# Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Anthropology/Antiquities and Aborigines of Texas

ANTIQUITIES AND ABORIGINES OF TEXAS.
By A. R. Roessler, of Washington, D. C.
In my frequent walks, some years since, along the beaches of the bays and inlets of the Gulf of Mexico, a few miles south of the Guadalupe River, I rarely failed to find a numbed of aboriginal relics—especially immediately after the ebb of a high tide. I have also found many about the bases of the sandy hillocks, or "dunes," which have been heaped up by the winds in many places along the coast. I have occasionally found large flints; but these were probably used for harpoons. Some of these arrow-heads are very rudely wrought, while others, particularly a very small kind, are of exquisite finish, with a point as sharp as a lancet, and the cutting edges finely and beautifully serrated. Most of the specimens collected by me had necks, or shanks, by which they were fitted into the shaft; a few, however, were without this appendage, but were either grooved or beveled on both sides of the base of the tongue. The flint pebbles, from which these arrow-heads were chipped, were probably obtained from 30 to 40 miles inland, where they abound in several localities. All the Indian tribes of Texas, when it was first colonized by Americans, used metallic arrow-heads, which they had probably substituted for flint ones nearly a century before, or not long after the establishment of the missions and military posts of San Antonio and La Bahia, where they doubtless obtained copper, brass, and iron, all of which metals they used for pointing their missiles. Fragments of earthen pottery are coextensive with the flint relics. But they bear evidence that our aborigines were never much skilled in the ceramic art.
The Indian dead usually receive very shallow sepulture. Often the Texas tribes do not bury their dead at all, but merely pile logs or stones upon their bodies, which are soon extricated and the flesh devoured by beasts of prey. The bones being thus left to the action of the elements, rapidly decay. Hence the osseous remains of the aborigines are rarely found far inland, but in various places along the coast the winds have performed the rites of sepulture by blowing the sand upon the dead. At Igleside, in 1861, human bones were disinterred at two localities more than a hundred yards apart, from a depth of 8 feet; and recently, in October, 1877, others were discovered in a sand hill, or "dune," near what is locally known as the "False Live Oak," in Refugio County. About a month after the discovery I went to the spot and found that a large quantity of human bones, including several skulls, had been exposed by the caving of the "dune;" but being much decayed, had broken to pieces in falling, and quickly dissolved in the Gulf tide at the base of the "dune." I saw for 40 feet along the face of the steep slope, from which the sand had slidden, a number of human bones and skulls projecting at various angles. One skull, which was better preserved ​than the rest, was of medium size and remarkably round. The others seemed of similar size and type. The teeth of all were well preserved, and did not exhibit any appearance of having been faulty during the lifetime of their owners. None of the bones seemed to have belonged to persons above the average size, with the exception of one femur. Neither the vertebral nor pelvic bones, the ribs, the omoplates, nor the bones of the hands and feet were preserved. These human remains were from 5 to 7½ feet beneath the surface of the ground, and 10 or 12 feet above the level of the bay.
After an interval of about six weeks, I again visited the spot. About 2 feet of the hill had. caved away since my first visit; but the bone deposit was still unexhausted, for I found three more skulls and several limb bones, all of which broke into fragments in extracting them from the compact sand.
I was disappointed in not finding stone arrow-heads in the caved sand. But my search for them was not thorough. There is no reason, however, to doubt that these are aboriginal remains. Their imperfect state of preservation in any kind of earth, very conservative of organic substances, alone warrants the conclusion that they are ancient, which is reinforced by an argument which I will here state. These remains are found at the southern extremity of a sand ridge about 2 miles long from north to south, and varying in height from 20 to 40 or 50 feet, and which was evidently formed while the gulf beat directly upon the shore of the mainland. But ever since the long, sandy islands extending parallel with our coast were heaped up by the action of the waves and currents of the sea, the only communication between the gulf and the interior bays, or lagoons, has been through a few narrow channels called "bayous." The consequence is, that the sandy materials of which the "dunes" are formed, instead of reaching the shore of the mainland as in former ages, are now deposited on the gulf side of the islands and blown up by the east and southeast winds into hillocks similar to, but generally less elevated than, those which were formerly heaped by the same agency upon the mainland.
