Kadohadacho (later shortened to Caddo), were the advanced civilization of peoples inhabiting the Red River region of East Texas. The loose-knit province or kingdom(1) was composed of about two dozen tribes. They inhabited modern day Marion, Grimes, Madison, and Walker Counties, to the North and East of today's Houston, Texas.
Despite their collapse before Texas became a state, they were the most important of the state's natives in their level of cultural development, advanced techniques and tools, and success in agriculture...It is probable that they were a part of the Mississippi Pattern, an advanced and vigorous Caribbean people who migrated by sea and established themselves along the Gulf Coast sometimes before A.D. 500. In this new land, the transplanted culture was highly successful, the people multiplied, and spread, in time, to the Trinity River in Texas on the west, and the Atlantic on the east.(2)
Citations 1-4: The Caddo Indians by Anne Ford. Archeology and Anthropology of the Americas.
As the westernmost expression of the larger Mississippian cultural tradition, the Caddo culture emerged around A.D. 800. With strong oral traditions, easily as relevant and powerful as our own written Western history, the Caddo have handed down their peoples' story. Unfortunately, much of this oral history has been terminated by the "catastrophic losses of life forced upon the Caddo by the invasion of America by Europeans. [However,] there are surviving bits of early Caddo history preserved in the traditions maintained by Caddo peoples today, in early Spanish and French accounts, and in later written histories as well as in the oral traditions recorded by ethnographers and folklorists."(6) These sources are important clues to the culture of the Caddo, and provide a limited glimpse into their past, going back approximately 300 hundred years, a short time in Caddo history.
"Studies of the Caddoan languages suggest that ancestors of the Caddo and the ancestors of the Plains Caddoans (Wichita, Kichai, Pawnee, and Arikira) split from a common ancestor (ancestral group) in the distant past, at least 3,000 years ago and probably even earlier. The Caddo cultural tradition as recognized now by archeologists begins about 1200 years ago (A.D. 800)."(7) 12,000-13,500 years ago very mobile hunter-gather peoples inhabited the area that became the Caddo Homeland. These early Paleoindain era peoples who emerged at the end of the Pleistocene era (the last ice age) may even have been pre-dated by earlier in habitants, but scholars have debated their impact.(8)
Distinctive styles of dart points made my early hunters, and which archeologists have named Dalton and Sam Patrice, categorize the first of many Archaic cultures in the Southeastern United States. The Archaic period spans approximately 7500 years (from about 8000 B.C.-1000-500 B.C.). During this period, there was a gradual shift from very mobile hunting cultures, to more settled groups reliant on gathering wild plants, small games and taking advantage of aquatic resources.(9) Although this broad definition of the culture of the era remains true, scholars now believe this era was also responsible for cultural development once thought to belong to "the succeeding Woodland era. For example, permanent or semi-permanent village settlements, pottery, horticulture (gardening), artificial earthen mounds, and extensive, long-distant trade of exotic materials all appeared during Archaic times in various places in the Southeast."(10)
Dalton and San Patrice styles of arrow points divide the peoples of this area into two separate cultures that were essentially developing populations along-side each other in the region. "Within the Caddo Homeland, evidence of Dalton culture is found mainly to the north, while that of San Patrice is mainly to the south."(11) The contrasting geographic distribution of this archeological evidence "may reflect an early split between ethnic/linguistic groups."(12) Later Caddo speaking peoples are categorized among the San Patrice due to the distribution of these points.
