Indigenous People

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During the Early Archaic, the waters around the bays were shallow, and there were many marshes and grass fields. Analysis of skeletons tells us that the people of this period ate a variety of foods, including land animals, river animals and fish, and ocean food sources.

Even though they moved around, the people of this period had complex societies. Archaeologists found a large multi-generational cemetery from this period at a site called Buckeye Knoll (in today’s Victoria County). Objects found at Buckeye Knoll show a cultural connection to groups living thousands of miles away, suggesting a long-distance cultural exchange.

We still don’t know very much about the people of the Middle Archaic. We know that many shell middens (large piles of shells) were made by these people, and they were apparently eating lots of oysters and clams.

There are also more artifacts from these sites than from earlier sites, suggesting that the people were doing more activities at each place they lived.

It is likely that these people were trading over long distances, determined by the presence of stone from distant places at their sites.

During this time, there is a large gap in occupation—about a thousand years where people didn’t live on the coast. Why? One theory is that the ocean rose quickly, which would have disrupted the ecosystem that produced food.

The Gulf of Mexico’s level was not always as high as it is now. Around 3,000 years ago, the sea level reached its current height. This new sea level and environmental change made it easier for people to live along the coast, and the population boomed.

Large numbers of people used the bounty of the sea to establish communities. They were semi-migratory, but returned to the same places again and again.

What was everyday life like for the indigenous people of the Texas Coastal Bend? They didn’t plant crops or have farms, so they could move around, following the seasons and the food. Instead of farming, they lived off the animals that lived here already, such as oysters, clams, fish, bison, and deer. Many of the groups who lived in this area also drank a strong tea made from the yaupon holly—the only North American plant that has caffeine.

European visitors wrote that indigenous people here lived in circular houses. Complete full-sized houses might have been ten to twelve feet in diameter, or only large enough for one or two people. Instead of taking houses like this with them when they moved, local indigenous people would have had several houses that they could move into during different seasons. 

By 1250-1300, the native people of the Coastal Bend, likely ancestors of the Karankawa tribes, were making a distinctive kind of pottery, known as Rockport ware.  It is sometimes undecorated (Rockport Plain), sometimes decoratively incised (Rockport Incised), but more often coated or decorated with asphaltum (Rockport Black-on-Gray). Rockport Black-on-Gray pottery is identified by the narrow horizontal bands of asphaltum painted along the pot rims. In some cases there are additional lines on the vertical plane extending down the necks of narrow pots. The pot interiors were often coated with asphaltum, possibly as a sealant, and the exteriors were sometimes partially or completely coated as well. The pottery bases were usually rounded rather than flat, allowing the pot to sit better in the fire, causing the contents to heat more evenly.

The Karankawa people moved with the seasons. In the fall and winter, they lived on the coast in fishing camps. In the spring and summer they moved inland, living off the bounty of the rivers and plains. Archaeology suggests that when the Karankawa moved out of the plains for the winter, inland groups moved in, allowing year-round use of the land. 

What happened to the Karankawa? European colonization drastically changed life for the Karankawa and people like them. Fights with settlers and diseases like smallpox ravaged the population and reduced their numbers. New introductions like the horse and the gun changed their daily lives. Spanish missions changed the environment. By the 1850s, the Karankawa were no longer an intact group of people. Other local groups, like the Aranama and Tamique, suffered similar fates.

Before bow and arrow technology was known to the early people of this region, Coastal Bend natives used a throwing stick called an atlatl. An atlatl is a wooden shaft with a hook on one end and a handle on the other.