Now, on the assumption that these human remains, in accordance with the universal custom of North American savages, were only interred to the depth of 2 feet at most, several feet of sand must subsequently have been blown over them to account for the depth at which they were found, and the sand for this purpose must have been transported to the adjacent beach by the currents of the gulf. Hence, I conclude that the remains were deposited in the "dune" before the gulf was cut off from the mainland by the formation of the chain of island barriers above mentioned. The sand ridge containing the osseous relics has been preserved from the wasting effects of the winds by the thickets of dwarf oak and sweet bay with which it is overgrown. Some of the live oaks at its eastern base are of sufficient girth to indicate an age of two centuries. Other oaks of the same species a short distance south ​of the "dunes," and very near the bay, are of much greater antiquity. All these trees must have grown up since the Gulf retreated behind Matagorda Island, which at this point is about 8 miles distant from the mainland. From all of which it follows as highly probable that the human remains, which I have described, were inhumed at a period when the broad waves of the sea resounded along the shore of the mainland, and before the sail of a ship had gleamed on the Gulf of Mexico.
Both history and tradition preserve the names of several tribes of Texas Indians, which had become extinct or had been blended with other tribes before the State was first colonized by Anglo-Americans, at which period, A. D. 1821, the only tribes with which the settlers came in contact were the Comanches, Wacos, Tawacanies, Ionies, Keechies, Lipaus, Tonkaways, and Carancaways. Of all these tribes the last named was the most remarkable. They inhabited the coast, and ranged from Galveston Island to the Rio Grande. The men were of tall stature, generally 6 feet high, and the bow of every warrior was as long as his body. These Indians navigated the bays and inlets in canoes, and subsisted, to a considerable extent, on fish. They were believed by many of the early settlers to be cannibals; but it is probable that the only cannibalism to which they were addicted was that which was occasionally practised by the Tonkaways, if not by all the tribes of Texas. This consisted in eating bits of an enemy's flesh at their war dances to inspire them with courage. A dance and feast of this kind I once witnessed at a settlement on the Colorado, where the Tonkaways were temporarily camped. A party of its braves on a war tramp slew a Comanche, and upon their return to their tribe brought with them a portion of the dried flesh of their slain foeman. This human "tasajo," after being boiled, was partaken of by the warriors of the tribe with cries and gestures of exultation. Their thievish and murderous propensities early involved them in war with the settlers of Austin Colony, by whom they were repeatedly defeated with severe loss, in consequence of which, about the year 1825, they fled west of San Antonio River, whither they were pursued by Austin at the head of a strong party of his colonists. When he arrived at the Manahuila Creek, 6 miles east of Galliad—then called La Bahia—he was met by a Catholic priest of that place, who bore a proposition from the Carancaways, that if Austin would desist from hostilities they would never in future range east of the San Antonio.
Austin agreed to this proposition and counter-marched his force. The Carancaways, however, did not long keep their promise. A few years afterwards several parties of them returned to the Colorado, their favorite resort, and committed divers thefts and atrocious murders, for which they were again severely scourged by the colonists. Efforts were long made by the Catholic missionaries to christianize these savages, and the mission of Refugio, 30 miles south of Galliad, was, I believe, founded for that special purpose. But the Carancaways ​were proof against all civilizing influences. At length, about the year 1843, forty or fifty men, women, and children—the sole remnant of this tribe, which twenty-one years before numbered nearly a thousand souls—emigrated to Mexico, and were permitted to settle in the interior of the State of Tamaulipas. At this time it is not improbable that the Carancaways are almost, if not quite, extinct. I am unable to ascertain whether any of the other tribes mentioned before in this paper are also verging on extinction, but it is well known that they have all rapidly diminished in numbers since they came in contact with civilization, and the conclusion is inevitable that in a score or two of years all the smaller tribes will become as extinct as the mammoth and the mastodon that preceded them.