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Our Catholic Heritage in Texas
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consisted of firearms, bows and arrows, the spear, the leather jacket or cuera, the shield, and a cap or helmet frequently adorned with horns or gaudy feathers. Their superb horsemanship, dexterity in the use of firearms, and endurance, coupled with their cruelty, made them formidable enemies. They were generally hated by all the other tribes. The Wiclzitas. Under this group, ethnologists now include the Wichitas proper, the Taovayas, the Tawakonis (called by the Spaniards Tahuacanas or Tuacanas), the Yscanis, and the Kichais or Quitseys. Speaking of these tribes, Mooney says that they were "a confederacy of Caddoan stock, closely related linguistically to the Pawnees, and formerly ranging from the middle Arkansas River southward to the Brazos River, of which general region they appear to be the aborigines, antedating the Comanche, Kiowa, Mescalero, and Siouan tribes."Zl But the northeastern range of these tribes must now be restricted to the area about the South Canadian in the northeastern portion of the Panhandle of Texas, where the Wichitas were first encountered by Coronado in 1541 in his dash to Quivira. It was among these Indians also that Father Fray Juan de Padilla seems to have suffered his martyrdom. 11 Towards the last third of the eighteenth century, the Panis Mahas or Skiddis, disturbed by the Louisiana cession and the advance of the Osages, seem to have moved from the Missouri River into Texas, where they joined the Taovayas. The entire group, who originally lived along the South Canadian, finally came to occupy the upper Red, Brazos, and Trinity Rivers. They were first known to the Spaniards of New Mexico as the J umanos and to the French as Panipiquets (Tattooed faces) . 23 It was mostly members of this group who attacked the Mission of San Saba. "The civilization of the Wichitas was essentially like that of the Caddos and the Asinais, though they were more warlike, less fixed in their habitat, and more barbarous, even practicing cannibalism extensively. While they spoke a Caddoan dialect or dialects, their language was considerably distinct from that of the Hasinais and the Caddos. The three groups were closely allied, and had as common enemies, on the one hand, the Apaches of: the west, and on the other, the Osages of the north." 24 21Hodge, o,;. cit., part II, 947. ncastaiieda, The Finding of Teras {Our Catholic Heritage in Teras, The Mission Era, l, 105-114.) 2lFor a discussion of the range of the Jumanos in Texas in the early seventeenth century and their relations with the Spaniards, see Castaneda, op. cit., I, 200-201. UBolton, De Mezieres, I, 24.
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