The Tonkawa and Escansaque, In and Out of Texas

The question I want to answer here is: who were the original indigenous inhabitants of Central Texas?  More specifically, since I have chosen 1600 as the arbitrary starting point of my chronological map of North America: who, in the year 1600, inhabited the portion of Texas located south of the Red River, east of the Jumanos, west of the Caddo confederacies, and north of the Sanans and Coahuiltecans?  I.e. how do I fill in the empty portions of this map?

Texas, ca. 1600 A.D. (slightly modified from previous post)

Most historical maps of Texas or North America will, as usual, be wrong here.  They'll put the Comanches in the western part of Central Texas, the Tonkawas in the south, and usually the Wichitas in the region around Waco—all wrong.  Usually the Jumanos will be ignored entirely, and you'll likely never see a map that so much as acknowledges the existence of the Sanans.  Sometimes they will even show the Kiowa residing in Texas in the 15th or 16th centuries, which is an error of a thousand miles or so.

Part of answering this question is determining the easternmost extent of the Jumanos' territory.  The farthest east I have seen them depicted on a map is the following from Lockhart (1997):

The different shape of this compared with Jumano territory as shown on my map is due to Lockhart’s assumption that the so-called Jumanos of the Salinas region in New Mexico were a different people, distinct from the Jumanos of the Texas buffalo plains.  My maps have mostly been following Nancy Hickerson's research, according to whom the Salinas and Plains Jumanos were the same.  Both theories have merit, but this isn’t the place to argue that point.  Instead, note how Lockhart has the Jumanos stretching all the way across Central Texas—apparently bordering the Caddo: this is much farther east than I've seen anyone else claim for Jumano occupancy, and to me seems implausible.  Lockhart presents this map more-or-less without comment, but I would guess his reasoning is based on the fact that the La Salle expedition sighted Jumanos (“Choumanes”) trading among the Hasinai Caddos in 1686 (Hickerson 1994:165).  However, since according to Hickerson the Jumanos were long-distance traders, it doesn’t necessarily follow from this that their territory extended that far.

So, I can't rely on maps made by other people, meaning I'll have to work from scratch.  This poses a problem, since Central Texas is a very poorly-documented region for the first couple centuries of European contact.  In fact, the regions surrounding it—on the north, south, east, and west—are all better known, from early explorations and entradas during the 17th or even 16th centuries.  By contrast, our first quality witnesses to Central Texas don't really arrive until well into the 18th century.  This means that whatever conclusions I draw about 1600 A.D. will have to be highly speculative, based on very meagre evidence, and probably wrong.  The sparseness of the evidence also means there's a sparseness of modern scholars studying the problem, so I'll have to engage in more original research and speculation than I'd prefer.  Nevertheless, although I am sure to make some errors in my analysis, whatever incorrect information that ends up on my map at the very least won't exceed industry standards...

The earliest account containing any information of value for Central Texas comes from the late 17th century, in a report written by the Franciscan friar Alonso de Posada.  This report, written in either 1686 or 1687, contains a description of North America (as he understood it) beyond the borders of New Mexico—including a dramatic and exaggerated account of the Apaches who, according to him, controlled an empire of over half a million square miles:

"[I]t should be noted that the Apacha nation possesses and controls all the plains of sibola.  The Indians of this nation are so haughty and arrogant and so proud as warriors that they are the common enemy of all the tribes below the northern regions.  They have struck fear to all other tribes and have overrun, ruined and cast most of them out of their own lands.  This tribe occupies, defends and considers itself owner of four hundred leagues of land east and west and two hundred leagues north and south.  In some places along their borders they claim even more territory." (Posada [1686] 1958)

Posada's report is more useful to me, however, for its description of two Spanish expeditions made into the interior of Texas during the middle years of the 17th century: one in 1650, conducted by Hernán Martín and Diego del Castillo [henceforth the "Castillo expedition"], and one four years later in 1654, conducted by Don Diego de Guadalajara.  These expeditions both had as their goal to investigate a settlement of Jumanos living along a river they called the "Rio de las Nueces" (which was probably the Concho, a tributary of the Colorado—however, see below); both expeditions also briefly probed the territory east beyond the Jumanos, downstream along the Concho and Colorado Rivers.  These two reconnoitering missions beyond of the Jumanos are the closest we get to any European exploring Central Texas during the 1600's.

Remember that this "Concho River" is not to be confused with the Rio Conchos in Mexico, this "Colorado River" is not to be confused with the Colorado River in Utah-Colorado, and that this "Nueces River" is not to be confused with the Nueces River in southern Texas.  Here, this map:

The Concho and Colorado Rivers

Alonso de Posada described the 1650 Castillo expedition thusly:

"...they arrived at this spot on the Nueces River in the Jumana Nation.  They stayed there six months because the Indians were friendly and because they found more than enough sustenance... These Captains traveled downstream on an easterly course with a declination to the south through the Indian nations called the Cuytoas, the Escanjaques and Ahijados.  After walking about fifty leagues, they arrived at the border of a nation called Texas. They did not penetrate this territory as they knew it to be very extensive and well populated.  This Texas nation goes forth from north to south the distance [of] probably about a hundred leagues.  In width, from east to west, it is probably about the same distance.  From the eastern border of this nation to the Coast and the Gulf of Mexico it must be about fifty leagues.  These remaining fifty leagues are inhabited by migratory Indians that do not plant nor harvest, for according to the information from near the coast there are many sand dunes and much sandy soil." (Posada [1686] 1958)

Four years later, in 1654, the governor of New Mexico sent Sargento Mayor Don Diego de Guadalajara to the Jumanos to corroborate the Castillo report:

"They found many Jumana Indians who warned the Sargento Mayor that the Cuitoas, Escanjaques and Ahijados were on the warpath.  To verify this information, the Sargento Mayor sent Captain Andrés López, some Christian Indians and many Jumana Indians, who willingly accompanied them to scout the above-mentioned warring nations.  Sargento Mayor, Don Diego de Guadalajara, remained behind with the rest of his men.  After walking some thirty leagues to the east, Captain Andrés López and his company of twelve soldiers, Christian Indians and Jumana Indians, ran across a settlement of Indians of the Cuytoas nation with whom they fought a very fierce battle and learned that Indian bands from the Escanjaques and Ahijados nations were helping the Cuytoas Indians whom they were fighting.  After a battle lasting almost all one day the victory was won by our men with a loss of very few of our Indians, while many were lost by our adversaries.  The victors took two hundred prisoners and booty of bales of hides of antelope, elk and buffalo.  They then returned to the camp of the Jumanas on the Nueces River where Don Diego de Guadalajara, royal servant, had his post." (Posada [1686] 1958)

