Karankawan Indian
Tribe History
Karankawan Tribes. The name Karankawa is derived from one of the
constituent tribes, but the significance is unknown.
Nda kun-dadehe, Lipan name, meaning "people walking in the water."
Quelancouchis, Clamcoets, names given by the French.
YRkokon kdpai, Tonkawa, meaning "without moccasins," but this name
includes the coast Coahuiltecan tribes.
Connections
The Karankawan tribes are placed in an independent linguistic
stock, which was connected most closely, it would seem, with the
Coahuiltecan group.
Location
On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico
between Trinity and Aransas Bays.
Subdivisions
Five principal tribes constituted the Karankawan stock. They were as
follows:
Coapite.
Coaque or Coco, on Galveston Island and at the mouth of Brazos River.
Karankawa, on Matagorda Bay.
Kohani, near the mouth of Colorado River.
Kopano, on Copano Bay.
To these should perhaps be added the Tiopane and Tups, and perhaps also
the Pataquilla, and the Quilotes mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca (1851).
Villages
History
The Karankawan coast was skirted by a number of early voyagers
but the first contact with its inhabitants worth noting was by Cabeza de
Vaca and other shipwrecked members of Pamphilo de Narvaez's expedition.
There is little doubt that the people among whom Cabeza de Vaca was cast
away in 1528 were the Coaque or Coco. In 1685 La Salle landed in their
country supposing that he was near the mouth of the Mississippi, and he
built a fort (Fort St. Louis) in which the French maintained themselves
for 2 years. In 1689 the region was visited by a Spanish expedition under
De Leon intent upon driving the Frenchmen out of the country. Shortly
afterward the Spaniards began to colonize Texas and, though few
settlements were made near the coast, missions were established from time
to time to gather in the Karankawan Indians. The neophytes could never be
induced to remain long at these missions, however, and continued during
the Spanish period in about the same condition of savagery in which they
had been found, though they decreased steadily in numbers. After the
American settlements had begun, the coast tribes annoyed them by constant
pilfering, and the reprisals which the Karankawans suffered finally
destroyed them entirely. The last are said to have perished shortly before
the Civil War. The only Karankawan vocabulary of undoubted purity was
recorded in 1720 by the French Captain Beranger. In 1891 Dr. A. S.
Gatschet published two others, one obtained from Tonkawa Indians and the
other, much longer, from a white woman named Oliver who had lived near the
last band of Karankawa in her girlhood and had learned a considerable
number of words. But this band is said to have been much mixed with
Coahuiltecan, a contention which an examination of the material seems to
confirm.
Population
Mooney's (1928) estimate of 2,800 for the Karankawan tribes in
1690 appears to me decidedly too high, but there are practically no data
upon which to make a satisfactory determination.
Connection in which they have become noted
The Karankawan tribes will be
longest remembered as those among which Cabeza de Vacs and his companions
were cast away in 1528, and where La Salle's colony was established in
1685. The name of one Karankawan tribe (Kopano) is preserved by Copano
Bay.
Additional Resources
Notes About the Book:
Source: The Indian Tribes of North America, by John R. Swanton, 1953, Bureau of
American Ethnology, Bulletin 145, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC.
Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing
has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual
output.
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