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The Names "Texas" and "Hasinai"
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The tribes in question commonly have been called the Texas, but more properly
the Hasinai. Concerning the meaning and usage of these terms I shall only
present here somewhat dogmatically part of the results of a rather extended
study which I have made of these points and which I hope soon to publish.1
The testimony of the sources warrants the
conclusion that before the coming of the
Spaniards the word Texas, variously spelled
by the early writers, had wide currency
among the tribes of eastern Texas and
perhaps over a larger area; that its usual
meaning was "friends," or more technically,
"allies"; and that it was used by the tribes
about the early missions, at least, to whom
especially it later became attached as a
group name, to designate a large number of
tribes who were customarily allied against
the Apaches. In this sense, the Texas
included tribes who spoke different
languages and who were as widely separated
as the Red River and the Rio Grande. It
seems that the Neches-Angelina tribes
designated did not apply the term
restrictively to themselves as a name, but
that they did use it in a very unethical way
as a form of greeting, like "hello, friend,"
with which they even saluted Spaniards after
their advent. I may say, in this connection,
that the meanings "land of flowers," "tiled
roofs," "paradise," etc., sometimes given
for the name Texas, I have never seen even
suggested by early observers, or by anyone
on the basis of trustworthy evidence.
The name Texas has been variously applied by
writers, but it was most commonly used by
the Spaniards, from whom the French and the
English borrowed it, to designate those
tribes of the upper Neches and the Angelina
valleys, and this in spite of their knowing
full well that among the natives the word
had the wider application that has been
indicated. There are many variations from
this usage in Spanish writings, it is true,
but this, nevertheless, is the ordinary one.
As a tribal name the term was sometimes
still further narrowed to apply to a single
tribe. When this occurred, it was most
commonly used to designate the Hainai, the
head tribe of the group in question, but
sometimes it was applied to the Nabedache
tribe. As a geographical term, the name
Texas was first ex-tended from these
Neches-Angelina tribes to their immediate
country. Thus for the first quarter of a
century of Spanish occupation, the phrase
"the Province of Texas" referred only to the
country east of the Trinity River; but with
the founding of the San Antonio settlements
the term was extended westward, more in
harmony with its native meaning, to the
Medina River, and then gradually to all of
the territory included within the present
State of Texas.
While the name Texas, as used by the tribes
in the eastern portion of the State, was
thus evidently a broad and indefinite term
applied to many and unrelated tribes
occupying a wide area, it is clear that the
native group name for most of the tribes
about the missions in the Neches and
Angelina valleys was Hasinai, or Asinai.2
Today the term Hasinai is used by the
Caddoan on the reservations to include not
only the survivors of these Neches-Angelina
tribes, but also the survivors of the tribes
of the Sabine and Red River country. It
seems from the sources, however, that in the
early days the term was more properly
limited to the former group. In strictest
usage, indeed, the earliest writers did not
include all of these. A study of
contemporary evidence shows that at the
first contact of Europeans with these tribes
and for a long time thereafter writers quite
generally made a distinction between the
Hasinai (Asinai, Cenis, etc.) and the
Kadohadacho3
(Caddodacho) group; these confederacies, for
such they were in the Indian sense of the
term, were separated by a wide stretch of
uninhabited territory extending between the
upper Angelina and the Red River in the
neighborhood of Texarkana; their
separateness of organization was positively
affirmed, and the details of the inner
constitution of both groups were more or
less fully described; while in their
relations with the Europeans they were for
nearly a century dealt with as separate
units. Nevertheless, because of the present
native use of the term and some early
testimony that can not be disregarded, I
would not at present assert unreservedly
that the term formerly was applied by the
natives only to the Neches-Angelina group.
If, as seems highly probable, this was the
case, in order to preserve the native usage
we should call these tribes the Hasinai; if
not, then the Southern Hasinai.
The name Hasinai, like Texas, was sometimes
narrowed in its application to one tribe,
usually the Hainai. But occasionally the
notion appears that there was an Hasinai
tribe distinct from the Hainai. This,
however, does not seem to have been the
case. As now used by the surviving Hasinai
and Caddo, Hasinai means "our own folk," or,
in another sense, "Indians."4
East Texas Indian
Missions
1. The
present paper embodies some of the results
of an investigation of the history of the
Texas tribes, which the writer is making for
the Bureau of American Ethnology.
2. The
Spaniards ordinarily spelled this name
Asinai or Asinay, and the French writers
Cenis. Mooney, the ethnologist, who knows
intimately the survivors of these people
living on the reservations, writes the name
by which they now call themselves Hasinai.,
or Hasini, preferably the former. His
spelling has been adopted as the standard
one by the Bureau of American Ethnology. See
the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau
of American Ethnology, 1092 (1896).
3. I use here also the
spelling adopted by the Bureau of American
Ethnology.
4.
See Mooney, op. cit.
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The Native Tribes About The East Texas Mission's, Quarterly of the Texas
State Historical Association, By Herbert E. Bolton, April 1908
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