Although societies that have been categorized as seemingly advanced cultures that developed during the Archaic period hundreds of miles from the Caddo area, advanced cultural development was also taking place in the Caddo Homeland of the lower Mississippi Valley. "In what is today northeastern Louisiana, Archaic peoples began building large earthen mounds as early as 4,000 B.C."(13) These mounds were used as platforms for the inhabitants of the region, and not as burial mounds. There are 11 mounds in Watson Brake near Monroe, Louisiana, ranging in size from 1-8 meters tall and "connected by ridges to form an oval enclosure over...261 meters across."(14) The hunter-gatherers that lived in the area took advantage of the "local swampy environments rich in aquatic life including fish, fowl, and beast."(15)
Massive earthworks have also been found in roughly the region (if only a few hundred miles due East), dating from 1700 B.C., at the site of what is today Poverty Point National Monument in northeastern Louisiana. Included at this amazing Archaic era site is "a huge bird-shaped mound more than 21 meters high and 216 meters in length and a unique C-shaped array of raised berms arranged into six concentric and nested rings that are nearly three-quarters of a mile across (3,950 feet or 1.2 km)"(16) This delta-like complex overlooking the Mississippi floodplain is one of the most important archeological sites in North America, and parallels on the time-line the building of the pyramids in Egypt.
Poverty Point is thought by many experts to have been the center of a precocious society with far-flung trade connections as indicated by the finding of many artifacts made of exotic or non-local stone (some coming from sources hundreds of miles away). These exotic items may have been sent to Poverty Point in exchange for shell beads and ornaments, produced at Poverty Point and at linked sites on the Gulf coast. For reasons yet unclear Poverty Point culture had declined by 1000 B.C. and left no obvious successor.(17)
Image above, artist illustration of Poverty Point from Poverty Point Earthworks: Evolutionary Milstones of the Americas
There is archeological evidence to connect the peoples that built the massive earthworks with the later Archaic era Caddos, primarily quartz from the Ouachita Mountains: evidence of a long distance trade relationship shared with the later Caddo and the Poverty Point builders. But the Late Archaic peoples in the Caddo Homeland had smaller societies and did not have close ties with the Eastern Woodlands.
Radiocarbon dating of domesticated squash and bottle gourds has shed new light on early plant domestication and horticulture, putting these developments earlier than previously thought (5000 years ago), shattering "the traditional notion that the Archaic cultures of the Eastern U.S. were purely hunters and gatherers. Clearly, Archaic peoples were experimenting with plant cultivation and probably all sorts of other manipulations of the natural environment like selective clearing, spreading desirable plants to new areas, and so on. Archeologists are now reevaluating existing ideas about Archaic life."(18)
Although little is known of the Late Archaic period (roughly 2000-500/200 B.C.) and the Caddo Homeland, evidence of dart-point styles reveals that societies in the Caddo Homeland "persisted longer than elsewhere in the Eastern Woodlands."(19) Evidence of "black middens" or kitchen "dumps" as it were, begin to be seen in this era, from the north side of the Ouachita Mountains and also in the Great Bend area of the Red River. These waste mounds are clues that settlements became more permanent and there was less mobility amongst these hunting and gathering peoples, and a favoring of sites most suitable for habitation.
The extensive use of local stones to make tools also points to a lessening of trade and resourcefulness in finding local (if inferior) materials with which to fashion tools (dart points, knives, and wood-working tools). Dependence on a wide variety of mammals, fish, birds, seeds, nuts, berries, and roots continues to be supportive of the hunter-gatherer nature of these Late Archaic peoples. In the Cypress Creek basin in northeast Texas evidence has also been found for the use of roots such as scurfy pea, prairie turnip, and breadroot. "Preparing tubers for eating is a labor-intensive process. They had to be located, dug up, baked or boiled, and then dried (or eaten immediately). The two advantages of tubers are that they are available when nothing else is and that they can be dried and stored for later use."(20)
This evidence gives us a sketch of the Caddo Homeland. People settled down into localized territories, used local resources. This also suggests that the regional population as relatively high, not offering the option to relocate due to neighboring groups. During this time, it is generally thought, the ancestors of the Caddo settled into what became the homeland of the later Caddo peoples.
