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Caddo Indians
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The Caddo Indians are usually considered to have been the most advanced of the Texas Indian cultures. Caddo was the name given to three confederacies, or leagues, of some 25 groups that lived in East Texas. From one of those confederacies, the Hasinai, comes the origin of the word Texas. The Hasinai called each other "Tayshas," meaning friends or allies. Later, the Spanish referred to the Caddoes as "Tayshas." The Spanish came to pronounce the word as "Tejas."
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The Caddo Indians were farmers, but they ... hunted, fished, and gathered wild plants. The Caddo Indians had villages of cone-shaped huts covered with mats made of grass or canes, called thatch. They made pots, jars, bowls and other items out of clay. Mound Builder people from other states traded items such as their own clay pottery and fine arrowheads with the Caddo. Some Caddo groups stayed in their homes near Caddo Lake until the mid-1800s. Today, many Caddos live in western Oklahoma as well as Texas.
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In The Caddo Indians, F. Todd Smith has done something very old, but at the same time something new and exciting: like an old-fashioned historian, he wrote a narrative history. What's new? He wrote a narrative history of the Caddo Indians and their relations with the Europeans and Americans who settled the Red River Valley of present-day Louisiana and eastern Texas. Like Daniel Usner in Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, [1] , Smith wonders in his introduction that historians have so long neglected such an interesting subject. The Caddo were among the first natives in North America contacted by Europeans--during the Soto expedition--and they occupied a strategic location that put them at various times between various combinations and permutations of New Spain, New France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, and other Indian groups, a position that allowed them to "play off" the peoples around them, although Smith does not use that exact term.
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In 1835 the Caddo Indians ceded their land to the United States, and the area was opened up for settlement. Within three years the area had enough people to create another parish. Thus, Caddo Parish was created on January 18, 1838. The name, suggested by legislation member W. H. Sparke, refers to the Caddo Indians.5 Caddo's first parish seat was at the Wallace family home situated along Wallace Lake, but it eventually moved to Shreveport. The boundaries of the new parish were not set until 1841. Originally Caddo Parish was framed by the Arkansas line at the north and the Red River at the east, but it extended farther south than it does today.
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This booklet, The Caddo Indians of Louisiana, was originally published in 1978 and was the second volume in the Anthropological Study series. The demand for this booklet proved so great that by 1982 it was out of print. For the last three years the Division of Archaeology has received so many requests for this volume that it is now being reissued. The present volume is virtually identical to the previous one with the exception of the illustrations.
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In August, a massive set of integrated exhibits on the theme Tejas: Life and Times of the Caddo Indians was added to the Texas Beyond History web site. This exhibit set is the most comprehensive presentation of Caddo history and archeology on the web, and one of the most comprehensive available for any North American tribe. It ... has numerous pictures and discussions of Caddo archeology in Arkansas. To view the site, visit www.texasbeyondhistory.net/tejas/.
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