Our Catliolic Heritage in T e:cas
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of greeting, meaning "friend," by which the members of the confederacy addressed each other. Unaware of this fact at first, the Spaniards, misled by the false rumors of the Great Kingdom of the Texas, applied this name to the tribes in this area, when they first came in contact with them in 1689. But the industrious and painstaking missionary Father Fray Francisco de Jesus Maria Casanas, a close and intelligent observer, soon discovered the mistake and in his long report to the viceroy on the Indians of this region, he clearly pointed out that they did not constitute a kingdom, that the chief called "governor" by the Spaniards was not the head chief, that the correct name of the group of tribes was not Texas, that this word meant friend, and that the proper name of the confederacy among whom the missions had been founded was Aseney or Asenay. 11 But the original name persisted and although it was first applied to the limited area between the Sabine, the Angelina, and the upper Neches, in time it came to designate the entire province with its changing boundaries and ever increasing area. This confederacy, however, did not at any time extend their range or habitat as far as the Trinity River as some have erroneously supposed, but confined the western limits of their rancherias to the upper Neches River. Their language and culture has definitely established them as a branch of the Caddoan stock. The Asinais or Hasinais, at the time when the Spaniards first met them, were a settled people who appear to have been established a long time in the place, where they were found by La Salle in 1687. They are the Cenis of the French accounts. They lived in large conical grass lodges, in scattered agricultural villages, and raised good crops of maize, beans, pumpkins and sunflowers. They varied their diet with small game, bear, and deer found in the neighborhood, and by buffalo from the plains beyond the Brazos, where they were in the habit of hunting at certain seasons. This group of Indians constituted by far the most highly civilized of those encountered by the Spaniards in Texas and it was among them that the first missions in east Texas were established. But an inherent aversion to being congregated in missions and the close proximity to and consequential relations with the French proved insur- mountable obstacles to their final conversion to Christianity and the ways 11 Carta de Fray Francisco de Jesus Maria Casanas to the Viceroy, August 1 5, 1691. This Interesting letter has been published by Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher in translation under the title "Description of the Tejas or Asinai Indian, 1691-1722," Quart1rly, Volume 30, pp. 206-219; 283-305; Vol. 31, pp. 50-63; 130-150. The original MS. was acquired by A. & M. College and later given to the University of Texas, where it ls kept In the Archives.
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