The First People Of Texas
An ice age thousands of years ago lowered sea levels and created a frozen land bridge between Asia and North America called Beringia
The first people to come to North America were hunters and gatherers following hers of migrating animals
Eventually, those first people migrated to Texas
Early people survived by hunting animals and gathering plants to eat
Early Texans adapted to their environment by eating different nuts and fruits during certain seasons
Early Texas found shelter in the natural cuts of canyons near freshwater
Native American peoples who lived in the Coastal Plains region include the:
Caddo
Atakapas
Karankawa
Coahulitecans
By the mid-1500s, there were several different groups of Natives living in Texas, each group developing its own distinct culture based on its location.
Southeastern culture groups included tribes called the Caddo, the Atakapan, and the Wichita who all lived in far east Texas
The Caddo were matrilineal, meaning their families were traced through the mother’s side
Housing: permanent villages with large dome-shaped homes made of woven straw
Food sources: hunted and fished; farmed to using crop rotation
Daily Life: Men and women shared responsibility, for farming; men cleared the fields, and women worked the fields
Due to a stable food supply, the Caddo was able to take on jobs beyond farming and developed into a complex society
The Wichita
Originally living in territories to the north of Texas (which is now Kansas and Oklahoma), the Wichita confederacy, made up of four native american groups, arrived in Texas in the 1700s, settling along and south of the Red River, to the west of the Caddo confederacy, in the center of the North Central Texas Plains.
The Wichita people spoke a common language and shared many cultural characteristics. They built permanent settlements, with round homes built out of wooden poles, covered in grasses, and large enough to house 5-10 people. They located their settlements along the banks of creeks and rivers, where the soil was more fertile.
Horses, which had arrived with the European explorers, were used by the Wichita people to hunt buffalo.
Gulf Culture
The Karankawa and Coahulitecan tribes lived along the Gulf of Mexico.
Coahulitecan settled in far south Texas and survived by hunting and gathering native wildlife (moved seasonally and built portable houses)
The Karankawas lived closer to the coast, made dugout canoes from local trees for fishing and transportation, and used alligator grease to keep mosquitoes away. (The Karankawas were nomadic hunter-gatherers and seasonal migrants. They lived next to the water when it was warm, and when it was cold they moved further away.