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Yscanis Indian Tribe
History
Yscanis, A
tribe of the Wichita confederacy; they were entirely distinct from the
Asinais (Hasinai), though the names of the two tribes have been confused.
It is possible that the Ysconis, or Isconis, reported to Domingo de
Mendoza in 1684 among the tribes awaiting him somewhere in central or east
Texas, were the Yscanis (Mendoza, Viage, 1683-84, MS.). In 1719 LaHarpe
visited them (the "Ascanis") on Canadian river, where they were living a
settled life with the Wichita, Taovayas (Tawehash), and Tawakoni. LaHarpe
also reported another village of the Ascanis 60 leagues farther to the
north west (Margry, Dec., vi, 293, 1886). Little more is heard of these
tribes till the middle of the 18th century, by which time they had all
moved southward into north Texas, under pressure from their bitter
enemies, the Comanche and the Osage.
According to an official report made in 1762, the Yscanis had been
among the numerous tribes which, about 1746, asked the missionaries at San
Antonio for missions in central Texas. If this be true, they were possibly
the Hiscas, or Haiscas, mentioned in documents relating to the San Xavier
missions (Royal cedulas of Apr. 6, 1748, and Mar. 21, 1752, MSS. in
Archivo Gen. de Mexico). In 1760 Fr. Calahorra y Saenz, of Nacogdoches,
went among the Yscanis and Tawakoni to establish peace, and soon afterward
made an unsuccessful attempt to found a mission for them. These two tribes
were at that time living close together on a stream in north Texas,
apparently farther north than the place where Mezières
found them a decade later (contemporary docs. in Bexar Archives). The
Yscanis took part in the peace conference held by Mezières
in 1770 at the Kadohadacho village, and two years later they sent
representatives to Bexar to ratify the convention before the governor of
Texas. When, in 1772, Mezières visited
the tribe, they were living near the east bank of the Trinity, somewhere
below the present Palestine, 7 leagues east of one of the Tawakoni
villages, and an equal distance west of the Kichai. The village consisted
of 60 warriors and their families. They lived in a scattered agricultural
settlement, raised maize, beans, melons, and calabashes, were closely
allied with the other Wichita tribes, whose language they spoke, and were
said by Mezières to be cannibals.
There are indications that after this the Yscanis united with the
Tawakoni, with whom they had always been most closely associated, to
reappear, perhaps, in the 19th century, as the Waco. In his reports of his
expeditions made in 1778 and 1779 to the Wichita tribes Mezières
does not mention the Yscanis, but he fully describes the two Tawakoni
villages, then both on the Brazos. Morfi, about 1782, on what authority is
not known, states that the "Tuacana nation, to which are united some 90
families of the Ixcani, occupies two towns on the banks of the river
Brazos de Dios" (Mem. Hist. Tex., bk. 11, DIS.). This not improbable, for
although the Yscanis are sometimes mentioned by name as late as 1794, at
least, it is always in connection with the other Wichita tribes, and with
no indication as to their location. After 1794, so far as has been
learned, the name is not used. But a quarter of a century later, when the
Tawakoni villages are again mentioned in the records (now English instead
of Spanish), one of them appears as that of the Waco, a name formerly
unknown in Texas, and not accounted for by migration. The Waco may have
been the Yscanis under a new name. For other information, see Tawakoni,
Tawehash, Waco, Wichita.
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Handbook
of American Indians, 1906
Index of Tribes or Nations
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