This dissertation traces the history of the Caddo Indian confederacies--the Hasinai, Kadohadacho, and Natchitoches--who lived in the pine forests along the present-day border between Louisiana and Texas. When first contacted by the Spanish in 1542 there were perhaps as many as eight thousand Caddo in all three confederacies Unfortunately for the Caddo, there was a heavy price to pay for accepting the Europeans into their world. The introduction of firearms intensified Indian warfare and made it much more destructive than before The situation became particularly grim for the Caddo following the epidemic of 1778-79, which reduced the population of the tribe by nearly two-thirds. By this time the French had withdrawn from Louisiana, and the fate of the tribe was completely in the hands of the Spanish. Spain, however, proved to be too weak and too unconcerned to afford the Caddo protection from the powerful Osage or even able to provide the tribe with arms to oppose the onslaught The Caddo were given temporary reprieve in 1803, when the United States obtained Louisiana. Once again the tribe found itself in a position to profit from being on the border of an international boundary. The young, aggressive United States supplied the tribe, especially the Kadohadacho, with the necessary trade goods, and until the end of the War of 1812, the fortunes of the Caddo were on the rise However, after the border dispute was settled between Spain and the United States, the Caddo once again became relatively unimportant to the whites. Neither the United States nor the newly-found republic of Mexico did much to protect the tribe from the numerous white settlers and emigrant Indians who flooded the area after 1815. Once it became obvious that the Kadohadacho only represented an obstacle to white expansion, the administration of Andrew Jackson sought to remove the tribe from its homeland. The Kadohadacho, realizing that they had no choice, agreed to sell their land to the United States in 1835, and join their kinsmen, the Hasinai, in Texas. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.) / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24217 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Contributors | Smith, Foster Todd (Author), Latner, Richard B (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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