The Caddos, the Wichitas, and the United States, 1846-1901
By: F. Todd Smith.
Series: The centennial series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University ;; no. 64
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: College Station
Language: eng
Number of pages: 190
Subjects: Caddo Indians -- History -- 19th century.; Caddo Indians -- Government relations.; Caddo Indians -- Ethnic identity.; Wichita Indians -- History -- 19th century.; Wichita Indians -- Government relations.; Wichita Indians -- Ethnic identity.; Indian reservations -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; United States -- Race relations.
Description: F. Todd Smith's new narrative picks up the story of these tribes begun in his volume The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542-1854. Their relations with the United States government, the state of Texas (whose role in Indian policy was distinctive because of its previous status as a sovereign nation), and officials of Indian Territory, as well as their ongoing struggles with other tribes similarly being forced from traditional lands, make compelling reading. Smith documents the process by which the Caddos and Wichitas increasingly lost control of their own fate and came to be governed by the whim of the federal government.

Smith relates the political history of the two tribes, details life and agricultural work on the reservation, chronicles federal attempts to introduce an education system to the Indians, and traces the effect of hostile tribes and unscrupulous whites on the reservation experiment. Using primary documents, he traces the history of the Wichitas and Caddos through the Civil War, when they were forced to take refuge in Union-controlled Kansas, to the sharing of reservation land with their former enemies, the Kiowas and Comanches. He describes in detail the efforts of the two tribes to adapt to white ways, developing a life within the confines of the reservation experience that borrowed from Euro-American culture while retaining many of their own traditions.

Throughout the book, Smith convincingly analyzes how the successful adaptation of the tribes to white demands itself undermined their power and future. In the end, Smith shows, the Caddos and Wichitas used the Euro-American legal system to fight the last battle - unsuccessfully - losing the very basis of tribal life, shared land.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-184) and index.