These descriptions paint a consistent picture of the situation in the 1650's along the Colorado River downstream from the Concho Jumanos (or "east" of them: the Spaniards were evidently a little disoriented).  The first stretch of the river, just below the Jumanos, was controlled by a detente of three tribes comprising the Escansaque, Aijado, and Cuitoa [to use the more common spellings of their names].  The second stretch was controlled by the Texas (or Tejas) Indians, the Spanish name for the Hasinai Caddo.  The third and final stretch, between the Hasinai and the Gulf of Mexico, were migratory hunter-gatherers whom we can suppose to be the Karankawa and Sanan tribes.

The Jumano and the Escansaque-Aijado-Cuitoa seem to have tolerated each other in 1650, if Posada can be believed, but by 1654 the Cuitoas were leading an offensive against the Jumanos, bringing their allies the Escansaque and Aijado along with them.  Nancy Hickerson (1994) surmises that this may have been an effort to cut off the Jumano from the Hasinai and seize the Colorado River trade.  In other Spanish documents, "Escansaque" and "Aijado" both refer to tribes located further to the north—their presence on the Colorado River thus suggests a southward migration or expansion of these tribes (and of the Cuitoa), and that by 1654 they possessed territory stretching from their northern reaches, all the way across Central Texas, at least as far as the Colorado.

And helpfully, Alonso de Posada provides detailed information on the locations of these tribes... or at least of those portions of territory adjacent the Colorado River.  Starting from the mouth of the Concho River, following the course of the Colorado River to its mouth at Matagorda Bay, there were 50 leagues of Escansaque-Aijado-Cuitoa territory, then 100 leagues of Hasinai territory, then 50 more leagues of migratory hunter-gatherer territory before the river reached Matagorda Bay—for a grand total of 200 leagues, or 520 miles.  Matagorda Bay is 302 miles (116 leagues) from the mouth of the Concho, measured linearly as the crow flies, but remember that a river's true length depends upon its sinuosity (its true length divided by the linear distance between its source and its mouth).  The average sinuosity factor for a river to have is 1.94—assuming a sinuosity similar to this for the Colorado, you can calculate its true length as approximately 585 miles, or 225 leagues.  This is acceptably close to the 200 leagues given by Alonso de Posada, especially considering various factors—such as that the Spaniards only traversed the first 50 leagues of the Colorado River (meaning the remaining distance was relayed to them via interpreters and converted from some Native mode of reckoning distance into Spanish leagues), and that "200 leagues" is clearly a neat, rounded-off number anyway.

Using this information, the eastern terminus of Jumano territory seems not to have extended further east than the mouth of the Concho River.  The tribes beyond, along the lower Colorado River, had the borders of their territory like so:

It seems, then, that I have almost everything I need here in order to answer the question "Who Lived In Central Texas?".  Directly east of the Jumanos was a strip of land occupied by the Escansaques and the Aijados, extending contiguously from their homelands in the north nearly all the way to the Colorado River; the Cuitoas, a tribe not otherwise known to be from the north, can be tentatively placed at the southern end of this strip, immediately bordering the river—this would explain why they formed the vanguard of the anti-Jumano offensive in 1654.  Further east, the Hasinai territory stretched from their historic core in East Texas all the way to the middle portion of the Colorado River, thus extending their range much further west-southwestward than most maps of Caddo territory would assert.

Texas, ca. 1600 A.D... or is it?

That just leaves a few spots left on my map to fill, and mostly answers the question of who originally occupied Central Texas... assuming the information is correct, that is.  Is the information correct?

Well...

No, it's not.  At least, it probably isn't.  The thing is: the Alonso de Posada report may be our only source of information for Central Texas in this period, but his description of the Castillo and Guadalajara expeditions is unfortunately rather problematic—for a couple of reasons.  The first is location: we don't even know for certain where this "Rio de las Nueces" that they visited even is.  It certainly isn't the modern Nueces River in southern Texas.  The majority opinion among scholars is that the Rio de las Nueces was identical with the modern Concho River, but this conclusion isn't necessarily obvious.  There are some scholars who identify the "Rio de las Nueces" as one of the rivers further north: the Red, the Canadian, or even the Arkansas River in Kansas.  These alternative hypotheses have some merit: for instance, they would explain the presence of "Tejas" Indians along the middle stretch of the river, since the Red and Arkansas Rivers flow through the heart of Caddo territory... however, as far as I know, "migratory Indians that do not plant nor harvest" doesn't really describe the Chitimacha of Louisiana as well as it does the Karankawa of Texas.

The argument for the "Nueces" being the Concho River mostly hinges on the details of a later expedition.  In 1683, the Jumano leader Juan Sabeata (or "Xaviata") journeyed to El Paso and petitioned the Spaniards for aid against the Apaches, who by that decade were on the verge of completely overwhelming his people.  Sabeata also requested the Spanish send friars, saying that some of the Jumanos and their Indian allies were Christians.  Jironza Petriz de Cruzate, the governor of New Mexico, agreed to this proposal—partly, perhaps, because it was 3 years since the Pueblo Revolt and he wanted to make up for lost colonies.  But a more pressing reason was that Sabeata mentioned other white men sighted further to the east.  To Sabeata, these other whites were simply more Spaniards, but Cruzate correctly inferred that they were their nemeses, the French—specifically, the 1682 scouting mission of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, though Cruzate didn't know that.  Either way, he felt the Spanish urgently needed to establish an in-land beachhead against their imperial rivals, and Sabeata's invitation was a golden opportunity.  An expedition was provisioned and dispatched, led by Juan Domínguez de Mendoza in 1683-4.

