Maps of the Texas Indian lands need to be viewed
with a few things in mind. First, many of the Indians moved around quite
a lot. A new tribe would move in and push the old tribe into a new territory.
Of course that new territory was occupied by another tribe who had to move
on or share their lands. Many of the territories overlapped quite a bit.
For example, the Tonkawa and the Karankawa shared most of the regions between
their homelands. The Caddo shared regions with the Wichita to the west
and the Atakapan groups to the south of them. There were no clear boundaries.
The central Texas region from north of Dallas down to Austin and over the
piney woods area is often called the buffer area in many books. Tarrant
and Dallas counties are not claimed by any one tribe. I have left them
as mixed because the Comanches, Wichita, Caddo and Tonkawa were all found
there along with a few smaller tribes. That is how mixed up the geography
can be in many places.
Other regions like the Caddo in east Texas and
the Karankawa regions on the coast were pretty stable. The same culture
lived on and controlled their land and did not share it. The Caddo and
Karankawa lived on the same land for thousands of years and may well have
been the original occupants.
I have used Texas Counties to show where tribes
lived because so many of you have e-mailed to ask, "what tribe lived
here where I live". If your county is on the edge of a tribal area
you can be sure it is mixed up with the surrounding tribes.
These first maps are of where the best known
tribes lived, the ones you all ask about the most. The time frame is mostly
early American contact, around 1820-40 and back a little into the Spanish
period. I will be posting chronological maps of regions soon. I have made
these big so you can scroll around and see everything.
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Copyright by R E. Moore and Texarch Associates 1999, 2012 all rights
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