antonio Road and the Atascosito Road into the Texas interior. Indians were needed to assist the Spanish regulars. Accordingly, Spain appropriated large sums of money to buy clothing, medals, guns, axes, knives, and other items for the Indians. These gifts were presented to Indians who visited Nacogdoches, the Spanish headquarters in East Texas.

In 1805 Dr. John Sibley was asked to serve as United States agent to keep the Indians in the vicinity of Natchitoches friendly toward the American government. He advocated alliances with the Indians and, like Turner, the establishment of an Indian factory at Natchitoches to divert Indian trade from the Spanish factory at Nacogdoches. Sibley made advantageous trade arrangements for the Indians and also distributed various types of gifts among them. His trading post was a popular gathering point for Indians in the area. There the Alabamas and Coushattas expressed loyalty to the Americans and received gifts. Then, at the first opportunity, they would travel to Nacogdoches for Spanish gifts and friendship. Both tribes probably understood that the Spanish and the Americans were engaged in a tug-of-war for their loyalty, and they capitalized on the opportunities intrinsic to this conflict. Soon, however, strained relations developed between the Indians and the White population of Louisiana. Each group accused the other of murdering members of its community. Representatives of the White population asked for the assistance of the militia, but Louisiana governor Claiborne refused this request. Instead, he called for a calm approach and took steps to avoid war.

Meanwhile, Alabamas and Coushattas had been moving into the Big Thicket region of Spanish Texas since the 1780s. There they found an awesome jungle-like wilderness that early observers said covered most of the area between the Sabine and Brazos rivers. Travel through much of this region was so difficult that the Spanish skirted the northern edge of the Big Thicket when they laid out the road from Nacogdoches to San Antonio. The Atascosito Road provided an alternate route into Texas along the southern boundary of this wilderness. For the incoming Alabamas and Coushattas, this unique natural region was an excellent hunting and gathering area with an abundant food supply that supported many kinds of animals, birds, and fish. It was a barrier to prospective settlers. The Indian newcomers developed a material culture adapted to the characteristics of the Big Thicket, where they could be relatively free from Spanish or other interference.

The earliest Alabama hunting camps, rancherías, and villages were located along Attoyac Bayou, the Angelina River, and the Neches River. In 1830 the Alabamas lived in three communities in what is now northwestern Tyler County. The largest and most prominent of these was Peach Tree Village, located about two miles north of the site of present Chester. The Alabama Trace and the Coushatta Trace passed through this village, and it was the northern terminus of the Long King Trace. Fenced-In Village ranked second in importance among the Alabama tribal settlements in the Big Thicket. It was located on the Liberty-Nacogdoches Road about five miles southeast of Peach Tree Village in northwestern Tyler County. Another Alabama community, Cane Island Village, was between Peach Tree Village and Fort Teran on the Neches River, about twenty-two miles northwest of the site of present Woodville. In 1830 about 600 Coushattas lived in three communities on or near the Trinity River. The Upper Coushatta Village ( Battise Village) was located where the Coushatta Trace crossed the Trinity in what is now San Jacinto County, on the opposite side of the River from the future site of Onalaska, Polk County. The site is now under Lake Livingston. Long King's Village, the Middle Coushatta Village, was located at the confluence of Tempe Creek and Long King Creek, approximately two miles north of the site of Lake Livingston Dam on the Trinity River. In the Lower Coushatta Village lived Colita, one of the best-known Indian leaders in East Texas, who succeeded Long King as principal chief of the Coushattas. Colita's Village was located on the Logan league in a great bend of the Trinity River-the "Shirt-tail Bend," as the steamboat sailors named it-now in San Jacinto County. Typically, an Alabama-Coushatta village was actually a community in which cabins were located in a succession of neighborhoods scattered for miles through the woods and along streams and connected by a network of trails. Cabins were usually grouped in family or clan units, with adequate land around each cabin for cultivating vegetables and growing fruit trees. Near the center of each community was a square used for a variety of governmental, social, entertainment, and religious activities. Alabamas and Coushattas relied primarily upon hunting, gathering, fishing, and vegetable cultivation for subsistence. The search for food was continuous, and members of these tribes used their trails and water routes extensively to obtain food. Both tribes prospered. In 1809 the combined population of Alabamas and Coushattas within seventy miles of Nacogdoches totaled approximately 1,650.

To facilitate land travel through their wilderness territory, the Alabamas and Coushattas developed a remarkable network of trails. These traces were usually laid as straight as practical between villages or other terminals. In many instances, they followed ridges between the drainage basins of streams, thus avoiding major water crossings. The proximity to streams made fresh water available. The density of most of the Big Thicket underscored the importance of this network: travel through the region was impractical except along the Alabama and Coushatta trails. It is ironic that these trails expedited the penetration of White settlers into this region and thus contributed to the later deterioration of the Alabama-Coushatta culture. Moreover, field notes of the earliest land grants now in Polk County and several adjoining counties show that most of the original White settlers in the area selected homesites along the Indian trails.

During the early decades of the nineteenth century, Antone served as principal chief of the Alabamas, and Long King served in the same capacity for the Coushattas. Before the Alabama-Coushatta tribal council was organized in the 1930s, most governmental affairs were in the hands of the principal chief. His duties included serving as tribal spokesman, representing the tribe at meetings and functions, serving as moral leader, settling disputes, keeping tribal records including deeds to land, leading religious and educational activities, assigning land to individuals, directing hunts, calling meetings, throwing out balls to begin ballgames, and directing dances.

Both tribes preferred to remain at peace with their neighbors, but proved to be effective warriors when forced to fight. For many years the Alabamas and Coushattas defended their territory in Alabama, especially against the Choctaws, and their record indicates that they readily fought any enemy when necessary. John Sibley mentioned that Alabamas and Coushattas had participated in raids against the Osages, had taken Osage scalps, and had returned horses the Osages had stolen from the Caddos. Jean Louis Berlandier wrote in 1830 that hunting and farming were principal occupations of the Alabamas, but that they "can be just as warlike as their neighbors." Coushattas participated in the Mexican War of Independence in 1812-13; their bravery and skill were mentioned by several chroniclers of the fighting around San Antonio in this rebellion against Spain. Stephen F. Austin, in the administration of his Texas colony, was aware of the Alabamas' and Coushattas' military capabilities, and his plans for campaigns against the Karankawa Indians and the Nacogdoches-area Fredonians usually included use of these two tribes. Gen. Sam Houston also planned to utilize the fighting ability of the Alabamas and Coushattas in the Texas Revolution. Early in 1836 Houston's army was retreating eastward across Texas, pursued by the Mexican army under Santa Anna. Many Texas settlers fled toward the Sabine River in this " Runaway Scrape." As the revolutionary army marched toward San Jacinto, Houston sent a delegation to ask the Alabamas and Coushattas for assistance. The tribes could provide about 250 warriors, and this group was the only noncommitted fighting force with any chance to arrive at San Jacinto in time to participate in the impending battle. The delegation dispatched by General Houston to negotiate for the services of the Alabamas and Coushattas arrived at Long King's Village several days before the battle of San Jacinto. The delegation brought a message from Houston and tried to persuade the Indians to join the army. While the discussions were proceeding, the battle of San Jacinto was fought, and the services of the Indians were no longer needed by the Texas army. Although the Alabamas and Coushattas did not participate militarily in the war, they were generous in their efforts to feed and care for settlers who passed through their villages in the Runaway Scrape. The Coushattas, however, did not entirely escape the turbulence of the 1836-39 period. In 1839 a Comanche raiding party approached the Long King Village from the north. Coushattas met the Comanches in the valley of Long King Creek and, in a fiercely fought battle, defeated the invaders who were forced to retreat.

After Texas won independence in 1836, the government of the republic confronted a multitude of problems, including formulating an Indian policy. President Houston's plans for the Indian population provided for peace, friendship, trade, and frontier protection. Mirabeau B. Lamar, who succeeded Houston as president, adopted a program that included exterminating the hostile tribes and removing friendly tribes from the republic or moving them to reservations in Texas. It is remarkable that Lamar's harsh policy was not applied to the Alabamas and Coushattas. While all other East Texas tribes were removed, Lamar expressed friendship toward these two tribes, requested White settlers in the Trinity River area to respect their rights, and appointed an agent to assist them in their relations with their neighbors. Furthermore, in 1840-during Lamar's administration-the Republic of Texas Congress granted each of these two tribes two leagues of land. When surveyors came to survey the land, the Alabamas, thinking the grant was for White settlers, departed for other homesites, leaving their hogs, cattle, and 200 acres of fenced land suitable for cultivation. The Coushattas fared no better. One league of their land included Colita's Village, and the other included the Battise Village. The two leagues were surveyed and the field notes were filed, but the grants never became effective; White settlers had already claimed the land.

After leaving Fenced-In Village, the Alabamas drifted southward and formed a settlement near the junction of Big and Little Cypress creeks. Next, they lived briefly at a site on Woods Creek called Rock Village. On October 29, 1853, Chief Antone, the tribal subchiefs, and prominent citizens of Polk County presented a petition to the Texas legislature requesting land for a reservation. It was approved, and the state of Texas purchased 1,110.7 acres of land for the Alabama Indian reservation. About 500 tribe members settled on this land during the winter of 1854-55. In 1855 the Texas legislature appropriated funds to purchase 640 acres for the Coushattas. Because suitable open land was no longer available in Polk County, however, this grant remained only a scrap of paper. With the permission of the Alabamas, most of the Coushattas settled on the Alabamas' reservation in 1859. When the state attempted to move the Polk County Indians to the Lower Brazos Reserve in 1858, Indian Agent James Barclay rode across Texas on horseback with a delegation of Alabamas and Coushattas to inspect the new reservation. The Lower Brazos Reserve was a barren, dreary land compared to the forested hills of their Polk County reservation. The Indian leaders told Barclay that they did not want to move from East Texas.

The Polk County Indians played only a minor role in the Civil War. John Scott, later chief of the Alabama-Coushattas, and nineteen members of his tribe were sworn into Confederate service on April 11, 1862. After serving briefly in Company G, Twenty-fourth Texas Cavalry, at Arkansas Post, they returned home and were organized by Capt. William H. Beazley into a cavalry company unattached to any regiment. In December 1864 this company listed 132 men on its roster and was part of the Sixth Brigade, Second Texas Infantry. The primary job of this new organization was to construct and operate flat-bottom boats for transporting farm produce to the Confederate forces along the Gulf Coast. Beazley's cavalrymen built most of their scows at Magnolia, a Trinity River port in Anderson County. Each boat, manned by an Indian crew, moved slowly downriver, stopping at plantation landings to pick up produce and other supplies requisitioned by Confederate authorities. At Liberty the boatmen delivered the boats and supplies to Confederate officials. To return upriver after each trip, the Indian cavalrymen-sailors rode horses driven to Liberty by their sons. Through no fault of their own, the Polk County Indians did not fight as a group in any battles of the war. In helping to move key military supplies, however, they contributed to the success of Confederate forces along the Texas Gulf Coast. Texas governors Francis R. Lubbock and Pendleton Murrah commented favorably on the service of the Polk County Indians, and the state legislature provided funds to pay the salary of an agent for them from 1861 to 1865.

After 1865, however, the Indians had a home but little else. Few could speak English effectively, and few could find jobs. The state government was busy with other matters, primarily with problems of Reconstruction. A great tide of settlers sweeping west brought bitter fighting between Whites and such warlike tribes as the Apaches, Comanches, and Sioux. One result was the development of a negative attitude among the settlers toward most Indians, and it was difficult to arouse public sympathy for the Polk County Indians. In 1866 Texas governor James W. Throckmorton proposed in vain that the United States government assume guardianship of the Indians in Polk County. During the administration of Edmund J. Davis, another effort was made to give the Indians federal protection, and in 1870 they were placed under military jurisdiction. Capt. Samuel M. Whitside, commander of the federal military post of Livingston, reported that the Polk County Indians needed an agent for their protection and volunteered to serve in the role until other arrangements could be made. The 1870s brought rapid deterioration in the Alabama-Coushatta culture. The influx of White settlers, the clearing of forests, and the plowing of farmland nearly destroyed the hunting, fishing, and gathering practices of the Indians, who were forced either to rely primarily on farming their limited, worn-out reservation lands or to seek employment outside the reservation. In February 1873 a bill was introduced in the United States House of Representatives to remove the Alabama, Coushatta, and Pakana Muskogee Indians from Texas to the Creek Nation in Oklahoma. The bill required that the proposed removal be approved by the Polk County Indians. There is no record that the proposal was approved by them, however, and the secretary of the interior recommended against passage of the bill. In 1876 the Alabamas discovered that they did not have title to 263 acres they had been occupying as part of their reservation. This tract had been surveyed for them in 1854, but the surveyor failed to file the necessary field notes with the General Land Office. The tract was included subsequently in a grant of land to the International-Great Northern Railroad, although the Alabamas continued to occupy the area. The Polk County Indians' fortunes continued to decline, and neither the national government nor the state of Texas seemed willing to help. In the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century the indifference of the United States toward the Indians was so complete that the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not bother even to make a count of the Indian residents in Polk County. For many years the bureau simply reported the same total number of Indians-290-in the county. The state government made no move to help. The Alabamas and Coushattas reached the lowest point of their history in 1879 when the state abolished the post of agent for them.