Mendoza never accomplished the Spanish colony at Jumanería that Cruzate hoped for, but he did leave a meticulously detailed account of his itinerary, which leaves virtually zero doubt that his destination was the Concho River (Weddle 2010).  As it happens, Mendoza had also been a member of the Guadalajara expedition in 1654.  The assumption that Mendoza would have proceeded to the same Jumano stronghold he visited three decades earlier—supported by the fact that Juan Sabeata himself stated that his home had been visited by Diego del Castillo in 1650—thus lends strong support for concluding that the Concho River is the same "Rio de las Nueces" from the Castillo and Guadalajara expeditions (Wade 2003: 77).

Route of the Castillo and Guadalupe (blue), and Mendoza (red), expeditions (adapted from Skeels 1972)

The balance of evidence seems to support identifying the "Rio de las Nueces" as the modern Concho River.  However, that hypothesis still "leaves certain important details unexplained," according to T. N. Campbell (2010), so the matter remains unresolved.  Unless I see some compelling counter-argument in the future, I will assume that the "Nueces" was the Concho.  However, there still remains another major problem with the Alonso de Posada account: the names of the first three tribes on the Colorado River.  These names—Escansaque, Aijado, and Cuitoa—each have their own problems, and I will discuss each in turn.

I'll start with the Escansaque:

In 1601, Juan de Oñate ("The Last Conquistador") closed the era of the epic Spanish entradas into North America with his expedition to the Great Plains of Kansas and Oklahoma.  This expedition took him to the Wichitas of Quivira—the same Quivira to which Coronado had journeyed in 1541, and the written accounts produced from these two expeditions make up the only first-hand information we have about the Plains north of Texas during the first two centuries of European contact.  After Oñate, aside from a small handful of individuals who allegedly travelled to Quivira but left us no written accounts, more than a hundred years passed before any other European saw the Wichita country and wrote about it—this person was the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe, who travelled up the Arkansas River in 1719 seeking trade alliances between the Plains Indian tribes and the nascent French colony of Louisiana.  This century-long lacuna in the historical record means that  information about the 17th century Wichita has to be interpolated from the information was gathered by Oñate and La Harpe.

First, a few words concerning the Wichita.  This tribe belongs to the Caddoan language family—meaning that they're related to the Caddos of the Red River, though the Wichitas themselves happen to be much more closely akin to the Pawnee and Arikara of the northern Plains.  In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Wichita were not yet a single, united people in the political sense—rather, they existed as a number of separate, autonomous bands, each of whom spoke a separate dialect of the Wichita language.  These bands included: the eponymous  Wichita-proper (also known as the Guichita or the Kirikirʼis), the Tawakoni, the Tawehash (or Taovaya), and the Iscani.  In addition to these, there were the Adeco and the Honecho bands, of whom very little is known, and probably others as well that got lost to history; (another band, the Waco, emerged later on, but probably didn't have autonomous band status in the 17th century).¹  One should also mention the Kitsai (or Kichai) tribe: these people were not Wichitan, but they spoke a closely related Caddoan language and seem to have spent a lot of time hanging around with the Wichitas—the Kitsai can probably be thought of as "para-Wichitan".

Route of Oñate, 1601 - based on Schroeder (1962) & Vehik (1986), with corrections from Blakeslee (2017)

Back to Oñate.  After traversing the Texas panhandle (which lay within the dominion of the Apache), Oñate's expedition encountered two groups of people who were said to be actively hostile to each other.  The first were the Escansaques, a nomadic people who were then inhabiting a large, mobile tepee camp (Craddock 2013: 5).  The second was a group of Wichitas located several day's travel beyond the Escansaques—the exact distance isn't quite clear—and resided within a vast settled community of houses which the Spaniards dubbed the "Great Settlement" ("Gran Población").  This settlement was estimated as housing some 20,000 individuals, and in recent years has been identified with archaeological remains located at the confluence of the Walnut River, near the Kansas-Oklahoma border.  Scholars associate the Wichitas with the Great Settlement with extremely high confidence, although the textual evidence is a little indirect: nowhere do the Oñate documents name them as "Wichita" or as "Quivira".  The Spaniards' Pueblo Indian guides called them "Jumanes", but that's probably more confusing than anything, because we know that they weren't Jumanos.²  According to Todd Smith (2000: 13), the Great Settlement was inhabited by the Guichita or Wichita proper.

As for the Escansaques, they were so named by the Spaniards for the way they greeted visitors:

"And when they had gone about 120 leagues from the said post at San Gabriel from which they had set out, they saw no more Indians of the apache nation or of any other for more than 60 leagues, and when they were at almost 200 leagues from the said post at San Gabriel they began to see Indians, whom they called Escanxaques, because they came forward to offer a peaceable greeting, raising both hands toward the sun and then laying them on their breasts, saying "Escanxaque," which is a sign of peace..." (Interrogatory of Don Francisco de Valverde [1602], in Craddock 2013)

The Escansaques are famous in American frontier history for being one of those enigmatic, elusive peoples whose tribal identity is a mystery (like the Massawomeck of Virginia, or the various Gens de... from the La Vérendrye account).  If you read about this era, you will probably see their name mentioned at least once, and there's a good chance it'll be followed by a bunch of dithering speculation on who exactly they were: the Apaches, the Wichitas, the Tonkawas, etc.  I think the earliest theory had it that they were the Kansa:

"If the 'Escansaques' or 'Excanjaques' are identical with the Kansa, and there is every reason for believing them to be the same, then the first mention of the tribe was made in 1599 [sic], by Juan de Oñate, who encountered them on an expedition to find the 'Quivira' of Coronado..." (F. W. Hodge [1897], qtd. in Morehouse 1906)

Hodge may have been wrong, by the way, about this being the first mention of the Kansa—many scholars now identify the Kansa with the "Guas" or "Guaes" mentioned in the accounts of the Coronado expedition (Wedel 1982). [Correction March 2019: The "Guaes" were the "Awahi", one of the names for the Pawnee.]

Most of these hypotheses are arguments from phonetic similarity.  This kind of argument is usually par for the course for early frontier history, where you have to squint your eyes a bit to recognize that "Quitxix", "Quidehais", and "Chicaes" all refer to the Kitsai, for instance... but with the Escansaques this can get a little silly.  So, for example, one theory says they were Kansa because "Escansaque" = "es-Kansa-que".  Another theory counters that no, they were members of the Iscani band of Wichitas, because "Escansaque" = "Iscani-saque".  Yet another theory observes that the Apaches were called "Canceys" by La Harpe—from kinne:s, the Wichita name for the Apache (Wedel 1982, Armik Mirzayan pers. comm.)—and so they must have been Apaches, because "Escansaque" = "es-Cancey-que".

