Product Code Database
The Karankawa ( ) were an Indigenous people concentrated in southern Texas along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, largely in the lower Colorado River and Brazos River valleys."Karankawa." In Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures, edited by John Mackenzie. Cassell, 2005. They consisted of several independent, seasonal nomadic groups who shared a language and some culture. From the onset of European colonization, the Karankawa had violent encounters with the Spanish Empire. After one attack by the Spanish, who the Karankawa after the establishment of Presidio La Bahía in 1722, the Karankawa allegedly felt "deeply betrayed and viewed Spanish colonial settlement with hostility."
In the 1800s, white American settlers arrived in their land under the leadership of Stephen F. Austin. He commissioned a captain to expel the Karankawa from the Austin land grant, leading to multiple attacks, including the Skull Creek massacre of 19 Karankawa. In 1824, Austin sent Captain Randal Jones with a group of 23 soldiers to what is now Brazoria County to fight and disperse the Karankawa Indians from their encampment. 15 Indians were killed, and the remaining fled the area. This event is known as the Battle of Jones Creek.
By the 1840s, the Karankawa, now exiled, split into two groups, one of which settled on Padre Island while the other fled into the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. In 1858, Mexican rancher Juan Cortina led a group of Mexicans and Texan colonists against what was believed to be the Karankawa's last known refuge, killing many. By 1891, the Karankawa ceased to exist as a functioning tribe. Today, however, there are unrecognized tribes who claim Karankawa descent.
The name Karakawa has numerous spellings in Spanish, French, and English.
Swiss-American ethnologist Albert S. Gatschet wrote that the name Karakawa may have come from the Comecrudo terms klam or glám, meaning "dog", and kawa, meaning "to love, like, to be fond of." The plural form of kawa is kakáwa, so the term would mean "dog-lovers" or "dog-raisers."
The Tonkawa called them Wrestlers ("Keles" or "Killis"). They alternatively called them the barefooted or those without moccasins ("Yakokon kapa-i"), but this name was also applied to other groups with which the Tonkawe were acquainted. The Lipan Apache called the Karankawa the "people who walk in the water" ("Nda Kun dadehe"), possibly referring to their mode of fishing and catching turtles, or simply their location near the swampy coast. The Karankawa called themselves "Karankawa" as well.
Later speculation placed the Karankawa language in the Cariban linguistic stock. Linguistic data suggests that the Karankawa name originated from the old Spanish Main, "Kalina," and a suffix from a Northern Carib tribe, "kxura, "meaning "people." A compound emerges: Karinxkxura, meaning "Carib people." But this theory is disputed, and ultimately, the origins of the name "Karankawa" remain unknown.
Alternate spellings of the name Karankawa have historically included: Carancahua, Carancagua, Carancaguase, Carancahuare, Caranchuasye, Carancahuase, Carancahuaye, Carancahuaze, Carancohuace, Caray, Carrai, Carray, Saray.
Recent archaeological records that used radiocarbon dating for artefacts indicated that these Native groups had been in the area as early as the fifth millennium BCE.
They constructed houses by arranging willow branches in a circle, bending the tops of the branches toward the centre, and interlocking them in wickerwork. This wickerwork was fastened with deerskin. Upon this framework, the Karankawa lay deer, wildcat, panther or bear skins, again fastened with deer hide thongs.
The next step was to make a fire. After European contact, the Karankawa sought matches or tinderboxes from settlers; otherwise, they resorted to the traditional method of using their firesticks, which they always carried in a package of deerhide thongs. The fire was always made in the centre of their dwellings and kept burning day and night. They used animal hides and pelts to sit and sleep on within their dwellings. Their household goods and utensils included wooden spoons, ceramic vessels, fishbone needles, and fine deer sinew.
In the region that the Karankawa inhabited, numerous small chunks of Bitumen have been found along the coast from oil seepage beneath the Gulf of Mexico. These chunks were used to bind arrowheads to their shafts; as a coating for pottery such as , jars, and bowls; and as a way to waterproof woven baskets.
After European contact, the Karankawa made bread from imported wheat flour. They laid the dough on a flat stone and then baked it on an open fire. They also enjoyed imported sweet coffee.
The Karankawa were skilled at obtaining pure, fresh water. White settlers did not know where they obtained it, because the wells of the whites had a brackish taste.
