A graceful, well-groomed woman, Ms. Jimenez plays cards with her women friends. His home is one of about 40 traditional-style houses, or wickiups, on the reservation. Siding is constructed from cattail stems or boards. Roofs are pieced together from cardboard. Some of the huts are covered with plastic tarp.
Some families have no electricity or running water in their homes.
Though outhouses are used, the Indians have access to central restrooms and showers. As recently as the early 1980s the Kickapoos had no land of their own in Texas and lived beneath the international bridge between Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico, about 60 miles southeast of Del Rio. Once the Kickapoos inhabited the Great Lakes region. Indian removals in the 1800s forced the Kickapoos southward, and one band ended up in Eagle Pass and eventually in Mexico. Others moved to Oklahoma and Kansas.