While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Since Indian political organization was at best but loose and shifting and
was strongly dominated by ideas of independence, and since writers were
frequently indefinite in their use of terms, it would not be easy to determine
with strict accuracy the constituent elements of this Neches-Angelina
confederacy at different times. However, a few of the leading tribes those of
greatest historical interest stand out with distinctness and can be followed for
considerable periods of time.
De Leon learned in 1689 from the chief of the Nabedache tribe, the westernmost
of the group, that his people had nine settlements.1 Francisco de Jesus Maria
Casañas, writing in 1691 near the Nabedache village after fifteen months'
residence there, reported that the "province of Aseney" comprised nine tribes
(Naciones) living in the Neches-Angelina valleys within a district about
thirty-five leagues long. It would seem altogether probable that these reports
referred to the same nine tribes. Those named by Jesus Maria, giving his
different spellings, were the Nabadacho or Yneci (Nabaydacho), Necha (Neita),
Nechaui, Nacono, Nacachau, Nazadachotzi, Cachaé (Cataye), Nabiti, and Nasayaya
(Nasayaha).1 The location of these tribes Jesus
Maria points out with some definiteness, and six of them at least we are able to
identify in later times without question. Moreover, his description of their
governmental organization is so minute that one feels that he must have had
pretty accurate information. The testimony of a number of other witnesses who
wrote between 1687 and 1692 in the main corroborates that of Jesus Maria,
particularly in the important matter of not including the Nasoni tribe within
the Hasinai.2
It so happens that after 1692 we get little intimate knowledge of the Hasinai
until 1715. When light again dawns there appear in common usage one or two
additions to Jesus Maria's list. Whether they represent an oversight on his part
or subsequent accretions to the group we can not certainly say. Of those in his
list six, the Nabadacho, Neche, Nacogdoche, Nacachau, Nacono, and Nabiti are
mentioned under the same names by other writers. Cachaé is evidently Jesus
Maria's name for the well known Hainai, as will appear later, while the Nabiti
seem to be San Denis's Nabiri and may be Joutel's Noadiche (Nahordike). For the
Nechaui we can well afford to accept Jesus Maria's explicit statement. Besides
these nine, the Spaniards after 1716 always treated as within the Hasinai group
the Nasoni, Nadaco, and the Nacao. Judging from the localities occupied and some
other circumstances, it is not altogether improbable that two of these may be
old tribes under new names, as seems to be clearly the case with the Hainai. The
Nasayaya, named by Jesus Maria, may answer to the Nasoni, well known after 1716,3
and the Nabiti may possibly be the Nadaco, also well known after that date. If
both of these surmises be true, we must add to Jesus María's list at least the
Nacao, making ten tribes in all; if not, there were at least eleven or twelve.
Putting first the best known and the most important, they were: the Hainai,
Nabedache, Nacogdoche, Nasoni, Nadaco, Neche, Nacono, Nechaui, Nacao, and,
perhaps, the Nabiti and the Nasayaya. This is not intended as a definitive list
of the Hasinai at any one time, but it does include those known to have been
within the compact area about the Querétaran missions and commonly treated as
within the Hasinai group. By following the footnotes below it will be seen that
"Nacoches," "Noaches," and "Asinay," which have been given, with resulting
confusion, as names of tribes where early missions were established, are simply
corruptions of "Neche," "Nasoni," and "Ainai," as the forms appear in the
original manuscripts, whose whereabouts are now known.
The Ais, or Eyeish, a neighbor tribe living belong the Arroyo Attoyac, at whose
village a Zacatecan mission was founded in 1717, seem to have fallen outside the
Hasinai confederacy. Only recently have they been included by ethnologists in
the Caddoan stock, and, although they are now regarded as Caddoan, there are
indications that their dialect was quite different from that of their western
neighbors, while their manners and customs were always regarded as inferior to
those of these other tribes.4 Moreover, there is
some evidence that they were generally regarded as aliens, and that they were
sometimes even positively hostile to the Hasinai. Thus Jesus María includes them
in his list of the enemies of the Hasinai; Espinosa, a quarter of a century
after Jesus Maria wrote, speaks of them as friendly toward the "Assinay," from
which by implication he excludes them, but says that the Hasinai medicine men
"make all the tribes believe that disease originates in the bewitchment which
the neighboring Indians, the Bidnis, Ays, and Yacdocas, cause them," a belief
that clearly implies hostility between the tribes concerned,5
while Mezières wrote in 1779 that the Ais were hated alike by their Spanish and
their Indian neighbors.6
The Adaes, or Adai, in whose midst the mission of Nuestra Senora de los Dolores
was founded in 1717, lived beyond the Sabine, and belonged to the Red River
group of Caddoan, or the Caddo. They, therefore, do not fall within the scope of
this paper.
1. "Poblaciones." Letter of
May 18, 1689, printed in Buckingham Smith's
Documentos para, la Historia de la Florida;
evidently that cited by Velasco, in Memorias
de Nueva España, XXVII, 179. Concerning the
Memorias, see note 3, p. 256.
2. See Joutel, in Margry,
Découvertes, III, 341, 344, et seq.
(French's version of Joutel's Journal,
printed in the Historical Collections of
Louisiana, is very corrupt, and must be used
with the greatest care); Terán, Descripción,
in Mem. de Nucva España, XXVII, 48, et seq.
3. The Nasayaya are placed
by Jesus Maria in a location corresponding
very closely to that later occupied by the
Nasoni. Yet, the facts that though Jesus
Maria named the Nasoni he did not include
them in the Hasinai group while he did
include the Nasayaya, and that Terán
explicitly excludes the Nasoni from the
Hasinai, make it seem probable that the
Nasoni and the Nasayaya were distinct. The
strongest ground for rejecting this
conclusion is the fact that the latter tribe
never appears again under a recognizable
name, unless they are the Nacaxe, who later
appear on the Sabine. The Nabiti might
possibly be the Nadaco, but this does not
seem likely, for the locations do not
correspond very closely, while as late as
1715 San Denis gave the Nabiri and Nadoco as
two separate tribes.
4. On the subjects of their
languages see the Handbook of the American
Indians, under "Eyeish." 5. Crónica Apostólica, 428.
6. Expedición, in Mem. de
Nueva España, XXVIII, 240.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
The Native Tribes About The East Texas Mission's, Quarterly of the Texas
State Historical Association, By Herbert E. Bolton, April 1908
