A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EXPLORATION OF
TEXAS NATIVE AMERICAN PAST

II  -  TEXAS IN CONTEXT

1.        THE LARGER CONTEXT:

The Texas territory, as large as it is, is only a small part of a larger context. Understanding it facilitates the interpretation of the human activities and cultural developments that took place in the distant past. Texas was a crossroads for many people that went through it in the waves of early migrations to the south.  Some stayed.  It was also a funnel where diverse people converged in an ever narrowing territory, with the consequential clashes and conflict. It is also a collection of marginal borderlands, outliers located far away from their centers of influence.  As such, we have to look outside of today’s territory to put together the puzzle of which we are only a small part.

Figure 5 - The Great Plains - An ocean of grassland

2.        THE GREAT PLAINS
           

      Texas is the southernmost tip of the Great Plains, an ocean of grasslands that extends from central Canada to southern Texas. Its ecology varies somewhat from the colder, harsh winters of the north to the semi-arid hot summers of the south. This is the land of the ancient giant beasts, the megafauna of the earliest times of human appearance in the continent: woolly mammoths, mastodons, giant beavers and sloths, giant bison and elk. It is the land of the later American Bison (buffaloes) and of the hundreds of nomadic groups that hunted them. This is the main path followed by different bands of Asian hunters coming through Beringia to begin their dispersal into the continent after crossing the ice-free inter-glacial valley.

Many of the nomadic groups lingered or stayed for long periods of time, developing a significant common cultural pattern that has grouped them as People of The Plains, in spite of their diversity. Many came through Texas, some of them stayed. The last wave during historic times were the Comanche.  How many preceded them during the last 20,000 years we will never know. The process of change and conflict created by this push and shove into the funnel explain the dynamics that characterized these groups. 

Figure 6 - A late summer storm in the Panhandle – The Great Plains

3.        THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

Figure 7 - The Rocky Mountain Range

     The main reason the Great Plains became a corridor through Texas, or to Texas, is the natural barrier created by the Rocky Mountains. This chain, with different names, starts in Alaska and ends in Central America. The folded mountain range rises from the high plains at altitudes of around 4,000 feet above sea level to peaks at elevations higher than 15,000 feet high.                                                                                             During the glacial periods, and for a long time after the glaciers began to recede, the Rockies were massive, impenetrable walls of ice. They also dominated the climate, creating a dry and much milder weather pattern in the plains just below. Human habitation and exploration of the mountains only took place after the glacial era, or in the southern region below the glacier borders. The plains, on the contrary, were open all the way from Alaska during much of the glacial era due to an inland ice-free passage. The southern Rockies, as well as the Sierra Madre in Mexico, are full of testimonies of ancient human activity.  

Figure 8 – Ancient Petroglyphs and graffiti in Hueco Tanks oasis.

        The tip of the mountains that are in Texas are no exception. It is no surprise that the famous Clovis and Folsom archaeological Paleo-Indian sites are in the vicinity of the Texas Panhandle. It is no accident that the Alibates Flint Quarry site, near Amarillo, was continuously inhabited by ancient craftsmen for thousands of years. The oasis at Hueco Tanks, near El Paso, had to be a mandatory stopover before journeying into the Chihuahua desert. The signs and messages of ancient travelers are superimposed on the stone walls and ceilings for us to see.  What about the millenary shamanic rituals that took place in the caves of the lower Pecos River? Like the Sistine Chapel, Pharaohs’ tombs, Lascaux or Altamira, these archaic cathedrals witness the beliefs and stories of the first settlers of Texas.

The Pecos River Pictographs

 Figure 9 - The Mississippi River Basin

4.THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN

As the nomadic hunters moved south from the Canadian plains, they encountered the drainage flows from the Rockies. Many of them initially flow in an easterly direction.  Following a river is the easiest way to explore a new territory, and many of the Paleo-Indians did.  To the east, the Great Plains diffuse into the Mississippi River Basin, the heart of the vast new territory the migrants encountered. Its many rivers became highways that promoted mobility and trade, its fertile soils nurtured agricultural societies that led to great settlements like the ancient Poverty Point in nearby Louisiana, or the later metropolis of Cahokia in Illinois.  Periodic flooding led to the development of earthworks technology.  They built enormous artificial platforms, or chose high banks upon which they constructed mounds and pyramids to center their villages.

Much like it happened in the Great Plains, the people that settled the great Mississippi Basin came at different times and from different directions, spoke different languages, had different beliefs, and brought with them distinct technologies. Nevertheless, they developed a significant common cultural pattern. Many refer to them as the Mississippi Mound Builders.  

The connection of Texas to this riparian culture becomes obvious if you follow the routes of the Red, the Canadian, the Arkansas, the White and the Ouachita rivers and their tributaries. They all empty into the Mississippi River delta system. They are the highways of the Caddo people, themselves only one of many groups that created the most extensive, significant and least known of the early cultures of what is now the United States.

 Figure 10 - Caddo Lake in the Pineywoods, between Louisiana and Texas

Key words: Texas 4th-7th grade Social Studies, Native American tribes, habitat and lifezones, cultural adaptation, Anazasi, Ancestral Pueblo, Rio Grande cultures, New Mexico and Colorado tribes, Paleo-Indians, Archaic and Classic Indians of the Southwest, Geography of the Rio Grande, Mesa Verde, Chaco, Taos, Acoma, Indian ruins, archaeological artifacts, teacher resources, Fund for Teachers, Texas.