Woodland Period
Woodland period is a time of specific cultural developments and the crystallization of Caddo cultural tradition(21). Woodland culture is roughly dated from between 1000 B.C.-1000 A.D. and is characterized by specific cultural developments, including increased settled village life, spread of pottery, building of burial mounds, "the establishment of extensive long-distance trade networks (or the expansion of existing ones)"(22), rise of elaborate ritual practices, cultivation of plants (gardening), "and the rise of societies led by hereditary leaders"(23). The patterns for these developments were begun in the Archaic period. The timing of these developments is not exact across the region, so "we will stick primarily to what is known about the Caddo area and the adjacent lower Mississippi Valley." (24)
Because of its geographic location on the southwestern edge of the Eastern Woodlands, where many of the developments above took place (closer to the Mississippi River Valley), "the Caddo Homeland was a cultural frontier of sorts"(25). Yet the Caddo developed pottery styles as early as 800 A.D. that rivaled the more "advanced" at an earlier date than the Mississippian settlements works of 1000 A.D.
Woodland Developments
The first part summarizes the chronological sequence of Woodland developments in the nearby lower Mississippi Valley with discussion of certain related developments in the Caddo area. The second part reviews the specific Woodland-period cultures from which Caddo culture developed. During this period agriculture became increasingly important and, ca. 700 A.D., the atlatl and dart were replaced with the bow and arrow. The construction of planned villages and civic and ritual centers also were characteristics of this period. These "mound centers" featured flat-topped mounds arranged around and open plaza. Ceramic technology (pottery) also developed during this time, and generally we see "the transformation from small egalitarian groups of mobile hunters and gatherers to larger, ranked societies who depended on agriculture....[and occupied the] Caddo 'heartland'—the Red River Valley at and below the Great Bend."(25)
Until roughly 800 A.D., developments in the Caddo Homeland shadow the cultural developments in the Lower Mississippi River Valley (east), but now we see the emergence of a distinct Caddo culture arising from the Late Woodland period.
Emerging Caddo (approximately 800-1000-1200 A.D.)
"The Mississippian world was a mosaic of cultural traditions sharing overlapping themes including maize agriculture, settled life, elaborate ritual life, ranked societies, mound-building, ancestor veneration, ritual/political centers, long-distance exchange, warfare, competition, effective methods of food gathering, hunting, processing, and storage, and sophisticated craft production. Such themes were shared mainly through the exchange of ideas and things from group to group rather than through migration."(26)
With lack of concrete evidence and few radiocarbon dates relating to the Caddo, much is left to inference, and many of the sites excavated are burial sites which give insight into burial practices but little information on everyday Caddo life. The George C. Davis site in east Texas has been a site of extensive scientific investigation. "The site consists of a village and a ritual center marked by three earthen mounds...The Crenshaw site on the west side of the Red River in Miller County, Arkansas (and, more generally, the Great Bend area) is a prime candidate as one of the key places where the Caddo cultural tradition developed."(27) Beginning with roughly 600-900 A.D., the site was used as a burial ground and ceremonial center. Some of the mass burials and rituals which took place here were unknown elsewhere in the Caddo Homelands. "Sometime after A.D. 900 people with a recognizable Caddo culture began using the Crenshaw site as a ceremonial center, adding some bizarre twists of their own."(28) Yaws and skulls were found in these sites, presumably with the bodies deposited elsewhere, as well as mass graves, yet there is nothing similar in practice in the historic accounts of the Caddo area.
A final example of fascinating but unique early Caddo behavior at the Crenshaw site is a set of features dubbed the 'Antler Temple' and an associated refuse pile containing the antlers and frontal skull sections of over 1000 white-tailed deer...[the site may date] to early Caddo times and might have been the residence of a shaman or priest, similar to the Hasinai fire temples documented in early Spanish accounts...While the Antler Temple seems to represent an early example of ritual practices still present among historic Caddo groups some 700 years later, it is still unique among known Caddo.(29)
The Middle Caddo period (A.D. 1200-1400)
The society of the Caddo appears to have been in flux during this time period. There is evidence of economic and settlement changes and also an increase in experimentation in pottery styles. The pottery found during this period exhibits a sense of individualism and creativity, and as such, is often difficult to categorize compared to the more standard ceramic styles associated with other periods.
