The Field and Its Workers 5 above that of the Karankawas. Their friends and allies were the Attacapas, the Aranames (Xaranames), and the Bidais. In 1756 the Presidio of San Agustin de Ahumada was founded in their midst and the mis- sionaries endeavored to gather them in missions, but to no avail.' The Bidais lived mainly along the Trinity from the lands of the Hasinai Confederacy to its mouth. In this area there is to this day a small creek that still bears the tribal name. Claiming to be the oldest inhabitants in the country where they lived, the tribe maintained its identity in spite of having been practically surrounded by a superior group of Caddoan stock. The Spaniards considered them indolent and treacherous and suspected them of being the means through which the French supplied arms and ammunition to the Lipan Apaches. Unlike the Arkokisas. they cultirnted the soil to some extent and had fixed habitations. In due season they were accustomed to hunt the buffalo that ranged through their territory. 9 The Attacapas ranged from east of the Sabine in present Louisiana west as far as the Neches. Primarily a Louisiana tribe, the close friendship and comradeship that existed between them and the Arkokisas entitled them to a place among the Texas Indians. The name is said to be of Choctaw origin, made up of two words liatak "man" and apa "eats" which would mean "man eaters" or cannibals. Little above the Karankawas in general culture, they do not appear to have cultivated the soil and seem to ha\'e depended for their subsistence mainly on the buffalo, fish, game, and the spoils from shipwrecks along the coast, the survivors of which they were in the habit of murde"ring and devouring. 10 Tlie Hasinai Confederacy. Extending west from Sabine River and occupying the valleys of the Angelina and upper Neches was a close union of Indian nations known as the Hasinai (Asinai, Cenis, Tejas or Texas) Confederacy, which consisted of ten or more tribes. The best known of these were the Hainai, Nacogdoche, Nabedache, Nasoni, Nadoco, and Neche. Tejas or Texas seems to have been a common word 8 Bolton, I bid., Chabot, Indian Excerpts, 3-4, Hodge, op. cit., part I, 87-88; Castaneda, Morfi's History of Texas, part I, So. 9 Hodge, op. cit., part I, 145, Castaneda, op. cit., part I, 81-82; Chabot, op. cit., 4. 18 Hodge, op. cit., part I, 114; Castaneda, op. cit., So; Chabot, op. cit., 2. Dr. John R. Swanson has added much information concerning this and other tribes of southwestern and western Louisiana in his splendid study Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley a11tl adjacent coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin no. 43.
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