Resources

The Caddo people are American Indians who formerly lived throughout the woodland regions west of the Mississippi River Valley in what today are called southwest Arkansas, northwest Louisiana, northeast Texas and southeast Oklahoma. Through study of the archaeological records, we can trace strong continuities in settlement patterns, food production, culinary practices, stone and ceramic technology, ornamental styles, religious rituals, and other cultural aspects of the Caddo people back at least to the tenth century. The Caddos were divided into numerous social and political groups, many of which were organized into complex societies consisting of multiple communities. They were linked by ceremonial centers, where community leaders resided and were interred after death.

The largest Caddo communities were strung along major river courses, but many smaller upland villages existed as well. Caddo families lived in cone-shaped, beehive-like houses made of a framework of poles covered with thatched grass. For food, the Caddos depended primarily on farming—growing corn, beans, squash, and native oily and starchy seed plants. They were hunters of deer and small game, fishermen, and collectors of nuts and other wild plant foods.

Production of ceramic containers was important to the Caddos. They made jars and bowls for routine cooking and storage, as well as “finewares” used in ceremonies and as gifts and products of exchange. Many of their finewares have polished surfaces and are engraved with elaborate designs—they constitute some of the finest ceramic art ever produced in North America. The Caddos made bows of prized bois d’arc wood and traded them to other American Indian groups. They also converted nonlocal materials such as distinctive stone, marine shell, and copper, into ornamental and sacred objects.

Caddo peoples briefly encountered Europeans during the DeSoto entrada in 1542, but sustained contact did not occur until the beginning of Spanish and French colonial efforts in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. At that time, there were two major clusters of Caddo people: the Kadohadacho centered in the Great Bend region of the Red River, and the Hasinai in the Neches and Angelina river drainages of what is now eastern Texas. Downstream along the Red River were several other Caddo groups, including the Natchitoches, who resided near the city of that name in Louisiana. Each of these clusters, or confederacies as they are sometimes referred to by historians and anthropologists, was made up of several smaller political or tribal groups.

Historical accounts contend that the name “Texas” is derived from the Hasinai word “teyshas” or “tayshas,” which means friends or allies. In the mid-1540s, it is reported that Spanish explorers misunderstood this word to be the name of the tribe, reporting it as Teyas or Tejas. Over time this came to mean the area north of the Rio Grande, extending to the Sabine River, which today is the border between Texas and Louisiana. A trading network between various Caddo groups and French settlers developed in the early eighteenth century. Its hub was Fort St. Jean Baptiste, which grew to become the town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, oldest settlement in the Louisiana Purchase and for one hundred fifty years a French community in culture and language.

The Caddos exchanged livestock, salt, bear grease, buffalo and deer hides, and other goods for French manufactured goods, especially firearms, cloth, and iron tools. Following the cession of Louisiana from France to Spain in 1762, European populations expanded rapidly along the Red River and the number of Caddos declined, due largely to a series of epidemics. Spanish and French colonists established farms and ranches and maintained a continuous commerce between Natchitoches and New Orleans, diminishing the importance of trade with the Caddo groups.

From the earliest time of colonization, the Kadohadacho had been under attack by Osage peoples from the north and Chickasaws from the east. By 1800, these attacks forced most of the Kadohadacho groups to consolidate in villages near what is now known as Caddo Lake, along the Texas-Louisiana border. During the early nineteenth century, the temporal setting of KADO - Lost Treasure of the Kadohadacho, relations between the Caddos and the federal government of the recently formed United States were volatile. Competition for land was increasing, Euro-American settlers complained of Indian thefts of cattle and horses, and government officials no longer felt compelled to provide traditional annual trade goods and gifts. In July 1835, Caddo leaders were coerced to sign a treaty ceding all of the Caddo homelands along the Red River and to agree to never again live there as a group. Caddo communities were forced to move to new locations.

By the 1840s, most Caddos had moved to the Brazos River, west of what today is the Dallas/Fort Worth area, to remove themselves from repressive measures and colonization efforts. In 1859, Texas forced the remaining Caddos (then numbering a little more than a thousand souls) to the Washita River in “Indian Territory,” now western Oklahoma. Since then, the Caddos have survived and prospered. Today, the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe that promotes the economic, cultural, educational and health status of its members, as well as preserving and protecting the heritage and traditions of the tribe.

There are a number of academic resources available on the Caddo tribe, several of which are included below in the bibliography. But there is only so much that can be gleaned from the historical record. Fortunately, two experts helped with the development of KADO, to make sure the story is as accurate a representation of both the historical record and Caddo traditions as possible.

My thanks to: Phil Cross, Caddo elder, former chairman of the Caddo Culture Club and expert in all things Caddo. Phil provided Caddo stories, and invaluable help with the language and background on the Caddo culture. He is well known in the Caddo community. A few years ago, he supervised the construction of the Caddo Grass dwelling at the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site near Alto, Texas.

Jeffery S. Girard served as regional archaeologist for the Louisiana Division of Archaeology and is a retired faculty member of Northwestern State University. He is the author of The Caddos and their Ancestors (LSU Press, 2018), and assisted my research with accurate accounts of the Caddo tribe and general history of the Caddo region.

In KADO, certain Caddo names and words have been changed out of respect for the Caddo Nation. The name Sah-coo, which means sun, is used to represent the great spirit. Na-Da-cah-ah, which means place of sorrow is used as the name for the Caddo’s sacred place described in the story. I use the tribal name Kadohadacho to represent all members of the Caddo Nation as it is known today, including Kadohadacho, Hasinai, Natchitoches and other tribes generally included in the southern Caddo language group from the Caddo homeland, which spans Northern Louisiana, East Texas, Southern Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma.