Caddo Fundamentals

The early ancestors of the Caddo were hunter-gatherers, who moved from place to place hunting and trapping wild animals and gathering the seeds, nuts, fruits, and roots of wild plants. Archaic hunters used the atlatl (spear-thrower) and dart to kill their favorite prey, white-tailed deer. By 2,000 B.C., people living not far to the north and east (in Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky) began experimenting with gardening. By selecting the best stock, they gradually developed the first domesticated forms of oily and starchy seeded plants such as squash, goosefoot, and sunflower. Some of the Late Archaic groups in the Caddo Homeland may have begun small-scale gardening as well. Part-time gardeners or not, Late Archaic peoples seem to have increased their numbers and put down roots. The intensive harvesting of hardwood nuts, such as hickory and walnut, combined with deer hunting and a host of other food resources, apparently provided enough surplus food for people to begin staying longer at one place.

Continuing a pattern begun in Late Archaic times, Woodland-period Caddo ancestors gradually shifted from being mobile hunter-gatherers to increasingly settled villagers who planted domesticated crops to supplement wild foods, a change with profound consequences. With agriculture and settled life came the ability to produce and store surplus food, higher population levels, and the need for new ways of organizing, integrating, and protecting society. The finding of artifacts in graves made of exotic materials from sources hundreds of miles away, shows that Fourche Maline and Mossy Grove peoples living in the Caddo Homeland were linked to other peoples across much of the Eastern Woodlands. In this sort of long-distance trade (down-the-line exchange) the exotic goods were probably given leader to leader to further ritual and social ties, not economic ties. The Woodland period also saw the introduction of pottery making from the Southeast, as well as, around A.D. 500, a new weapon system, the bow and arrow (probably from the Southwest).

Around 1200 years ago, early Caddo society began to crystallize as one of the earliest Mississippian cultures in the Southeast. Among the many villages, some emerged as ritual centers, special places where religious and political leaders lived. Early ritual centers were places where temples and other special buildings stood, sometimes on top of earthen mounds. Temple and burial mounds were sometimes arranged around open plazas, where the peoples gathered on solemn and festive occasions. During this time, complex religious and social ideas took hold, including the notion that some people and certain lineages (kin groups) were more important than others. Evidence of these changes are seen most clearly in large tombs thought to contain adult male leaders accompanied by retainers or family members sacrificed in their honor and fancy grave offerings including obvious symbols of authority and prestige.

By 1000 years ago, Caddo society can be said to have entered its heyday, an era of unprecedented wealth, population, and prestige that lasted over 600 years and was still underway in A.D. 1542 when Caddo peoples were first encountered by Europeans. The Caddo were the westernmost people of the Mississippian world, an ethnically and politically fragmented realm that stretched eastward to Georgia and northern Florida and as far north as Illinois and Wisconsin. Major Caddo ritual centers in most parts of the Caddo Homeland, especially along the Red River, were the principal places of small, independent societies. The Caddo had developed a distinct pottery tradition and produced extremely fine pottery, no doubt the envy of neighbors far and wide. Overall, the Early Caddo period seems to have been a time of cultural unity during which Caddo groups in many areas did many things the same way such as pottery making and burying their dead.

As Caddo peoples grew more numerous, more and more villages, hamlets, and farmsteads were established throughout the Caddo world. It was at this time that corn became the mainstay crop for most Caddo groups, a change that probably helps explain why Caddo settlements became smaller and more spread out. People lived among their cornfields. At the north end of the Caddo world the site of Spiro on the Arkansas River reached its zenith as an important trading and ritual center sitting strategically at the choke point of a natural transportation route (the Arkansas Valley) between the core of the Mississippian world to the east and the Buffalo Plains to the west. The Middle Caddo period is also a time during which Caddo potters experimented a great deal with different shapes and designs.

Caddo population peaked after A.D. 1400, with Caddo settlements built throughout the Caddo Homeland including many places that had not been settled before. Ritual mound centers seem to have become less important in some areas. By Late Caddo times, instead of broad cultural unity, there are many distinct local traditions, pronounced variations on the theme of being Caddo. The increasing reliance on corn agriculture and high population levels resulted in declining health among Caddo people. The east-west trade brought small quantities of marine shells, turquoise, cotton, and Southwestern pottery to the Caddo Homeland from as far west as the Pacific ocean as well as trade pieces from the Mississippi Valley.

The first Europeans to set foot in the Caddo Homeland were Spaniards who were members of the De Soto entrada in 1542. They did not stay long and well over a century would pass before Europeans returned to the Caddo world. In the intervening period, the seeds of profound change began to reach the Caddo: Old World diseases, plants (such as peaches and watermelons), animals (especially horses), and metal tools and weapons. In the late 1600s, the Spanish entered the region from the southwest and the French from the Mississippi Valley. They established missions and trading posts and competed with one another for control over the Caddo domain. Recurring diseases (like smallpox) continued to decimate Caddo populations. Rival Indian groups, now equipped with guns, encroached from the east. Yet this is the very period during which the Caddo entered written history and the period upon which much of our understanding about Caddo life is based. Early chroniclers encountered at least two dozen named, independent Caddo groups, some speaking separate dialects of a common language.

As Europeans and their descendants colonized North America, Caddo societies grappled with catastrophic changes caused by rapid population loss, incursions of enemies from the north and east (especially the Osage), mounted raiders from the west (especially the Apache), and with a changing economy. Caddo groups became middlemen and active partners in trade, especially with the French and French allies such as the Tunica. Caddo groups formed alliances in an attempt to cope with massive population loss and threats from encroaching enemies.

Given no choice, Caddo groups agreed to give up a million acres of their traditional lands in present day Louisiana and Arkansas and move eastward into Texas in exchange for modest payments, only some of which were ever made. The forced exodus began a 20-year period during which the Caddo had no permanent home. Relentless Anglo settlement from the east pushed Caddo groups westward out of their homeland into north-central Texas.

Finally the new state of Texas set aside a small reserve on the Brazos River about 75 miles west of Fort Worth for the dwindling groups of Caddo, Wichita, and other tribes. Hostile settlers in the area soon forced the Caddo to flee to the Indian Territory (today's Oklahoma) where they were to be given land with the Wichita. Major Robert S. Neighbors, the federal Indian Agent who protected and led the Caddo and Wichita to their new home, was killed by an Indian-hating settler upon his return to Texas.

Caddo people returned to Indian Territory to find that that most of their lands had been given to Plains Indian groups. The Caddo finally settled down on the remaining land near the towns of Binger, Fort Sill, and Anadarko, Oklahoma. In the 50 years following the Civil War, the Caddo learned to live in west-central Oklahoma, often intermarried with members of other tribes, slowly increased their numbers, and struggled to cope with assimilation into American society.

For the first time, the Caddo are recognized as a single tribe or nation, a change brought about by the necessity of dealing with the United States government.

On order of the U.S. government, Caddo tribal lands, like those of certain other tribes, were parceled out to each adult Caddo, 160 acres each. White settlers were given everything left over (most of the Caddo land). This was a deliberate strategy intended to seize more Indian lands and prevent tribes from reorganizing and to force Indian peoples to assimilate into American society.