"We all went naked like them, and every morning at daybreak, in any season, they went to plunge into the nearest river. Like them, they ate meat from the hunt, fresh or cured in the sun, but most often half raw. The only meals that horrid them were those they made of human flesh, as they are cannibals, but toward their savage enemies only. They never ate a single Frenchman that they had killed because, they said, simply they do not eat them. And the same Jean-Baptiste Talon vouches that he once went three days without eating, because nothing presented itself during that time except some human flesh of the Ayenis whom they had killed on one of the expeditions."
Several years before this, French castaway Henri Joutel, a captain of the La Salle Expedition, lived among the Cenis Tejas tribe and hunted with their neighbouring bands who had an identical culture and language as the Karankawa. He wrote in his manuscripts that, "The warriors returned from a grand raid, parading around 48 scalps and body parts of which some of the warriors partook in cannibalising, as it was apparently thought, in order to gain the deceased warrior’s bravery.
The Karankawa were noted for their skill in communicating with each other over long distances using smoke signals. The Karankawa could make the smoke of a small fire ascend toward the sky in many different ways, and it was as intelligible to them across long distances as their language. Their methods are unknown.
They did not have a regular sleep schedule, but slept whenever they wished. They also ate and drank at all times of the day.
Karankawa never communicated their native names to the whites. However, they all adopted English or Spanish names. Many men adopted American military epithets and Christian names, and they would change these frequently.
Among the Karankawa existed an in-law taboo. Once a man and his wife had become, in the Karankawa sense, married, the husband and his children were no longer allowed to enter the residence of his wife's parents, nor could his wife's parents enter his or his children's home. These two groups were also no longer allowed to talk with one another and never came face to face with one another. If a situation of coming face to face with one another arose, both parties averted their eyes and moved away from each other. This taboo only seemed to apply to the husbands and their children, most likely due to the inconvenience on the wife's part, as Karankawans were typically patrilocal.
The Karankawa practiced Axe throwing, recreational brawls with knives, ball games, and wrestling matches. No gambling or guessing games seemed to have developed among the Karankawa. The Karankawa were also noted for their remarkable physical feats, such as continuing to fight after being wounded in battle, breaking ice with their bodies, and swimming in freezing water.
The ritual to become a chief has been studied by 18th-century Spaniards. They have stated that a selection starts from many candidates, and each is injured by a comb created from the spines of a sea fish, long wounds being dug into their skin from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet and then tied to a pole for several days to either emerge thin or emaciated and close to death. While this description can indeed be a ritual to choose a chief, a diary of Fray Gaspar Jose De Solis states that he suspects these rituals could simply be a puberty rite or an initiation ritual to a brotherhood.
The written accounts of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca mentions bride price and bride service as part of a Karankawa marriage. While the bride price is assumed to be the generalized system in the Indigenous population found by Cabeza de Vaca where the groom gives presents to the parents of the girl he wishes to marry, to secure their permission, the bride service is based on a ritual where the husband must give every morsel of food he managed to collect or hunt to his wife. His wife then delivers the bounty to her parents and in return is given food to give back to her husband. This ritual goes on for an unknown number of months, but when it is concluded, the pair typically then engages in patrilocal residence. In terms of marriage, divorce is a common aspect typically only to marriages that have not created any children and is unlikely if children have been born from the marriage. Between the husband and wife, no signs of fondness, intimacy, or special treatment were observed. The Karankawa reacted strongly and sometimes violently to Europeans interfering in marital or familial affairs.
The Karankawa were said to have great compassion and tenderness for their children. Mothers carried babies, not yet able to walk, on their backs, wrapped in a loop of animal hide.
The men wore hide , while the women wore deerhide skirts. They did not wear headcovers or shoes. Some women of the tribe obtained European clothing occasionally, but would only tear them apart or wear them temporarily. European blankets were of greater use to the tribe, worn fastened to their bodies during cold weather and pinned with thorns. Both men and women wore a small bracelet of undressed deer skin. In the warm climate, children did not wear clothing until they were about 10 years old.