A shift to farmstead life and corn farming may be supportive of the types of settlements see during this time. As the Caddo shifted from larger communities indicative of the earthworks and mound culture found in earlier archeological sites, to small village agricultural communities, "Caddo farmers moved to the country, so to speak."(30) Archeological findings from this time period show both these "rural" communities, and also a continued pattern on the "city" life of the large mound and ceremonial centers. There is speculation that the mound civic and ritual centers which are spaced rather evenly along the red river valley, served associated villages as places of interaction. "For example, the Jamestown (eight mounds and village), Boxed Springs (four mounds, village, and large cemetery), and Hudnall-Pirtle (eight mounds and 60-acre village) sites appear to represent the apexes (central places) of three Early and Middle Caddo networks in the Sabine River basin...[including] premier mound centers in the Neches-Angelina river basin, and the Washington Square site in the middle of what is today Nacogdoches, Texas"(31), just north of present day Houston, Texas.
The Oak Hill Village site in Rusk County, Texas, occupied a small ridge overlooking Mill Creek, a tributary of the Sabine River. More is now known about this Oak Hill Village site in Rusk County, Texas than perhaps any other site dating to the period. On behalf of TXU Mining Company LP, archeologists from the private consulting firm PBS&J used heavy machinery and hand excavation to open up broad areas, researchers were able to expose the "footprint" of virtually an entire small village...Oak Hill Village had at least 42 circular and rectangular structures representing at least three successive villages. The structures that were part of the last and largest village were arranged over a 3.5-acre area in a circular pattern around a central plaza area....analysts were able to work out the basic sequence of the village phases, called here the early, middle, and late villages.(UT Austin)
The Early Village style (ca. 1150 A.D. is characterized by rectangular structures and the village lacked a central plaza. The population of this village may have been up to 70 individuals. The Middle Village (ca. 1250 A.D.) exhibited circular structures, similar to other Texas Caddo sites. This era appears to have spanned approximately 100 years, the dwellings were contracted around a central plaza, and the population may have approached 100 inhabitants. The Late Village (ca. 1350-1450 A.D.) shows an expansion of the houses, continuing to be built as circular structures, and the village may have had a population of a little over 100 people. There is also evidence of "special structures" with long entryways pointing north, interior partitions to some of the buildings, and possible evidence of circular buildings used for grain.(32) The homes were constructed primarily of oak, and evidence of cooking fires or "smudge pits" perhaps designed for meat smoking or mosquito protection had also been found. Through this archeological site, and charred corn cobs unearthed, it has been determined that the Caddo of this period grew several different types of corn, perhaps at different times of the year and with different susceptibility to drought. "The 300-year span of the successive Oak Hill villages illustrates nicely the increasing importance of corn. Corn was found in 32% of the Early Village soil samples from hearths and pits, 50% of the Middle Village samples, and 97% of the Late Village samples."(33) The village economy also depended on a mix of crops, the gathering of wild plants, and hunting of small game (deer was a favorite, rabbits, buffalo, and squirrel). Hickory nuts were abundant in the archeologists findings, as were acorns, walnuts, and evidence of persimmons, dewberries, and grapes.
Late Caddo Period (ca. 1400-1680 A.D.)