After 1880 the picture began to brighten. This period was marked by three factors that had a vast influence on the Alabamas, Coushattas, and Pakana Muskogees. The first was construction of a Houston-Shreveport railroad that passed through Polk County. The Houston East and West Texas Railroad reached Polk County in 1881 and opened the gate for development of the lumber industry. Many of the Indians soon became expert in lumbering jobs. As sawmills spread through the Big Thicket, so did opportunities for employment; many Indian families had steady cash incomes for the first time in their history. Job opportunities in the timber industry became increasingly important in subsequent years. Even more important was the coming of Christianity and education. The first Presbyterian mission was established on the Alabama-Coushatta reservation in Polk County in 1881, and since that time the church has played a major role in the lives of these Indians. Early missionaries were ministers, teachers, doctors, nurses, and friends, and their total impact was beyond measure.

The third prominent influence at this turning point was the work of J. C. Feagin, an attorney from Livingston who demonstrated his interest in the local Indians by maintaining a constant barrage of letters, reports, demands, and appeals on their behalf to public officials on every level of state and national government until his death in 1927. Feagin convinced Congressman Samuel Bronson Cooper that assistance should be provided for the Polk County Indians. Cooper introduced a bill in January 1896 and again in March 1897 to grant 25,000 acres to the Alabama-Coushattas. The commissioner of Indian affairs reported unfavorably on the bill both times, and it failed both times. In an act of April 1910 the Sixty-first Congress directed the Department of the Interior to investigate the status of the Alabama Indians in Texas. William Loker was appointed commissioner. In his report, Loker opined that the principal needs of these Indians were more land and a school with manual training. He added that if they had about 5,000 acres, they would be able to compete successfully with their White neighbors in farming and stock raising and could become self-sufficient. Congress did nothing for the Polk County Indians in 1910, but Feagin had succeeded in bringing the Indians to the attention of the national government. His efforts constituted a successful opening phase of a campaign that involved, in subsequent years, the work of many other interested persons to improve dramatically the lot of the Alabama-Coushattas.

In the years after Loker's report, several requests for federal assistance for the Alabama-Coushatta Indians were submitted, a number of them by Feagin. Chief Clerk Hauke wrote the commissioner of Indian affairs suggesting the purchase of land, farm equipment, a school, a hospital, and a demonstration farm. In the next year Congress appropriated $8,000 for education and for investigation about whether to purchase land for the Alabama-Coushattas. In a report to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane of September 1918, Inspector James McLaughlin recommended an appropriation of $100,000 for the purchase of lands for the Alabama-Coushattas. In 1928 Clem Fain, Jr., of Livingston was appointed Texas agent for the Alabama-Coushattas, and he continued the campaign to focus public attention on them. Early in 1928 he accompanied principal chief Charles Martin Thompson and second chief McConnico Battise to Washington to appeal for assistance. This campaign was successful: in June 1928 Congress appropriated $40,000 for the Alabama-Coushattas. Of this amount, $29,000 was used for the purchase of 3,071 acres of land adjoining the original reservation, and the remainder was spent primarily for horses, cattle, hogs, and livestock feed. The deed for this additional land was issued to the Alabama and Coushatta tribes, and the name "Alabama-Coushatta" has been used since 1928 as the official title of the enlarged reservation. In 1929 the state of Texas appropriated $47,000 for the construction of a gymnasium, a hospital, a home for the reservation administrator, and twenty-five cottages.

In a report to the commissioner of Indian affairs in 1931, special commissioner Roy Nash recommended that Alabama-Coushatta affairs be left to the state of Texas. The state Board of Control served as the supervising board until September 1, 1950, when the Board for Texas State Hospitals and Special Schools was given the administration of all state institutions and agencies classed as eleemosynary. From 1929 to July 1, 1955, trusteeship of the Alabama-Coushatta reservation was in the hands of the federal government. In June 1934 Congress passed what has been termed the Indian Reorganization Act which authorized Indian tribes to organize for their welfare, as individual tribes or with other tribes living on the same reservation. Specifically, the act gave the tribes the right to incorporate under a federal charter which was to become effective when ratified by a majority vote of the adult Indians living on a reservation. The Alabama and Coushatta Indians were organized under the act as a single tribe with both a constitution and charter. The constitution and bylaws for the corporation were approved on August 19, 1938, and the charter was ratified by the Alabama-Coushattas on October 17, 1939. By means of a quitclaim deed effective July 1, 1955, the federal government relinquished the trusteeship of the Alabama-Coushatta land and other assets, and the state of Texas assumed full responsibility. The state's trusteeship of the Alabama-Coushattas continued until August 1987, when the state withdrew as trustee and the federal government assumed full responsibility for the Polk County Indians.

The governing body under the Alabama-Coushatta constitution and by-laws is the Tribal Council, composed of seven members elected by tribe members. The chief of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe is an advisory member and votes only to break a tie. The officers of the Tribal Council are chairman, vice chairman, secretary, and treasurer. All are selected by the Tribal Council from its own membership at the first meeting of the newly elected council.

The Alabama-Coushattas passed other milestones in 1924 when American Indians became citizens; in 1934, when the Polk County Indians formed a school district; in World War II, when forty-seven tribe members served in the armed forces (Indians had not been allowed to serve in World War I); in 1948, when the Texas attorney general confirmed the voting rights of the Alabama-Coushattas; in 1963, when the state allocated $40,000 to finance a museum, a restaurant, and an arts and crafts shop on the reservation; in 1970, when construction began on new brick homes as a Mutual Help Housing Project administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development; in 1975, when a Multipurpose Community Center was built to house the tribal kindergarten program, adult education, library, youth activities, counseling, vocational training, and recreational activities; in 1988, when the Tribal Council contracted for health care from the Indian Health Service of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of Indian Affairs began providing social and economic programs on the reservation, especially adult vocational training and scholarships; in 1989, when the Chief Kina ( Robert Fulton Battise) Medical Center was dedicated; and in 1994, when ground was broken for the large, multipurpose Alabama-Coushatta Cultural Center. A solid waste facility was opened in 1997, and in 2002 a covered pavilion was constructed. The Alabama-Coushatta Tribe celebrated their sesquicentennial with a powwow in February 2005, marking 150 years of settlement on the land that became their reservation. Clayton Sylestine was first chief, and Clem Sylestine was second chief of the Alabama-Coushattas in 2005. The reservation includes two churches, the First Indian Presbyterian and the First Assembly of God. The reservation also contains several shops-a smoke shop, souvenir shop, and truck stop-as well as recreational campgrounds that receive more than 200,000 visitors each year. Campsites, picnic areas, and nature trails center around Lake Tombigbee, a twenty-six-acre reservoir. The Alabama-Coushatta Indians host an annual powwow during the first weekend of June.

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The Alabama-Coushatta Indian Tribe of Texas, Incorporated, occupies a 4,593.7-acre reservation on U.S. Highway 190, seventeen miles east of Livingston in Polk County. In 2005 the names of more than 1,000 Alabama-Coushattas were recorded on the tribal roll, of whom approximately 500 lived on the reservation.

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The Kickapoo Indians, an Algonkian-speaking group of fewer than 1,000 individuals scattered across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Mexico, are the remnants of a larger tribe that once lived in the central Great Lakes region. When first encountered by French explorers in the early 1640s, the Kickapoos, or Kiikaapoa, as they call themselves, were still living in the region between lakes Michigan and Erie-the area considered to have been their ancestral home. By the 1660s, however, accelerating conflicts with the Iroquois over access to hunting grounds rich in fur-bearing animals had driven the Kickapoos and other central Algonkians to seek refuge in what is now Wisconsin. There they formed a loose alliance with other displaced Algonkians while carrying on a vigorous trade with the French. At the time of first contact with Whites, the Kickapoos were an independent and self-sufficient people whose mode of life was well adapted to their rich environment. Their self-reliant attitude set them apart from other Indians and continues to be a distinguishing characteristic of the group. It suited them well, for in the seventeenth century the Kickapoos, like other closely related tribes such as the Sacs, Foxes, and Shawnees, lived in a fashion best described as seminomadic. Their yearly subsistence pattern was split between periods of sedentary village life, when the group practiced horticulture and performed religious ceremonies, and time spent on the prairies, where, broken down into smaller, family-based bands, they hunted game and gathered wild foods. For generations, this roving life provided the Kickapoos with adequate nutrition while helping them maintain their autonomy.

Nonetheless, over the next two centuries, the pressures of White expansion, Indian removal policies, and the escalating cycle of frontier violence forced the Kickapoos into a series of relocations, divisions, and reassociations. On two occasions-Pontiac's so-called conspiracy of 1763-69 and the crusade led by Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet, during the first two decades of the nineteenth century-the Kickapoos were in the forefront of unsuccessful multitribal Indian resistance movements. These associations not only turned frontier Whites against the Kickapoos but also effected deep divisions within the tribe, so that by the mid-nineteenth century the tribe had divided into three distinct groups-the Kansas Kickapoos, the Oklahoma Kickapoos, and the group known as either the Mexican Kickapoos or the Texas Band of the Oklahoma Kickapoos. With time, these divisions became more distinct as each group adapted to its particular situation.

Of the three, the Kansas Kickapoos, followers of the prophet Kenekuk settled near Fort Leavenworth since 1834, have become the most settled and acculturated. At the other end of the spectrum stand those who journeyed through Texas and into Mexico. These people, living in virtual isolation, have been remarkably successful in preserving much of the traditional Kickapoo way of life. They are also the largest of the Kickapoo divisions. The Kickapoos were initially invited to settle in Texas by Spanish colonial officials who hoped to use displaced Indians as a buffer against American expansion. This goal proved unreachable, however, as declining Spanish influence and the Mexican War of Independence worked to encourage Americans to settle in Texas. For their part, the Kickapoos adjusted to their new life by joining Cherokee chief Bowl's alliance of immigrant Indians living in northeastern Texas. Unfortunately for the Indians, they claimed the very lands coveted by the White American immigrants. The two groups proved unwilling or unable to live in harmony.

After the Texas Revolution, President Sam Houston attempted to secure peace on the frontier by offering a treaty that would have given land grants to the tribes allied with Bowl. The treaty was never ratified, however, and on October 8, 1838, violence erupted on Richland Creek (later known as Battle Creek) in what later became eastern Navarro County. There, in the Battle Creek Fight, twenty-five members of a surveying party engaged an estimated 300 Kickapoo, Cherokee, and Delaware warriors. Only seven Whites survived. A short time later the tense frontier situation grew worse when an alliance of Kickapoos and Mexican guerrillas led by Vicente Córdova attacked the settlement of Killough ( see CÓRDOVA REBELLION). These acts of violence, combined with the threat of an Indian-Mexican combination, provided Houston's successor, Mirabeau B. Lamar, who was already predisposed to regard all Indians as enemies, the necessary justification for attempting to force all Indians out of Texas. By 1839 most Kickapoos had fled the republic for Mexico or Indian Territory. In Mexico, however, they continued to make trouble for Texans by allying themselves with the Mexican military and serving their new country as raiders into Texas and as border sentinels. For the next thirteen years these Kickapoos, operating out of Morelos, Coahuila, with Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, and Seminole partners, harassed settlements in South Texas while successfully repelling Comanche and Apache encroachments from the north. In return for this service the Mexican government awarded the tribe 78,000 acres of land near Zaragoza and Remolino. In 1852 the tribe traded this grant for 17,352 acres at El Nacimiento and an equal amount in Durango that the tribe never occupied. This El Nacimiento grant established a permanent Kickapoo presence in northern Mexico, and the settlement remains home to most of today's Kickapoos.

With the beginning of the Civil War both the Union and the Confederacy sought the aid of the various Indian tribes. Attempting to avoid involvement, many of the Kansas and Indian Territory Kickapoos set out through Texas to join their relatives in Mexico. On January 8, 1865, their effort to remain neutral came to an end when three Kickapoo bands, camping on Dove Creek, a tributary of the Concho River, were attacked by the Confederate cavalry in the battle of Dove Creek. Although surprised and outgunned, the Kickapoos repelled the aggressors. Convinced that Texas had declared war on them, the Kickapoos quickly abandoned camp and completed their journey to Mexico. For years they used the Dove Creek ambush as an excuse for raiding across the Rio Grande. By the early 1870s Kickapoo depredations had become such a serious problem that many Texans called on the cavalry to violate the international border and subdue the offending Indians. On May 18, 1873, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's Fourth United States Cavalry, under orders from Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, did just that. Planning their attack so as to coincide with a major Kickapoo hunt, the cavalrymen, some 400 strong, fell on the Kickapoo camp near Remolino while most of the men were away. After a brief skirmish, forty surviving Indians, mostly women, children, and those too old or infirm to hunt, were captured, tied two or three to a horse, and marched to San Antonio. From there they were transferred to Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, where they were held hostage to encourage the surrender of fugitive Kickapoos. Those that gave up, 317 in all, were removed to Indian Territory, but most of the tribe refused to leave and gathered anew in El Nacimiento.

Life in Indian Territory was less than satisfactory. Gathered on a small reservation shared with the Sacs and Foxes, the Kickapoos were subjected to allotment schemes, pressured to send their children to government schools, and forced to endure the presence of White squatters on their supposedly protected lands. Increasingly unhappy, many Kickapoos sold their lands in 1894 and moved to rejoin their relatives in Mexico. This was an equally unsatisfactory situation because the Kickapoos at El Nacimiento, asserting that the recent immigrants had been contaminated by White culture, refused to allow them to join the principal band. With nowhere to go, the emigrants initially settled in Sonora and then, after complex legal haggling, regained their allotments in Oklahoma, to where most of this band returned by the 1920s. Even so, El Nacimiento remains the home for most Kickapoos and is recognized by the Oklahoma and Kansas groups as the repository of all that is truly Kickapoo.

