SOCIAL STUDIES FACT CARDS
TEXAS INDIANS
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TEXAS INDIANS DATABASE
Number of Cards
29
Card Description
One card each on 20 Texas Indian groups; One card each on 9 subjects common to Texas Indian life

TEXAS INDIANS
An Introduction

PREHISTORY

Before man came to North America, it was a hunter's paradise.  Countless numbers of moose, caribou, mountain sheep, buffalo, musk-ox, and elk roamed over the continent. 

Glaciers extended as far south as central Iowa.  As this ice sheet melted, an ice-free land bridge opened up at the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, connecting two continents. 

Small bands of Asian hunters walked across this land bridge as they followed big game looking for new pastures in North America.  The hunters traveled east and south and started settlements.  The American Indian had arrived. 

Before the coming of the Europeans in the 16th century, the descendants of these Asian migrants were hunters, gatherers, and farmers on the American continent.  They probably lived in cave and brush shelters across the continent, including in Texas.  Archaeologists have found human skeletons, rock art, and grinding stones throughout the area. 

EUROPEAN CONTACT       

The Spanish
Columbus' "discovery" of the West Indies was followed by many Spanish expeditions into the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.  The conquest of Mexico and Central America soon followed. 

The Spanish adventurer Cabeza de Vaca explored the Gulf Coast and made journeys into the interior from 1527 to 1536.  His expedition struggled through the forests and swamps of Florida and was shipwrecked off the coast of present-day Texas.  (De Vaca's 1542 account of his travels inland includes the earliest written description of the Great Plains.) 

Traveling south, de Vaca and his companions reached Mexico City in 1536 and told exaggerated stories of their explorations, including tales of the fabulous Seven Golden Cities of Cibola somewhere to the north. 

After hearing these stories, the Spanish government immediately commissioned the explorer Coronado and his men to explore the Southwest.  Pueblo Indians, in an attempt to lead the Spaniards away from their homelands, told them stories about Gran Quivera, a city to the north with even greater riches than Cibola.  Coronado searched for treasure throughout the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and Kansas, but found none.    

Late in the 1600s, Spanish missionaries came north from Mexico to Christianize the Texas Indians.  They established the missions of Ysleta del Sur and Socorro del Sur in 1681 in the Upper Rio Grande Valley.  Ysleta became part of Texas when the course of the Rio Grande changed. It is now the oldest European settlement in the state. 

For some Indians, the missions became places of refuge from their enemies. The missions introduced them to the European way of life. Unfortunately the missionaries, and the Spanish settlers who soon followed, brought diseases such as smallpox and measles that killed many Indians and reduced the size of many tribes. The settlers, in their search for good locations for new homes, displaced tribes, dividing and reducing the Indian population.    

Years later more Spanish explorers came to the Southwest.  Padilla was sent to Texas in 1819 to make an official report on Indians and estimate how many there were. General Téran, commandant general of the area that included Texas, toured East Texas in 1828.  In 1831 Madero, Commissioner for the Spanish states of Coahuila and Texas, made maps, determined the size and location of the Indian tribes in Texas, and reported on their lifestyles.    

About the same time, Jean Louis Berlandier, a French botanist and zoologist, went to Texas at the request of the Mexican government.  He made estimates of the Indian population and kept an illustrated journal of what he saw. 

The French
The French also sent expeditions into this area.  In 1682
La Salle arrived to explore the Mississippi delta area and claim the Gulf Coast for France. He returned to France and set sail again with shiploads of French colonists.  They came ashore at Lavaca Bay, about halfway between today's Galveston and Corpus Christi, and established Fort Saint Louis.  La Salle made three expeditions in this area before he was killed by one of his men. 

CONCLUSION

The Indian groups that are the most "native" to Texas -- the Caddos of East Texas, the Tonkawas of Central Texas, the Coahuiltecans and Jumanos of South and Southwest Texas, the Atakapas of Southeast Texas, and the Karankawas of the Gulf Coast -- are gone today.  Most died at the hands of the Spanish and French, some from diseases brought by the Europeans.  Some moved south and blended into the Mexican population or were killed by aggressive Plains Indians. 

By the mid-1800s almost all of the Indian tribes living in (or simply passing through) Texas were  from somewhere else -- the Plains Indians (Comanches, Apaches, Kiowas) from the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains; the Alabama-Coushattas, the Five Civilized Tribes (Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles), the Biloxis, and the Quapaws from the eastern United States; and the Arapahos, Cheyennes, Delawares, and Shawnees from the north.   

In 1837 the United States government established Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Many Indian tribes who were removed from their homelands to make way for white settlers were given new lands there. 

The Indians of Texas are, and have been, as diverse as the land in which they have lived.  They have been fishermen, sedentary farmers, nomadic bison hunters, and gatherers of roots, fruits, and seeds.  Often a "nation" or "tribe" was simply one town or a few villages.  A band was perhaps only a family group.    

More Indian tribes have lived in Texas during historic times than in any other state of the U.S.  Their numbers and location changed on a regular basis because of death, blending with other tribes, or their constant search for food. 

The Texas Indian tribes and bands had many names in their own languages for themselves and others.  The early explorers gave them Spanish and French names.  Identifying the various tribes can be difficult and information contradictory.   

Texas Indians Fact Cards gives quick facts about the history, settlements, and traditional way of life for Indian groups who lived in Texas at various times from before 1600 to the end of the 1800s. 

Sources: Much of the information in the Texas Indians Fact Cards is taken from Berlandier's journal, The Indians of Texas in 1830, reprinted in 1969, and the Handbook of North American Indians, volumes 9, 10, & 15, published in 1978, all by the Smithsonian Institution; The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times by W. W. Newcomb, published by the University of Texas at Austin in 1961; and Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico edited by Frederick Webb Hodge, published in 1975.    

Population estimates for the years before 1900 are from The Indian Tribes of North America (1979) and The Indians of the Southeastern United States (1979), both by John R. Swanton, published by the Smithsonian Institution. 1990 Census figures are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Subject Summary Tape File 13 (SSTF-13).    

The Institute of Texan Cultures, University of Texas at San Antonio, provided answers to many questions.


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