-: Welcome to Texas History.
We're gonna be covering the entire history of Texas.
And we're gonna be starting with section one,
Pre-historic to Spanish Explorers.
Alright, we're gonna talk about the land and the rivers,
the geography of Texas itself.
We're gonna be talking about the first settlers
that came to Texas, up through 1500
and then we're gonna talk about the native Americans,
the Indians of Texas by the time the Spanish arrive in 1500.
Alright, so the first thing you guys need to write down
in your notes,
the first part of Texas history you have to know,
is that geography matters.
You have to know that the land itself has a history.
And the land itself matters enormously in Texas history.
When you talk about East Texas
and the rich piney woods areas right there
and all the farming that comes in
that brings Americans into the region.
When you talk about the plains of Texas out here
that has oil underneath it,
it bring in the Comanches, the first people's to Texas.
In all ways and shapes and forms
the land shapes the history
that we're gonna be talking about
for the next 24 or more hours.
So we want to start talking about the history
of the land itself and set the stage
for where we're gonna be talking about
our entire story.
So the most fundamental divide in Texas geography alright,
the most fundamental divide in Texas history
in some ways, is this Balcones fault line
that runs along the division between East Texas,
and the South Texas and the gulf coastal plain right here,
and Central Texas and the west
and the far west portions of Texas.
And that was formed in the, about 300 million years ago,
alright, when Texas was a part of
the massive formation of Pangaea
and the supercontinent that formed 300 million years ago,
when all the continents pushed together
and formed one massive giant supercontinent.
Alright, the coast of Texas right there
was being pushed up against by South America right here.
Which, when it pushed up against this area right here,
pushed up a giant mountain range,
right along this Balcones fault region right here,
called the Ouachita mountains,
which is today the remnants of beneath Dallas,
they run down towards Austin Texas,
down towards San Antonio.
And you can see basically that line
between East Texas, the valley and then
the West Texas plains out in this territory.
It was a massive mountain range.
Formed hundreds of millions of years ago.
And that matters for a number of reasons.
One of which is it means for hundreds of millions of years
all rail fall, alright, all organic matter
would flow over to this territory out here.
And it was a big division between these two sides.
And so when all that flowed out into this territory,
you have a massive accumulation of organic matter
and things like that, that are being pushed down
by sediment on top that forms ultimately
some of the massive oil deposits
that we have out in West Texas, in the Permian Basin,
Midland, Odessa, and places like that.
East Texas, is actually being butted up against
with South America.
And so you've got this crunching that happens
on the land itself that compresses it
out in that direction there.
By the time of the age of the dinosaurs, right?
We're going back real far here. (laughing)
It's around the time of the Triassic,
the rise of the dinosaurs,
the continents start moving apart.
And they start pulling apart from each other.
And so what you have is this movement,
of slow movement of South America and Africa
away from North America that starts pulling away
and starts making the gulf of Mexico,
that pulls open this huge territory
and starts making the actual gulf coast of Texas,
and that Eastern territory that's gonna be
so important going into the future in Texas history.
By the time you get to the late Jurassic,
when dinosaurs are really going.
You have dinosaurs like Allosaurus
running all over the place,
the gulf is fairly fully formed right over here
and things are pushing out.
The continents keep moving
until the end of the dinosaur era,
the late cretaceous, about 85-65 million years ago.
And that's around the time that the continents
get to their modern geographical location,
similar to what we have today.
And you have North America,
largely formed physically where it is.
The difference is, that at the late Cretaceous,
what you have is that it's so much warmer on the earth.
And there aren't any massive polar ice caps.
And so, you have a lot more water, alright,
all over North America.
And you have this vast intercontinental sea,
that's reached across the modern plains of Texas
and up through North America.
And it means that there's a shallow sea
that covers East Texas, South Texas
and parts of West Texas out there.
Where for tens of millions of years,
you have seabed sediments, alright,
deposited, floating to the bottom,
filling up a rich organic material
that's gonna make the east portions of Texas
especially lush fertile regions,
for growing all kinds of, all kinds of plant of all sorts.
You also have, in Texas, out on the west portion,
western portions right here,
near Big Bend and out in that direction right there,
you have dinosaurs.
You have Triceratops.
(audience laughing) You do.
We have great excavation work that's been done.
Especially around the Big Bend area right there.
Because this is right along the edge of the water out there.
It's a really lush, fertile environment.
You go out to far west Texas today, it's very arid, right?
It's very dry.
But it was a very different kind of environment
in the late Cretaceous.
So you also have large carnivores,
like Tyrannosaurus Rex, who were running around out there,
chasing down Triceratops and such.
You have massive sauropods,
one of those famous Brontosaurus type creatures out there.
This is the Alamosaurus.
So if you go to the Perot Museum today,
there's a giant Alamosaurus that's there.
There a big showpiece dinosaur that they've got up there.
Which has also been found out in far west Texas.
It's not named after the Alamo.
Alamo, being cottonwood tree in Spanish,
was actually originally found in New Mexico
and that's what it's named for.
But you have massive creatures like this
that are walking the Earth
out in far west Texas along the edge of this
big intercontinental sea.
At the end of the dinosaur age, you have Texas where it is.
You've got the sea bed right over there.
And what changes all of that is a massive comet or meteorite
that comes into the Earth, hits around Yucatan Peninsula
in Mexico today and starts a new ice age,
that will mark the end of the dinosaurs
and the beginning of a new era in world history.