The Kickapoos did not legally hold title to land in Texas until 1985, but because they have traditionally camped near the international bridge between Piedras Negras, Coahuila, and Eagle Pass, Texas, they have long been identified with this state. On January 8, 1983, Public Law 97-429 resolved the Kickapoos' ambiguous land situation. Under this statute they were officially granted lands near El Indio, Texas, and became identified to United States authorities as the Texas Band of the Oklahoma Kickapoos, thereby becoming eligible for federal aid. Nevertheless, the people still call themselves the Mexican Kickapoos, as they are called in Mexico, their primary place of residence. Today the Mexican Kickapoos are distinguished by their retention of their traditional culture. From religion to home construction to language and education, the coherent Kickapoo way of life has survived, even if somewhat modified by a veneer of western civilization. The group, which numbers between 625 and 650, spends the major portion of the year in El Nacimiento-about 130 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas-but still lives a seminomadic life that has been adapted to modern economic conditions. In middle to late May most of the residents of Nacimiento divide into family-based bands and set out across Texas and other western states to work as migrant agricultural laborers. By late October or early November the bands make their way back to Nacimiento, where they pass the winter hunting, planting crops, raising cattle, and participating in religious ceremonies. Though some earn money by selling agricultural products and crafts, most depend upon federal and Texas welfare programs to supplement their meager incomes.

The Kickapoos' disregard of outside influence in other matters is further evidenced by their relationships with Mexican and United States authorities. Since, in spite of their receipt of government money, they regard themselves as a nation unto themselves, the Kickapoos have migrated across the international border with little regard for political boundaries. Mexico and the United States, in turn, have informally granted the Kickapoos the privilege to seek employment in both countries by giving them, in effect, dual citizenship. Consequently, the tribe is free to cross and recross the border at will. Mexico also allows the Kickapoos certain freedoms not granted to regular Mexican citizens. For example, they are not required to license their vehicles in Mexico and can take electrical appliances into the country without paying duty. However, as the result of a provision in United States Public Law 97-429 that seeks to clarify the Kickapoos' citizenship status, they may be forced to declare allegiance to one or the other government.

To a large degree the persistence of Kickapoo cultural forms is related to the continuing importance of the extended family as the basic unit of society. The Kickapoos take kinship obligations and communal responsibilities very seriously and are reluctant to act in ways contrary to tradition. Consequently, though marriage outside of the group is possible, it remains rare, and most Kickapoos prefer to marry within the tribe. A self-contained social structure is also revealed by the Kickapoos' continuing resistance to efforts to introduce formal education among them. Since they believe that exposure to outside ways will result in rapid disintegration of their culture, Kickapoo adults respond by keeping their children away from government schools and have, on occasion, destroyed school buildings. The tribe's migratory life also hampers attempts to enforce attendance. Therefore, education is frequently carried on in the traditional fashion, by tribal elders, and most Kickapoos remain illiterate in English and Spanish. Yet there are some signs of change. In 1937 the Mexican Código Agrario forced the tribe to adopt an elective governmental system, the ejido. This system, which requires the Indians to elect a president, secretary, and treasurer while providing for a tribal police force, has coexisted with the traditional system of hereditary chief and tribal council. The ejido, however, has become more important. Tribal government changed again in 1984 when Public Law 97-429 placed the Mexican group under the auspices of the Oklahoma tribe. Also, the Kickapoos' hostility to formal education abated somewhat as they acquired televisions and as some of them began to look outside the community for employment. Nevertheless, the Kickapoos remain among the most traditional of all North American Indian groups.

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The Kickapoo Indians, an Algonkian-speaking group of fewer than 1,000 individuals scattered across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Mexico, are the remnants of a larger tribe that once lived in the central Great Lakes region.

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The Kickapoo Indians, an Algonkian-speaking group of fewer than 1,000 individuals scattered across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Mexico, are the remnants of a larger tribe that once lived in the central Great Lakes region. When first encountered by French explorers in the early 1640s, the Kickapoos, or Kiikaapoa, as they call themselves, were still living in the region between lakes Michigan and Erie-the area considered to have been their ancestral home. By the 1660s, however, accelerating conflicts with the Iroquois over access to hunting grounds rich in fur-bearing animals had driven the Kickapoos and other central Algonkians to seek refuge in what is now Wisconsin. There they formed a loose alliance with other displaced Algonkians while carrying on a vigorous trade with the French. At the time of first contact with Whites, the Kickapoos were an independent and self-sufficient people whose mode of life was well adapted to their rich environment. Their self-reliant attitude set them apart from other Indians and continues to be a distinguishing characteristic of the group. It suited them well, for in the seventeenth century the Kickapoos, like other closely related tribes such as the Sacs, Foxes, and Shawnees, lived in a fashion best described as seminomadic. Their yearly subsistence pattern was split between periods of sedentary village life, when the group practiced horticulture and performed religious ceremonies, and time spent on the prairies, where, broken down into smaller, family-based bands, they hunted game and gathered wild foods. For generations, this roving life provided the Kickapoos with adequate nutrition while helping them maintain their autonomy.

Nonetheless, over the next two centuries, the pressures of White expansion, Indian removal policies, and the escalating cycle of frontier violence forced the Kickapoos into a series of relocations, divisions, and reassociations. On two occasions-Pontiac's so-called conspiracy of 1763-69 and the crusade led by Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet, during the first two decades of the nineteenth century-the Kickapoos were in the forefront of unsuccessful multitribal Indian resistance movements. These associations not only turned frontier Whites against the Kickapoos but also effected deep divisions within the tribe, so that by the mid-nineteenth century the tribe had divided into three distinct groups-the Kansas Kickapoos, the Oklahoma Kickapoos, and the group known as either the Mexican Kickapoos or the Texas Band of the Oklahoma Kickapoos. With time, these divisions became more distinct as each group adapted to its particular situation.

Of the three, the Kansas Kickapoos, followers of the prophet Kenekuk settled near Fort Leavenworth since 1834, have become the most settled and acculturated. At the other end of the spectrum stand those who journeyed through Texas and into Mexico. These people, living in virtual isolation, have been remarkably successful in preserving much of the traditional Kickapoo way of life. They are also the largest of the Kickapoo divisions. The Kickapoos were initially invited to settle in Texas by Spanish colonial officials who hoped to use displaced Indians as a buffer against American expansion. This goal proved unreachable, however, as declining Spanish influence and the Mexican War of Independence worked to encourage Americans to settle in Texas. For their part, the Kickapoos adjusted to their new life by joining Cherokee chief Bowl's alliance of immigrant Indians living in northeastern Texas. Unfortunately for the Indians, they claimed the very lands coveted by the White American immigrants. The two groups proved unwilling or unable to live in harmony.

After the Texas Revolution, President Sam Houston attempted to secure peace on the frontier by offering a treaty that would have given land grants to the tribes allied with Bowl. The treaty was never ratified, however, and on October 8, 1838, violence erupted on Richland Creek (later known as Battle Creek) in what later became eastern Navarro County. There, in the Battle Creek Fight, twenty-five members of a surveying party engaged an estimated 300 Kickapoo, Cherokee, and Delaware warriors. Only seven Whites survived. A short time later the tense frontier situation grew worse when an alliance of Kickapoos and Mexican guerrillas led by Vicente Córdova attacked the settlement of Killough ( see CÓRDOVA REBELLION). These acts of violence, combined with the threat of an Indian-Mexican combination, provided Houston's successor, Mirabeau B. Lamar, who was already predisposed to regard all Indians as enemies, the necessary justification for attempting to force all Indians out of Texas. By 1839 most Kickapoos had fled the republic for Mexico or Indian Territory. In Mexico, however, they continued to make trouble for Texans by allying themselves with the Mexican military and serving their new country as raiders into Texas and as border sentinels. For the next thirteen years these Kickapoos, operating out of Morelos, Coahuila, with Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, and Seminole partners, harassed settlements in South Texas while successfully repelling Comanche and Apache encroachments from the north. In return for this service the Mexican government awarded the tribe 78,000 acres of land near Zaragoza and Remolino. In 1852 the tribe traded this grant for 17,352 acres at El Nacimiento and an equal amount in Durango that the tribe never occupied. This El Nacimiento grant established a permanent Kickapoo presence in northern Mexico, and the settlement remains home to most of today's Kickapoos.

With the beginning of the Civil War both the Union and the Confederacy sought the aid of the various Indian tribes. Attempting to avoid involvement, many of the Kansas and Indian Territory Kickapoos set out through Texas to join their relatives in Mexico. On January 8, 1865, their effort to remain neutral came to an end when three Kickapoo bands, camping on Dove Creek, a tributary of the Concho River, were attacked by the Confederate cavalry in the battle of Dove Creek. Although surprised and outgunned, the Kickapoos repelled the aggressors. Convinced that Texas had declared war on them, the Kickapoos quickly abandoned camp and completed their journey to Mexico. For years they used the Dove Creek ambush as an excuse for raiding across the Rio Grande. By the early 1870s Kickapoo depredations had become such a serious problem that many Texans called on the cavalry to violate the international border and subdue the offending Indians. On May 18, 1873, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's Fourth United States Cavalry, under orders from Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, did just that. Planning their attack so as to coincide with a major Kickapoo hunt, the cavalrymen, some 400 strong, fell on the Kickapoo camp near Remolino while most of the men were away. After a brief skirmish, forty surviving Indians, mostly women, children, and those too old or infirm to hunt, were captured, tied two or three to a horse, and marched to San Antonio. From there they were transferred to Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, where they were held hostage to encourage the surrender of fugitive Kickapoos. Those that gave up, 317 in all, were removed to Indian Territory, but most of the tribe refused to leave and gathered anew in El Nacimiento.

Life in Indian Territory was less than satisfactory. Gathered on a small reservation shared with the Sacs and Foxes, the Kickapoos were subjected to allotment schemes, pressured to send their children to government schools, and forced to endure the presence of White squatters on their supposedly protected lands. Increasingly unhappy, many Kickapoos sold their lands in 1894 and moved to rejoin their relatives in Mexico. This was an equally unsatisfactory situation because the Kickapoos at El Nacimiento, asserting that the recent immigrants had been contaminated by White culture, refused to allow them to join the principal band. With nowhere to go, the emigrants initially settled in Sonora and then, after complex legal haggling, regained their allotments in Oklahoma, to where most of this band returned by the 1920s. Even so, El Nacimiento remains the home for most Kickapoos and is recognized by the Oklahoma and Kansas groups as the repository of all that is truly Kickapoo.

The Kickapoos did not legally hold title to land in Texas until 1985, but because they have traditionally camped near the international bridge between Piedras Negras, Coahuila, and Eagle Pass, Texas, they have long been identified with this state. On January 8, 1983, Public Law 97-429 resolved the Kickapoos' ambiguous land situation. Under this statute they were officially granted lands near El Indio, Texas, and became identified to United States authorities as the Texas Band of the Oklahoma Kickapoos, thereby becoming eligible for federal aid. Nevertheless, the people still call themselves the Mexican Kickapoos, as they are called in Mexico, their primary place of residence. Today the Mexican Kickapoos are distinguished by their retention of their traditional culture. From religion to home construction to language and education, the coherent Kickapoo way of life has survived, even if somewhat modified by a veneer of western civilization. The group, which numbers between 625 and 650, spends the major portion of the year in El Nacimiento-about 130 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas-but still lives a seminomadic life that has been adapted to modern economic conditions. In middle to late May most of the residents of Nacimiento divide into family-based bands and set out across Texas and other western states to work as migrant agricultural laborers. By late October or early November the bands make their way back to Nacimiento, where they pass the winter hunting, planting crops, raising cattle, and participating in religious ceremonies. Though some earn money by selling agricultural products and crafts, most depend upon federal and Texas welfare programs to supplement their meager incomes.

The Kickapoos' disregard of outside influence in other matters is further evidenced by their relationships with Mexican and United States authorities. Since, in spite of their receipt of government money, they regard themselves as a nation unto themselves, the Kickapoos have migrated across the international border with little regard for political boundaries. Mexico and the United States, in turn, have informally granted the Kickapoos the privilege to seek employment in both countries by giving them, in effect, dual citizenship. Consequently, the tribe is free to cross and recross the border at will. Mexico also allows the Kickapoos certain freedoms not granted to regular Mexican citizens. For example, they are not required to license their vehicles in Mexico and can take electrical appliances into the country without paying duty. However, as the result of a provision in United States Public Law 97-429 that seeks to clarify the Kickapoos' citizenship status, they may be forced to declare allegiance to one or the other government.

To a large degree the persistence of Kickapoo cultural forms is related to the continuing importance of the extended family as the basic unit of society. The Kickapoos take kinship obligations and communal responsibilities very seriously and are reluctant to act in ways contrary to tradition. Consequently, though marriage outside of the group is possible, it remains rare, and most Kickapoos prefer to marry within the tribe. A self-contained social structure is also revealed by the Kickapoos' continuing resistance to efforts to introduce formal education among them. Since they believe that exposure to outside ways will result in rapid disintegration of their culture, Kickapoo adults respond by keeping their children away from government schools and have, on occasion, destroyed school buildings. The tribe's migratory life also hampers attempts to enforce attendance. Therefore, education is frequently carried on in the traditional fashion, by tribal elders, and most Kickapoos remain illiterate in English and Spanish. Yet there are some signs of change. In 1937 the Mexican Código Agrario forced the tribe to adopt an elective governmental system, the ejido. This system, which requires the Indians to elect a president, secretary, and treasurer while providing for a tribal police force, has coexisted with the traditional system of hereditary chief and tribal council. The ejido, however, has become more important. Tribal government changed again in 1984 when Public Law 97-429 placed the Mexican group under the auspices of the Oklahoma tribe. Also, the Kickapoos' hostility to formal education abated somewhat as they acquired televisions and as some of them began to look outside the community for employment. Nevertheless, the Kickapoos remain among the most traditional of all North American Indian groups.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Kickapoo Indians, an Algonkian-speaking group of fewer than 1,000 individuals scattered across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and northern Mexico, are the remnants of a larger tribe that once lived in the central Great Lakes region.

