Karankawa people
The Karankawa 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. 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 viewed Spanish colonial settlement with hostility."
In the 1800s, white American settlers arrived in their land under the leadership of Stephen F. Austin. He commissioned a captain to expel the Karankawa from the Austin land grant, leading to multiple attacks, including the Skull Creek massacre of 19 Karankawa. In 1824, Austin sent Captain Randal Jones with a group of 23 soldiers to what is now Brazoria County to fight and disperse the Karankawa Indians from their encampment. 15 Indians were killed, and the remaining fled the area. This event is known as the Battle of Jones Creek.
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. In 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. By 1891, the Karankawa ceased to exist as a functioning tribe. Today, however, there are unrecognized tribes who claim Karankawa descent.
Name
The Karankawa's autonym is Né-ume, meaning "the people".The name Karakawa has numerous spellings in Spanish, French, and English.
Swiss-American ethnologist Albert S. Gatschet wrote that the name Karakawa may have come from the Comecrudo terms klam or glám, meaning "dog", and kawa, meaning "to love, like, to be fond of." The plural form of kawa is kakáwa, so the term would mean "dog-lovers" or "dog-raisers."
The Tonkawa called them Wrestlers. They alternatively called them the barefooted or those without moccasins, but this name was also applied to other groups with which the Tonkawe were acquainted. The Lipan Apache called the Karankawa the "people who walk in the water", possibly referring to their mode of fishing and catching turtles, or simply their location near the swampy coast. The Karankawa called themselves "Karankawa" as well.
Later speculation placed the Karankawa language in the Cariban linguistic stock. Linguistic data suggests that the Karankawa name originated from the old Spanish Main, "Kalina," and a suffix from a Northern Carib tribe, "kxura, "meaning "people." A compound emerges: Karinxkxura, meaning "Carib people." But this theory is disputed, and ultimately, the origins of the name "Karankawa" remain unknown.
Alternate spellings of the name Karankawa have historically included: Carancahua, Carancagua, Carancaguase, Carancahuare, Caranchuasye, Carancahuase, Carancahuaye, Carancahuaze, Carancohuace, Caray, Carrai, Carray, Saray.
Origins
According to some contemporary sources, the migrations of their ancestors were entirely unknown to the Karankawa of the early 19th century. Linguist Herbert Landar, however, argues that based on linguistic evidence, the Karankawa language and people originated from a Carib subgroup, which remains to be discovered. Their exact migratory path northward is equally indistinct. Migration northward is theorised to have occurred during the late 15th century. The route north was from the original land north of the Amazon River toward Tamaulipas and Texas, and was probably done over a long period of time by short bursts of migration. Scholars have speculated that the Karankawa were descended from a group of Carib Indians who arrived by sea from the Caribbean basin. This is partially based on the similarity of their physical appearance to Caribbean natives, but no ethnographic or archaeological evidence has been found for this speculation.Recent archaeological records that used radiocarbon dating for artefacts indicated that these Native groups had been in the area as early as the fifth millennium BCE.
Lifestyle
Seasonal nomadic lifestyle
The Karankawa voyaged from place to place on a seasonal basis in their dugouts, made from large trees with the bark left intact. They travelled in groups of thirty to forty people and remained in each place for about four weeks. After European contact, canoes were of two kinds, both being called "awa'n": the original dugout and old skiffs obtained from the whites. Neither was used for fishing but for transportation only, and their travels were limited to the waters close to the land. The women, children, and possessions travelled in the hold while the men stood on the stern and poled the canoe. Upon landing at their next destination, the women set up wigwams and the men hauled the boats on the shore. Their campsites were always close to the shoreline of the nearby body of water.They constructed houses by arranging willow branches in a circle, bending the tops of the branches toward the centre, and interlocking them in wickerwork. This wickerwork was fastened with deerskin. Upon this framework, the Karankawa lay deer, wildcat, panther or bear skins, again fastened with deer hide thongs.
The next step was to make a fire. After European contact, the Karankawa sought matches or tinderboxes from settlers; otherwise, they resorted to the traditional method of using their firesticks, which they always carried in a package of deerhide thongs. The fire was always made in the centre of their dwellings and kept burning day and night. They used animal hides and pelts to sit and sleep on within their dwellings. Their household goods and utensils included wooden spoons, ceramic vessels, fishbone needles, and fine deer sinew.
Environment
The Karankawa travelled to the coastal region. They hunted and gathered food from rivers and by the shore.In the region that the Karankawa inhabited, numerous small chunks of asphaltum have been found along the coast from oil seepage beneath the Gulf of Mexico. These chunks were used to bind arrowheads to their shafts; as a coating for pottery such as ollas, jars, and bowls; and as a way to waterproof woven baskets.
Cuisine
Karankawa cuisine included venison, rabbit, fowl, fish, turtles, oysters, and other shellfish. Their cuisine also included food gathered from the wild, such as berries, persimmons, wild grapes, sea-bird eggs, tuna and nopales, and nuts. They boiled food in ceramic pots or roasted entrés and seasoned their dishes with chile.After European contact, the Karankawa made bread from imported wheat flour. They laid the dough on a flat stone and then baked it on an open fire. They also enjoyed imported sweet coffee.
The Karankawa were skilled at obtaining pure, fresh water. White settlers did not know where they obtained it, because the wells of the whites had a brackish taste.
Cannibalism
There is nearly 340 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 incontrovertible evidence that the Karankawa practised 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." 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, and 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. The 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, 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."
Several years before this, French castaway Henri Joutel, a captain of the La Salle Expedition, lived among the Cenis tribe and hunted with their neighbouring bands who had an identical culture and language 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 cannibalising, as it was apparently thought, in order to gain the deceased warrior’s bravery.
Culture and Language
Language and communication
Little is known of the extinct Karankawa language, which may have been a language isolate. The Karankawa also possessed a gesture language for conversing with people from other Native American tribes.The Karankawa were noted for their skill in communicating with each other over long distances using smoke signals. The Karankawa could make the smoke of a small fire ascend toward the sky in many different ways, and it was as intelligible to them across long distances as their language. Their methods are unknown.
Manners and customs
The Karankawa had a specific way of conversing. They carefully repressed their breath while speaking; at the end of their sentences, they exhaled heavily, releasing the air they held back during speaking. Moreover, their expression was interpreted by Europeans as impassive, especially because they never looked at the person to whom they were speaking. Their pronunciation was very exact, and they ridiculed poor elocution by the whites who tried to learn their language. The Europeans described their general demeanour as surly and fatigued.They did not have a regular sleep schedule, but slept whenever they wished. They also ate and drank at all times of the day.
Karankawa never communicated their native names to the whites. However, they all adopted English or Spanish names. Many men adopted American military epithets and Christian names, and they would change these frequently.
Among the Karankawa existed an in-law taboo. Once a man and his wife had become, in the Karankawa sense, married, the husband and his children were no longer allowed to enter the residence of his wife's parents, nor could his wife's parents enter his or his children's home. These two groups were also no longer allowed to talk with one another and never came face to face with one another. If a situation of coming face to face with one another arose, both parties averted their eyes and moved away from each other. This taboo only seemed to apply to the husbands and their children, most likely due to the inconvenience on the wife's part, as Karankawans were typically patrilocal.