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Karankawa people

Karankawa
Né-ume[1]
Karankawa territory
Total population
extinct as a tribe since the 19th century[2]
Regions with significant populations
United States (Texas)
Languages
Karankawa language, English, Spanish
Religion
Indigenous religion

The Karankawa /kəˈræŋkəwə/[3] 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.[4] 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. After one attack by the Spanish, who ambushed the Karankawa after the establishment of Presidio La Bahía in 1722, the Karankawa allegedly felt "deeply betrayed [and] viewed Spanish colonial settlement with hostility."[5]

In the 1820s, European-American colonists arrived in their land under the leadership of Stephen Austin. He commissioned a captain to expel the Karankawa from the Austin land grant,[6][7] leading to multiple attacks, including the Skull Creek massacre of 19 Karankawa.[8] 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. During 1858, Mexican rancher Juan Nepomuceno Cortina led a group of Mexicans and Texan colonists against what was believed to be the Karankawa's last known refuge, killing many.[7] By 1891, the Karankawa ceased to exist as a functioning tribe.

There is nearly 300 years of information written about the Karankawa Indians of Texas from La Salle's first landing at Matagorda Bay in 1685 until the close of the Rosario Mission. The Karankawa had been described for centuries as "cannibals," There is incontrovertable evidence that the Karankawa, like all early hunter gatherers around the globe practiced ritual cannibalism on their enemy. Just as their Aztec and Guachichiles and Guamares cousins to the south in Northern Mexico, "they ate their enemy for vengeance. Their bones, scalps and genitals were displayed in victory celebrations."[9]

The Choctaw name for cannibal was "Atakapa" which was the western most band of the Karankawa Texas Indian group.

The first person to document the Karankawa's cannibalism was French Jean Baptiste Talon who lived as a captive among the tribe for several years who stated in 1689:

"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. They 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 that] 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." [10]

Several years before this, French castaway Henri Joutel, a captain of the La Salle Expedion lived among the Cenis [Tejas] tribe and hunted with their neighboring bands who had an identical culture and langage 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 cannibalizing, as it was apparently thought, in order to gain the deceased warrior’s bravery. [11]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference gatshet42-44 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference coast was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Karankawa". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  4. ^ "Karankawa." In Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures, edited by John Mackenzie. Cassell, 2005.
  5. ^ Ricklis, Albert A. (2010). The Karankawa Indians of Texas: An Ecological Study of Cultural Tradition and Change. University of Texas Press. p. 2. ISBN 9780292770775.
  6. ^ Gatschet, Hammond & Williams Oliver 1891
  7. ^ a b Wolff, Thomas (1969). "The Karankawa Indians: Their Conflict with the White Man in Texas". Ethnohistory. 16 (1): 1–32. doi:10.2307/480941. JSTOR 480941.
  8. ^ Anderson, Gary Clayton (2005). The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 53–54. ISBN 9780806136981.
  9. ^ de Ahumada, Pedro (14 March 1576). "Bishop Mendiola to the king, Zacatecas; Testimony of Geronimo de Santoy". Jstor. 3: 57–58.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference :6 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Parkman, Francis (1910). La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West: France and England in North America; Part 3. Little, Brown. pp. 378, 425.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

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