Author David La Vere offers a complete chronological and cultural history of Texas Indians from twelve thousand years ago to the present day. He presents a unique view of their cultural history before and after European arrival, examining Indian interactions-both peaceful and violent-with Europeans, Mexicans, Texans, and Americans.

An incredibly detailed account of Indigenous lifeways during the initial rounds of European exploration in south-central North America. Several hundred tribes of Native Americans were living within or hunting and trading across the present-day borders of Texas when Cabeza de Vaca and his shipwrecked companions washed up on a Gulf Coast beach in 1528. Over the next two centuries, as Spanish and French expeditions explored the state, they recorded detailed information about the locations and lifeways of Texas’s Native peoples. Using recent translations of these expedition diaries and journals, along with discoveries from ongoing archaeological investigations, William C. Foster here assembles the most complete account ever published of Texas’s Native peoples during the early historic period (AD 1528 to 1722). Foster describes the historic Native peoples of Texas by geographic regions. His chronological narrative records the interactions of Native groups with European explorers and with Native trading partners across a wide network that extended into Louisiana, the Great Plains, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Foster provides extensive ethnohistorical information about Texas’s Native peoples, as well as data on the various regions’ animals, plants, and climate. Accompanying each regional account is an annotated list of named Indigenous tribes in that region and maps that show tribal territories and European expedition routes. “A very useful encyclopedic regional account of the Europeans and Native peoples of Texas who encountered one another during the relatively unexamined two hundred years before the Spanish occupation of Texas and the French establishment of Louisiana.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Briefly describes the environment, daily life, and customs of four Indian groups that lived in Texas--the farmers, the fishermen, the plant gatherers, and the hunters.

Journeying back to a time before Europeans set foot in North America, readers meet the colorful Native American groups that once called Texas home. The tribes addressed include the Caddo, Hasinai, Karankawa, Apache, and the Comanche. Readers also learn how these Native Americans influenced European settlers--an effect that can still be seen today.

Presents an introduction to the Native American tribes of Texas, describing their location, political structure, religion, dress, and culture.

Fascinating anthropological study of a group of Kickapoo Indians who left their Wisconsin homeland for Mexico over a century ago. "...an excellent work..." — American Indian Quarterly. 26 illustrations. Map. Index.