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The Apache Indians belong to the southern branch of the Athabascan group, whose languages constitute a large family, with speakers in Alaska, western Canada, and the American Southwest. The several branches of Apache tribes occupied an area extending from the Arkansas River to Northern Mexico and from Central Texas to Central Arizona. Generally, the Apaches are divided into Eastern and Western, with the Rio Grande serving as the dividing line. Two groups, the Lipans and the Mescaleros, lived partially or entirely within the confines of Texas. The Apaches went by numerous names. Because of their nomadic nature, it seems probable that several names were used to identify the same band or tribe. Some names of Apache bands in Texas were Limita, Conejero, and Trementina (perhaps the same as Limita). But only the names Lipan and Mescalero survived into the nineteenth century. The name Apache most probably came from the Zuñi word apachu, meaning "enemy," or possibly Awa'tehe, the Ute name for Apaches. The Apaches referred to themselves as Inde or Diné, meaning "the people." The Apaches arrived in the Southwest between A.D. 1000 and 1400. After somehow being separated from their northern kinsmen, they carved out a home in the Southwest-apparently migrating south along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, then spreading westward into New Mexico and Arizona. In time, pressure from the Comanches and other tribes pushed the Apaches farther south and west.

The social unit of the Lipan and Mescalero Apaches was the extended family. Several extended families generally stayed together and were led by their most prominent member, who acted as chief advisor and director of group affairs. A number of the groups lived in close proximity and could unite for defensive or offensive purposes, or for social or ceremonial occasions. The leader of the combined groups was the band leader. The Lipans had no formal organization larger than the band. This loose organization caused problems in relations with the Spanish, and later with the Mexicans, Texans, and Americans. One Apache band, for instance, might make peace with its enemies, while another would remain at war. Likewise, when the Apaches made peace with one enemy Indian settlement, it did not mean that they made peace with other affiliated settlements. Band leaders were always males, but females held a central place within the tribe. Upon marriage, the groom moved in with his wife's family and had to hunt and work with his in-laws. If the wife should die, the husband was required to stay with her family, who would usually supply him with a new bride. The wife had little obligation to the husband's family, but if he died, his family could provide a cousin or brother for her to marry. Men were allowed to marry more than one woman, but few besides wealthy or prestigious leaders did so. On those rare occasions, they were required to marry sisters or cousins of their wives.

The Apaches were nomadic and lived almost completely off the buffalo. They dressed in buffalo skins and lived in tents made of tanned and greased hides, which they loaded onto dogs when they moved with the herds. They were among the first Indians, after the Pueblos, to learn to ride horses. Learning from runaway or captured Pueblos, the Apaches quickly adapted to their use of horses. Formerly peaceful trade relationships with the Pueblos deteriorated, however, as the Spanish discouraged trade with the Apaches and forced the Pueblos to work their farms. When the Pueblos became unwilling or unable to trade with the Apaches, the nomadic Indians turned their new equestrian skills to raiding for horses and supplies. The Spanish first contacted the Apaches in 1541, when Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and his men encountered a band of "Querechos" on the journey to Quivira. From 1656 to 1675, the Spanish settlers and Pueblo Indians of New Mexico suffered heavily from almost continuous Apache raids. These raids, in conjunction with drought, harsh Spanish rule, and missionary activities, led the Pueblo Indians to revolt and to drive the Spaniards out of New Mexico in 1680 (the "Pueblo Revolt). When the Spaniards reconquered New Mexico in 1692, the Apaches were a powerful nation of mounted Indians who raided with impunity wherever they desired. But the Apaches' dominance was short-lived. Their aggressive behavior turned their neighbors into enemies, and a new, potentially powerful tribe, the Comanches, began pressuring the Apaches from the north. By 1700 the Apaches began migrating southwest as the Comanche, Wichita, and Tejas Indians, better armed through trade with the French, began to occupy the dominant position on the South Plains. In addition, the Apaches had never adapted completely to a Plains culture. They continued to establish rancherías, where they built huts and tended fields of maize, beans, pumpkins, and watermelons. This attempt to improve their source of food was a major cause of their defeat by the Comanches. Twice a year, during planting and again during harvesting, the Apaches were tied to their fields. As a result, the Comanches knew where to find their enemies and could launch devastating raids upon the Apache settlements. With each successful raid the Comanches grew stronger and the Apaches weaker.

As the Apaches fled before the Comanche onslaught, many groups moved westward into New Mexico and Arizona. Others, mainly the Lipans and Mescaleros, fled southward into Central Texas as well as into northern Mexico. There, they collided with the Spanish, who were advancing northward. The Spanish had earlier aided the Tejas Indians of East Texas in their raids against the Apaches. When the Spanish founded San Antonio in 1718, the Apaches discovered a convenient, accessible location at which to stage raids against their European enemies. The Spanish at San Antonio attempted to make peace with the Apaches but had little success. After a series of clashes, the viceroy ordered the governor of Texas, Fernando Pérez de Almazán, to secure peace with the Apaches through gentle means. Noting that the Jicarilla Apaches had made peace with the Spanish in New Mexico, the viceroy saw hope for similar conciliation with the Texas Apaches. The viceroy therefore forbade any further campaigns against the Apaches in 1725, and his decision appeared to be justified by a substantial drop in Apache raiding over the next six years. During this lull in activity, Pedro de Rivera y Villalón made a general inspection of the entire Spanish frontier and recommended, among other things, a reduction in the size of the garrison at San Antonio. Influenced no doubt by the relative quiet around San Antonio, Rivera suggested that the garrison be reduced. This action raised a storm of protest from the missionaries and settlers at Bexar. They feared renewed raids once the Apaches learned of the smaller force at San Antonio. The Regulation of 1729, based largely on Rivera's recommendations, forbade governors and commanders from waging war on friendly or indifferent Indians, discouraged campaigns against hostile Indians by friendly tribes, and encouraged granting peace to any enemy tribes who sought it. During the 1730s and 1740s, the Apaches and Spaniards continued to wage war on each other. In 1743 Fray Benito Fernández de Santa Ana urged the establishment of missions for the Apaches in their own lands, arguing that this was the best solution to the most serious Indian problems in Texas. On August 19, 1749, four Apache chiefs with numerous followers buried a hatchet along with other instruments of war in a peace ceremony at San Antonio. For the first time both sides appeared genuinely to desire peace, and the Apaches, decimated by Comanche raids, appeared willing to accept Christian conversion in exchange for protection by the Spaniards.

The missionaries at San Antonio proposed several plans to set up missions for the Apaches, but competition among proposals delayed their implementation. The first formal mission for the Texas Apaches was established not at San Antonio but in the jurisdiction of San Juan Bautista on the Rio Grande. On December 21, 1754, Alonso Giraldo de Terreros established the mission of San Lorenzo, situated in Mexico eighteen leagues west of the presidio at San Juan Bautista. San Lorenzo had a degree of success until Father Terreros retired from the management of that mission to promote a larger project intended for the San Saba River in Texas. Less than a year after San Lorenzo was established, its neophytes became discontented, revolted, burned the mission buildings, and deserted. The missionaries blamed the failure of that first Apache mission on the natural inconstancy of the tribe, as well as on their reluctance to live away from their homelands. The latter reason helped bolster the argument for placing a mission closer to Apache territory. Revived prospects for mining in the region of San Saba, which was located in the heart of Apachería, also boosted the argument for that location. In addition, Terreros's cousin offered generous monetary support for the mission. The plan for a mission-presidio-colony project was soon under way. When Terreros, the presidio commander Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla, and their entourage arrived at the San Saba River in April 1757, they found no Indians to greet them. Still, despite Ortiz's objections, the missionaries demanded that construction begin, and Ortiz yielded to their entreaties. In June 1757 the first Indians began to arrive at the site, and within days 3,000 Apaches encamped around the mission. The missionaries were extremely pleased until they learned that the Indians were not willing to enter the mission. Instead, they had gathered for their annual buffalo hunt and for a campaign against their enemies, the northern tribes. The Indians soon departed, promising to return to settle at the missions upon completion of their quest. During the autumn and winter of 1757, small groups of Apaches would appear at the mission; but after partaking of the priests' kindness, they continued their migration to the south. On March 16, 1758, a party of 2,000 Comanche, Tejas, Bidai, Tonkawa, and other Indians swooped down upon Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission, killed eight of the inhabitants, pillaged the supplies, and burned the buildings.

Despite the disaster at San Saba and the apparent untrustworthiness of the Apaches, the Spanish continued in their efforts to keep the peace. The Apaches for their part did just enough to keep the Spanish interested. They even joined Colonel Ortiz on his campaign in 1759 to punish the northern tribes. Although some of the Lipans retreated before the final battle, most of them apparently served Ortiz well during the campaign. The Lipans continued to ask for a mission but refused to settle in the region of San Saba after the massacre that had occurred there. They desired a location more remote from their Comanche and northern enemies. In January 1762 the new Apache mission, San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz, was established on the upper Nueces River halfway between San Saba and the Rio Grande. Once the mission was established, several Apache bands visited it, but only one band of more than 300 actually settled at the mission. Within a month, however, an Apache chief requested the establishment of a second mission at a site several miles downstream from San Lorenzo. In February 1762 Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Mission was established. Life at the missions progressed relatively smoothly until a smallpox epidemic hit the neophytes in 1764. In addition, the missions were too poor to feed the Indians regularly, and the missionaries demanded too much labor from them. Slowly, the Lipans became discouraged with mission life. In 1766 they abandoned Candelaria; and when the Comanches and other northern tribes began raiding San Lorenzo, the Apaches deserted in droves. By the summer of 1767, both missions were devoid of Lipan Apaches.

At approximately this time, the Marqués de Rubí completed his inspection of the frontier, and upon his return to Mexico set forth his recommendations. He believed that the Comanches and other northern tribes attacked the Spanish only because of the latter's connection with the Lipan Apaches. Rubí felt sure that friendship could be cultivated with the northern tribes and that with their help the Apaches could be exterminated, or at least sufficiently reduced. By the 1790s the Apaches had become relatively quiet, although they continued to raid sporadically. The Spanish made peace treaties with them in 1790 and again in 1793. When the Mexican War of Independence began in 1811, the decreased attention that the Spanish paid to Indians caused them to become bolder, and they again staged raids. These attacks continued until the end of Spanish rule in Texas and Mexico. Antonio María Martínez, the last Spanish governor of Texas, reported raids by Lipan and Comanche Indians, even on the capital of Texas, San Antonio ( see CAPITALS).

The Mexican government quickly signed two treaties with the Lipans. In each, the Mexicans promised to supply the Apaches with annual gifts of gunpowder and corn in exchange for peace. As Anglo-Americans began moving into Central Texas, the Apaches cultivated a friendship with them, each side hoping that the other would help defend them against hostile tribes in the area. The Lipans often raided into Mexico and sold their stolen horses and goods to the Anglos. The Mexican government generally overlooked these depredations, because of the usefulness of the Apaches against the formidable Comanches.

When Texas gained its independence, the relatively cordial relations between Whites and Apaches continued. The Texans drew up their own treaty with the Lipans in 1838. The alliance broke down in 1842, and 250 of approximately 400 Lipans left Texas for Mexico, where they joined the Mescaleros on destructive raids across the border for several decades. In 1865-67 alone, Uvalde County reported the theft of more than $30,000 worth of livestock and the deaths of eighteen people. The Mexican government was reluctant to act, because several Mexican border towns profited handsomely from the purchase of plundered goods from the Apaches. Finally, in 1873, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie led a force of 400 soldiers into Mexico to destroy the Lipan villages. His army killed or captured virtually all of the surviving Lipans, and they were deported to the Mescalero Reservation in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, which had been assigned to the Mescaleros in 1855 but not officially established until 1873. In 1905 the remainder of the Lipans in Mexico drifted onto the Mescalero Reservation. In 1970 about 1,660 Indians were enrolled there-not only Mescaleros, but Chiricahuas, Lipans, Kiowas, and a few Comanches as well. Thirty-five Lipans were living in Oklahoma in 1940 but were not officially listed among the tribes of the state.

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The Caddo confederacies and the bands within them scattered three directions over a period of decades, eventually to reunite in Indian Territory at the Wichita Reservation. https://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/tejas/voices/without.html The removal treaty signed on July 1, 1835 in what would later become Shreveport, Louisiana, was signed by the Caddo that lived in Northwestern Louisiana under principal chief Tsauninot's leadership. A group of Caddo settled among the Choctaw and Chickasaw in south-central Indian Territory near present-day Paul's Valley, OK. The small town of Whitebead, OK was named for this group of Caddo, who are sometimes referred to as the "Whitebead group" among Caddo people today. Another group of Caddo led by Nadako chief José María (Kahdii Haish) were interned on the lower Brazos reservation near the Salk Fork of the Brazos River in present-day Young County, TX. This group was emergency evacuated by the U.S. Indian Agent Major Robert S. Neighbors in 1859 to avoid a massacre by Texas frontiersmen led by Colonel John R. Baylor. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/shreveport-and-chonena-caddo-bands-leave-texas

After multiple forced removals, the Caddo eventually relocated to what is now Caddo County, OK. The Kadohadacho, Natchitoches, and Hasinai confederacies and all the bands within them consolidated geographically as a consequence of Indian removal. Additional losses resulted from the subsequent sale of reservation lands as a result of allotment. Twentieth century efforts to revitalize economic, social, political, and religious institutions have enabled Caddo people to maintain a distinctive identity today and continue building toward a hopeful and prosperous future.

