Karankawa Indians
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Among the first Indians encountered in Texas by 16th and 17th century European explorers were the nomadic Karankawas, who lived along the coast from Galveston Bay to the Corpus Christi area. A primitive tribe, the Karankawas fished and gathered roots and cactus fruit for food. The men were usually tall and wore their hair long or braided with colorful bits of flannel and rattlesnake rattles. The women were shorter and stouter. The Indians often smeared their bodies with alligator grease and dirt to repel mosquitoes. At first friendly to Europeans, they later gained a reputation for savagery. Persistent reports that the Karankawas were cannibals may be traced to occasional ritualistic practices. Attempts by Spanish Franciscans to found missions for this coastal tribe were not successful. Never large in numbers, the Karankawa population dwindled as a result of diseases contracted from Europeans. During the 19th century, many of the Indians were killed in warfare with Jean Lafitte's pirates and with Anglo-American colonists. Remaining members of the tribe fled to Mexico about 1843. Annihilation of that remnant about 1858 marked the disappearance of the Karankawa Indians. (1976)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Karankawas were nomadic bands who lived along the Texas coast from Galveston Bay to the Corpus Christi area, fishing and gathering roots and cactus fruit and famously smearing themselves with alligator grease against mosquitoes. Among the first Native people met by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish explorers, they were friendly at first but later feared, and Spanish attempts to gather them into missions failed. Never numerous, they were ravaged by European diseases and by nineteenth-century warfare with Lafitte's pirates and Anglo colonists; the last remnants fled to Mexico around 1843, and the tribe vanished by about 1858.
Why it matters
The Karankawas' extinction within a few generations of sustained European contact is a stark record of how disease, displacement, and violence erased entire Native nations from the American landscape.
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Themes & tags
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