And this is really where our story begins in the Ice Ages.
There's been about five massive ice ages in global history.
Our story starts at the end of the last ice age.
Which began 2 1/2 million years ago
and lasted until about 10,000 years ago.
And at the end of that last ice age,
Texas was fully formed the way that we would see it today,
in terms of geography.
There's no actual boundaries on the Rio Grande
or the Red River or any of that sort of stuff.
But the actual geography of Texas
is what we have up there today.
It been formed by hundreds of millions of years.
And the result is a particular geography
that's going to affect Texas history going forward.
Alright, so let's talk about the geography of Texas.
And there's a whole bunch of different
regions on here obviously.
The ones we need to know are basically East Texas,
Gulf Coastal plain and the plains region out here
in far west Texas.
So in anybody from the panhandle of Texas?
Anybody been to the panhandle of Texas?
Alright, what's the panhandle of Texas like?
Student: Flat landscape?
-: Flat, absolutely.
Say what again?
Student: Slightly higher elevation.
-: Slightly higher elevation, absolutely.
It's dry right?
Yeah, it's very dry.
At the end of the last ice age, it wasn't as dry.
You've got a number of rivers up here.
It was a well watered territory.
It was a grasslands.
And that's been formed by those millions of years
of the water flowing on the other side
of the Ouachita mountains,
which, you know, by the time you get
to the end of the dinosaurs had eroded and gone away
and are now buried underneath the rest of Texas.
But the result of that is that you built up
this layer of soil that was perfect
for grasslands development.
You also have the Hundredth Meridian right here
in the middle of Texas, right here,
where you have a lot less rainfall over here
than you do on the eastern portions of Texas, alright?
You have just a lot more rain,
a lot more irrigation on this side than you have out there.
So that's one of the reasons it's dry
and drier than the rest of Texas.
East Piney Woods, eastern portions of Texas right here,
you have this transition zone of the Cross Timbers
where we are right now,
and then you come over into
the Eastern Piney Woods over here.
Is anybody from East Texas?
What's East Texas like?
Female Student: Trees.
-: Trees right? The great Piney Woods.
Yes absolutely.
Why is there so many trees over there?
Why is so lush over in East Texas?
Great soil, right?
It's got great soil.
It's been built up over tens of millions of years
in part because of the sea bed
that had been underneath for so very long, alright?
And so it's an incredibly lush, fertile area.
It also gets a lot more rainfall, right?
It gets an enormous amount of rainfall out here
and as a result you have a much more
lush area out in far East Texas
than you do out in the western plains,
out in the West Texas territories.
Absolutely. Gulf Coastal Plain, down here.
So we move from the East Piney Woods down here,
come down to the Gulf Coastal Plains down here.
Is anybody from Houston?
What's Houston like?
Female Student: Uh, it's wet.
-: It's wet right?
It's hot, it's muggy, and swampy, right?
Yeah, exactly.
It is the soil types down along the gulf coast,
are also pretty lush.
They're also very fertile.
But they're also a lot sandier as you get closer
down towards the coast itself.
And so it's not quite as fertile as the Eastern Piney Woods
territory over here.
This area is quite good, especially you get closer to
the Balcones Escarpment,
but down closer to the plains itself.
I'm sorry, down closer to the coast itself.
It gets a little sandier,
it gets a little bit harsher in it's environment.
You get down to South Texas.
The modern valley.
Is anybody from South Texas?
What is South Texas like?
Female Student: Flat.
-: Flat and what?
Yeah, it's flat, humid, it's really hot now.
At the end of the last ice age, not so much.
What is the soil type like in South Texas?
Does anybody know?
Rocky, alkaline, yes it's very sandy.
It's very, it's not the most naturally lush area
that you're ever gonna have.
It is today an area that grows an enormous amount of food
and cotton and citrus and such and so forth.
'Cause we dump and enormous amount of water
down on the valley, much like we do on the panhandle today.
But it's a harsher, much harsher environment
than the Gulf Coastal plain right here,
or the East Piney Woods out in this territory.
Much harsher.
West Texas, out in Big Bend and those territories out there.
Is anybody from there?
Has anybody been there?
Alright, what's Big Bend like out in far West Texas.
Dry, absolutely, yes sir.
Male Student: Rocky and mountainous.
-: Rocky and mountainous, you have the Chisos Mountains
right down there in Big Bend, absolutely.
Another kind of hold over,
of the movement of the tectonic plates, absolutely.
Is that a lush environment?
Not particularly, right?
It's a harsh environment as well.
And so you have this again divide between East Texas
and then you've got the plains region right up here
that's all along this fault line,
where the original Ouachita Mountains had been.
Keep that geography in mind.
I know that's a little tedious to go over,
as sort the outset, but lays the foundation
for a lot of what we're going to be talking about,
where the Indians in Texas come from,
where they go, how the Spanish react to the region,
how Mexico reacts to the region,
how the Anglo-Americans react to the region.
All that establishes kind of the base line for everything
that we're gonna be talking about.
The other thing that you need to remember
about the geography of Texas are the rivers.
Write down the rivers.
Because the rivers, Texas is unusually well irrigated.
Especially along the Gulf Coastal plain
over here in East Texas.
We have enormous number of rivers out here.
Huge system that again irrigates an area that gets quite
a bit of rainfall compared to the hundredth Meridian
out here on the West Texas and Central plains out there.
That makes an enormous difference going forward.