When I started doing research on this era, I kept seeing the Escansaques being mentioned, and was concerned how all of the explanations of their identity given by various authors were completely contradictory.  The ~Mystery Of The Escansaques~ made for entertaining frontier history, but wasn't very helpful from the perspective of my map project—I started to worry that I might have to just throw my lot in with one of the competing hypotheses and then run with it.  But, then, I found out that it the mystery had been solved thirty-five years ago!

In 1982, T. N. Campbell (whom I shamelessly lauded in my previous post) along with W. W. Newcomb, Jr. published an article called Southern Plains Ethnohistory: A Re-Examination of the Escanjaques, Ahijados, and Cuitoas, in which they critically re-investigate the alleged provenances of each of those three mysterious tribes mentioned in the Alonso de Posada report.  This article was extremely useful, to say the least, and is the nucleus around which this entire blog post is based.

Newcomb and Campbell point out that it makes no sense trying to find some name buried within "Escansaque" or one of its variants, since this was neither what the people called themselves, nor was it a name applied to them by a neighboring tribe—rather, it was the phrase they uttered when greeting the Spaniards, accompanied by the aforementioned hand gesture.  In other words, it was how they said "hello".  So all that "es-Cancey-que" business was as though someone had called the French the "Boju", or the Germans the "Goontok", and then someone else came along and started comparing those words with the names of various European ethnicities to try to identify them.  This seemingly obvious point was missed, according to Newcomb & Campbell, because earlier scholars had only consulted the official report of the Oñate expedition—the "Relación Cierta y Verdadera" or "True and Accurate Account" as it's called, which uses the name "Escansaque" without explanation.  Supplementary materials concerning the Oñate expedition were neglected—most significantly, the Valverde Interrogatory of 1602.  This document gave the description of the Escansaques' customary salutation, and thus the origin of their name... but, perhaps even more importantly, it also contained something else: a map.

The Escansaques and the "Gran Población" were bitter enemies, and—once it became clear to both tribes that Oñate and his men weren't there to assist either of them in their conflict—relations grew sour between the Indians and the Spanish, as the latter were guilty in the eyes of both tribes of cavorting with the enemy.  One thing led to another... there was a fight... and Oñate's men ended up taking several Indian captives, including one man from the Escansaque camp whom the Spaniards nicknamed "Miguel".  This Miguel was taken back with them to Mexico City, and was one of several individuals interrogated by Don Francisco de Valverde concerning the Oñate expedition.  During this questioning, Miguel drew a map:

The "Miguel Map" of 1602 (Craddock 2013) (Full size version)

The deposition had Miguel draw this map because the Spaniards wanted to know where the Indians were hiding all of their gold (obviously...).  You can imagine how well that worked out for them, but for us the map itself is worth much more than gold: a map, drawn by the very hand of a Great Plains Indian himself, of a region hundreds of miles from any European colony, over a hundred years before any other Europeans would begin to explore it—pretty cool!  Miguel's map includes the names and locations of several Native settlements, as well as major rivers and Indian trails, complete with annotations indicating the distances between them; Miguel himself was obviously illiterate, and the labels were added at his direction by a Spanish notary.

The "Miguel Map", and the Valverde Interrogatory describing its creation, had been available in print since 1953, so it's something of a mystery why it took until 1982 for scholars to become generally aware of it.  Subsequent studies such as Susan Vehik, 1986 and Donald Blakeslee, 2017 have reviewed and corrected Newcomb & Campbell on a number of points, but (in my view) the major conclusions from their 1982 paper all remain standing.  The first conclusion concerns the identity of the Escansaques.

Miguel drew the map of his homeland with 12 circles, representing 11 settlements, pronouncing the name of each one, which the notary then wrote upon the page.  These names, written in colonial hispanic orthography, were: Eguasapac, Aguacane, Cochpane, Cochizta, Ahacapan, Yuhuanica, Ahaccache, Yahuicache, Tancoa, Vyana,³ and Etzanoa.  Out of these, "Etzanoa" refers to the vast "Great Settlement" along the Walnut River, and "Aguacane" refers to the Escansaque encampment.  The Escansaques' name, their real name, was Aguacane.

The Miguel Map, redrawn and oriented such that up = north (from Vehik 1986)

If that were all there was, it wouldn't be of much help.  It's nice to know what the Escansaques called themselves, but aside from that all we've done is replace one name for a mysterious Indian tribe with another, right?  Wrong!—we've replaced one name for a mysterious Indian tribe with eleven names, which means we have a corpus, and that means we can use linguistics.  No one knows the Wichita language better than linguist Dr. David Rood—not since its last native, fluent speaker sadly died two years ago—and this is what he had to say about the placenames from the Miguel Map:

"Except for the m in Auyam [note: this name is now read as "Vyana," which conveniently doesn't have an m], the sounds apparently represented in these names are all what I would expect to find in an older variety of Wichita.  Moreover, the Wichita grammatical prefixes can be identified, and they are in the right sequences.  For a variety of complex reasons, I cannot translate the names, but the prefixes are all used today in personal names and to describe geographical phenomena.  I think it is therefore quite safe to conclude that these names are from a language closely related to modern Wichita—either its direct ancestor, or the direct ancestor of one of the dialects that has not survived. (David Rood [1981], qtd. in Newcomb & Campbell 1982)

I should mention that when I contacted Dr. Rood about this, he seemed somewhat less sanguine about the matter than in 1981.  However, it's probably safe to say that the Escansaque were Wichitas, or at least Wichitans of some kind.  Furthermore, the "Aguacane" have been mentioned in other historical documents, in contexts suggesting a Wichita affiliation: they appear as the "Aucanis" in a French map from 1720, as the "Aquajuani" in a Spanish document from 1754, and possibly as the "Huanchane" in a French document from 1719 (Vehik 1992).⁴  For a little orthographic context, here are some of the ways that other Wichita bands have been spelled in the historical documents:

Wichita  — Ousitas, Ouitsitas, Ouachitas, Guachitas, Ouedsitas, Ovedsitas, Ovagitas

