Gulfwestern People

Specific Native American Tribes

Geographic Region Inhabited

Types of shelter

Lifestyle

Food

Legacy

The Gulfwestern PeopleCoahuiltecans & Karankawas

First things first…

One very important fact about this so-called tribe. There is no one "Coahuiltecian" tribe or culture. It never existed. There is a Coahuiltecan group or region in South Texas made up of over a hundred similar Indian cultures. These Natives of the Coahuiltecan region shared very similar ways of living. But they were not one tribe or culture.

Like the Coahuiltecans, the Karankawa Indians were several band or maybe even several tribes. We are not sure, because much of the history of the Karankawa is lost.

The Gulfwestern People lived throughout south Texas and in the lagoons and bays along the Gulf Coastal Plains .

Karankawas would seasonally set up large fishing camps to collect a variety of fish and make tools. Coahuiltecans often used thin branches bent to the ground and covered with animal skins or grasses.

Texasbeyondhistory.net and Texasindians.com

These people were known to live off the land and eat seasonally, meaning they could go days to months with very little to no food. In addition to fishing, they hunted everything from deer to mice and gathered anything from berries to two of their favorite foods – the pecan and the prickly pear cactus.

Texasbeyondhistory.net

With bows and arrow ready, a Karankawas man in a dugout canoe watches for passing fish off the Texas coast.

Hunters sometimes “hunted” deer using “surround” fires.

Texasbeyondhistory.net

Meeting the Spanish

The Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca met the Karankawa group of people and lived with them for many months. When he and his friends went back they wrote The Relacion, an account of their time with the group. He described them as tall (near 6 ft), muscular, the men stark naked, with lower lip and nipples peirced, covered in alligator grease (to fight off mosquitos), happy, and generous.

Indigenouspeople.net

An excerpt…

“No foods were continuously plentiful, when the harvest was good they gorged at repletion. Unique in their gluttony…they eat locusts, lice, even human flesh…raw meat, bear’s fat…passion for spoiled food….In spring they might subsist exclusively on oysters, then for a month they ate blackberries.”

The Relacion Cabeza de Vaca

Meeting the French

• The French explorer La Salle shipwrecked near Galveston.

Texasbeyondhistory.com

What happened to these people??• The Karankawa are all gone now. They disappeared sometime in

the early 1800s. In 1840 only about 100 Karankawas were left. By 1850 they were gone. Probably from disease.

• Their only survivoring Coahuiltecans today are the many Native Texan Hispanic families in South Texas. Many families who are members of the Catholic Churches at the old missions in San Antonio can trace their families back to Coahuiltecan ancestors. The few surviving Coahuiltecans in other parts of South Texas were absorbed into the larger Hispanic/Mexican culture of South Texas. Almost any Hispanic family in South Texas who can trace their ancestors back to the early 1800s probably has Coahuiltecan blood in the family. The culture and languages these people spoke are completely gone now.

Texasindians.com