So, we're being our story at the end of the last ice age.
Last ice age began 2 1/2 million years ago.
It's ending about 10,000 years ago.
So at the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago,
what was Texas like?
It was cold that exactly right.
It's cold, it's the end of the last ice age,
it is kinda nasty.
The Gulf Coastal coastline right here
was actually 350 feet further down into the Gulf of Mexico.
Because at the end of the last ice age,
you had these massive polar ice caps,
that have sucked up so much water,
that the edge of Texas is actually 350 feet further
into the Gulf Coast than it is today.
Is it covered in glaciers?
Stand up if you think it's covered in glaciers.
Stand up if you think it's not covered in glaciers.
Very good.
It's not covered in glaciers. (chuckles)
The glaciers of the last ice age
did not make it further south than the Dakotas.
So they never made it quite this far down into Texas.
But what you do have in Texas,
as a result of the glaciers a massive animals.
You have these massive creatures that have been
pushed down from the northern portions of North America.
Being pushed literally by the glaciers themselves.
And so in texas you have things like Wooly Mammoths
running around in Texas.
You imagine getting in a time machine and going back
and running into Wooly Mammoths running right there.
You got huge creatures of all sorts that are running around,
particularly on the Texas plains,
because it's a massive grassland.
Sort of like the African Savanna.
It's a huge area that's just perfect
for large grazing animals,
who also become very large in part to deal with the cold.
It's a way of conserving heat internally.
That gigantism that you see going on
during the last ice age.
You also have some really scary creatures running around,
like saber-toothrd cats that are feeding
on whatever they can get out here.
And you have giant, massive, scary looking creatures
that don't exist anymore.
Like giant armadillos, (laughing)
which are the size of Volkswagen Beetles.
Could you imagine going outside and there's
two Volkswagen Beetles fighting? (laughing)
Right out front.
All running around Texas on the plains
and territories out there.
Who's not in Texas?
People, that's exactly right.
There are no people in Texas, about 12,000 years ago.
But that's about to change.
So people start coming to Texas at the end
of the last ice age, as part of this massive migration
that's been happening into North America, and out of Asia.
When those polar ice caps and the ice age themselves
start sucking up so much water,
you have a land bridge that's being formed over here,
the Bering Strait.
That allows land passage from Asia into North America.
And so based on our best archeological evidence,
and the best materials that we can come up with,
and our finds, it seems that man, early man,
started coming into North America,
about 20,000 years ago.
Started coming into North America along this way,
right over here.
Migrating their way in, as you can see from these arrows,
making their way south slowly and surely.
Why, why are they coming into North America?
Did they look across the Bering Strait
and say that looks fabulous over there,
I can't wait to go check that out?
They're looking for food.
That's exactly right.
What food are they looking for?
Male Student: Meat.
-: Meat, yes, they're following the herds of animals
that they eat.
They're following Giant Bison herds,
they're following Mastodons,
they're following everything that makes it's way down
into this territory.
And so they're going very slowly.
They don't know they're coming to North America.
This isn't their plan, this isn't what they've
been trying to accomplish.
They're making their way in slowly one step at a time.
And so it takes a very long time for them to make
their way through it.
You gotta understand, the glaciers are about down to here.
So this is no easy going.
And a lot of the grazing animals have been pushed down
because of the glaciers, down this direction,
into places like Texas.
So the first people, as far as we know,
as far as the evidence shows us,
the first people to come into North, come into Texas,
arrived about 12,000 years ago, migrating into Texas.
How would they have come into Texas?
What would have been the highway into Texas for them?
(student mumbles)
Say what?
The plains, it's exactly right.
They came in down through the plains,
the southern high plains down into
the north and central middle plains right here.
Why would that have been their way in?
Male Student: Following herds.
-: They're following herds, that's exactly right.
That's their food source, that's what they're following.
So they're coming in following the Mastodon herds,
they're coming in following the Giant Bison
and they're making way into the territory.
And for that reason, they stay almost exclusively
in this territory here.
They don't go into the Eastern Piney Woods,
it's full of trees.
It's full of plant life of all sorts
that they don't need to deal with.
They don't go in the Gulf Coastal plain.
They stay mostly in this area right here,
and down around far West Texas,
because they're chasing these guys.
That is a Giant Bison.
And it is much bigger than the modern Bison.
You guys know what a modern Bison looks like right?
Alright, that's pretty big.
That's pretty scary.
This guy is way bigger and way scarier than that.
Look at his giant massive horns.
If you go to the Perot Museum today,
they have a set of these horns, alright,
there on display, next to a modern Bison's horns.
And this guy dwarfs a modern Bison on all counts.
He's a giant beast.
And the way that the early people
who came into Texas survived,
was jabbing pointy sticks into such large
and scary creatures. (laughing)
That's a hard way to make a living.
And a hard way to survive, right?
And so, this is an illustration obviously
of Indians hunting the Giant Bison
by hurdling giant stick in them.
And what they used was this device,
it's just a big long stick.
Which I pronounce as an atlatl,
but it's a way of extending your arm
and extending the force of what you're throwing into there.
But the basic idea is, take the pointy end,
jam it into this giant creature and hope you can kill it.
This is a really tough way to live,
and so we don't have a lot of evidence,
or we don't have a lot of insight into what life was like
for early man in Texas.
But we know it was a sort of Hobbesian existence,
nasty, brutish and short kind of thing.
Most of the evidence that we have of early people in Texas,
comes from kill sites of Bison, and things like that.
One thing that they would like to do is try to stampede
them off of cliff, if they possibly could.
So think of like Palo Duro Canyon or something like that.
Where you get fire and you start running towards a herd,
and try to stampede them a direction
and if they all go over the cliff then they all get killed,
and then you have a big kill site, that you can eat off of.
Which is way easier than killing them with spears, right?
We also know from cave painting
and things in this area down here around Big Bend,
that they had a rich cultural life,
religious ideas of various sorts.
Many of which we're still piecing together,
some wonderful museums in Texas,
that talk about all kinds of insights that we've had
into early people.
One of the earliest evidence we actually have of early man,
is actually right up here in North Texas where we are today,
when their excavating the Little Elm Dam,
and they found some early campsites of people in Texas.
Some of the earliest opportunities we have to understand
and know much about people in Texas.
But that's about all we really know on a large scale.
There are people who devote their whole careers to this
and know more than I do.
As a general rule, we don't know a whole lot beyond the fact
that they stayed in this area,
and that at the end of the last ice age,
as the ice age is ending, things got harder for them.
Why, because when the ice age started ending,
so did a lot of the giant beast that they would
like to jab pointy sticks into in order to survive.
Their food sources started dying.
Giant Bison started dying off
eight to nine thousand years ago.
And that made things difficult.
That's what you survived on, that's what you ate,
that what you built your life around.
And so when they started dying off,
because they couldn't adapt as well
to the warming conditions.
When you're a giant beast like that,
it's part of ways to conserve heat
and so getting rid of heats very difficult.
And so that became part of the problem.
And then a terrible drought hit Texas,
about 7,000 years ago, persisted on and off
for about 4,000 years.
That is a really long drought to have to deal with, right?
So you've got you're food source is dying off,
and then you've got a 4,000 year drought,
things are really tough.
So my question for you guys is,
what do you do when all of your food is disappearing
at the end of the last ice age?
Stand up if you think you just give up.
Stand up if you think you have to adapt.
Exactly, you have to adapt.
But the question is how?
How do you adapt?
So what do they do?
What would you do?
(student mumble)
Say what?
Planting, yes you could plant food.
They developed agriculture,
but that's gonna take a long time.
So they adapt in different ways early on,
and then they'll move their way to agriculture.
Yes sir.
Yeah so he said, "expand outward from the plains."
This is your main territory right here, move out.
Move in different directions.
Why would that be a useful thing to do?
You can hunt other things.
You can go find other sources of food
outside the plains region.
The plains region is dominated by these grazing animal.
Because that's what it is, it's a grassland savanna.
Since you can't eat grass,
you gotta go look somewhere else for food.
And look for other sources that you can find,
in order to feed yourself.
Yes sir.
Male Student: In East Texas there's a resource
that's scarce on the plains being wood.
-: Yes that's absolutely true.
You get a lot of...
He said there's a lot of trees in the East Piney Woods,
that's why it's called the East Piney Woods,
and so you have a lot of resources in terms of food
for cooking and things like that.
You could also actually turn those into weapons,
and things like that, absolutely.
You diversify in every direction you can.
You move out into different directions.
Some groups go in the East Piney woods,
some go down top the Gulf Coastal plain,
some, as we'll talk about, get forced into the valley,
and a few hardy souls stay out here.
But most people abandon the plains.
One of the big innovations is that
the bow and arrow is developed, not discovered so much,
but developed and comes to Texas by about 600 AD.
Or at least that's the earliest evidence
that we have currently,
of bows and arrows being used in Texas.
And that's for hunting smaller game,
that's the real difference right there.
Is they start hunting smaller game, hunting deer,
and rabbits and other sorts of stuff.
They'd always try to hunt things
when they could on the plains,
but here your diversifying food sources in all directions.
They also start fishing.
And so you get evidence of fishing as well.
And then as you said about planting food,
by about 600 or so, they also start planting corn.
And corn had been around obviously for a long time.
Corn had migrated up from Mexico up into Texas,
and it appears in Texas aroundish the same time
we have early evidence of the bow and arrow in Texas.
We're growing and domesticating plants of various sorts,
while they're hunting all kinds of different creatures.
And so, by about 600 AD or so, when you have...
The earliest peoples moving into all kinds of directions,
and developing as separate from each other.
East Texas starts developing separately,
these territories out here,
and so you got these different cultures and groups
and ultimately tribes that start developing differently
in different parts of Texas.
Adapting to their geography.
This is why we said geography matters.
They're moving to different parts of Texas,
and adapting to specific geographies of those areas.
And so, by the time you get to 1500 (chuckles)
this is the geography of Indians in Texas,
as best we know.
Which is amazing, we started with dinosaurs,
and we're already up to 1500 AD.
That moved pretty fast.
We're gonna slow down. (laughing)
Now I gotta go at that pace.
So by 1500, this is the basic geography
that we have of Texas.
These are the different groups that we need to go around
and start discussing, where they are,
and how they're adapted to the particular geographies.
So, lets start up here with the Caddos.
Where are the Caddos?
Say it loudly.
Students: East Piney Woods.
-: East Piney Woods that's exactly right.
What is the East Piney Woods like?
Student: Woody.
-: Woody, yes. (laughing)
It's lush, right?
Good soil types, right?
Great place to grow things, trees or otherwise, right?
The Caddos are up in a very lush area.
It's a very rich geography for them.
And so, the Caddos by the time you get to about 1500 AD,
have developed a very powerful and rich society.
The Caddos farm, they live in sedentary villages.
They grow their own food,
and there's actually a very large Caddolin society,
up here along the Mississippi River Valley.
So the Caddos in Texas are a part of this much larger
group of about 200,000 people we think,
up in the Mississippi River Valley territories there
in far East Texas.
And they're, as far as the Indians in Texas at 1500,
they're rich, they're doing well.
Because of their geography.
Because they can grow corn, and they can grow enough of it,
that they can have surplus corn.
They can trade to other people, they can use for
developing economic influence, and military prowess.
And so, by the time you get to 1500,
you have these Caddolian villages that are highly organized,
very well maintained, very well structured,
there's a government structure that maintain relations
between all of them.
They're interconnected, they have the main trade networks
all over the territories, and if there's a power dynamic,
amongst Indians in Texas,
the Caddos are basically at the top of that power dynamic.
They're in one of the most lush and fertile areas
and so as a result, they have one of the better situations.
Their geography is something that
they have taken advantage of in ways that allows them to
thrive and flourish.
Does that make sense?
So the Atakapas.
You start going down here, south of the Caddos,
down around the coast, right around the modern border
of Texas and Louisiana, Jefferson county territory,
we're we'll visit Spindletop in 1901, whenever we get there.
Atakapas, where are they?
Student: Near the coast.
-: Coast, East Texas, right.
But along the coast right down there.
What is the geography of that territory like?
Speak up, speak up, speak up.
(students mumbling)
Swampy, wet, absolutely.
Is it fertile?
Yes, do you wanna grow a lot of food there?
Maybe not in the swamps. (chuckles)
It's a very fertile territory,
but it is also a challenging territory.
By the end of the last ice age, things have warmed up,
obviously the coastline retreated
when the polar ice caps melted a little bit
to the modern coastline right here.
But it's a swampy area, it's hot humid,
there's mosquito everywhere, much as there are today.
It's a more challenging environment, and it's not quite
what the Caddos have, right?
It's not bad, but it's not quite the Caddos have.
So the Atakapas aren't quite as structurally organized,
and as rich in terms of what they're able to produce,
what they're able to use their surplus corn for,
in terms of trade networks and things like that.
They're a little further down the power dynamic
from the Caddos.
The Caddos are a much more powerful group than they are.
But they're doing okay in this territory right here.
Taking advantage of what they have here,
fishing, surviving along the coast.
You go further down the coast, and you have the Karankawas.
You all remember the Karankawas from fourth
and seventh grade Texas history?
Students: Yes.
-: This is the group that we
always talk about for some reason.
Where are the Karankawas?
Near the coast right?
Modern Galveston, Houston, down not quite all the way
to Corpus, maybe.
Along the coastal territories right there.
What is that geography like?
(student mumbles)
-: Hot, humid, swampy in some cases.
Depends on where you are.
Sandier as you get closer to the coast,
not quite as lush as the territories up here.
And so the Karankawas are very different than the Caddos.
The Caddos are highly organized structurally.
They're very integrated.
The Karankawas are actually a group of different tri,
or different groups of people,
who all share a common language.
But they're not as deeply organized,
and as cohesive as the Caddos by any means, shape, or form.
They are much more loose band of people who are affiliated,
who live in this territory.
And where they're living is a challenging territory,
in many ways, especially along the coast region right there.
And so, if you're living along the coast
around where Houston is today, what would you eat?
What would you survive on?
Students: Fish.
-: Fish, yes they definitely fish.
What else would be down there?
Female Student: Alligators.
-: Alligators, that's exactly right.
One of the things they hunt is alligators.
How are you gonna kill an alligator?
(students shouting)
Without a gun. (laughing)
Yes, that pointy stick thing, they were using on Giant Bison
is still around, and they would jab them in the eye.
Imagine hunting a alligator by stabbing it in the eyeball.
That sounds like a really tough way to live. (chuckles)
They loved alligator for a lot of reasons.
You could eat it obviously, but the alligator grease
was terrific because you could smear it
over your entire body
and it was a natural mosquito repellent.
Which if anybodies been to Houston,
and dared to go outside. (laughing)
That is something that is very necessary
for surviving in this territory.
They were very warlike group from what we know.
Now I gotta emphasize, a lot of what we think we know about
these groups, comes from the Spanish.
Early explorers and a lot of their accounts.
This isn't like we have the Karankawa history
of being Karankawan, or anything like that,
that gives us a deep insight
to what their daily lives were like.
These are observations from the outside.
So when I say things like, the Karankawas have a reputation
for being warlike, that is usually Spanish people saying,
they were very warlike, and all of that.
They were definitely a group not to be messed with.
And they definitely were aggressive in terms of protecting
themselves and protecting their different groups
and things like that.
The name Karankawa actually comes from
a derivation of dog lover.
Which apparently they domesticated coyotes,
and so that is one reason that they,
well that's the reason they got the name the Karankawas.
But they're a very fierce group right here,
that is different than the Caddos
and even different than the Atakapas, alright?
And they live along this more challenging territory,
but they've adapted to it, in terms of fishing and hunting
and things like that, and are thriving
and are doing quite well there along the coast.
You move further down and you get the Coahuiltecans.
Where are the Coahuiltecans?
(students mumbling)
Well it's South Texas, going down into the valley territory.
What's the valley like?