Kirikirʔi:s — Quirasquiris, Quicasquiris, Quiraquirit, (maybe) Quivira

Tawakoni (Tawa:kháriw) — Teucarea, Touacaru, Tuacana, Tahuacanas, Taguacanes, Chaguacanes, Tabancamas, Tavakavas, Taovacanas, Tawakenoes, Towiachs, Towacarro

Tawehash — Taovayas, Toayas, Touajas, Tabas, Tauaïasés, Taoüiaches, Taouaiazés, Tavoyache, Tahuayas, Taobayaces, Tabuayases, Taouayaches, Tahuaiasses, Tamayacas, Towaahack, Towiache, Toweaches, Towiash, Toyash, Towoashe, (maybe) Teguayo, (maybe) Ahouaho

(mostly Newcomb 2001)

Or the names of these Pawnee groups:

Awa:hi [the Wichitas' name for the Pawnee tribe] — Harahey, Arahe, Arae, Arache, Aguaje, Aguages, Aovages, Aavajes, Guahes, Quaji, Ahuachés, Ouacee, Ouass, Ovaes, Ollaés, Aiiaes, Arche, Haxa, Axa

axtárahi — Astaray, Rhtarahé, Ḣtadhahé

tuhka:tákux — Toucatacaux, Tuchkataku, Tukátuk

nahu:ká:ta — Naucat, Laocata, Rahokata, Nhukát

 (Parks 1979 & 2001)

I could go on and provide many other examples, but hopefully you see my point: that these names can vary a lot in how they're spelled in the historical documents.  In fact, there are two other names from the Miguel Map that look familiar as well, but I'll get to them later.

So, the Escansaques were Aguacane, who were probably Wichitan.  Does that confirm the theory that the Escansaque were the Iscani?  According to Newcomb & Campbell: Yes... sort of...  Their theory is that the Aguacane were originally a distinct Wichita band, but eventually merged into the Iscani over the 1700's.  Susan Vehik (1992 & 2006), more directly, simply identifies the Aguacane as the Iscani, though for non-linguistic reasons.  It's also possible that the name "Aguacane" is linguistically the same name (though mayhaps not referring to the same people) as "Tawakoni", which—if you glance back up at that list—you'll see has also been spelled "Taguacane".  This alternation between word-initial /t/ and /Ø/ makes perfect sense, according to David Rood:

"An initial /t/ in Wichita and Pawnee usually signals and indicative verb... Using a verb to name something is quite common in these languages, [and] a form without the initial /t/ could be another version of the same verb, a generalized or timeless tense.  So yes, it is quite possible that aguacane and taguacane are forms from the same root, different not because the Spanish scribes mis-heard one of them, but because they were given two different grammatical forms on different occasions." (David Rood, p.c.)

This same alternation might also explain "Ahouaho" ~ "Tawehash".

That the Escansaques/Aguacanes and the Guichitas of Etzanoa were at war with each other also isn't quite a wrench in this theory.  Remember that the "Wichita Nation" was not yet a single, unified entity during this period—the various bands of Guichitas, Iscanis, Tawakonis, etc. would have spoken dialects of a single language, but of course American Indians are no less capable than anyone else is of going to war with people who happen to speak the same language as them.

Considering that the Escansaques were more-or-less proven to be Wichitas way back in 1982, it's a little puzzling that one still sees them written about as though they were still the elusive, unfathomable Tribe Of Mystery that they once were.  For example, here's Ronald Breth in 1986:

"The next possible mention [of the Kansa] is in Onates records of his explorations of 1601, if the 'Escanjaques' are the Kansa out on their summer bison hunt."

And Kendra Burns, in 1996:

"The Escanjaques' exact identity has not been determined, but it is known that they were enemies of the Wichita Indians.  Newcomb (1961:106) believes that the Escanjaques were Apache.  Hammond and Rey (1953 2:752) have suggested that they were either Kansa or Osage, who were known to attack the Wichita during this time.  Forbes (1960:101,145) offers that the Escanjaques were Tonkawas." (p. 45)

And Nancy Hickerson, in 1996:

"I concur with Hyde (1959: 43) in favoring a link between the Gatacka [Kiowa-Apaches] and the Escanjaque, whose presence in the Plains is first noted at the time of Oñate's expedition to Quivira." (p. 82)

And Jeffrey Carlisle, in 2001:

"The Escanjaques were apparently either Kansa or Osage, or more likely a Tonkawan group.  In any case, they were not Apaches." (p. 71)

Maybe these people know something that I don't, though, I dunno...

So much for the Escansaque.  What about the second name from the Posada report: the Aijados?  The Spaniards gave this name (variously spelled Ahijados, Ayjados, Aixaos, Aijaoz, etc.) to another Tribe Of Mystery, who supposedly lived a considerable distance off... somewhere... usually near Quivira or thereabouts.  The historian George E. Hyde, evidently relying on Posada's report and assuming the "Rio de las Nueces" to be the Red River, placed them in between the Jumanos and Quivira, somewhere in north-central Texas or southern Oklahoma (Hyde 1959: 13,43).  More recently, Susan Vehik located the Aijados in northern Oklahoma, taking the peculiar stance that Posada's "Rio de las Nueces" refers to the Arkansas River.  She also (tentatively) equates the Aijados with the Tawehash band of Wichitas, as well as with "Uayam" [Vyana] from the Miguel Map (Vehik 2006).

Central & Southern Plains, ca. 1650-1700 A.D., according to Vehik (2006)

However, Newcomb & Campbell note that there are no really credible accounts of any European directly encountering a member of the Aijado nation.  The name "Aijados" almost always referred to some vague, far distant kingdom beyond the horizon, elusive and powerful.  Take, for instance, this account, from the 1630 Memorial of Fray Alonso Benavides:

"Even so, we know by evidence and eyesight that there exists in this kingdom [Quivira], and in that of the Aixaos which borders upon it, very great quantity of gold.  And each day we see their Indians, who trade with ours, who testify to it. [...] Even so, well testifies the Captain and great pilot Vicente Gonçales, of the nation of Lusitania, who from Havana went to coast the coast of Florida.  And he entered into that great river where the English are settled.  And entering to the interior he saw the Indians of Quivira and Aixaos, with earrings and necklaces of gold, very bulky and so soft that with the fingers they made of them whatever they wished.  The Indians assuring [him] that there existed in their Kingdom of Quivira and Aixaos much of that [metal].  So, in order that Your Majesty enjoy all this, it is fitting in any event that this Kingdom of Quivira, and that of the Aixaos, be settled, and that those Indians be Christians." (Benavides [1630] 1916: 64)

That is not a story that inspires confidence.