The Karankawa had distinctive tattoos, notably, a blue circle tattooed over each cheekbone, one horizontal blue line from the outer angle of the eye toward the ear, three perpendicular parallel lines on the chin from the middle of the lower lip downward, and two other lines extending down from under each corner of the mouth. Moreover, 16th-century European explorers wrote that Karankawa people had , or piercings of cane on the lower lips, nose, and other parts of the body.Trigger, Bruce G., and Washburn, Wilcomb E. "The Greater Southwest and California from the Beginning of European Settlement to the 1880s." In The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, 57-116. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
The woman in some tribes such as the Coco group also had a tattoo of concentric black circles from their nipple to circling their entire breast.
Men, women, and children alike rubbed sharks' oil on their entire bodies regularly to deter mosquitoes effectively and to keep their skin soft and supple. Europeans who encountered the Karankawa were disgusted by the odor.
The women wore no ornaments, while the men wore many ornaments. Men's long hair was braided with three strands. They inserted bright items (such as ribbons or colored flannel). The women never braided their hair nor combed it regularly. The men wore necklaces of small shells, glass beads, pistachios, and thin metal disks on their throats (never on their chests). They also wore finger rings.
At the full moon and after very successful hunting or fishing expeditions, the Karankawa traditionally held a ceremony. After gathering around a central fire, they boiled a strong and bitter brew from the leaves of the Ilex vomitoria tree and stirred it until the top was covered with a yellowish froth. This brew was shared and all the Karankawa drank freely. Although this brew was said to be intoxicating, Europeans did not notice any visible effects on the natives. One native stood within the circle of men, wrapped up to his head in skins, and he bent over as he walked around the fire. They chanted in chromatic ascending and descending tones, and all the natives joined in the chorus. This ceremony continued throughout the night.
Other than this, only a few other rituals were observed, and their purposes are unknown. The Karankawa stared at the sun when it disappeared into the sea, like some other native groups of the area. They also smoked tobacco through their nostrils first to the north, then to the east, west, and south. They frequently whistled at certain times and apparently for some objective, but ultimately for unknown purposes. Jean-Baptist Talon, in response to interrogation, reported, "one could only infer that they have some confused impression of the immortality of their souls and the resurrection of the dead by the ceremonies that they observe in the burial of their dead. After having wrapped the corpse in a well-prepared buffalo hide, the same one that he had used in life to cover himself, they bury him with his club, his bow, and his arrows, a quantity of smoked meat, some corn and vegetables, and two pieces of a certain rock that they use instead of gun flint to make fire.For this purpose they make a little hole in one of the pieces of wood, which is flat, and which they lean against something; and having sharpened the other, which is round, they adjust the point of i in the hole and make some fire by rubbing these two pieces of wood, by turning the one that is round between their hands, as fast as they can and all that in order that he may use them (so they say) when he wakes up".
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador who lived among the Karankawa for several years in the 1530s and wrote a memoir, made no mention of cannibalism except for ritualistic consumption of deceased relatives in the form of funeral ashes "presented in water for the relatives to drink." Upon his return to Spain, Cabeza De Vaca noted in his written report to the King, "that five Christians quartered on the coast Galveston, came to the extremity of eating each other. Only the body of the last one, whom nobody was left to eat, was found unconsumed. Their names were Sierra, Diego Lopez, Corral, Palacios, and Gonzalo Ruiz,"this, after shipwrecking off Galveston Bay. The Karankawa people "were so shocked at this Spanish cannibalism that, if they had seen it sometime earlier, they surely would have killed every one of us." Whites never actually witnessed an act of cannibalism, and second- and third-hand accounts are of disputed credibility.
Henri Joutel, the companion of Robert Cavelier de La Salle on his last expedition in 1687, recorded several tribes living in the coastal area, including the Karankawa (which he spelled as Korenkake and Koinekahe). His observations were that the Karankawa were peaceable rather than hostile. Upon their first meeting, Joutel reports that the Karankawa "demonstrated their friendship by putting their hands over their hearts, which meant that they were glad to see us." He also noted that they possessed horses, which were undoubtedly obtained from the Spanish.
When de La Salle stole some canoes from the Karankawa to sail up a river and establish Fort St. Louis, the Karankawas were enraged. When they heard of de La Salle's departure and subsequent death, they attacked about 20 French settlers left in the fort and massacred all but five. The survivors were forcibly tattooed and made to follow the Karankawa on their hunting and fishing expeditions; they were eventually rescued by a Spanish expedition in 1689.