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The Caddo confederacies and the bands within them scattered three directions over a period of decades, eventually to reunite in Indian Territory at the Wichita Reservation. https://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/tejas/voices/without.html The removal treaty signed on July 1, 1835 in what would later become Shreveport, Louisiana, was signed by the Caddo that lived in Northwestern Louisiana under principal chief Tsauninot's leadership.

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Between 1500 and 1700 the name Jumanos was used to identify at least three distinct peoples of the Southwest and South Plains. They include the Tompiro-speaking Pueblo Indians in Salinas, a nomadic trading group based around the Rio Grande and Río Conchos, and the Caddoan-speaking Wichitas along the Arkansas River and Red River basins. Although they ranged over much of northern Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, their most enduring territorial base was in central Texas between the lower Pecos River and the Colorado. The Jumanos were buffalo hunters and traders, and played an active role as middlemen between the Spanish colonies and various Indian tribes. Historical documents refer to Jumana, Humana, Sumana, Chouman, Xoman, and other variants of the name; but Jumano has been the standard form in twentieth-century scholarship. Other names mentioned in connection with the Jumanos, as closely allied or subordinate groups, include Cíbolos, Jediondos, and Caguates. Early scholars pondered the mystery of their virtual disappearance from the historical record around 1700. Further, the scattered distribution of the Jumanos, in bands, rancherías, and villages at widely separated locations led to disagreement about their identity. This has been termed the "Jumano problem." One solution, widely accepted since 1940, was to draw a distinction between "true" Jumanos-the nomadic bands in the South Plains-and other groups who also practiced facial painting and were therefore called Jumanos. However, this idea now appears simplistic, since many interconnections, suggestive of a shared cultural and linguistic identity, appear to link most, if not all, of the groups. There are no substantial records of the Jumanos' language, and their linguistic identity has been the subject of considerable debate. An early scholar believed that they were Caddoans, ancestral to the Wichitas. Others have suggested a Uto-Aztecan or Athabascan affiliation. A recent study has argued that the Jumanos spoke a Tanoan language. If they did, this would link them with the eastern Pueblos of New Mexico and would imply that their ancestral ties lay within or near the Rio Grande valley. Although few direct connections between historic and prehistoric sites have been demonstrated, clues of geographical distribution and cultural similarity suggest that the Jumanos were descendants of a prehistoric Jornada Mogollón population indigenous to this region.

Spanish explorers sometimes referred to the Jumanos as "naked" Indians because their breasts and genitalia were not covered. However, both men and women did wear garments and shoes (probably moccasins) of tanned skins. Women had brief skirts or aprons and short sleeveless tunics, and both men and women used capes or cloaks for protection against the weather. Men cut their hair short, decorated it with paint, and left one long lock to which the feathers of various birds might be tied. Women may have worn their hair long or in braids. The Jumanos were characterized as a rayado (striped) people because of a distinctive pattern of facial marking in horizontal lines or bars. The medium may have been tattooing or some combination of scarification and paint. This practice, probably an adaptation to their traditional role in intertribal trade, made them immediately recognizable. Nomadic Jumanos used skin tepees. Stone circles near La Junta de los Ríos and elsewhere have been tentatively interpreted as evidence of this type of housing. Those living at more permanent rancherías built houses of reeds or sticks, while those in the pueblos of New Mexico had masonry houses. The Jumanos hunted with bow and arrow. Spaniards remarked on the strength of their "Turkish" bows (reinforced with sinew). In war, they used clubs, or cudgels, of hardwood. Jumano traders supplied arrows, and perhaps bows as well, from La Junta to the Indians of central and eastern Texas. Evidence of trade from the Tompiro region of New Mexico may be seen in the large quantities of potsherds, of local types such as Chupadero black-on-white, found over a wide region of the South Plains. Jumanos supplied corn, dried squashes, beans, and other produce from the farming villages, in exchange for pelts, meat, and other buffalo products, and foods such as piñon nuts, mesquite beans, and cactus fruits. Other trade goods included textiles, turquoise, exotic feathers, mineral pigments, shells, salt (from salines in New Mexico and near the lower Pecos), and possibly hallucinogens (including peyote, which was available at La Junta). The Jumanos obtained horses early, probably via their connections in Nueva Vizcaya, and may have been instrumental in introducing their use to the Caddo, Tonkawa, and other Texas tribes.

Documentary evidence focuses three geographical regions for the Jumanos: Nueva Vizcaya, New Mexico, and Texas. In 1535 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca visited the "People of the Cows," believed to have been a Jumano group, near La Junta, in Nueva Viscaya. The earliest recorded use of the name Jumano, in 1581, was Antonio de Espejo's reference to villagers at La Junta. However, modern scholars do not agree on the nature of the Jumano presence there. Both Hernán Gallegos, in 1581, and Diego Pérez de Luxán, in 1582, indicated that the population at La Junta included two distinct groups, speaking different languages: the Abriaches (or Cabris), whose settlements extended up the Río Conchos from La Junta, and the Otomoacas (or Amotomancos), whose language was similar to that of the Caguates, their upstream neighbors. According to Pérez, the nomadic Jumanos of the lower Pecos were similar in language, clothing, and appearance to these Patarabuey villagers, with whom they had trade relations. It appears that the situation at La Junta may have been analogous to that in New Mexico, where nomadic Jumanos from the plains periodically visited, and sometimes lived among, their village-dwelling trading partners and kin. After the return of the Espejo-Beltrán expedition, little is known of the La Junta region for roughly a century. In 1684, at the instigation of the Jumano chief Juan Sabeata, Franciscans from New Mexico founded the missions of La Navidad en las Cruces and Apostol Santiago, to accommodate the La Junta tribes and refugees from Apache depredations elsewhere. Over the next decade Sabeata evidently resided at La Junta and led annual trading expeditions to conduct "trade fairs" with Indian groups of central and eastern Texas, including the Tejas (Caddo) Indians. For at least part of this time, Juan Sabeata was a Spanish-appointed native governor, and the Jumanos and Cíbolos under his command served as scouts and mercenaries in fighting against rebellious Tobosos and Chisos.

In 1598, Juan de Oñate received oaths of loyalty from caciques of three Jumano villages of Genobey, Pataoece, and Cueloce, located in the second geographical focus, Tompiro Province, adjacent to the Salinas of New Mexico. The two smaller pueblos may soon have been evacuated and the Jumano population consolidated at the larger pueblo of Cueloce, which came to be called "the pueblo of the Humanas" or simply "Las Humanas" (now the Gran Quivira ruins). In 1601, Vicente de Zaldívar led a punitive expedition to this site to put down a rebellion, instigated by the Jumanos but also involving other pueblos of the region. The Jumanos still had a reputation for rebelliousness in 1627, when Fray Alonso de Benavides began active missionizing of the Tompiro Province. The church of San Isidro was built at that time, and was briefly supervised by Fray Francisco Letrado. Las Humanas was then a satellite of the Abo mission until 1660, when Fray Diego Santander became resident priest and built the large church of San Buenaventura. Las Humanas was a frontier trading center frequented by nomadic Jumanos, who in 1629 petitioned Fray Juan de Salas to visit their rancherías in the plains. When these rancherías were subsequently evacuated, the Franciscans resettled the refugees in the Salinas, near the missions of Quarai and Las Humanas. Las Humanas became increasingly inaccessible to Jumano traders, as their Apache enemies came to dominate the plains to the east. New Mexican colonists then began to make annual trading trips to the Jumano base on the Río Nueces. This site was also visited by military parties from New Mexico in 1650 and 1654. During a famine in the 1660s, more than 400 people died of starvation at Las Humanas. In the same years, Apache raiding became endemic to the region. The Tompiros were deserted by 1670, and the remaining Jumano population was reportedly removed to the newly founded mission of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, south of El Paso. In October 1683, Juan Sabeata led a delegation of Indians to El Paso to petition Fray Nicolás López, the Franciscan padre custodio, and Don Gironza Petris de Cruzate, governor of New Mexico, to send missionary and military assistance for the Jumanos and their allies at La Junta and in Texas.

In 1540 the Coronado expedition found "Querechos" (Apaches) and "Teyas" at war in the plains east of the northern Pueblo villages, in what is now Texas. The Teyas may have been Jumanos, though some scholars insist they were Caddos. In 1598, Zaldívar learned of the ongoing Jumano-Apache war near Pecos Pueblo. Three years later Oñate's expedition encountered a large settlement of people, called Jumanos by the accompanying New Mexican Indians, near the Arkansas River on the southern frontier of Quivira; this group is usually assumed to have been part of the Wichita tribe. In his Memoir of 1634, Benavides stated that the Apaches controlled the plains east of New Mexico for a distance of more than 100 leagues. By midcentury, refugees from the plains were sheltered in New Mexico, and others had withdrawn to the Río Nueces (the region of the upper Colorado and Concho, near the site of San Angelo). Spanish expeditions traveled there by descending the Pecos. However, this route was early abandoned by the Jumanos, probably because of the Apache occupancy of the Guadalupe Mountains. The Río Nueces was linked to La Junta by a chain of Jumano settlements on the lower Pecos, Toyah Creek, and the Davis Mountains. In January 1684, after founding the missions at La Junta, Nicolás López was joined by Capt. Juan Domínguez de Mendoza and twenty New Mexican troops from El Paso. The soldiers and friars were escorted toward the Río Nueces by Juan Sabeata and a mixed party of Indians, to meet with representatives of more than thirty tribes and bands. Lists of these Indian "nations," as given by Sabeata and by Domínguez de Mendoza, include the "kingdoms" of Quivira and the Tejas as well as the Emets, Tohojos, Acanis, Papanes, and many whose names are not now recognizable. The Indians hoped to make an alliance with Spain in order to halt further Apache advances into their territories. However, en route to central Texas, Domínguez de Mendoza broke off relations with the Jumano governor, and the expedition became, in effect, a Spanish buffalo-hunting trip. Thereafter, most of the Indian representatives failed to appear, to the disappointment of López, who had hoped for a new mission field in Texas to replace that recently lost in New Mexico. During the last decades of the seventeenth century, Spaniards from Coahuila encountered mounted Jumanos at locations including the Guadalupe River and Anacacho Mountain, near Eagle Pass. Members of La Salle's colony also became acquainted with the Jumanos while visiting and trading with the Hasinais. Their accounts document the role of the Jumanos of this period as middlemen in supplying Spanish goods and horses to the tribes of central, southern, and eastern Texas.

Much of what has seemed mysterious or problematical in reference to the Jumanos becomes less so when they are seen in the larger context of intergroup relations in the greater Southwest. On the western edge of the plains, bands of Jumano hunter-gatherers had long-established dealings with related farming villages in the Rio Grande valley, maintained through reciprocal exchange of food and other products. These relations were initially disrupted when the eastern Apaches, relative newcomers to the Southwest, began to extend their range into the South Plains. There, they competed with the Jumanos for hunting territories and for control of trade with the village tribes. But the trade in New Mexico was only a segment of an extended network, in which the Jumanos were also trading partners and allies of the distant Caddos and Wichitas, as well as numerous small groups of central and southern Texas. Their war with the Apaches was, in part, a defense of territory but was also a struggle to control trade routes and to preserve the integrity of this regional system. The Apache invasion of the South Plains was already under way in the sixteenth century, when Spanish entradas into the region began. Over the course of the following century, Apache dominance increased and the Jumanos were forced to retreat. Colonists in New Mexico and Nueva Vizcaya traded with the Jumanos, who became middlemen in supplying Spanish goods to the eastern tribes, while providing buffalo pelts and furs in exchange. The presence of Spanish forces in New Mexico may have served to stabilize relations between the Pueblos and Apaches to a degree. However, repeated Jumano efforts to secure Spanish aid in defense of their territories in the plains were ineffective. By the end of the seventeenth century, when Apache dominance extended into the lower Rio Grande valley and reached eastward to the upper Brazos and Colorado Rivers, the Jumanos had lost their entire territorial base, their trade routes were broken, and they ceased to exist as an identifiably distinct people. In the west, many Jumanos-like members of other defeated groups-were eventually incorporated into Apache bands. In central Texas, Jumanos were found among the detribalized Indians of the Ranchería Grande, and others may have taken refuge among their eastern allies. Finally, it is possible that a segment of the Jumanos-perhaps the horse-herding people of the Río Nueces-survived to become the nucleus of the Kiowa Indians, who appeared in the central plains toward the end of the eighteenth century.

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The Caddo originated in the lower Mississippi Valley and spread west along the river systems. Sometime between 700 and 800 they settled the area between the Arkansas River and the middle reaches of the Red, Sabine, Angelina, and Neches rivers and adopted agriculture. They grew corn and pumpkins as primary crops which, later combined with beans and squash, stimulated population growth.

The name Caddo derives from a French abbreviation of Kadohadachho ("real chief"). The Caddo people in historic times (after 1535) comprised at least 25 distinct but closely affiliated groups centered at the Great Bend of the Red River and extending into the Piney Woods region.