Newcomb & Campbell also remind their readers that "ahijados" is a word in the Spanish language: the past participle of the verb ahijar, "to adopt".⁵  That this is not just a chance phonetic resemblance is proven by the fact that whenever the name "Ahijado" occurs in the earliest Spanish documents, it plainly does not refer to an ethnic group, but is used to describe Miguel and the other young Indians who were captured by Oñate's men in 1601.  Miguel was not a native of Escansaque: according to the Valverde Interrogatory, he had been born among another tribe, the Tancoas, and was captured by an Aguacane war party when he was about 12 years old (Craddock 2013: 189-90).  Per the rules of conduct governing Native American tribal warfare, the child Miguel was taken in and raised by his captors as an adoptee, an ahijado.

Thus, according to Newcomb & Campbell, there never was an Aijado tribe.  The name originated as a common Spanish noun referring to a few adopted war captives, and over time its etymology was forgotten such that people began to speak of an exotic "Kingdom of the Aixaos" that was ridiculously wealthy in gold (obviously...), and whose location was only ever vaguely alluded to.  Newcomb & Campbell therefore "suggest that the essentially fictitious name Ahijados be dropped from the list of valid American Indian ethnic units".

Returning now to the Alonso de Posada report... (forget about the Cuitoas for now—I'll return to them later):  the men of the Castillo and Guadalajara expeditions in the 1650's could not possibly have encountered Aijados along the Colorado River, or any other river for that matter, because there never existed any such people as the "Aijados".  But what about the Escansaques?  They existed.  Do the findings of Newcomb & Campbell (and Vehik and Blakeslee) mean then that the Spaniards ran into a group of Aguacanes east of the Jumanos on the Colorado River?  It's not impossible, but in my opinion the evidence doesn't really point to that conclusion.  Remember the etymology of "Escansaque": the Spaniards would not have been told, by the Jumanos or by any other Native guide or interpreter, that any band of Indians they encountered were called "Escansaques".  They could only have heard this word from the Aguacanes themselves, if they happened to approach the Spanish and used their customary greeting described in the Oñate documents.  However, if this gesture was a "sign of peace" as the Oñate documents say, it's not likely they would have used it to salute a group of Spaniards accompanied by the Jumanos, their enemies.

It seems likely that someone on the Castillo expedition or the Guadalajara expedition was told about an enemy tribe living downstream from the Jumanos, and for some reason assumed that they were the same as the Escansaques and Aijados, whom they had heard about before.  It's also possible that Alonso de Posada altered their names when he wrote his 1686 report, changing them to names he assumed were synonymous and with which his readers would have been more familiar.  This is the conclusion Newcomb & Campbell reach:

"It appears more likely that Posada, or those from whom he obtained information, assumed that certain groups of western Texas were the same as some of the Indians encountered by the Oñate expedition farther to the north."

As an aside: it might seem reckless or irresponsible for Posada to "tamper with the evidence" like this, but modern historians still do this kind of thing:  assuming the identity of an enigmatic historical tribe, and replacing its name with some other name that's more easily recognizable.  This is especially common with scholars writing for a popular audience.  For example, take this map from Todd Smith's The Wichita Indians (2000):

Smith refers to "Iscanis" along the upper Canadian River in 1541 and along the Salt Fork in 1601, more or less without comment.  I'm not questioning the quality of Smith's scholarship, since he explains in the notes at the back of the book that this refers to the "Teyas" of Coronado and the "Escansaques" of Oñate.  But most people aren't going to check in the notes at the back of the book, so my beef here is with Smith's transparency: the main body of the text doesn't tell you any of this, nor that the identities of the Teyas and Escansaques are both somewhat controversial.  I assume that Smith considered this to be extraneous information that would have only distracted his readers and hurt the flow of his book.

The most gracious interpretation of the Posada evidence is that somebody, either Posada himself or someone from the Castillo or Guadalajara expeditions, recognized these tribes to be Wichitan in some way—on what grounds, we cannot know—and so called them by names previously used for tribes closely associated with the Wichita.  Thus, it may (may!) indicate that the tribes to the east of the Jumanos were Wichitan.  It's a possibility at least worth considering.

What about the third name, though: the Cuitoa?  In Posada's account of the Guadalajara expedition, the Cuitoa are implied to be the only tribe actually controlling territory along the Colorado River, and the only tribe whom Guadalajara's men directly interacted with—the Aijados and Escansaques being known only through hearsay.  This makes their existence in Texas appear much more plausible than that of the Escansaques or Aijados.  The only problem is that the these "Cuitoas" are not mentioned in any other historical document, so we cannot easily connect them with any other known, historical tribe.⁶  The name is a hapax legomenon—appearing in the report of Alonso de Posada and nowhere else.

Thus, we have only the method of phonetic similarity to fall back on for determining who the Cuitoa were.  A number of hypotheses have been put forth.  Albert H. Schroeder (1962) proposed that they were the same as the "Quisita" people reported by Bénard de La Harpe in 1719, however I can't find any other article or document that refers to these "Quisitas".  It seems to be a misreading or miscopying (by Schroeder or one of his sources) of "Ousitas" (La Harpe [1718-20] 1958-9), which I think clearly refers to the Wichitas.  So that theory is thrown out.  Another, proposed by T. N. Campbell (2010), is that the Cuitoa are the same as the "Quitaca", one of 19 Indian groups said to have accompanied Juan Domínguez de Mendoza on his 1683-4 expedition to the Concho River.  Most of the other 18 tribes named by Mendoza are also hapax legomena, but "Quitaca" happens to re-appear in a 1771 document, in a context implying it refers to a Wichita group.  If true, this would mean that all three of Posada's names—Escansaque, Aijado, and Cuitoa—can be (tenuously) connected to the Wichita.