Someone said bad. (laughing)
Hot, right, the valleys lovely, we love the valley.
(laughing)
people could be watching from the valley right now.
The valley is hot, it is dry, it is sandy,
and all those territories down there.
It is not a great place to grow food,
unless you have modern irrigation.
It is not an easy place to grow food.
And so, down in the valley right there,
is not a place that you would voluntarily go.
So the Coahuiltecans aren't really a tribe.
The Coahuiltecan are basically a mishmash
of different Indian groups, who were pushed down into
this territory by other Indians in the region.
So we say Coahuiltecan, Coahuiltecan is just a term
that basically means Coahuila and Texas.
Coahuila is the state that we'll be later in Mexico
right here, this is obviously Texas.
So the Coahuiltecans are groups of Indians,
who live down in this territory here,
kinda shoved down into this region.
Having been pushed out of more fertile areas
like East Texas by other tribes like the Caddos, Atakapas,
Karankawas and folks like that over here.
This is not where you wanna go.
So if you're talking about the power dynamics in Texas,
the Caddos are at the top,
and the Coahuiltecans are down near the bottom.
Some of the weaker groups, the folks who are scrounging by
in this territory and barely surviving.
Again we know that in part
because of later Spanish explorers,
who described the dire straights the Coahuiltecans endured
out in this territory.
Any questions about that stuff up till there?
So lets move on to West Texas, where we have the Jumanos.
Yes sir.
Male Student: In terms of the Coahuiltecans,
would that people who would cross the river from the tribes.
-: You mean would cross what would be
the modern Rio Grande, down here?
It's kind of a whole area.
We're talking about, in our class right here,
we're talking about South Texas groups.
They move back and forth migrating trying to find foods
at various points.
And so you have different groups down here
on both sides of the river.
But primarily again for this class we're talking about
the ones that are in South Texas specifically.
So the Jumanos, where are the Jumanos?
(students mumbling)
Far West Texas right?
Out near modern Big Bend National Park.
The Jumanos are a kinda hybrid sort of group.
They spend some of their time in villages,
where they had adobe huts,
much like the Pueblos in New Mexico.
So you're thinking about sort of primitive villages
out there, where they would grow corn and things like that
in order to survive.
But they're also on the edge of the plains.
One way that they made their living
and one way that they'd survive,
is that they would migrate out onto the plains territory
right here, and hunt bison as the bison herd migrated
up and down the plains region out there.
So they would split their time essentially
between semi-permanent villages out here,
and the plains region out here.
Trying to take advantage both of the opportunities
in West Texas and the challenges of West Texas.
We're not gonna talk a whole lot about the Jumanos,
'cause they're gonna get hunted to death by the Apaches,
by the 1720s, so they're not gonna show up for very long,
in our class here.
We're gonna skip the Pueblos
'cause they're mostly in New Mexico.
But see the Apaches with the arrow
pointing down to this territory?
You've heard of the Apaches, right?
Where do the Apaches live?
Male Student: The Great Plains.
-: The Great Plains, right?
The live out in the plains territory out there.
What are the plains like?
We've talked about this extensively.
Male Student: Nice and green and flat.
-: Green, flat, grassland territory, right?
So if you're gonna live on the plains, by 1500 AD,
what are you gonna eat?
Are you gonna eat the grass?
(students mumbling)
Bison, yes, alright.
Stand up if you think hunting bison was easy in 1500.
Stand up if you think it was especially difficult by 1500.
That exactly right, it is especially difficult by 1500.
Because you're not hunting Giant Bison anymore,
these are small modern bison.
Which we all know are cuddly beasts
that are really easy to run down. (laughing)
But if your an Apache and your doing this in 1500,
how are you hunting?
(student mumbles)
Not by horseback, not by horseback,
Why are you not hunting on horseback?
(students shouting answers)
There no horses in North America.
He set you up I appreciate it. (laughing)
There are no horses in North America yet.
The Spanish will bring them, okay.
Not on purpose, they're like oh America needs horses,
lets bring them. (laughing)
But they haven't brought horses over yet,
and so as a result, there are no horses.
So, if you're an Apache, how do you hunt?
Male Student: Running.
-: Running, on foot, and maybe with a bow,
but usually a giant spear, just like the primitive people
who were first in Texas.
You hunt on foot, so the average hunting territory
for an Apache was 200 square miles.
For one person.
Can you imagine living this way?
It's like, well I gotta walk around. (laughing)
See if I find any bison, hope so. (laughing)
Like the best that they had were dogs,
that would pull stuff for them.
That's the beast of burden that they have available to them.
So, here's something I want to emphasize to you guys.
If you're writing your notes down, write this down.
The Apaches are a weak group.
They're not powerful, they're not fearsome,
they are a weak group, because they're in a particularly
challenging territory on the plains right here.
Every other Indian group, abandoned this territory,
'cause it was too hard to live there.
That's where they make their home.
They will be transformed later into the fierce
and powerful group, because of the arrival of the horse.
When they reinvent themselves as a horse culture.
But for now they are not
a terrifying scary group, whatsoever.
Our last group right here is the Wichitas,
up there in Cross Timbers section were we are here
in North Texas that transition zone
between the plains and East Texas,
you know they're up here in Oklahoma, the Panhandle,
and North Texas here.
What's that territory the Wichitas are living in?
What's that like?
(students mumbling)
It is a Cross Timbers territory, transition zone
between the East and Central Texas, right?
So the Wichitas take advantage of both things.
