While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
It is easy to gain an exaggerated notion of the numerical strength of the
native tribes. Popular imagination, stimulated by the hyperbole of writers for
popular consumption, has peopled the primitive woods and prairies with myriads
of savages. Student?, however, have shown that this is an error, and that the
Indian population has always been, in historical times, relatively sparse, In
their efforts to counteract these exaggerated notions, they, in-deed, have
leaned too far in the opposite direction.
The Hasinai, apparently one of the most
compact native populations within an equal
area between the Red River and the Rio
Grande, numbered only a few thousands at the
coming of the Europeans. What I have already
said about the nature of their villages has,
perhaps, prepared the reader to believe this
assertion. While our statistical information
on this point does not constitute entirely
conclusive evidence, it does, nevertheless,
give us a basis for plausible conjecture.
The earliest estimate that might be called
general is that contained in a mémoire of
1699, printed by Margry, and based
apparently upon the report of one of the
survivors of the La Salle expedition. The
mémoire states that from "Bay Saint-Louis. f
Matagorda Bay] going inland to the
north-northwest and the northeast there are
a number of different tribes. The most
numerous is the Cenys and Asenys, which,
according to the opinion of a Canadian who
has lived several years among them, form but
one village and the same nation. He
estimates that they do not exceed six
hundred or seven hundred men. The
Quélancouchis [Karankawa], who live on the
shores of the sea about Bay Saint Louis, are
four hundred men."1
It would seem that in this passage the term
"Cenys et Asenys" corresponds closely with
the term Hasinai as I have used it, unless,
as is probable, the Nasoni are excluded;
but, since this is not certain, the
estimate, though based on long experience,
would not be conclusive without
corroborating testimony. This we get in
1716. Ramon tells us that the four missions
founded by his expeditions, which were
within easy reach of all the tribes
described, "would comprise from four
thousand to five thousand persons of all
ages and both sexes." In the same year
Espinosa recorded in his diary his opinion
that the Indians grouped around the three
Querétaran missions, not including the
mission among the Nacogdoche and the Nacao,
would number three thousand; and after a
residence there of some years he estimated
the number of persons within range of each
mission at about one thousand.2
This estimate must have had a good
foundation, for we are told that the padres
kept lists of all the houses and of the
persons in each.3
Assuming that the mémoire, Ramon, and
Espinosa include the same tribes in their
estimates, it will be seen that the first is
some-what the more conservative. This fact
strengthens the probability that, like other
early reports, the mémoire did not include
the Nasoni in the Hasinai.
So much for general estimates for the whole
group. Detailed information concerning some
of the individual tribes appears in 1721.
When Aguayo in that year reestablished the
missions that had been abandoned some two
years before, he made a general distribution
of presents and clothing among the Indians
at the different villages. At the mission of
San Francisco de los Neches he gave the
Neche chief the Spanish baston, token of
authority, and "clothed entirely one hundred
and eighty-eight men, women, and children."
Never before had they received "such a
general distribution." West of the Neches
Aguayo had been visited by a hundred Nacono
from down the river. At the mission of
Concepción he requested the Hainai chief,
Cheocas by name, to collect all his people.
This took some time, as they were widely
scattered, but several days later they were
assembled, and Aguayo gave clothing and
other presents to four hundred, including,
possibly, eighty Kadohadachos, who happened
to be there on a visit. Similarly, at the
Nacogdoche mission he provided clothing "for
the chief and all the rest," a total of
three hundred and ninety; and at the Nasoni
mission for three hundred.4
This gives us a total of less than fourteen
hundred Indians who came to the missions
during Aguayo's entrada to take advantage of
the ever welcome presents. This number
apparently included the majority of the five
most important tribes, and probably included
some from the neigh-boring smaller tribes
attached to the missions.
The conclusion is that the estimates of
Ramon and Espinosa, which put the total
number of inhabitants included in 1716 in
the ten or more tribes about the four
missions at four or five thousand are
sufficiently liberal. If this conclusion is
true, the tribes could not have averaged
more than three or four hundred persons
each.
The territory then occupied by perhaps
four thousand Indians now supports one
hundred thousand people.5
Kept down by epidemics, crude means of
getting food, and to some extent by war, the
number of these natives was small. But few
then, they are incomparably fewer today, for
the descendants of all these tribes, now
living on the reservations, do not exceed
two hundred or three hundred souls.6
5. Peña, Diario, in Mem. de
Nueva Espana, XXVIII, 36, 39, 41, 43, 44.
6. The surviving Caddo and
Hasinai together numbered 551 persons in
1906 (Data given by Dr. Mooney in a
communication of April 23, 1908).2 Estimate
based on the United States Census for 1900.
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includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
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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