The Piney Woods is a temperate coniferous forest ecoregion in present-day East Texas, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana, and southeastern Oklahoma.

The Caddo people differ from most other American Indian groups that lived in Texas because of their territorial stability. Settlement and use of lands had great permanence: the Caddo lived and sustained themselves in the same broad forested and well-watered landscape for over 1,000 years.

By the time of contact with Europeans, the Caddo were organized into three kin-based affiliated groups. The Hasinai confederacy (called Cenis by the French and Teyas by the Spanish) occupied between nine and 12 communities in the Neches and Angelina river valley region of East Texas. The Kadohadacho and Natchitoches confederacies lived in the area of the Red River to the north and east in what are now the border regions of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Check out the 1687 Map

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Early Caddo History - El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

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Before the Comanches arrived, the Jumano Indians and some Pueblo Indians and some Apache Indians had lived in the Southern Plains. To move into this area the Comanches first had to drive these other tribes out. See the articles on the Apaches and Jumanos. To drive out the Apaches they must have been very fierce fighters. This area is now part of the Texas Panhandle and Northwest Texas. You can find this on a map. Look on a map around the modern cities of Abaline and Amarillo. This is the area were the Comanches first lived in Texas. Later, they kept moving south. By the middle 1700s they had come almost down to where Kerrville is now and over to near Austin. This is where the first German and American settlers found them, and where most maps show them to be – from around Kerrville all the way up to Amarillo and the western part of the state of Oklahoma and in eastern New Mexico. The city of Lubbock is in the middle of the old Comanche territory. The Comanches were organized as bands. They are not really a tribe. If you don't know what I am talking about or are confused by this you should have read "Read Me First" first. The only time there were leaders over more than one band was when two or three bands joined to fight a common enemy or to go on a very big raid. Then a temporary war chief would be named to lead the war parties. After the war or raid the chief would quit and each band would go back to its own leaders.
We now have some Comanche languages (names). Look at the last part of the Comanche story /page.
There were about 12 bands of Comanches, but this number probably changed. The most famous band was the Penatekas. Penateka means honey eater in Comanche. Some other band names were; The Quahadies, Quahadie means antelope, the Buffalo -eaters, and the Yap-eaters, yap is the name of a plant root. When the Comanches first started moving south they came one or two bands at a time. Tradition says the Penateka band was the first to move south. Other bands soon followed. They moved from an environment of mountain valleys with limited food resources and harsh winters out onto the great plains. On the plains they hunted buffalo and elk and learned to live like other plains Indians. Remember that they did not have any horses back then, so they had to walk to get around and hunt. The plains gave them more food, but they had to compete with the other Indian tribes who already lived on the plains. This may be where and when they learned to fight so well and steal from other tribes around them. The Comanche got their first horses around 1680 from the Spanish and Pueblo Indians. Once they had horses they learned to use them. Many experts have said that the Comanche were the finest light cavalry in the world. When it came to riding and fighting on horseback only the Cheyenne Indians came anywhere close. The Comanches used this skill with horses to win many battles and overcome their opponents. Read about the great raid of 1840 and the Battle of Plum Creek for and example of how well the Comanches were when on horseback. The Comanche could do things on and with horses that amazed other people who were also good with horses They could ride faster and farther and get more out of a horse than any of their competitors could. On foot they were not such good fighters. Go to the Indian Horse page to learn more about Indian horses. They lived in tee-pees, like most plains Indians, and they were nomadic. Each band would move around from place to place to hunt and trade. Often they would cover hundreds of miles in one year. While the men fought, and hunted, the women gathered the plants and other foods they ate. This way of living is called being "hunter - gatherers". Because they moved all the time they are nomadic. So they were nomadic hunter gathers. The food the women gathered made up much more of the food they had than the hunting by the men. Of course, when the men killed many buffalo there was plenty to eat. But, on a day to day basis the women gathered most of the food. The women also cooked the food and kept the tee-pee clean. They also looked after the kids. When they moved it was the women who took down and put up the tee-pee. That is quite a bit of hard work.

Because they moved around so much they liked things that were light weight and that did not break easily. This is why they did not make or use much pottery. They made and used baskets and leather to make containers. They also used animal skins and woven grass mats on the floors of their tee pees.
Here is a good Comanche myth. Thanks to Jane Archer and Wordware Publishing for sharing it with us. This is Jane's favorite Indian myth. She calls it Indian fast food!!! Read it and see why.
Deer Medicine by Jane Archer One time the People camped at the base of a mountain near a rushing stream. Over time a person disappeared, then another. The band grew troubled and took their worries to their medicine makers. After sweat lodge purification, after sage and sweet grass cleansing, the medicine makers held council.
"I do not trust those deer," Medicine Man said.
"I trust them less than you." Medicine Woman looked up at the mountain where the deer lived near a large cave.
"I suspect they are stealing our people."
"And keeping them in their cave."
"To eat," Medicine Man said.
"Our people depend on us to care for them."
"And we must do so.
Medicine Man and Medicine Woman walked up the mountain to the cave of the deer.
Guard Deer stood near four sticks at the dark hole of an entrance.
"Good morning," Medicine Woman said. "How are you?"
"You look plump and well," Medicine Man said.
"What food do you eat?" Medicine Woman asked.
"We eat good food," Guard Deer said. "Would you like to see?"
"Yes, we would."
Guard Deer picked up one of the sticks and knocked on the entrance. "One fat buffalo."
A buffalo trotted out.
"That is impressive," Medicine Woman said.
"Watch this." Guard Deer hit the entrance again. "One buffalo calf."
A buffalo calf walked out.
"I am really impressed," Medicine Man said.
"Now you know how we get our food," Guard Deer said. "You may see no more."
"Thank you," Medicine Woman said.
As the medicine makers walked away, they whispered to each other.
"I do not believe that is all in their cave," Medicine Man said.
"I agree. We must find out what else is in there."
They hid behind a large rock while they considered their problem.
"Maybe we could change the sticks when Guard Deer looks the other way," Medicine Man said.
"Guard Deer is too sharp."
"That is true."
"They must change guards soon and the entrance will be unguarded for a brief time," Medicine Woman said.
"We must strike then."
"Yes."
Without making a sound, they worked their way back to the entrance. Concealed behind rocks and plants, they watched and waited. Soon Guard Deer stepped away to consult the next Guard Deer.
They raced to the entrance.
Medicine Woman grabbed a stick and hit the cave. "Two people."
Two warriors walked out.
Medicine Man placed his hand on the stick, and they struck again. "More men."
Many men ran out of the cave. All of them carried bows with arrows in quivers on their backs.
Deer erupted from all directions, but the warriors fought together to drive them back. When the battle was won by the People, most of the deer lay dead. The medicine makers turned to the deer still alive.
"We are the strongest so hereafter we will eat you," Medicine Man said.
"Your skin and bones, all of your body, will be used to help the People," Medicine Woman added.
Guard Deer raised a head. "So be it."Copyright, 2000, Jane Archer
If you enjoyed this myth, read more in by Jane Archer. Ask your librarian to order Texas Indian Myths and Legends Texas Indian Myths and Legends for your school.

Did you like that myth? To learn more about Indian myths and for activities using myths check out our Indian Myths page.
When the Spanish tried to settle in Texas in the 1700s it was the Comanches who kept them in the south of Texas. After conquering so many other Indian cultures the Spanish could not defeat the Comanches and move farther north. When the Germans and Americans started moving near and into Comanche territory they were asking for trouble and they got it. The Comanches attacked settlers and stole horses and cattle from settlers just like they did from other Indian cultures and the Spanish. The Comanches would take captives whom they would offer to return for a price. The Comanches were not very good to have as neighbors. The early Texans were not such nice guys either. At the Council House fight in San Antonio in 1840 the Texans used a flag of truce to lure 33 Comanche chiefs into town to talk and make peace. They then made demands the Indians could not meet or agree to. One of the goals of the meeting was to get captive whites back from the Comanche. The Comanche brought one captive to the meeting. They held others back to have something to negotiate with. Also, some white captives were under the control of bands of Comanche who did not come to the meeting. The Texans demanded that the Comanche turn over all the captives right away. When the Indians did not immediately give in to the demands, instead of honoring the white flag of truce, the Texans started shooting the surprised unarmed Indians. The Comanches fought back, but all of them were killed. Even the Comanches camped outside of town were attacked by surprise and many were killed. Everyone knows that white flag means a truce and not dirty tricks like that. After that the Comanches had a hard time trusting the word of any European. Recall in all of this that the Comanches had been taking captives from everyone around them and then negotiating and trading for goods to give them back for 200 years. The Texans either knew this or should have known. The Texans probably would have gotten the captives back without bloodshed if they had just negotiated in good faith. The Council House fight led to the Great Raid of 1840. In August of 1840 the Comanches, led by war chief Buffalo Hump, raided all the way to the Texas coast. This was revenge for the Council House fight. They raided and burned the towns of Victoria and Linnville. They stole hundreds of horses and mules and as much stuff as they could carry. They then returned to their own lands. On the way back they fought the battle of Plum Creek near Lockhart. In 1846 Buffalo Hump signed a treaty with the US government at Council Springs. He led the Comanches to the Brazos river reservation in 1849. In 1856 he led the Comanches to the Oklahoma reservation at Ft. Cobb. In 1892 the reservation was dissolved. Each family was given 160 acres. This was called an allotment. Allotment means dividing something up and allotting (giving parts) the parts to individuals. An allotment is like a share. The US Government got all the land that was not given to Comanche families and that was a lot of land. This land was sold to white settlers in 1901. 500,000 acres of Comanche land was held back, but it was leased to white ranchers in 1906. The Comanches still live in the area around the town of Lawton. This was the time period of tribal enrollment. To get an allotment an Indian had to be enrolled in the tribe. Enrollment means they registered with the United States Government as a member of the tribe. Many Indians did not register for many reasons. This has caused trouble ever since. The Indians who did register say the Indians who did not are not really Indians anymore. One reason many Indians did not enroll is because some of them were passing as white people. Many Indians were and are part white and look enough like a white person to mistaken for white. Being seen as white was important back in the 1890s because of the racism back then.

For you younger readers, there were many laws and customs in the 1890s and later that discriminated against what were called "persons of color" or colored persons. Persons of color were Africans, Mexicans, Chinese and of course Indians. Of course the term colored means their skin was not white. There were laws back then called Jim Crow laws that banned colored persons from sitting in or eating in white only restaurants. Persons of color were not allowed in the city limits of many towns after dark. Businesses could refuse to do business with them and did so. In some places Jim Crow laws required persons of color to always be employed or be sent to prison to work on convict labor gangs. Persons of color or "coloreds' as they were called by whites were not allowed to vote, could not hold elected office, and were not allowed to sue or use the court system. Their children had to go to substandard colored schools and often had no schools. Many jobs and professions were forbidden to coloreds. Most colleges in the south refused colored students by law. In most towns they had to live in colored sections of town and could not buy or live in white only parts of town. So, if an Indian could pass as being white they did. Many did not want to enroll and come under the Jim Crow laws.

Life on the reservations was very hard on all the Indians. Often the U S government did not honor its promises to provide food and shelter. As time went on the better land on the reservation was taken away and given to whites. But the worst part was the racial discrimination. Indians were treated the way black and Hispanic people were treated and often worse. They had few or no rights. They were not allowed to have good jobs or a good education. Indian children were often taken away from their families and sent to far off schools. Schools where the boys were trained to be farm hands and laborers for white people and the girls were taught to be maids and cooks. For many years they were not allowed to have good jobs . All of this forced the Comanches to live in poverty for many years. Much has changed for the Comanche and now they are doing much better. They have much better schools and many of them now got to college. There are Comanche doctors, lawyers and teachers now. Most of them live in decent houses and own cars or trucks. There are quite a few Comanches living today and they are all proud of their culture. Comanches today live in houses like everyone else. They drive cars and the kids go to schools on busses. They can get a burger down at McDonalds if they want. They also still get together and do the old dances and sing the old songs in Comanche. Elders still tell the old stories about Comanche heroes and the old days when the Comanches ruled the southern plains. Names from Comanches Americans : pabotabeb Arrow : pacande Arrowhead : tahka Bear : guasape White bear : tosaguara Bird : juhtzu Black : tuhubit Brave : teconiuap Buffalo : cuhtz Butterfly : ueyahcora Cardinal bird : ecjuhtzu Chewing gum : sanahco Clothing : nenamuiecap Colt : pucurua CORN : janib Cougar : toyarohco Coyote : tzena Dance : nihcaro Dawn : nabuni Deer : areca Dream : nabusiaep Drink : jibito Drum : sabahpaqui Eagle : piajuhtzu Flea : ecapusia Flint : tetecae Flower : sahtotzip Gold : oaui Gourd : oteauh Grandfather : roco Grandmother : caco Hand : moo Hat : suparello Honey : uobipihuab Horse : puc ; Mustang horse cobe Hummingbird : temuqit Jaguar : naboroya Kiss : murrae Knife : ui Leather : taibobicap Man : tenahpua Meat : tehcap Morning star : tahtatzi-nupi Mother : pia North Star : tatzinupi-puetuh-catutamiae Old : puetep Owl : mupitz neminoet PayPal : PayPal see Gold : auui Rabbit : tabo Rainbow : paracoa Rattle Snake : uehquetzutzu Skunk : nabohcutz Sky : tomobi Spider : tatetz Sun : taabe Thunder : tomoyaque Turkey : cuyon Turtle : uacani Ugly : ayaquia ayo Warbonnet : tunahuasa Water : uahpahcaep White : tosabite Wolf : piasa Woman : guahpe Wood : juhpi Worm : uoabi Yellow : ojapite Yes : jaa
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The Karankawa Indians are an American Indian cultural group whose traditional homelands are located along Texas's Gulf Coast from Galveston Bay southwestwardly to Corpus Christi Bay. The name Karankawa became the accepted designation for several groups of coastal people who shared a common language and culture. Those groups, identified in early historic times, included the Carancahuas, Coapites, Cocos, Cujanes, and Copanes. All of these Indians spoke a language called Karankawan, of which around 500 words are preserved. The significance of the name Karankawa has not been definitely established, although it is generally believed to mean "dog-lovers" or "dog-raisers." That translation seems plausible, since the Karankawas reportedly kept dogs that were described as a fox-like or coyote-like breed. The Karankawas were a nomadic people who migrated seasonally between the barrier islands and the mainland. Their movements were dictated primarily by the availability of food. They obtained this food by a combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Bison, deer, and fish, were staples of the Karankawa diet, but a wide variety of animals and plants contributed to their sustenance.

