Can anyone recommend good reading material on the Karankawa Indians of the Texas Coast?

Amazon has this one for $99 since it's 1st ed. and out of print, but no way am i paying that:
http://www.amazon.com/Karankawa-Indians-Texas-Archaeology-Ethnohistory/dp/0292770774/sr=1-2/qid=1165528996/ref=sr_1_2/103-1044927-5179814?ie=UTF8&s=books

any suggestions? comments?

Best I can suggest for something like that is hit the antique and old books stores. I have got some good deals on 1st editions from people who don't have a clue what they have.

But it takes a lot of searching

they would take a bite out of your budget

let me take a look round here. One of my profs at A&M galveston new all kinds of stuff about the island one of them being the native americans that inhabited it. I think I still have obe of the books about the karankawa somewhere

This thread got me thinking. Do we know of any Karankawa artifacts stored anywhere? Galveston? San Antonio(Witte Museum), or the Institute of Texas Cultures? Are there any archaeological studies planned? Just curious.

terata,

in addition to my search for some quality reading material, i am also looking for that type of stuff.

i grew up on the coast and went to boy scout camp at camp karankawa outside of west columbia and recently became intrigued by the subject.

I recall seeing Karankawa artifacts at Port Arthur's city museum, been a few years though. Seems like the Bullock Museum in Austin had some things as well.

Fehrenbach's Lone Star discusses them pretty well in part of a chapter but not as well as the Commanches who get a whole chapter and another whole book from him.

still haven't been to the bullock museum. need to go one of these days.

Checking out Karankawa sites might be a good project for Archaeology grad students. I wonder if they have applied for any exploration grants reecently. If I can solicit any onfo on a dig on the coast, any of you interested in assisting?

There was a pretty decent book on the Karankawas published a couple of years ago by either A&M or Texas Univ Press. I am pretty sure it is still in print.

The section in The INdians of Texas on them is pretty decent.

Cabeza de Vaca spent a few years among them and his description is pretty interesting.

The Texas Memorial Museum at Texas U has a good collection but I don't know if it is on view.

The Natural History Museum in Corpus has a good collection.

If you want to see some sites close up, take a shovel and stick it in the ground anywhere along the Gulf coast from Port Lavaca to Kingsville that is within 20 yards of the water. They lived along here for a few hundred years and left lots of garbage and bones.

Along OSO Creek in Corpus just across from the King's Crossing Country Club you can go out after any decent rain and find all kinds of stuff poking up. Including skeletal remains on occasion. Don't take any of it with you because it is against the law.

Thanks, huisache, I'm going to make that a personal adventure. I'll post what, if anthing, I find.

correct me, but didn't they 'digest the numbers' from time to time?

Ricklis/s book was from UTexas Press and is out of print. It was just published a few years ago and so there are copies out there. Check used book stores. The Texas State Historical Society has scores of booksellers at their annual meeting the first weekend of March (coincides every year with the Declaration of Independence) and will be in Austin this year. Somebody there will have it.

i have a book on the history of Galveston island ill look it up for you

I HAVE this book. It's sitting in my hands right now (well, on my desk as I type). I can't believe Amazon is selling it for $149.

Mine is in very good shape. It came out in 1996, and I don't remember when or where I bought it, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

I seem to recall that I might have bought it at the Texas capitol gift shop. When I'm over there for opening day of the session tomorrow, I'll pop in and see if they have any.

[This message has been edited by aalan94 (edited 1/8/2007 1:50p).]

Actually, I am almost completely certain that I bought that book at the Bullock Museum. You might check there.

Aalan, for god's sake don't go to the capitol building. That place is crawling with thieves of all sorts and the most disreputable people in Texas.

Better to be eaten by cannibals than to be seen amongst those brigands.

hui, rumor has it little ricky perry will be there. I didn't know he had the balls to brigand?

Yes, I was at the den of iniquity today, but did not see any evidence of cannibalism. ...But those free tamales tasted kind of wierd.

Rob, I found a copy of that Karankawa book in the gift shop there (only one copy) for something like $15.95, which is about $100 cheaper than the one you found online. You want me to pick it up for you and mail it to you?

A book on Texas cannibals is on sale at the gift shop at the legislature.

I rest my case.

I was taught about something called the "second harvest" in 7th grade Texas history. I seem to recall it was the Karankawa that engaged in this. I know we spent time on them since I grew up a few miles from Galveston Bay and they were native to the area.

Evidently they ate seeds and nuts without chewing them and "harvested" them again later and consumed them again.

Anyone else ever hear this?

Only in the Texas Legislature special sessions. I've heard rumors they feast off each other's droppings.

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Rob, I found a copy of that Karankawa book in the gift shop there (only one copy) for something like $15.95, which is about $100 cheaper than the one you found online. You want me to pick it up for you and mail it to you?

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damn, i went on my honeymoon and forgot ALL about this thread. where did you see this?

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I was taught about something called the "second harvest" in 7th grade Texas history. I seem to recall it was the Karankawa that engaged in this. I know we spent time on them since I grew up a few miles from Galveston Bay and they were native to the area.

Evidently they ate seeds and nuts without chewing them and "harvested" them again later and consumed them again.

