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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 |
An Introduction
PREHISTORY
Before man came to
Glaciers extended as far south
as central
Small bands of Asian hunters walked
across this land bridge as they followed big game looking for new pastures in
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
EUROPEAN CONTACT
The Spanish
The Spanish adventurer Cabeza de
Vaca explored the
Traveling south, de Vaca and his
companions reached
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
Late in the 1600s, Spanish missionaries
came north from
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
About the same time, Jean Louis
Berlandier, a French botanist and zoologist, went to
The French
CONCLUSION
The Indian groups that are the
most "native" to
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
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
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
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