In 1691, Captain Domingo Teran led a combined land-sea expedition to Texas to strengthen recently established missions and to search for French presence. Both expeditions were mismanaged and led to a temporary lapse in Spanish interest. Continued French action, however, encouraged the Spaniards to occupy the area of Matagorda Bay permanently.
La Bahía del Espiritu Santo, a mission-presidio complex, was established in 1722 on the southern bank of the San Antonio River. At first, the Karankawa were not antagonistic to the Spanish, but in 1723, a skirmish occurred between the Spanish and Karankawa, after which the Karankawa moved away from the mission and became hostile. By 1727, the Karankawa depredations forced the mission-presidio complex to move inland to the Guadalupe River, where they remained until 1749. The Karankawa successfully reduced Spanish claim to the Texas coast.
By the 1730s, the Karankawa and other native tribes of the Texas area were viewed by the Spanish as the primary obstacle to control of northern New Spain. In 1749, Jose Escandon was made governor and representative of the viceroy, appointed to conquer and settle northern Mexico and the region of Texas, and to map, survey, and acquaint himself with the area and with the natives. He recommended that the mission of La Bahía should be moved because of native hostility and the unfavorable climate.
A new mission, Mission Rosario, was established in 1754. It was in constant fear of revolt by the natives in the mission and often appealed to La Bahía for military aid. Overall, it was extremely ineffective as a spiritual and "civilizing" center. The Karankawa fled when subjected to any corporal punishment, and continued to enjoy the resources provided by the Spanish without being dependent on them.
Over time, the Karankawa grew to speak Spanish with great fluency and adopted Spanish names for themselves to facilitate interaction with the whites.
The late 18th century had a revival of Karankawa resistance and strength. The Spanish began to see them as unable to be converted to mission life, and some began to scheme for their extermination, but none of these schemes was successfully carried out.
In 1779, in response to the killing of Spanish sailors by a group of Karankawas, led by Joseph Maria, along the Texas Gulf Coast, and a later raid on Mission Rosario also masterminded by Maria that led to the mission's abandonment by the Spanish, they planned a series of punitive expeditions against the Karankawa intended to exterminate them, although all of these proved abortive and unsuccessful, and they were abandoned as a strategy by 1786, with the war ending three years later, in 1789.
In 1806, the Rosario mission was merged with that of Refugio. In 1830, Refugio and La Bahía del Espiritu Santo were secularized.
In 1821, Moses Austin received the Austin land grant to settle 300 families between Galveston Bay and the Colorado River. The Karankawa sought to hinder their progress by killing settlers who were guarding the ship John Motley and by stealing their supplies. By 1825, settlers banded together to attack the Karankawa. Stephen Austin commissioned Captain Kuykendall to lead volunteers to expel them from the territory, which extended to the Lavaca River. They chased the Karankawa to Manahila Creek, where a Spanish missionary interceded on their behalf and made them promise to never again go east of the Lavaca. This promise was broken, however, and was met by disproportionate violence by the Texan colonists.
Chief Jose Maria's 19-year-old son, Walupe, was captured by the Mexicans and killed. His father came on board the ship of a Texan settler and announced his intent of revenge, but the majority of his men and himself were killed. Antonio, who claimed he was the brother of Jose Maria, became chief after that. During his administration and afterward, the Karankawa population diminished significantly from disease, conflict with Europeans, and infighting.
By the 1840s, the Karankawa consisted of two groups; one settled on Padre Island, while the other applied to settle in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. After being exiled from their homeland, the latter group reportedly plundered and stole; the Mexican government then ordered troops to subdue them. General Avalos was ordered to move the Karankawa to the border of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León. The two states disputed over the Karankawa, and they were eventually returned to Reynosa. After continued robberies, the Karankawa were removed to Texas.
In 1858, the judge of Rosario, Mexico, sent a message to the mayor of Reynosa that he had tried to arrest the Karankawa, but they moved north of the American border beyond his jurisdiction. He added that Mexicans and Americans should work together for the Karankawas' arrest. Later that year, Juan Cortina made a surprise attack on the recently returned Karankawa and annihilated what was believed to be at the time, the last members of the tribe. In a study on the Karankawa published in 1888, one interviewee "thought that some Karankawa may be still in existence, but could not tell where." The Karankawa went extinct as a distinct tribe in the late 19th century.
|
|