The high point in the Caddo population where ritual centers, villages, hamlets, and farmsteads flourished in the Caddo homeland. The small village societies did not form any central alliance, but formed small, competing village-groups (polities) and maintained competition with neighboring Caddo. It is also during this time in the Caddo history that there is some supporting archeological evidence for specific geographic territories throughout the Caddo Homeland: Clusters of villages that intermarry and share ritual, economic and military ties. The larger mound community centers as well as the smaller farmstead/villages had circular homes constructed with oak poles and grass, and included outdoor shaded areas, household cemeteries and refuse areas. "The Spanish noted that successful fall harvests occasioned major festivals at the principal villages that drew kinfolk and allies near and far for several-day celebrations of Caddo life. Such events would have involved feasting, special ceremonies, tobacco smoking, dancing, performances of stories and songs, trading, negotiating, courtship, and many other activities."(34)
Titus Phase
Between 1430-1680 A.D., the specific society of Caddo living between the Sabine and Sulphur rivers in the East Texas Pineywoods between are known as the Titus phase. Styles of pottery define the phases of the culture within this timeframe and geological region. There is a marked variety and artistry to the pottery unearthed and linked to this period exhibited in a plethora of vessel shapes, decoration, and multiplicity of uses including as both fine and utility ware: cooking and serving food, personal possessions, social identifiers.(35)
Examples of fine ware include highly polished and decorated vessels with crushed clay and bone, vessels engraved "with engraved lines, with scrolls, scrolls and circles, pendant triangles, and other curvilinear motifs."(36) Ochre and white kaolin were used on the surface as coloration. "The diversity of vessel forms is impressive: carinated bowls, compound bowls, bottles, cone-shaped bowls, ollas, jars with flaring rims, square bowls, globular peaked jars, and chalices. Animal effigies and rattle bowls were also made."(36) Utility vessels were characterized by plain conical shapes, larger vessels with wide mouths and vessels for liquid with narrow "necks". They were decorated with bands, brush strokes, and punctures, and as is expected, the utility vessels comprise the bulk of the archeological finds. Ceramic, siltstone, sandstone, and wood body decoration included earspools and elbow pipes of clay.
The Caddo made their first, limited European contact with DeSoto's army in 1542-1543. The "protohistoric" period refers to the period after the first contact with Europeans. However, it was not until 1686 that Europeans returned to the area bringing diseases, horses, Old World plants, and European trade goods, this is when the catastrophic impact on the Caddo can been seen.(36)
The 1541-1543 Spanish entrada led by Hernando de Soto, and, following De Soto's death at the Mississippi River, by Luis de Moscoso, was the first European penetration into the interior of the Southeastern U.S. It was a long and often violent intrusion that left Native American societies in its wake in turmoil and resulted in uncounted casualties, some killed outright by the Spanish army and others gradually by inadvertently unleashed Old World diseases. The large Spanish army fed itself by demanding or simply confiscating food stores from native peoples as they moved from place to place attacking and usually defeating the towns and peoples who stood up to them. The De Soto chronicles are the first written accounts describing Caddo peoples.(37)
Within the last 10 years, archeologists and ethnohistorians studying the Caddo have been attempting to map more precisely the routes of Spanish and French explorers and colonists and determine the impact of this European contact on the Caddo. Although European contact with the Caddo was irreparable and catastrophic for these relatively peaceful farmers of the southeast river valleys, the impact of the fist meeting with De Soto's army in 1542, and then the subsequent 144 years of non-intervention before European return, points to a gradual decline in Caddo population unfolding "in fits and starts over several centuries ."(38)
It was in 1686 when La Salle's expedition again met the Caddo along the Red River in East Texas. Over the next 150 years as Europeans laid claims to Caddo lands and beyond, the Caddo became sandwiched between French and Spanish settlements. Between 1691 and 1816 it is estimated that 95% of the Caddo populous succumbed to epidemics brought by the Europeans.(39) The remaining Caddo gained economically in trade with the Europeans. "The resulting economic symbiosis between the Caddo groups and Europeans was the key to the political success, resilience, and strength of the Caddo tribes through much of the colonial era."(40) What was left of the Caddo population gave rise to diverse groups uniting, and to practical and forced migration. There is evidence to support the idea that the Caddo societies of the late 17th and early 18th centuries enjoyed a successful relationship with the French and Spanish, not succumbing to the mission culture, and welcoming the Europeans into their society in order to maintain good sociopolitical ties with them.
This helps explain why Caddo rituals and greetings seemed excessive to Europeans and why discussions of these exchanges seem to dominate much of the Spanish and French archival documents. Similar interactions are sadly missing from the observations and records of the Americans, strongly hinting that the Caddo by the 1810s were unable to exploit existing American trade and military relationships in the same way they had the Spanish and the French.(41)
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