The Karankawas' principal means of transportation was the dugout canoe, a watercraft made by hollowing out the trunk of a large tree. Those dugouts, unsuited for deep, open water, were used primarily in the relatively shallow waters between the islands and the mainland. Each canoe was spacious enough to carry an entire family along with their household goods. The Karankawas also traveled overland by foot, and were often described as powerful runners, as well as expert swimmers. Upon the Spaniards' introduction of horses, these coastal Indians maintained their own herds along the coast.

A portable wigwam, or ba-ak, provided shelter for the coastal people. Large enough to accommodate seven or eight people, the structure consisted of a willow pole frame that was covered with animal skins and rush mats. Karankawas crafted baskets and pottery, both of which were often lined with asphaltum, a natural tar substance found on Gulf Coast beaches. The chief weapon of the tribe, for both hunting and warfare, was the long bow and arrow. Bows were made of red cedar and reached from the eye or chin level to the foot of the bearer. Controlling most of Texas's shallow bays and coastline, the Karankawas also acquired guns from shipwrecks or by raiding passing vessels.

Karankawas were known for their distinctive physical appearance. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century the men were described as tall and muscular, and during the summer wore deerskin breechcloths or nothing at all. Come winter, these Indians donned buffalo and deer robes for warmth. They painted and tattooed their bodies, and also pierced the nipples of each breast and the lower lip with small pieces of cane. They often smeared their bodies with a mixture of mud and alligator or shark grease to ward off mosquitoes. Women also painted and tattooed their bodies and wore skirts of Spanish moss or animal skin that reached to the knees. The social and political organization of the Karankawas was determined by their nomadic lifestyle. While the Karankawas traveled in small bands of around fifty kinsmen headed by a chief during most of the year to facilitate optimal hunting and foraging, those bands converged into much larger groups of five-hundred plus individuals around winter when food was most plentiful. A well-developed system of smoke signals enabled scattered groups to come together for social events, warfare, or other purposes.

Karankawa ceremonialism centered around gatherings which the Spaniards' labeled "mitotes." The ceremonies often included dances and the consumption of intoxicating beverages brewed from the parched leaves and berries of the yaupon ( Ilex cassine or vomitoria), a small shrublike tree native to south Texas. One observer in the sixteenth century witnessed that the "black drink" was consumed exclusively by the men of the tribe. The Karankawas also participated in competitive games demonstrating weapons skills or physical prowess. Wrestling was so popular among Karankawas that neighboring tribes referred to them as the "Wrestlers." Warfare was a fact of life for the Karankawas, and evidence indicates that the tribe practiced a ceremonial cannibalism prior to the eighteenth-century that involved eating the flesh of their traditional enemies. That custom, widespread among most Texas tribes during that era, involved consuming bits and pieces of the flesh of dead enemies as the ultimate revenge or as a magical means of capturing the enemy's courage. In later years, Europeans and Anglo-Americans utilized the Karankawas' cannibalism as justification for annihilating them, despite the Karankawas having seemingly ceased the practice in the eighteenth century.

The Karankawas' entrance into the historical record in 1528 represents the first recorded contact between Europeans and American Indians in Texas. Two small boats carrying survivors of the ill-fated Spanish expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez landed on a small island to the west of Galveston Island. That island, named Malhado, or Isle of Misfortune, by the Spanish, was inhabited by Karankawa speakers. The written account of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of those shipwrecked survivors, provides our earliest knowledge of these coastal people. Cabeza de Vaca lived among those hunting and gathering groups for several years and provided invaluable ethnological accounts of those Native Americans. After Cabeza de Vaca's encounter with them, the Karankawas were not substantially visited again by Europeans for more than a century and a half. In 1685 a French expedition, led by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, established Fort St. Louis on Garcitas Creek near Matagorda Bay, in the heart of Karankawa country. When the French settlers' ship Aimable broke apart on Matagorda Bay in February 1685, the Karankawas acquired some debris from the wreckage. Hoping to reclaim the goods taken by the Karankawas, La Salle sent a party of aggressive Frenchmen to the Karankawas' campsite where they retrieved their merchandise and stole canoes and other items. Armed conflict between the two groups broke out thereafter. Suffering from repeated attacks by the Karankawas, La Salle and a contingent of men set out for Canada to find help for the struggling colony. That help never came. La Salle's own men murdered him on the expedition north, and in 1689, after an outbreak of smallpox on the Gulf Coast, the Karankawas attacked the remaining settlers at Fort Saint Louis and killed all but six children who were taken captive. Those children, four of whom were members of the Talon family, were later rescued by Spanish expeditions in the early 1690s. Two of the former captives, Pierre and Jean-Baptiste Talon, were returned to France in 1698 where they were interrogated by French officials ( see TALON CHILDREN). The resulting transcript provides valuable information on Karankawa culture in the late seventeenth century.

In the early years of the eighteenth century, French interest in the Texas coast was rekindled, and Karankawa country again became the center of Spanish-French rivalry. In 1721 a French land expedition, led by Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe, approached Karankawa territory. In response to that French incursion, the Spanish established Nuestra Señora de Loreta Presidio and Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission near the site of former Fort St. Louis. Because of their locations near Matagorda Bay, both became known as La Bahía. The mission was established specifically to civilize and Christianize the Karankawas and make them loyal Spanish subjects, but hostilities between the two parties quickly developed when the captain of La Bahía detained some Karankawas that attempted to flee the settlement into a hut and fired a cannon at them. The cannonball missed and a Karankawa ultimately killed the captain with a half-pair of shears. By 1726 no neophytes remained at La Bahía, and the fort and the mission were moved to the Guadalupe River where they remained until 1749. At that time, they were relocated to the San Antonio River near present Goliad.

Despite the lack of success at La Bahía, the Spanish continued their efforts to missionize the Karankawas for the dual purposes of subduing the tribe and establishing a permanent hold on the Texas coast. In 1754 a new mission, Nuestra Señora del Rosario de los Cujanes, was established for the Karankawas on the San Antonio River, upstream from La Bahía. Rosario Mission enjoyed some success, and in 1764 it boasted a neophyte population of 101. That success was short-lived.

In 1779, the Karankawa-Spanish War erupted after Indian leader Joseph María assaulted the Andry expedition and he liberated around ten Karankawa families from Mission Rosario. While most Karankawas preferred peace-the war being spurred on by a small contingent of individuals-the Spaniards saw the conflict as a ripe opportunity to gain control of the Karankawas' lands and open up access to the Texas coast. The Castilians predicted an easy victory. Instead, the war dragged on for more than a decade and resulted in three failed attempts at genocide led by Athanse de Mézières, Nicholas de La Mathe, and Domingo Cabello y Robles. When a smallpox pandemic ravaged Texas in 1780, the Karankawas sued for peace, but were repeatedly refused until interim-Governor Rafael Martínez Pacheco took control of Texas, defied the orders of his superior, and negotiated a ceasefire with the coastal tribes around 1790. By war's end, the Karankawas remained in control of their territory and the Spanish agreed to build a new mission, Nuestra Señora del Refugio. The mission relocated three times, but was finally situated at Rancho de Santa Gertrudis, near the site of present Refugio. A reported 190 mixed Karankawas and Coahuiltecans occupied Refugio Mission in 1814, but by the early 1820s repeated Comanche attacks had caused the virtual depopulation of that mission. The two struggling Karankawa missions (Refugio and Rosario) continued to operate until they were secularized in 1830 and 1831.

An 1819 confrontation with Jean Laffite's pirate colony on Galveston Island marked the next major conflict for the Karankawas. The incident reportedly occurred when Laffite's men kidnapped a Karankawa woman, and the tribe retaliated by assembling a reported 300 warriors to attack the pirate compound. Laffite's force of 200 men armed with two cannons inflicted heavy losses on the Indians and forced them to retreat.

Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, and the new government encouraged Anglo-American immigration to the sparsely populated province of Texas. As settlers entered the Karankawas' land, confrontations became frequent. Mexican authorities attempted to protect the colonists by making peace with the Karankawas, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The colonists, spurred by empresario Stephen F. Austin, banded together to rid themselves of the Indian threat. Austin was convinced that extermination provided the only acceptable solution to the Karankawa problem, and in 1824, he personally led an expedition of some fifteen men and encouraged the colonists to attack American Indians. This ultimately drove the Karankawas to seek sanctuary at La Bahía. A priest at the mission arranged an armistice between the two groups. According to terms of the agreement, the Karankawas, led by Chief Antonito, agreed to remain west of the Lavaca River. That treaty was renewed in 1827 by empresario Green DeWitt and two Karankawa chiefs, Antonito and Delgado.

As Anglo settlers flooded coastal Texas, the Karankawas' time-worn subsistence strategies were increasingly threatened. Small groups subsequently attached themselves to individual settlers, such as Phillip Dimmitt, who could provide protection against marauding colonizers in exchange for work and trade. On the eve of the Texas Revolution, both Mexicans and Anglo-Texans sought Indian neutrality, but the Karankawas' loyalties to specific settlers, who had their own various loyalties, proved troublesome. The governments of Mexican Texas and the Republic of Texas regarded the Karankawas as enemies, and although no Karankawas deaths are directly attributed to military actions during the rebellion, their status as hostile inhabitants encouraged subsequent exterminations.

By the conclusion of the Texas Revolution, port towns, ranches, and roads engulfed the Karankawas' landscape. Prominent businessmen, including the well-known James Power, promoted the annihilation of the coastal tribes. Anglo-Texans utilized propaganda popularized since to the seventeenth century to legitimize massacres. By the 1840s only scattered remnants of the culture remained along the Texas coast. Disinformation about the Karankawas remains in circulation, including descriptions as seven-foot-tall giants.

Generally, Karankawas either incorporated themselves into the colonizers' society, integrated into other Native American groups, or moved south to Tamaulipas, Mexico, to escape pressure from the growing Texan population. Karankawas encountered similar problems south of the Rio Grande. Accused of plundering settlements in the Reynosa area, the tribe came under continued attack from Mexican authorities. By the late 1850s these Karankawas had been pushed back into Texas, where they settled in the vicinity of Rio Grande City. Local residents did not welcome the tribe, and in 1858 a Texan force, led by Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, attacked that small band of Karankawas. Following that defeat, the coastal Texas tribe was considered extinct, but surviving Karankawas across the Gulf Coast retained and passed down aspects of their culture generation after generation. In the twenty-first century, the Karankawa Kadla (mixed Karankawas) formed to gather and organize individuals who identified as being partially Karankawa. The Karankawa Kadla has since revitalized the Karankawan language, worked with local authorities to protect burial sites, and developed education programs that combat traditional Anglo education. After centuries of strife, Karankawas remain on their homelands as a persistent people.

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The Handbook of Texas is your number one authoritative source for Texas history. Read this entry and thousands more like it on our site.

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The cultural heritage consisted of man made products that were used in the daily lives of the Jumanos,. Bow and arrows, Coas were sticks that were used to make holes when the planting season came about. Comal’s for cooking food and Corn grinders made of Rock to grind the corn in order to make Torti…

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Lipan Apache Tribe: About Us, Who We Are

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The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas is the continuation of the historical Lipan Apache Tribe that has called the Southern Great Plains, Mapimi Basin in Northern Mexico, and the Gulf of Mexico coast home for many centuries. Our tribe has always functioned as a confederation of different ba…

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TIMELINE
Pre-European Karankawa ranged from Galveston Bay to Corpus Christi Bay and approximately 100 miles inland. Principally near bays and offshore barrier Islands.

1528 Karankawa met survivors of the Narvey Expedition. Cabeza de Vaca lived on Malhado and after he escaped there, he became the slave of the Karankawa Indians.

1529 February - Indians moved inland

1534 Cabeza de Vaca escaped the Karankawa with Andres Dorantes de Carranza, Alonzo Castillo Maldanado and an African born slave, Estevanico and made their way to Mexico.

1537 Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain and published an account of this travels.

1685 Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle landed at Matagorda Bay.

1688 After bad relations and killings on both sides, the Karankawa attacked Ft. St. Louis and killed remaining colonists except for five children. Two Frenchmen away from the fort returned and buried the remains of the dead.

1689 Alonso de Leon found Ft. St. Louis and buried three remaining bodies that had not been found before. He managed to rescue the Frenchmen and bargained for the release of Robert and Lucien Talon and their sister Magdalene.