La Harpe probably never mentioned "Quisitas", but there are two tribes he does mention which may be connected to the Cuitoa.  (By the way: warning: original research ahead.)  The first are the "Quichuan", who were said to be "situated at two leagues from the Red River, on the left, in going up to the environs of the place where M. Du Rivage had found these nomadic nations."  The "nomadic nations" that Du Rivage found were a war party of men from 6 tribes, most or all of which were Kitsai or Wichita bands; and depending on how far up Du Rivage was at the time, this places the Quichuan somewhere in north-central Texas, south of the Red River... which is not a great distance from where Posada's Cuitoas may have been located.  I find the similarity in names between "Cuitoa" and "Quichuan", combined with their apparent proximity to each other, to be at least somewhat suggestive of a connection.

The second tribe, "Quataquois", is named by La Harpe as one of 9 nations cohabitating a large village on the Arkansas River in Oklahoma.  Of the other 8 names, all except one (the "Caumuche" who may be the Comanche⁷) refer to bands of the Wichita.  Ralph Smith's commentary of the La Harpe account interprets the "Quichuan" to be the Kiowa and the "Quataquois" to be the Kiowa-Apache—the latter often called by the name "Gattacka" (from Pawnee katahkaaʼ, meaning a Plains Apache tribe or "any tribe west of the Pawnees" (Parks & Pratt 2008)).  The Quichuan=Kiowa interpretation is almost certainly wrong, as the Kiowa were located much, much further north in this period—in western South Dakota or thereabouts.  The Quataquois=Gattacka theory holds a bit more water, especially since La Harpe probably wouldn't refer to the same group twice under two different names.  Nevertheless, I think the name's similarity with "Cuitoa" and "Quitaca" is worth at least thinking about.

To repeat: the Cuitoa were listed by Alonso de Posada alongside two other tribes vaguely associated with the Wichita.  The Quitaca are mentioned in 1771 alongside several Wichita bands.  The Quichuan were said by M. Du Rivage to be allied with a group comprising mostly Wichita bands.  The Quataquois were said by La Harpe to be cohabitating a village mostly consisting of Wichita bands.  Do you see a pattern here?

So, am I saying that we should interpret the Posada report to mean that a band of Wichitas inhabited Central Texas, east of the Jumanos?  Well, perhaps not.  You see, there's still one more problem with Alonso de Posada's account of the 1650 Castillo expedition and the 1654 Guadalajara expedition.  According to Newcomb  & Campbell, the entire thing may be a fraud.  As in, Posada may have made them up... lied... forged the entire thing:

"It is very puzzling to learn that no one has ever found copies of the primary records of these two expeditions.  It does not appear reasonable to believe that the commanders of these expeditions failed to prepare formal reports of their activities, or that copies of the reports, if actually prepared, were not forwarded to Mexico City and on to Spain." (Newcomb & Campbell 1982)

They also suggest, echoing Jack Forbes, that Posada may not have been the forger, but rather Mendoza, and that Posada based his report partially on his fraudulent testimony.  In either case, it is implied that that the name and people of "Cuitoa" may have been invented entirely out of thin air.

I don't know personally how suggestive it is of forgery that we have no primary documentary records of the Castillo and Guadalajara expeditions.  I mean, I'm kind of surprised that we still have the documents for any of these early historical periods, so I'm not the person to ask.  I also don't know how strong the conclusions are for the forgery hypothesis—are Newcomb & Campbell saying that the Castillo and Guadalajara expeditions literally never happened?  That Castillo, and Guadalajara weren't even real people?  Or did the expeditions really happen, but we just can't trust the accounts of them regarding the details—particularly their battle with the Cuitoas?  I don't know.

So, to summarize, the Alonso de Posada report is problematic for the following reasons:

1: It is unknown whether his "Rio de las Nueces" refers to the Concho-Colorado, the Canadian, the Red, or the Arkansas.  Each possibility significantly alters how one interprets the data.

2: If, as most believe, the "Nueces" is the Concho-Colorado, then his statement that the Tejas (Hasinai) controlled 100 leagues along its middle section is highly anomalous.

3: The Escansaques of 1601 were Aguacane Wichita, but none of the Jumanos or other Native interpreters would have given "Escansaque" as the name of the tribe attacking them downriver.

4: The Aijado nation never existed.

5: The Cuitoas may or may not have been the same as the Quitaca, the Quichuan, and/or the Quataquoi—any one of which may have been a Wichita-affiliated group, or possibly Kiowa-Apache, or possibly something else entirely.

6: The entire thing might be bogus.

That's a lot of uncertainty to wade through.  I agree with the Newcomb & Campbell quote from earlier, that some Spaniard "assumed that certain groups of western Texas were the same as some of the Indians encountered by the Oñate expedition" and so called them by the names Escansaque and Aijado.  That still means, however, that the Spaniards encountered somebody east of the Jumanos in 1654, i.e. the episode wasn't totally fabricated.  In the Posada report, the only such people directly encountered—the Indians that the Spanish had their day-long battle with—are those called the Cuitoas.  Since this name isn't obviously fraudulent like the others, it may be reasonable to conclude that a tribe called the Cuitoa lived east of the Jumano, in Central Texas, in 1654.

Texas, ca. 1600 A.D.

That's about all I can say about the western half of Central Texas.  What about the other half, east of the Cuitoa, west of the Caddo and north of the Sanans?  Who lived in eastern Central Texas at the beginning of the 17th century?

I won't be able to answer that question entirely in this post.  However, the usual response to that question is the Tonkawa, whom I've mentioned a couple times already.  If you're familiar at all with Native Texas history, you probably know the Tonkawa as living somewhere in this part of East-Central Texas—as shown, for instance, in the popular William C. Sturtevant map of "Early Indian Tribes, Culture Area, and Linguistic Stocks":

Or in the Ives Goddard map of "Native Languages and Language Families of North America":

Goddard and Sturtevant were both cramming 350+ years of history into a single image, so their maps are anachronistic by necessity and by design.  That's why they look so different from my map, with Comanches and Apaches and Wichitas all over the place.  The exact placement of the Tonkawas also differs considerably between the two, as you can see.  A more reliable source here would presumably be something like Jason C. Abbott, A History of the Tonkawa Indians to 1867 (1996):

"TONKAWA RANGE: Until 1855": That would include the year 1600, so this might be what I'm looking for.  If I overlay that shape onto my map-in-progress, it looks like this:

That doesn't perfectly fill the space I need, but there's no reason I should expect it to.  It also overwhelms the core of the East Sanan zone and almost all of the Bidai, but tribal territories could sometimes overlap like that.  So, can I add the Tonkawa to Central Texas?

