The People of the Coastal Wetlands

The People of the Coastal Wetlands: Keywords: Karankawa, Atakapa, Akokisa, Orcoquisa, Texas Coastal Plains, Native Americans, Texas history, 4th-7th grade Social Studies, the marshlands of Texas.

The People of the Coastal

Wetlands of Texas

The Coastal Plains of Texas are the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, from the border with Mexico, in the south, to the border with Louisiana in the east. This  region extends from the Rio Grande to the Sabine river. It is a semi-tropical habitat, wet/humid and hot in the summer, with mild winters.The area is subject to periodic flooding and hurricanes. 

A beach and dunes at the mouth of a stream - salt water

An estuary-bay-lagoon behind an island, brackish water

It is a habitat that changes as it goes inland: beach, dunes, barrier islands, estuaries/bays and lagoons, wetlands and marshes, saltgrass plains and grasslands. It is a curved band of 60-100 miles wide, cut by numerous large and mighty rivers.  Each river creates its own narrow riparian forest and swamp that cuts the landscape dominated by canes, palmettos, clumps of oaks and saltgrass. Each river cuts the coastal plain into chunks that to the Spanish colonists and administrators represented such obstacles for transportation that they were only interested in the next band, where the buffalo had already marked trails and the rivers could be forded most of the year. As a result, they left the native people very much to themselves.

Alligator - King of the fresh water swamp

Oak clumps and saltgrass prairie

The first account of the aborigines of this habitat came to us by way of the reports of the Spanish Conqueror Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who in 1528 accidentally landed in one of the barrier islands with some other 90 Spanish survivors. With his exception and three others, the rest succumbed to hunger, disease or Indian attack. Cabeza de Vaca lived among aborigines for nearly eight years and wrote an extensive report about his adventure.

The salt grass plain and oak clumps

The exception seems to be the search in 1689 for the French invaders that had accidentally shipwrecked in the area of Matagorda Bay when searching for the mouth of the Mississippi river. Known as the La Salle expedition, its survivors were massacred by the natives within a few months, except for several children that were taken captive and the Spaniards rescued.



During the 300 years of the Spanish possession of Texas, the only interest in knowing these indigenous people was shown by the Franciscan missionaries who unsuccessfully attempted many times  to settle them in mission-villages. Their ancient nomadic ways were never changed until they became extinct after Texas gained independence from Mexico in the XIX century.

Deer of the coastal plain - major source of food for hunters of the area

Oyster beds at low tide

Although many names appear in documents about the people of this habitat, most of them may have referred to name of bands or clans. Three names are now used to identify different people that survived in the Coastal Plains:  the Karankawa, the Atakapa (Ishak) and the Akokisa (Orcoquisa). Their territories were defined by rivers.  The Karankawa extended from Galveston bay to the south.  The Akokisas settled on the margins of the Trinity and San Jacinto, and the Atakapas from Galveston bay-north all the way to the bayous of west Louisiana.

Map with areas of occupation along the Gulf Coast - the Bidai were Caddoan

WHERE TO BEGIN AN E-SEARCH:

1. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online

2. http://www.texasindians.com/

3. http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/

4. http://www.native-languages.org/kids.htm

Because these groups no longer exist as such, and some historians label them extinct, a full picture of their cultures is not possible. They lived in a wet environment subject to major weather events, a situation that does not permit good preservation of sites and artifacts. Nevertheless, a similar cultural group still existed not too long ago in a similar environment. The Seminoles of the Florida swamps reflect the major patterns of what the Texas wetlands' people may have had.  It is interesting to note that the Seminoles were not from the Florida area, and they were part of the larger woodlands people called Choctaw.  The XVIII and XIX century invasions of Georgia by settlers brought in by England pushed them into the swamps for protection.  They learned to survive by adapting to a new environment, and perhaps helped by the remnant of the original Florida natives.  This video brings some light to living in the wetlands of the gulf.

THE SEMINOLE OF FLORIDAS WETLANDS VIDEO

The three groups of Texas' wetlands ancient people correspond to the historic (After European contact) period, but it would be reasonable to estimate that their pre-agricultural civilization could date several thousand years.  Of the earlier archaic people of this area we know less.  Of the Paleolithic people that may have traveled through or stayed we have no relevant information. The coastline was several hundred miles further into the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the last Ice-age, up to 300 feet below the present level.  Any archaeological remains from this period would be under water and silt.