Much like the Jumanos do
living on the edge of the plains out here.
Does that make sense?
So the Wichitas have permanent villages.
They grow food much like the Caddos do.
But they also migrate, just like the Jumanos do,
out into the plains to hunt the bison,
to take advantage of those opportunities out there,
and they go back and forth.
Almost all these groups are trading with each other,
when they have the opportunities, and the Caddos
are the trade masters of the region.
They're the ones who are kind of at the center
of so much of the commerce that happens
between all the different Indian tribes in Texas,
during this early, early period.
You guys have any questions
about any of those Indian groups up until now?
Yes sir.
Male Student: I have a question about the Apaches.
If they're traveling so far to get to their food,
do they like take their camp and set it wherever
they get kills, or do they drag stuff
all the way back to camp?
-: Yeah, so the question is how much do they migrate?
And the answer is a lot!
They migrate as much as they have to.
And they are constantly following the herds.
So that's the main migration points.
But then the hunters would then go out, kill,
and then you know you bring as much food back as you can.
But they don't have horses to pack any of that stuff on.
So you have a huge number of limitations
on what you're able to do
and how much you can really sustain.
Which means that the Apaches, again when foods that hard
to come by, you can't build up population numbers
in great significance, as a result as well.
You have these like, bottlenecks essentially,
of how many calories you can bring in,
throughout this time period that keeps down their numbers.
Which major Indian group is not in Texas by 1500?
Male Student: The Comanches.
-: The Comanches, right.
Will become one of the most important and fearsome groups,
and powerful groups within Texas history.
They are not in Texas in 1500.
They're not present, they're not on our map.
Why not?
Where are the Comanches?
Colorado, yeah, they don't actually exist yet.
The Comanches do not exist yet, alright?
What will become the Comanches are
a part of the Shoshone Indians.
Which are in, up in Colorado, modern day Colorado.
Eastern Colorado, right along the edge
of the mountains right there, you have the Shoshones.
And the Comanches will later shear off from the Shoshones
and form the Comanches after the arrival of the horse.
The horse is what's gonna transform the Apaches
and it's going to create the Comanches.
And that will have a huge impact long term in Texas history,
as the Comanches come down to this territory.
But for now they're not present
and nobody wants to live on the plains,
the Apaches are there but absolutely nobody else.
And so you had this power dynamic kind of around the horn
within Texas, all these different directions.
In terms of North America, is this the
happening place to be for Indians in North America?
Male Student: Not really.
-: No, absolutely not.
This is a far off little forgotten corner of North America.
These tribes are only a part of a larger migration,
that has populated both North and South America,
by the time you get to 1500.
And I wanna emphasize, Texas is on the edge of all of this.
The Indians in Texas are on the very fringes of everything
that's going on right here.
I'm gonna give you some population numbers here.
By the time you get to about 1500 our best estimates,
is that you have about 12 million Indians
living in modern day North America.
That is, by North America I mean specifically,
Canada and the United State.
About 12 million Indians living in that territory.
As you go further south, you get way more people.
In modern day Mexico, which is a part of North America,
but in modern day Mexico, you have 35 million people.
So just think about that difference right there.
There are only 12 million in modern day United States,
and Canada territories, there are 35 million
in was modern day Mexico.
And then, you know haw many are down here in South America?
60 million, alright?
So you got 12, 35, 60 million people,
all these territories.
The Indians in Texas are on the very edge and very fringe
of all these territories.
They're on the very edge of all of this stuff.
Why are there so many people further south?
Male Student: They have the Equator.
-: Closer to the Equator, closer to the sun essentially
that you are.
And so the further down you get, where the Equators
right here, you get much larger populations.
It's colder and much more difficult to live
the further north you go up this direction right here.
But Texas is on the very fringe.
The Indians in Texas are on the very fringe.
To give you a context point.
The happening place to be in North America, at this time,
around 600 AD would be the Mayan civilization
that's forming in the southern portions of modern day Mexico
down in the Yucatan.
And the Mayans are building this massive civilization
around 600 AD.
Where you have, you know these incredible city-states
that are developing down here
in the modern day Yucatan Peninsula.
You have these city-states that are being built out of
the jungle, that are incredible.
They're absolutely massive structures,
beautiful things that are still being recovered
from the jungles today.
Has anybody been to like Chichen Itza
or any place like that?
Can you describe what Chichen Itza is like?
Female Student: Intricate.
-: Yeah they're very intricate, right?
They're very elaborate places.
(student mumbling)
Yeah the architecture is astounding of these places, right?
And it's amazing they built all this without the wheel.
They didn't have that ability to move all these stones
into this territory.
But the build these massive structures,
these incredible temples.
The learning and the sophistication
of the Mayan civilization is really astounding.
They're ability to understand astrological phenomenon,
and to align their architecture to all of this stuff.
Their sophistication in math and science
is absolutely astounding and truly humbling.
I mean they have these massive temples that are aligned
to like Venus' one time it goes past Mars,
and aligns with our moon, it happens only every 420 years.
And they build this thing that aligns just perfectly
like that so like Indiana Jones style some light thing
comes into the temple at just the right moment.
And just as a contrast point, I wanna point out
while the Mayans are doing this, the Indians in Texas
are saying, look at this we can eat corn. (laughing)
This is amazing, you put it in the ground, more comes up.
(laughing)
We should do this as often as possible.
Which is not to denigrate the Indians in Texas,
it's only to point out the edge of all of this
that the Texas Indians are on.
They're not at the center of anything,
they are on the very fringes of absolutely everything.
But the Mayan civilization
starts to disappear around 900 AD.
They hit their peak around 600
and then they start to disappear around 900 AD.
And for reasons that we're still not terribly clear about.
Some people have speculated that they
caused their own demise, because of deforestation,
and environmental destruction in the territory.
But we're not really sure.
But when they disappear they leave a power vacuum here
in what is modern day Mexico.
And around 1300 AD, another group moves into the territory
takes advantage of that vacuum, which would be the Aztecs,
moving into north of where the Mayans were
into modern day Central Mexico.
Or they move into the modern valley of Mexico,
basically the site of modern day Mexico City.
They move into the territory from the north,
we're not 100% certain where the Aztecs came from.
The had a story about them coming from the northern
territories, Aztlan, and then they move
into Central Mexico, right here.
And what we think of the Aztecs and it's often described as
an Aztec Empire, but the Aztecs were really a conglomeration
of the city-states, that were related,
that were integrated to each other.
Obviously, all part of the same culture,
language and all that sort of stuff.
But it's much more like the Greek city-states
in certain sense, where you have Athens, and Sparta,
and they're all Greek and all that sort of stuff.
The Aztecs are a little bit more like that.
The have all their different city-states around each other.
The most powerful of which was Tenochtitlan,
the most powerful and influential
and the one that most people tend to know.
It was based with it's city Tenochtitlan
in the middle of a lake, which is again
the site of modern day Mexico City,
where they built their massive city there.
And you have all these other city-states
around the territory here that they interact with,
and deal with and all that sort of stuff.
And the way the Aztecs worked,
is that they would concur their neighbors.
They came in they were very militaristic,
very fierce group, they would move into a territory
and then they would take over their neighbors,
and when they took over their neighbors,
the would subjugate them.
Alright, say alright, you, you are now controlled
by the Aztec Empire, and you need to pay tribute
to the Aztec Empire.
This is a way that they built up their wealth,
and therefore their power as a result of this,
they brought in they told these different tribes,
alright now that your subjugated to us,
you need to pay us food, and sacrifice victims
for our religious ceremonies.
And so, the thing about it was, much like the Romans
would build their empire by taking over people
all around them, the Aztecs did the same thing.
The difference is that the Romans would incorporate you
into the Roman Empire, you could become Roman.
The Aztecs, you could not become Aztec.
You did not get incorporated into the society
in the same way shape or form.
The result is something really important
that you should write down.
The Aztecs are surrounded by groups that hate them.
And that will turn out to be important,
when the Spanish arrive in not too terribly long from then.
Here's the situation, by the time we get to 1500 AD.
The Aztecs have built a massive and powerful empire
in this territory right here,
that stretches in terms of it's economic and political reach
far beyond the city-states around modern day Mexico City.
Up here in Texas the Indians in Texas know nothing that.
They've never heard of the Aztecs,
they are part of trade networks that reach all the way down
into Central Mexico.
So they're a part of some of these larger trade networks.
But the Indians in Texas have nothing to do with that
beyond that and don't know anything about it.
They're still very excited about their corn.
They're excited about their bows and arrows,
things are going as decently as they can for the Caddos,
and some of the other groups.
But they don't know anything about
what's going on down here.
What none of them know, is that there's some very pasty
white guys, who have recently showed up right out here,
in the Caribbean as the Spanish have arrived.
And are about to change everything
because the arrival Spanish is going to rework
and reorder daily life for all Indians in the Americas,
and particularly for the ones in Texas,
that we're gonna be talking about here.
So we're at section two now, Spanish Explorations.
So I'm gonna pause real fast before we go into section two.
Any questions from section one.
Yes sir.
Male Student: About the ice age, this (mumbles).
So which ice age was this 12,000 years ago?
-: No we're actually not in an ice age right now.
Yeah, we're out of an ice age, the world is still warming.
Absolutely, but we the last ice age, the fifth ice age,
started 2 1/2 million years ago,
and ended about 10,000 years ago.
And so we're out of that.
Some people call the 19th century the little ice age,
'cause it got a little cooler for a short while,
but we're not in an official ice age actually right now, so.
Yes ma'am.
Female Student: So you said that the Aztecs concurred
surrounding territories similar to the way
that the Romans did, so the Romans, (mumbles)
historians point to them having done that,
simply that they had to go concur those people,
whether it be to protect their own assets
or protect the people that they are.
Is there any evidence to point that Aztecs did that,
or were the truly (mumbles) resources.
-: I think it's probably a combination of both,
I mean there's a fierce competition for all resources
in the territory, and you know, I think it also depends
on your perspective if you're an Aztec,
you're saying, of course we had to do this,
to support ourselves.
This is the way it needs to be.
And if you're not an Aztec you say, no,
that's incredibly ridiculous, you shouldn't have done that,
that was unnecessary from the very beginning.
Female Student: So there's evidence of them like
explaining why they did this?
-: I don't personally know of like a dear diary,
we the Aztecs did this for this particular reason.
But you know a lot of, unfortunately after the Spanish
took over the Aztecs, they destroyed huge numbers
of the written materials from the Aztecs, the codices,
that the Aztecs had kept.
There was some rescued, we still have many we've been
decoding the language ever since.
So we know a lot about them, but there's actually
very big gaping holes unfortunately,
about what we're able to know about some aspects of that.