Map of Texas Native American Distribution in the 1200-1800

[Traces]

Map showing the general location and dispersal of various Native American tribes across Texas. Kind of handy when you're reading Texas history.  As the map notes, this is sort of a general guide: the boundaries were certainly fluid.



 

[Temple Belton Killeen]

That's pretty neat. I was thinking that there were far more tribes than the 10 listed here. 

[Riverlady]

I thought you might like this map of Kiowa migration done by James Mooney, showing dates of migration from Montana southward.  (It showed up today on the feed of another history FB page I follow.) The map is from UT Arlington Portal to Texas History (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth288635/). From the Wikipedia entry for  James Mooney, Mooney "earned the confidence of the Kiowa who told him about their system of calendars to record events. They told him that the first calendar keeper in their tribe was Little Bluff, or Tohausan, principal chief of the tribe from 1833 to 1866. Mooney also worked with two other calendar keepers, Settan, or Little Bear; and Ankopaingyadete, meaning "In the Middle of Many Tracks", and commonly known as Anko. Other Plains tribes kept pictorial records, which are known as winter counts. They were commonly created in the winter, when the people were indoors, and expressed major events of the year.

"The Kiowa recorded two events for each year, offering a finer-grained record and twice as many entries for any given period. Silver Horn (1860–1940), or Haungooah, was the most highly esteemed artist of the Kiowa tribe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and kept a calendar. He was a respected religious leader in his later years."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mooney

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Riverlady

[Traces]

That is fascinating, @Riverlady  I had no idea that the Kiowas had calendar keepers.

Thanks so much for posting and also for the attribution.  Our archives need all of the support we can give them.

[Panther City Air]

This image was shared by someone I follow over on the bird app that does podcasts involving some pretty deep dives into Texas History, my understanding is that it's a fairly accurate depiction of population distribution around the time Columbus showed up. The lights are intended to show burning campfires as if you were viewing a night time satellite image from back then. I have a short clip fading this into a more current view, the two things that stand out when I compare then and now: 1) the campfires in Mineral Wells blend perfectly into the city's lights of today 2) Houston area sprawl has always been a problem

 

I guess the best way to share the video is upload it to the 'Tube and link it, I'll do that when I have a chance later