This travel bug is one of several commemorating the major Indian tribes native to the land of what is now Texas from historic times (in general from the 18th century). The term tribe applies to peoples who spoke the same language and and shared the same customs and rituals. There are many other tribes and lesser-known bands occupying Texas than are acknowledged here. Some of these were never large enough to be considered a major tribe, others ceased to exist before the 1700s (assimilation and disease), some these were driven into the region by European-American expanansion (Cherokee, Kickapoo, Tigua, Alabama, others), and finally some could not be classified because they were never seen by keen observers while their language and ways were still intact. The Cohuiltecans of south Texas fit all these criteria. It would be a mistake to assume that these tribes are insignificant in the history of Texas. Below is a brief narrative of the presence of one major tribe from historic times. Much of the information is from the online Texas Almanac.
The now-extinct Karankawa Indians played an important role in the early history of Texas. The name Karankawa became the accepted designation for several groups or bands of coastal people who shared a common language and culture. They inhabited the Gulf Coast of Texas from Galveston Bay southwestward to Corpus Christi Bay. All spoke a little-known language called Karankawa, and only about 100 words of that language have been preserved. The significance of the name Karankawa has not been definitely established, although it is generally believed to mean "dog-lovers" or "dog-raisers." That translation seems plausible, since the Karankawas reportedly kept dogs that were described as a fox-like or coyote-like breed. The Karankawas were poorly equipped, nomadic people who migrated seasonally between the barrier islands and the mainland. Their movements were dictated primarily by the availability of food and secondarily by climate. They obtained food by a combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering. Fish, shellfish, and turtles were staples of the Karankawa diet, but a wide variety of animals and plants contributed to their sustenance.
Always on the move, the Karankawas rarely remained at a single campsite for more than a few weeks. Their principal means of transportation was the dugout canoe, a crude watercraft made by hollowing out the trunk of a large tree. Those primitive dugouts, unsuited for deep, open water, were used primarily in the relatively shallow waters between the islands and the mainland. Each canoe was spacious enough to carry an entire family along with their household goods. The Karankawas traveled overland by foot, and were often described as powerful runners, as well as expert swimmers. A portable wigwam, or ba-ak, provided shelter for the coastal people. The crude structure, large enough to accommodate seven or eight people, consisted of a willow pole frame that was covered with animal skins and rush mats.
Warfare was a fact of life for the Karankawas, and evidence indicates that the tribe practiced a ceremonial cannibalism that involved eating the flesh of their traditional enemies. That custom, widespread among Texas tribes, involved consuming bits and pieces of the flesh of dead or dying enemies as the ultimate revenge or as a magical means of capturing the enemy's courage.
The Karankawas' entered the historical record in 1528 when two small boats carrying survivors of the ill-fated Spanish expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez landed on a small island to the west of Galveston Island. That island was inhabited by Karankawas. The written account of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of those shipwrecked survivors, provides our earliest knowledge of the coastal people. Cabeza de Vaca lived among those hunting and gathering groups for several years. After Cabeza de Vaca's encounter with them, the Karankawas were not visited again by Europeans for more than a century and a half.
In 1685 the LaSalle French expedition established Fort St. Louis in Spanish-claimed territory on Garcitas Creek near Matagorda Bay, in the heart of Karankawa country. When La Salle and a contingent of men set out for Canada to find help for the struggling Fort St. Louis colony, Karankawas attacked the remaining settlers, killing all but six children, who were taken captive. Those children, five of whom were members of the Talon family, were later rescued by Spanish expeditions in the early 1690s.
In the early years of the eighteenth century, French interest in the Texas coast was rekindled, and Karankawa country again became the center of Spanish-French rivalry. The French continued to explore the coastal area, and in 1719 the Karankawas captured a shipwrecked sailor, François Simars de Bellisle. Bellisle lived with the tribe for fifteen months before escaping to Louisiana, where he provided French authorities with extensive information about the Texas coastal tribes. In 1721 a French land expedition, led by La Harpe, crossed Karankawa territory. In response to that French incursion, the Spanish established Nuestra Señora de Loreta Presidio and Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission near the site of former French Fort St. Louis. Because of their locations near Matagorda Bay, both sites became known as La Bahía. The mission was established to Christianize the Karankawas and make them loyal Spanish subjects, but hostilities quickly developed between Spaniards and Indians. For more than a century, the Spanish attempted to missionize the Karankawas but with little success. A few were eventually gathered into missions, but most rejected that way of life.
By the end of Spanish rule in Texas, the Karankawa population had been greatly reduced by epidemic diseases and other effects of European invasion. An 1819 confrontation with Jean Laffite's pirate colony on Galveston Island was particularly costly for the Karankawas. The incident occurred when Laffite's men kidnapped a Karankawa woman, and the tribe retaliated by assembling 300 warriors to attack the pirate compound. Laffite's force of 200 men armed with two cannon inflicted heavy losses on the Indians and forced them to retreat. That encounter was a major defeat for the once powerful Karankawas.
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, and the new government encouraged Anglo-American immigration to the sparsely populated province of Texas. As settlers entered Karankawa territory, confrontations became frequent. Mexican authorities attempted to protect the colonists by making peace with the Karankawas, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The colonists, spurred by Stephen F. Austin, banded together to rid themselves of the Indian threat. Austin was convinced that extermination provided the only acceptable solution to the Karankawa problem. In 1824 he personally led an expedition of some ninety men that drove the Karankawas to seek sanctuary in La Bahía Mission in present day Goliad. A priest at the mission arranged an armistice between the colonists and Indians. According to terms of the agreement, the Karankawas agreed to remain west of the Lavaca River. Despite that and a subsequent treaty, Karankawas continued to range east of the Lavaca River, and conflicts between colonists and Karankawas were frequent.
The tribe's population steadily diminished as they fought the growing Anglo-Texan population, as well as hostile Tonkawas and Comanches. When Texas became an independent republic in 1836 the Karankawas had been so reduced that they were no longer considered a formidable enemy. By the 1840s only scattered remnants of the tribe remained along the Texas coast. One of those bands, camped on the Guadalupe River below Victoria, was attacked by Texans in 1840 in retaliation for Karankawa raids on area settlers. Many Indians were killed in the attack, and the survivors fled down the coast where they settled about fifty miles southwest of Corpus Christi. Other small groups of Karankawas were located on Aransas Bay near the mouth of the Nueces River and in the vicinity of Lavaca Bay. During the mid 1840s most of the surviving Karankawas moved south into Tamaulipas, Mexico, to escape pressure from the growing Texan population, but they encountered similar problems south of the Rio Grande. Accused of plundering settlements in the Reynosa area, the tribe came under continued attack from Mexican authorities. By the late 1850s the Karankawas had been pushed back into Texas, where they settled in the vicinity of Rio Grande City, about 100 miles upriver from Brownsville. Local residents did not welcome the tribe, and in 1858 a Texan force, led by Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, attacked and annihilated that small remaining band of Karankawas. After that last defeat, the coastal Texas tribe was considered extinct. To the end of their existence, these coastal people retained their hunting, fishing, and gathering culture.