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Mar. 1, 2005 Once upon a time, there lived on the Gulf Coast in East Texas, and inland about 100 miles, from Galveston Bay down to Corpus Christi Bay or Laguna Madre, a confederation of five Indian tribes: the Capoques, the Kohanis, the Kopanes, the Guapites and the Karánkawas. Thus, their homeland extended southward from today's metropolis of Houston two-thirds of the way to the Rio Grande and Mexico. Sharing a common language, Karankawa, the five separate tribes were often referred to collectively as just 'the Karankawas'. I've seen different classifications of the Karankawa language, as Coahuiltecan or Hokan, but almost all classifications of American Indian languages are very tentative and arbitrary, especially in a case like that of Karankawa, which is now extinct, with only 100 words having come down as linguistic relics. East Texas is generally fairly rainy, with 55 inches of rain a year, and tends to be swampy in some places. East Texas is also warm to hot most of the year, but freezing temperatures do visit the region periodically. Today there are hundreds of thousands of cattle egrets in the vicinity, but they weren't there in the heyday of the Karankawas. The Gulf Coast of Texas consists of a chain of barrier islands, 15 to 110 miles long, behind which numerous shallow, calm lagoons and bays have formed. It was here that the Karankawas got their food, by fishing and collecting oysters. They also hunted and gathered nuts and berries. Apparently, the five tribes coexisted fairly peaceably, but were enemies of the Comanches and the Tonkawas, two Indian nations that lived inland to the northwest. The Karankawas were very tall, by some accounts around seven feet, and muscular. They wore minimal clothes, or none at all, but decorated themselves with tattoos and war paint, and pierced their lips and nipples with reed slivers. East Texas, even today, is infested with mosquitos, which the Karankawas dealt with by smearing themselves with alligator grease. Alligators too are still to be found in East Texas. The Karankawas looked and were ferocious. They prided themselves in being able to walk in the hot sun, without need of shade, and may have had bronze skin and red hair as a consequence. They lived in wigwams, traveled on foot or in dugout canoes, used bows and arrows, even for fishing, and could build fires. They reportedly ate rival chieftains whom they had conquered but seemed to regard with revulsion the spectacle of famished marooned Spaniards eating their dead mates. The tragedy of their contact with Caucasians lasted intermittently from 1528 to around 1860. In 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez was sent from Spain to conquer and govern the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida. In 1528, having lost many men along the way, he reached Texas, where he and most of his remaining men drowned in a shipwreck. A survivor was Álvaro Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who lived several years among the Karankawas as a slave, eventually escaping with a few comrades westward into New Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca left writings on his experiences with the Karankawas and other aspects of his travels, and is duly remembered as one of the greatest of Spanish explorers. The Karankawas' next contact with Caucasians came in 1685, when René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle, having sailed from France with a destination of the estuary of the Mississippi River, landed instead in East Texas at Matagorda Bay, where he built Fort St. Louis. On one of his exploratory trips, La Salle, with six others, was slain by one of his own men, the remnant of his party returning to France via Canada. The Karankawas attacked the fort, where 20 people remained, shortly thereafter, killing all the adults, but sparing six chuldren. Later, Spaniards rescued the children. French and Spanish interest in Karankawa country revived around 1700, with expeditions from both. In the century between 1720-1820, the Spaniards organized three missions, Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga, Nuestra Señora del Rosario de los Cujanes and Nuestra Señora del Refugio at or near Matagorda Bay. The first was a failure; the second and third missions did make a few short- term conversions, but Comanche attacks forced the closure of Rosario and Refugio around 1830. Essentially, most of the Karankawas understandably rejected Christianity in the long run, and Spanish missionizing must be regarded as a failure. In 1819, Jean Lafitte (or Laffite), the famous Louisiana pirate, who may have come from France, landed on Galveston Island, where he and his men were attacked by a force of about 300 Karankawas. The pirates, though numbering only 200, were equipped with cannons, and killed a great number of the Indians. In 1821, Mexico, which then included today's Mexico, as well as Texas and the rest of the what is now Southwestern US, became independent of Spain, and shortly thereafter, Stephen F. Austin, after whom Texas' capital, Austin, is named, got permission to found a colony in Texas. In 1824, Austin, an advocate of genocide of the Karankawas, led an expedition against them, but instead a a treaty was effected whereby the Indians agreed to confine themselves to a specified range. Treaty violations led to a number of battles between the Caucasian settlers and Karankawas, who suffered attacks from the Comanches and the Tonkawas also, so that around 1836 they numbered only very few. In the 1850's some Karankawas migrated to Tamaulipas, a Mexican state, but were repelled by the Mexicans in various battles and returned to East Texas. In 1858, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina led a party of Texans against the Karankawas near Río Grande City, reportedly killing the last of the seven- foot Indians. In a conflicting version of the end of the Karankawas, the last of them was hanged for refusing to work during his imprisonment by Confederate forces in the Civil War. Incidentally, Stephen F. Austin was the firebrand who is largely responsible for starting the Mexican War of 1846-1848, which resulted in the annexation of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California. Many commentators have called this a landgrab or a theft. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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