A social history of Caddoan peoples: Cultural adaptation and persistence in a Native American community.

Abstract

Cultural information on the historic Caddoans is limited. This scant information has nonetheless been used to extrapolate cultural loss for the contemporary tribe. The Caddo suffered population decline of catastrophic proportions--approximately 95%--between 1691 and 1900. It has been assumed by some researchers that the Caddo may have suffered population loss of similar proportions protohistorically, due to diseases introduced by Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century. Although no empirical evidence supports this contention, this presumed population loss has been used to justify disassociating the contemporary Caddo from their prehistoric past.

This work examines the population health of protohistoric Caddoans based upon bioarchaeological evidence to discover if presumptions of protohistoric demographic collapse are supportable. Further, historic observations are reexamined and reinterpreted to discover adaptive responses to extreme biocultural stress. This work also looks at community formation after 1859, when Caddoans merge into one tribal entity, as well as how the Caddo have adapted culturally to maintain a unique identity.

The Caddo Indians originated in the Red River Valley, and occupied the area encompassed by present-day northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas, southeastern Oklahoma, and east Texas. At first white contact, the Caddo were organized into at least twenty extensive matri-bands settled in three to four geographical groupings. Over the centuries, these bands have merged into one social and political unit, the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma.