Gateway to Texas: The History of Orange and Orange County Page: 19
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GATEWAY TO TEXAS
Calcasieu. A council deliberated whether the bodies
should be cooked for food, for food was scarce. The
bodies roasted in a pit, but finally the shaman gave it
as his opinion that if the Attakapas were to eat the
flesh of white men, their skin would become spotty.
Albinism, somewhat prevalent and well known among
Indians, was not considered a desirable possession, so
the cannibal feast did not take place.
As for the more mundane aspects of their diet,
certainly the chief foodstuffs came from the
bays, rivers, lagoons, ponds, and bayous whose
shores the Attakapas inhabited. The shell mid-
dens that accumulated from the clams, oysters,
and crabs that were so abundant have already
been mentioned. Alligator specialties were also
prominent in the diet.
At times the Attakapas were known to plant
corn, although because of their pursuit of game
and fish, and the gathering of other foods which
grew wild, they usually did not prefer the farm-
ing life. They rounded out their diet with bird
eggs and "wild potatoes" (probably wild chin-
quapins). Furthermore, according to De Belle-
isle, "when it rains no one goes out to look for
food ..."
The Attakapas had no temples, and religion
did not seem to play a large part in their every-
day lives. One religious belief was that their men
came from the sea, having been cast up to the
shore in large oyster shells. However, in view of
the fact that the Attakapas were probably an in-
land tribe some centuries ago, it is likely that
they borrowed this legend from the Karankawas.
They also believed that men who had died by
snake bite and those who had been eaten byother men could not enter the second life (which
explained their reasoning in eating their ene-
mies). Curiously, the Attakapas also held that
there had been a great deluge that destroyed all
the people in the world, except for a few who
lived on a mountain or high land.
Interesting among the Attakapas' customs was
their manner of taking names. Fathers renamed
themselves at the birth of their first son or when
their sons became famous. A father would re-
sume his old name if his son died.
The male Attakapas limited their clothing to
breechclouts, adding an animal skin robe (fre-
quently with the tail on) during cold weather.
Their women wore simple skirts of skins, with a
hole cut in the middle to facilitate gathering the
garment around the waist with thongs. They
were called Flatheads by early white settlers be-
cause of their custom of strapping their babies to
boards, which caused their skulls to develop this
way.
One of their stranger customs was that they
"wailed" their greetings. Upon first hearing it,
De Belleisle said he feared for his life; he later
learned that they wailed for good news as well as
bad.
In many customs, such as hunting, fishing,
dancing, cooking, and others, the Attakapas fol-
lowed the Karankawas, "but there was no racial
affinity whatever; the Karankawas being tall,
slender, agile, light-skinned, yellow-haired, and
with regular features and white teeth". Although
the Attakapas had their own language, in speak-
ing with white men they used the Caddoan dia-
lect (and, in fact, were at first thought to have19
been Caddoan). However, a few of their words,
especially those relating to fish and fishing, were
identical with the ancient Karankawan words.
Although nature provided the Attakapas with
most of their needs, they did trade some with
surrounding tribes. Dyer writes, "The Attakapas
were too lazy to tan skins of beasts or of large
fish." Their pottery was mostly made for them
by tribes to the north, except for the large con-
ical jugs for alligator oil which they got from the
Karankawas. In exchange, the Attakapas traded
sharks' teeth, marine curios, dried or smoked
fish, plumes and feathers from various water-
fowl, and feather pelts of eiderdown from the
breasts of geese, these latter being highly prized
for ornamentation by the Creoles. Seaweed (for
medicine) was also a popular item for the Atta-
kapas to trade.
No one knows for sure exactly what became of
the Attakapas. Certainly the intrusion of colonial
Spain and France put them into decline. Court-
house records contain no mention of Indians
along the Neches and Sabine rivers or around
Sabine Lake from about 1785. Possibly this indi-
cates that the Attakapas had already disappeared
from this area. The scholar Castaneda reported,
"In 1779, the tribe was estimated to number loo
warriors. There were 9 survivors in 1908." Fi-
nally, in 196i W.W. Newcomb wrote, "Some
Bidais are said to have been intermarried with
the Koasatis, and their descendants, if any, on
the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation in
Polk County are the only Texas natives who re-
main in the state today."
Dorothy Couser
Dr. Russell Long
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Williams, Howard C. Gateway to Texas: The History of Orange and Orange County, book, 1988; Orange, Tex.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39146/m1/37/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .