The Field and Its Workers
II
But this opinion concerning the character of the Wichitas, who gave their name to one of the tributaries of the Red River and one of the cities of the State, is contradicted by Morfi, who had access to numerous first-hand sources. Speaking particularly of the Taovayas, he says: "They are very industrious, and there is not a house in which four or five vessels filled with large quantities of beans and pumpkins are not seen. The latter they preserve from one year to the next by cutting them in long strips and weaving them curiously like mats. They also raise watermelons, melons, and tobacco in abundance .... "The government of these Indians is democratic, without the exclusion of women, and this justly so, since it is the latter who contribute most to the welfare of the republic. The women tan, sew, and paint the skins, fence-in the fields, sow the grain, care for the cornfields, harvest the crops, gather and keep the seeds, cut and fetch the firewood, prepare the food, build the houses, and rear the children ... They are cheerful, affable, and very docile in their manners, compassionate toward the sick, the orphans, and the widows, respectful to their elders, generous with strangers, kind to guests. But in general they are more resentful of injuries received than grateful for benefits conferred. They are extremely cruel with the prisoners they take in war, but this practice seems more an ill-advised reprisal than natural cruelty." 25 The Coalmiltecan Tribes. The various groups of Indian nations described heretofore, formed the outer fringe that encircled the province of Texas like a half moon from Galveston Bay to the mouth of the Sabine, hence north to the big bend of the Red River, and hence west to the headwaters of the Colorado. Behind this outer fringe there were other tribes found chiefly between the lower San Antonio River and the lower Rio Grande. Ranging from the coast inland, between the two streams mentioned, as far as the Camino Real, the main highway of the eighteenth century from the Mission of San Juan Bautista on the Rio Grande, slightly below present Eagle Pass, to the city of San Antonio, there was a remarkably large number of small and weak tribes, which are now generally designated by the common name of Coahuiltecan. Bolton has identified as many as seventy different tribes within this region. They all seem to have spoken or understood a common language, which ethnologists have called Pakawa and which Orozco y Berra, an eminent student of native languages, calls Tejano or Coahuilteco. "I call
25 Castafieda, Morfi's History of Te:ras, part I, 86-87.
Powered by FlippingBook