1691 Captain Francisco Martinez was able to purchase Eustace Bremen and the last remaining Talon child, John Babtiste.

1719 Karankawa captured a Frenchman named François Simars de Belliste who stayed with them for 15 months.

1721 April - In an attempt to bring Christianity to the Karankawa, the Spanish built a presidio and mission at the site of Ft. St Louis. These were called Neustra Senora de Espiritu de Zuniga and Nuestra Senora de Loreto.

1722 April - The missions opened

1726 Mission de Espiritu Santo de Zuniga moved to the Guadalupe River.

1811 Karankawa were in the center of the Mexican Revolution

1817 Karankawa had a confrontation with Francisco Xavier Mina at Matagorda Bay.

1818 Jean Lafitte becomes embroiled in a war with the Karankawa at Three Trees and killed many of the Native Americans.

1821 Stephen F. Austin met with the Karankawa.

1822 Austin met with them again.

1824 Karankawa signed a treaty with Austin which they did not keep.

1827 May - Karankawa sign another treaty.

1840 Mexico gave the Karankawa permission to move south of the Rio Grande

1858 They are forced back over the border because they had caused problems for the Mexican Government. The remaining Karankawa were killed by Juan Cortina and others.
VOCABULARY LIST 1. Adze
Adz \Adz\, Adze \Adze\, n. [OE. adese, adis, adse, AS. adesa, adese, ax, hatchet.]

A carpenter's or cooper's tool, formed with a thin arching blade set at right angles to the handle. It is used for chipping or slicing away the surface of wood
2. Archaeology
\Ar`ch[ae]*ol"o*gy\, n. The science or study of antiquities, esp. prehistoric antiquities, such as the remains of buildings or monuments of an early epoch, inscriptions, implements, and other relics, written manuscripts, etc.
3. Artifact
\Ar"ti*fact\, n. A product of human workmanship; - applied esp. to the simpler products of aboriginal art as distinguished from natural objects.
4. Asphaltum
Asphalt \As"phalt\, Asphaltum \As*phal"tum\, n. 1. Mineral pitch or compact native bitumen. It is brittle, of a black or brown color and high luster on a surface of fracture; it melts and burns when heated, leaving no residue. It occurs on the surface Asphaltic Lake. It is found also in many parts of Asia, Europe, and America. See Bitumen 2. A composition of bitumen, pitch, lime, and gravel, used for forming pavements, and as a water-proof cement for bridges, roofs, etc.; asphaltic cement. Artificial asphalt is prepared from coal tar, lime, sand, etc.
5. Breechcloth
\Breech"cloth`\, n. A cloth worn to cover the loins; a loincloth
6. Cannibalism
\Can"ni*bal*ism\, n. The act or practice of eating human flesh by mankind.
7. Dugout
\Dug"out`\, n. 1. A canoe or boat dug out from a large log. [U.S.]. 2. A place dug out. 3. A house made partly in a hillside or slighter elevation.
8. Nomadic
\No*mad"ic\ 1. A member of a group of people who have no fixed home and move according to the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land. 2. A person with no fixed residence who roams about; a wanderer.
9. Ritual
\Rit"u*al\, a. 1. Of or pertaining to rites or ritual; as, ritual service or sacrifices; the ritual law. 2. adj 1: of or relating to or characteristic of religious rituals; "ritual killing" 2: of or relating to or employed in social rites or ritual. n 1: any customary observance or practice [syn: rite] 2: the prescribed procedure for conducting religious ceremonies 3: stereotyped behavior
10. Tattoo
\Tat*too"\, n.; pl. Tattoos. An indelible mark or figure made by puncturing the skin and introducing some pigment into the punctures; - a mode of ornamentation practiced by various barbarous races, both in ancient and modern times, and also by some among civilized nations, especially by sailors.
11. Willow
\Wil"low\, n. any of numerous deciduous trees and shrubs of the genus Salix [syn: Willow Tree]
12. Yaupon
\Yau"pon\, n. An evergreen holly (Ilex vomitoria) of the southeast United States, having lustrous red or sometimes yellow fruit, whose dried leaves are used to make a bitter tea. Also called cassina

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TIMELINE Pre-European Karankawa ranged from Galveston Bay to Corpus Christi Bay and approximately 100 miles inland. Principally near bays and offshore barrier Islands. 1528 Karankawa met survivors of the Narvey Expedition. Cabeza de Vaca lived on Malhado and after he escaped there, he became the slave of the Karankawa Indians.

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YDSP offices have resumed normal operations with continued observance of COVID-19 safety protocols for both employees and visitors. Temperature screenings and masks are required for any YDSP government building visitor. The tribal community is strongly encouraged to CALL AND SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT prior to your office visit. You are asked to continue monitoring your email and the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo website.
YDSP GOVERNMENT CONTACT INFORMATION: EMERGENCY SERVICES:

Department of Public Safety Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5pm Monday - Friday 915-860-9653

Health Clinic Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00 pm Monday - Friday 915-858-1076

Behavioral Health Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00 pm Monday - Friday 915-860-6170

YDSP GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Tribal Council Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-859-8053

Tribal Administration Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-859-7913

Tribal Clearance Agency Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-218-7487

Department of Tribal Empowerment Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-872-8648

Early Learning Center and Pre-K Program Operating at 50% capacity Monday - Friday 7:30am to 5:30 pm (915) 858-5835

BRAVE Program Operating at 50% capacity Monday - Friday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm program begins Monday, February 8th: 2:30pm - 6:00 pm (915) 790-0227

Department of Economic Development Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-859-8151

Department of Tribal Court and Records Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-860-7449

Purchase Referred Care (PRC) Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00 pm Monday - Friday 915-858-2117

Recreation and Wellness Center Hours of Operation: 6:15am to 11:45:00pm Monday -Friday, 6:15am to 1:45:00pm Saturday and Sunday Opens to the public on Monday February 8, 2021 915-858-8583

Cultural Center Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Sunday 915-859-7700

Community Development (Housing) Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday (915) 859-9196

YDSP TRIBAL ENTERPRISES

Speaking Rock Hours of Operation: 24/7 Everyday 915-860-7777

Tigua Inc. Hours of Operation: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday - Friday 915-298-0700

Quick Links:
YDSP Cultural Center Online Store
Future Sukin Ibi Teuym Health Clinic
Back to School Fair Student Sign Up Native Pathways Program One Call Notification Sign Up
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (YDSP) is one of three federally recognized Native American tribes, and the only Pueblo, in the State of Texas. The current YDSP population is approximately 4,226 members nationwide. Thirteen miles from downtown El Paso, Ysleta, Texas has been home to the Tigua people for over 300 years.

During the period of early Spanish settlement (1598-1680), relations between the Pueblo Indians and the Spaniards were strained, which brought fierce oppression of all Pueblo people. In 1680, New Mexico Pueblo Indians rebelled against the Spaniards. This caused many tribal factions to relocate to modern-day northern New Mexico and West Texas, which includes the El Paso/Tigua region. The Tigua people of Ysleta del Sur were industrious farmers who raised wheat, corn, cattle, and horses. The Tigua were also instrumental in building the Ysleta Mission . In essence, YDSP is the oldest community in the State of Texas as well as the oldest running government since its establishment in 1682. The Pueblo's culture continues to flourish as each generation proudly promulgates its heritage.

The Pueblo is an active partner in the greater El Paso region. Its government and business contributions support the Pueblo as well as the greater El Paso economy. The Pueblo owns and operates a tribal government and diverse enterprises that provide meaningful employment and benefits for both tribal members and regional citizens. The Pueblo is proud to be an employer of choice in the region with a local workforce nearing 1,200 across all tribal entities -- 30% of these positions are filled by YDSP members. Furthermore, gainful employment opportunities are critical to the Pueblo achieving economic self-sufficiency while improving its overall quality of life.

Revenue generated from these tribal sectors fund essential community infrastructure and services, such as health care, education, law enforcement, tribal courts, elder assistance, housing, economic development, and capital improvements. Education, job creation and workforce skill building are YDSP priority areas. It is the Pueblo's economic development efforts that create avenues to self-determination and self-governance.

YDSP embodies the principles of self-governance throughout all of its facets. Self-Governance provides tribal governments the autonomy and decision-making authority over the federal financial resources provided for the benefit of Indian people, while setting economic foundations that leverage their unique sovereign statuses. Tribes perform better when they set their own trajectories, allocate their own resources, and establish priorities based on their needs. It is also a tool to broaden self-determined efforts that spark innovation, courage, and resiliency. Self-governance is not a program with a beginning and end, it is paradigm shift that changes the thinking of status quo to that of endless potential.

The Pueblo also incorporates the tenets of self-governance through its partnerships and business engagements with expectations of dealing in a government to government manner. From its government operations to enterprise development to service delivery, the Pueblo implements self-governance strategies to design programs that address YDSP priority areas.

Thank you for taking the time to visit the YDSP website and learn about Tigua history, community, and services/products. Please explore the calendar of events and plan a visit to the Pueblo, especially during cultural and other community events.

Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo

Related Pages

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YDSP offices have resumed normal operations with continued observance of COVID-19 safety protocols for both employees and visitors. Temperature screenings and masks are required for any YDSP government building visitor. The tribal community is strongly encouraged to CALL AND SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT prior to your office visit.

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We work hard to provide our tribal members and all those who are interested or concerned with the proper information. We hope this website provides you with the direction to find what you need.
Please let us know if there's anything we can help you with.

Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes in the United States. Their tribal jurisdiction encompasses Oklahoma, Pottawatomie, and Lincoln Counties. Membership to the tribe requires a minimum blood quantum of ¼ Kickapoo decent.

HISTORY

The Kickapoo are a Woodland tribe, speaking an Algonquian language, and were related to the Sac and Fox. They first came into contact with Europeans in the mid-seventeenth century in southwestern Wisconsin. By the mid-18th century the Kickapoo lived in two communities, the "Prairie Band," along Illinois's Sangamon River, and the "Vermillion Band," east of the Wabash River in Indiana.

The Prairie Kickapoo band resisted acculturation and continued to migrate, going first to Missouri and then to the Spanish province of Texas before the 1821 Mexican Revolution. Spanish officials gave them land in Texas. However, after the Texas Revolution, the Republic of Texas did not want them. In 1839, they were forcibly removed, and many traveled to Mexico. There, the Mexican government gave the tribe a land grant and eventually placed them at Nacimiento in exchange for protecting their northern borders. Some Kickapoo decided to settle in two villages in Indian Territory. Some settled on Wild Horse Creek in the Chickasaw Nation, and the others settled in Creek Nation near the confluence of the Canadian and Little rivers. Many Kickapoo would eventually leave the Indian Territory during the Civil War and rejoin those in Mexico.

In 1873, a military scheme forced some of the Mexican Kickapoo to relocate to the Indian Territory. In 1883, they were assigned a reservation. However, after the enactment of the Kickapoo Allotment Act in 1893 they lost much of their land. This left the tribe desolate and in poverty, which they did not begin to recover from until the 1930s and finally in the 1960s with the help of federal government programs.

The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma was organized under the Indian Welfare Act of 1936. Their headquarters are located in McCloud, Oklahoma and is presently governed by a 5-member Business Committee. Many of them reside in Lincoln, Oklahoma, and Pottawatomie counties. Other tribe members currently live near Topeka, Kansas, Eagle Pass, Texas, and Nacimiento, Mexico.

Today, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma culture remains strong, and the language is still spoken. They offer many services and programs to their tribal members which seek to empower and improve their lives. This includes housing, scholarship opportunities, child welfare, and job opportunities. Tribal revenue is largely generated by the Kickapoo Casinos located in Harrah and Shawnee.

THE KICKAPOO TRIBE OF OKLAHOMA'S ORIGINAL RESERVATION BOUNDARIES OF SERVICES START WHERE THE DEEP FORK RIVER INTERSECTS WITH THE INDIAN MERIDIAN (NW), PRECEDING EAST ALONG THE DEEP FORK RIVER TO STATE HWY 18, THEN SOUTH ON HWY 18 TO NORTH OF THE CITY OF SHAWNEE, THEN WEST TO KICKAPOO STREET IN SHAWNEE, THEN SOUTH ON KICKAPOO STREET TO THE NORTH CANADIAN RIVER (NOW KNOWN AS THE OKLAHOMA RIVER), THEN WEST ALONG THE RIVER TO THE INDIAN MERIDIAN AND BACK NORTH TO THE BEGINNING.

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We work hard to provide our tribal members and all those who are interested or concerned with the proper information. We will touch on where Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is now and where they're heading in the future. Please let us know if there's anything we can help you with.

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Located an hour and a half north of Houston in the Big Thicket, the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe is the oldest Indian reservation in Texas. Our rich history and beautiful enclave are what tribal citizens and tourists alike love about our nation. Visit us to experience the natural beauty of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas.

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We are the Comanche Nation and in our native language "Nʉmʉnʉʉ" (NUH-MUH-NUH) which means, "The People". We are known as "Lords of the Plains" and were once a part of the Shoshone Tribe. In the late 1600's and early 1700's we moved off from our Shoshone kinsmen onto the northern Plains and then southerly in search a new homeland. We Migrated across the Plains, through Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. We ultimately settled here in Southwest Oklahoma. The horse was a key element in Comanche culture. The people mastered their skills on horseback and gained a tremendous advantage in times of war.
Read more about The Comanche Nation

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We are the Comanche Nation and in our native language "Nʉmʉnʉʉ" (NUH-MUH-NUH) which means, "The People". We are known as "Lords of the Plains" and were once a part of the Shoshone Tribe. In the late 1600's and early 1700's we moved off from our Shoshone kinsmen onto the northern Plains and then southerly in search a new homeland.