Karankawa Campsite
Jamaica Beach, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In this area is one of several known Karankawa campsites or burial grounds. Now extinct, the nomadic Indians lived along the Texas coast, depending on the Gulf for survival. In 1528 they aided Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca, but resisted all intruders from the time of the French expedition of La Salle in 1685. The tribe later declined because of disease and warfare with pirates and Anglo-American settlers. Known for tall tribesmen and alleged practices of ceremonial cannibalism, they had virtually disappeared from Texas by the 1840s. This campsite was discovered in 1962. (1966)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This coastal site was one of several campsites and burial grounds of the Karankawa, the nomadic people who lived along the Texas Gulf and drew their survival from its waters. They aided the shipwrecked Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca in 1528 but resisted later intruders, from La Salle's 1685 French expedition onward. Devastated by disease and conflict with pirates and Anglo-American settlers, the Karankawa had all but vanished from Texas by the 1840s; the campsite was rediscovered in 1962.
Why it matters
The site honors a vanished coastal people whose encounters with Spanish, French, and American newcomers trace the whole arc of European contact and Indigenous dispossession on the Gulf Coast.
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Related people
- · Cabeza de Vaca
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
West Galveston Island
Galveston, TX
The earliest known inhabitants of West Galveston Island were the Karankawa people, and it was near here that the shipwrecked Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca came ashore in 1528, the first European known to reach the island. Over the centuries that followed the island saw explorers, the pirate Jean Lafitte, stagecoach and ferry travel down its beaches, and a grim role in the illegal slave trade as a landing point for traffickers barred from Galveston's harbor. By the twentieth century it had become a haven for migratory shorebirds and, since 1957, a booming resort coast.
Stewart Property
Galveston, TX
This ridge on the west end of Galveston Island holds one of the area's oldest known histories of human use — once a campsite for the seagoing Karankawa people — before it passed through a striking succession of nineteenth- and twentieth-century owners. Texas Revolution veteran Col. Warren D. C. Hall bought it in 1856; later owners named it "Mottexas" and "Isla Ranch," and in 1933 it took the name of Galvestonian Maco Stewart, founder of the Stewart Title Company. The land was eventually deeded to the University of Texas for its Galveston medical branch, layering Indigenous, frontier, and modern uses on a single stretch of shore.
Lafitte's Grove
Galveston, TX
In 1817 the privateer Jean Lafitte established a fort and settlement on Galveston Island, using it as a base to prey on Gulf shipping. Here in February 1821 his men clashed with the Karankawa people in the Battle of the Three Trees. Ordered to leave by the United States government, Lafitte abandoned and burned the post later that year.
Site Of Landmark Campbell's Bayou
Texas City, TX
Around 1821 the privateer and War of 1812 veteran James Campbell — a lieutenant and close friend of the buccaneer Jean Lafitte at Galveston — put the sea behind him to settle here as a rancher. He had earlier taken a bride, Mary Sabinal, in Karankawa ceremony, and the couple raised their community on this coastal ground. The settlement endured until a hurricane destroyed it a second time in 1915, and the Campbells lie with other early Texans in the nearby cemetery.