Anyone else ever hear this?

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I had to look up the spelling of the tribe, it was the Coahuiltecans of the Brasada. The area south of San Antonio. From T. R. Fehrenbach's Lone Star:

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Several Spaniards described Karankawa tortures and cannibal feasts--though naturally none of these men were eyewitnesses. The most notable fact about the Karankawas was that they avoided all contact with Europeans; they refused to cooperate with them in any way, and attacked any incursion of their territory with fury. In return, no Amerind tribe was ever described in worse terms or exterminated with greater relish or sense of justification.

West of Karankawa country, on a line ranging through San Antonio to Del Rio and south to the mouth of the Rio Grande, was the territory of a great number of small bands of Coahuiltecans. This was cactus and brush country, arid, rolling stretches of semidesert, dry savannah at its best, which the Spanish called brasada or monte. The bison did not come below the Balcones Scarp because of the heat, and there were no large game animals in sufficient numbers to support a true hunting economy. Few regions of America were less bountiful for primitive man, without irrigation techniques or the use of domesticated cattle. The Coahuiltecan culture was one of digging and grubbing, with an occasional economic windfall such as a jackrabbit in the pot.

Yet, such is human ingenuity that no other species ever used the resources of a country more fully: the Coahuiltecans consumed spiders, ant eggs, lizards, rattlesnakes, worms, insects, rotting wood, and deer dung. They caught fish when they were beside a stream, roasted them whole, then set them in the sun for several days, collecting flies and maggots. The enriched food was eaten with gusto. They utilized almost every plant that grew in South Texas. They made flour from agave bulbs, sotol, lechuguilla, and maguey. They roasted mesquite beans, and ate these with side orders of earth. One peculiar source of food--which a Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca described as "indescribable"--was the Second Harvest: whole seeds and similar items picked out of human feces, cooked and chewed.

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I am amazed at the resourcefulness of humans -- that people and cultures can exist in the most barren environs.

I am baffled by why they choose to do so.

I live in the old Karankawa stomping grounds and I wonder why we live here in June-August.

My theory is that the first ones to come went insane from the heat and the hurricanes and did not have the sense to leave.

I dump on Fehrenback frequently and the offered quote is an example of why.

He is being anthropologically politically correct in asserting that there is little evidence of Karankawa cannibalism. Naturally, a group that is as hostile to foreigners as them would not provide a lot of opportunities for observing them eating people. One wonders why the assertion was made so often regarding them in particular, even by the other native tribes.

An anthropoligist I knew told me years ago about finding Karankawa sites where there were human femurs which were broken open in the middle of the bone after being blackened over fires. Human marrow flows out easier and tastes better if it is warmed up.

For the past 30 thirty years or so there has been a concerted effort to rehabilitate the image of Indians (no, I'm not using the term "native Americans", which is an aspect of this movement.)

Much of this is driven by Indian Activist groups.

I think they are justified in many ways given the general view of Indians through the 1950s - the whole "bloodthirsty savages" thing.

But IMO the movement has overplayed its hand, culminating in the "Pocohontas" & "Dances with Wolves" imagery of the noble Indian, living at peace and in harmony with nature and the world until the big, bad white man arrives to steal his land and rape the Earth.

Pursuing balance is fair enough, but through Disnification, we have educated a generation that thinks deer and rabbits talk, and Indians were living in Eden before the Europeans arrived.

Pre-modern tribal civilizations lived hard scrabble, Hobbesian lives pretty much everywhere, and Indians were no different. Living a brutal, unforgiving existence breeds brutal cultural practices: sacrifice, torture, dismemberment/scalping, even cannibalism.

These are human traits, not necessarily cultural ones. Every civilization has brutal practices in the closet somewhere. The early Irish tribal leaders used to blind their close male relatives (uncles, cousins, even brothers) to preclude challenges to succession. How twisted is that?

I understand tribal activists wanting to counter the previously biased imagery that there was something uniquely savage about early American peoples. But I fear they are becoming successful to the point of historical revisionism.

Trinity-

I think the romanticism is much older than 30 years, but it has certainly been overdone. I'd put the beginnings of the current revisionism back with the hippie movement of the 60s.

But I read a book by one of Randal McKenzie's Lieutenants, Robert G. Carter, about his time in the Red River Wars in the Texas Panhandle.

Carter was a MOH recipient, and was mustered out due to injuries in the Red River War. He had a negative view of the plains Indian, and if I recall his writing in his 1935 book, his exact words were:

"....'Lo, the Noble Savage', HA!..."

It gave me an impression that he was already disgusted by romanticized accounts of the Indians...in 1935.

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damn, i went on my honeymoon and forgot ALL about this thread. where did you see this?

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It was in the Texas capitol gift shop. Probably still is. Want me to bag it?

They were sold out as of Jan 10, but I appreciate it if you could check and let us know if restocking has occured aalan. Thanks.

Went by there today, after watching our Democratic Governor's speech.

Still there.

We have a Democratic governor? Great. What happened to that dipshot republican who got reelected in November? Hopefully some Karankawa wannabe ate the sorry jerk

Thanks, aalan.