Caddo Indians

Caddo Indians
Author: Cecile Elkins Carter
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806133188

This narrative history of the Caddo Indians creates a vivid picture of daily life in the Caddo Nation. Using archaeological data, oral histories, and descriptions by explorers and settlers, Cecile Carter introduces impressive Caddo leaders past and present. The book provides observations, stories, and vignettes on twentieth-century Caddos and invites the reader to recognize the strengths, rooted in ancient culture, that have enabled the Caddos to survive epidemics, enemy attacks, and displacement from their original homelands in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma.

The Caddos and Their Ancestors

The Caddos and Their Ancestors
Author: Jeffrey S. Girard
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-04-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807167029

Taking an archaeological perspective on the past, Jeffrey S. Girard traces native human habitation in northwest Louisiana from the end of the last Ice Age, through the formation of the Caddo culture in the tenth century BCE, to the early nineteenth century. Employing the results of recent scientific investigations, The Caddos and Their Ancestors depicts a distinct and dynamic population spanning from precolonial times to the dawn of the modern era. Girard grounds his research in the material evidence that defined Caddo culture long before the appearance of Europeans in the late seventeenth century. Reliance solely on documented observations by explorers and missionaries—which often reflect a Native American population with a static past—propagates an incomplete account of history. By using specific archaeological techniques, Girard reveals how the Caddos altered their lives to cope with ever-changing physical and social environments across thousands of years. This illuminating approach contextualizes the remnants of houses, mounds, burials, tools, ornaments, and food found at Native American sites in northwest Louisiana. Through ample descriptions and illustrations of these archaeological finds, Girard deepens understanding of the social organization, technology, settlement, art, and worldviews of this resilient society. This long-overdue examination of an often-overlooked cultural force provides a thorough yet concise history of the 14,000 years the Caddo people and their predecessors survived and thrived in what is now Louisiana.

Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians

Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians
Author: John Reed Swanton
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 1996
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780806128566

First published in 1942, John R. Swanton’s Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians is a classic reference on the Caddos. Long regarded as the dean of southeastern Native American studies, Swanton worked for decades as an ethnographer, ethnohistorian, folklorist, and linguist. In this volume he presents the history and culture of the Caddos according to the principal French, Spanish, and English sources. In the seventeenth century, French and Spanish explorers encountered four regional alliances-Cahinnio, Cadohadacho, Hasinai, and Natchitoches-within the boundaries of the present-day states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma. Their descriptions of Caddo culture are the earliest sources available, and Swanton weaves the information from these primary documents into a narrative, translated into English, for the benefit of the modern reader. For the scholar, he includes in an appendix the extire test of three principal documents in their original Spanish. The first half of the book is devoted to an extensive history of the Caddos, from De Soto’s encounters in 1521 to the Caddos’ involvement in the Ghost Dance Religion of 1890. The second half discusses Caddo culture, including origin legends and religious beliefs, material culture, social relations, government, warfare, leisure, and trade. For this edition, Helen Hornbeck Tanner also provides a new foreword surveying the scholarship published on the Caddos since Swanton’s time.

Hasinai

Hasinai
Author: Vynola Beaver Newkumet
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2009-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781603441292

Authors Vynola B. Newkumet and Howard L. Meredith culled traditional lore and scholarly research to survey the major landmarks of the Hasinai experience--the Caddo Indians of the American Southwest.

The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana

The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana
Author: Fred B. Kniffen
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 1987-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807153303

Although many specialized studies have been written about Louisiana's Indian tribes, no complete account has appeared regarding their long, varied history. The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present is a highly informative study that reconstructs the history and cultural evolution of these people. This study identifies tribal groups, charts their migrations within the state, and discusses their languages and customs. According to the authors, the first descriptions of Louisiana Indians are contained in accounts kept by members of Hernando de Soto's expedition In the 1540s. The next recorders of Indian life were the French in the 1700s. European influences irrevocably marked the Indians' lives. The natives lost tribal lands to the new settlers and replaced many of their weapons and tools with those of the Europeans. Diseases apparently introduced by the Spaniards decimated entire tribes and caused the disappearance of certain tribal languages that had never been recorded. However, much of Indian material culture has survived even to the present, including the dugout canoe, or pirogue, and the beautiful cane basketry of the Chitimacha tribe.According to the authors, current figures show that Louisiana has the third largest native American population in the eastern United States. Several of Louisiana's present-day Indian tribes, such as the Tunica-Biloxi, Choctaw, and Koasati, entered the state in the second half of the eighteenth century. They gradually established settlements throughout the state, at times displacing the native tribes. Today, many of Louisiana's Indians work in business and industry and as farmers and loggers.The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana is a valuable contribution to the literature on Louisiana History. It will be of interest to anthropologists, geographers, historians, and anyone wanting to know more about these important members of Louisiana's population.

North Caddo Parish

North Caddo Parish
Author: Sam Collier
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738552828

In 1835, the United States purchased close to one million acres of land from the Caddo Confederacy of Native Americans; the Louisiana portion became known as Caddo Parish. The Indian agency's protection of that land delayed the settlement of the parish for 25 years or more after it began in other parts of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. The Red River logjam that existed for a few hundred years backed up bayous, which in return created navigable streams and lakes. The uplands contained massive stands of virgin timbers and bountiful fruit, berries, fish, and game. The first land patents were sold in 1841, and by 1850, the area was known as Caddo Prairie. For a majority of the next 100 years, steamboat traffic, homesteaders, plantations, subsistence farmers, logging operations, entrepreneurs, and a building boom brought on by the railroad and oil industries uniquely melded to define local, cultural history. Today three towns and five villages are located in north Caddo Parish, while the memories of 10 historic communities remain strong.

Traditions of the Arikara

Traditions of the Arikara
Author: George Amos Dorsey
Publisher: Washington, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Total Pages: 218
Release: 1904
Genre: History
ISBN:

The Caddo Indians

The Caddo Indians
Author: F. Todd Smith
Publisher: Texas A & M University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1995-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780890969816

In 1542 members of the thriving Caddo Indian culture came face to face with Luis de Moscoso, successor to Hernando de Soto as leader of a Spanish exploration party. That encounter marked a turning point for this centuries-old people, whose history from then on would be dominated by the interaction of the native confederacies with the empires of various European adventurers and settlers.Much has been written about the confrontations of Euro-Americans with Native Americans, but most of it has focused on the Anglo-Indian relations of the eastern part of the continent or on the final phases of the western wars. This thorough and engaging history is the first to focus intensively on the Caddos of the Texas-Louisiana border area. Primarily from the perspective of the Caddos themselves, it traces the development and effect of relations over the three hundred years from the first meeting with the Spaniards until the resettlement of the tribes on the Brazos Reserve in 1854.In an impressive work of scholarship and lucid writing, F. Todd Smith chronicles all three of the Caddo confederacies–Kadohadacho, Hasinai, and Natchitoches–as they consolidated into a single tribe to face the waves of soldiers, traders, and settlers from the empires of Spain, France, the United States, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas. It describes the delicate balance the Caddos struck with the various nations claiming the region and how that gradually evolved into a less beneficial relationship. Caught in the squeeze between Euro-American nations, the Caddos eventually sacrificed their independence and much of their culture to gain the benefits offered by the invaders. Falling victim to swindlers, they at last lost their lands and were moved to a reservation. This intriguing new view of a little-known aspect of history will fascinate those interested in the culture and fate of American Indians. Thorough in its research and comprehensive in scope, it offers valuable insight into the differing approaches of the various European and American nations to the native peoples and a compelling understanding of the futility of the efforts of even some of the most sophisticated tribes in coping successfully with the changes wrought.