[ Note March 2019: some of the conclusions in the following section I now believe to be false, due to information I have learned since writing it.  I will eventually make a correction-and-emendation post, but to be honest that probably won't be for a while. ]

I'm not entirely sure, but... probably not.  The reason, once again, lies in the Valverde Interrogatory and the Miguel Map of 1602.  Recall that the captive Miguel, the ahijado, had been captured by the Aguacanes and taken from his home country when he was approximately 12 years old.  He told the Spaniards that this original home of his was called "Tancoa".  According to Newcomb & Campbell, this "Tancoa" is the same as "Tonkawa".  On the Miguel Map, Tancoa appears to be north of the Arkansas River, possibly between the Little Arkansas River and Cow Creek (Vehik 1986, Blakeslee 2017):

Arkansas River archaeological sites—probable Tancoa location circled 

So if we accept this, that means in 1601 A.D. the ancestors of the Tonkawa were not in Central Texas, nor even in Texas at all, but far to the north—in central or south-central Kansas.  Over the following centuries, they (like their Wichita neighbors) drifted southward, eventually landing in their historical south-central Texas range.  The next time we can locate them in the historical record is in 1719, when they were residing somewhere near the Red River dividing Texas and Oklahoma.  Over the rest of the 1700's, they gradually established themselves in south-central Texas, where they were presumed to have been all along.  Or, as T. N. Campbell put it:

"It was assumed that, as the Tonkawa ranged over the Bastrop area after the first Anglo-American settlers arrived, they must have been native to the area and therefore were probably related to other Indian groups of the same area." (Campbell 1986)

...sigh...  Yep.  Tell me about it.

As is the case with the Escansaques, this discovery about the Tonkawa is curious for how unsuccessfully it seems to have become common knowledge.  I know two friends from Texas, both of them with a more-than-passing interest in Native American history, and neither of them had ever heard that the Tonkawa were originally from the north.  One scholar as late as 1996 (fourteen years after Newcomb & Campbell's paper) wrote an entire M.A. thesis on the history of the Tonkawa, and even he said this:

"The history of the Tonkawas prior to the eighteenth century is speculative.  They undoubtedly lived in what were presently the geographical boundaries of Texas during the fifteenth century." (Abbott 1996: 1)

The author's source for that statement is an outdated publication by W. W. Newcomb from 1961; his co-authored 1982 paper is nowhere mentioned, not even to dispute its findings.

One scholar who has disputed them is Donald Blakeslee:

"When the plains portion of the Miguel map is oriented correctly, as per Susan Vehik, it becomes clear that Tancoa was upstream from Etzanoa along the Arkansas River and probably represents the large Quiviran communities in Rice County.  It would be surprising to find Tonkawas that far north." (in Craddock 2013: 2016 addendum)

"Newcomb and Campbell ... who did not realize that north was not at the top of the map as Miguel drew it, assumed that the Tancoa on the map was a reference to the Tonkawa tribe.  This might seem reasonable to an English speaker, but in Spanish, the accent would fall on the second syllable of Tancoa, making it sound like tan-COH-ah.  For Tonkawa, the accent is on the first syllable ... In Spanish, the word would have been spelled something like Tóncoa ... Furthermore, there are no protohistoric archaeological remains in Kansas north of Etzanoa that might identify a Tonkawa presence." (Blakeslee 2017: 16n7)

Blakeslee is an eminent scholar and, unlike me, is actually an expert in this stuff, so his objection is worth serious consideration.  Nevertheless, I'd like to respond to his criticisms if I can, and try to defend the Tancoa=Tonkawa thesis.  I can't really dispute his point about there being no identifiable Tonkawa archaeological sites in Kansas, but since Prof. Blakeslee himself is an archaeologist even he might agree that this is the least significant objection: "pots aren't people" and so on.  Then there's the second point, regarding whether Newcomb & Campbell were relying too much on what "might seem reasonable to an English speaker."  I can't speak for W. W. Newcomb, but T. N. Campbell spent a significant portion of his career buried neck-deep in colonial Spanish documents pertaining to Christian missions in Texas and Coahuila.  In the words of Thomas R. Hester, "all one has to do is to flip through the pages of the New Handbook of Texas to realize how many hundreds of Native American groups have been identified, indeed rescued, from the thousands of scribbed pages of Spanish documents studied by Campbell" (in Wade 2003: xiii).  Considering Campbell's obvious familiarity with the historical documents, it is a little strange that Donald Blakeslee would accuse him of not being familiar enough with Spanish to know how its stress works.

I would also comment that different languages have different kinds of accent systems-- stress vs. pitch, etc.-- and this can cause confusion if you're not familiar with it.  With Russian words, I "hear" the accent being in the "wrong" place all the time.  Something like that could easily explain why there's no acute written in "Tancoa".  And besides, go back and take another look at the list of spelling variants for the names of Wichita bands... do we really need to be this persnickety about one little accent marker?

Thirdly, there's Blakeslee's geographical objection: "It would be surprising to find Tonkawas that far north."  Simply put: I disagree.  Daniel Prikryl (2001) analyzed the earliest mentions of the Tonkawa in the historical documents, and—even ignoring the Oñate materials—he was able to present evidence of a southward migration of the tribe over the course of the 1700's: from the Red River valley of northern Texas in 1719 to their historical location in south-Central Texas by the early 1800's.  And while a southbound trajectory during the 18th century doesn't prove a southbound trajectory in the 17th century, it doesn't preclude it either. 

Tonkawa southern migration (based on Prikryl 2001)

It is also worth pointing out that during this same period—the 17th and 18th centuries—the Wichitas also migrated from their home in Kansas southward across Oklahoma and into Texas.  This Wichita migration is usually explained as them fleeing from more powerful and aggressive Native tribes further north: the Apaches, the Comanches, and especially the Osage.⁸  If the Tonkawas' migration was also a flight from northern raiders, then that threat would certainly have existed as early as the 1600's—especially from the Apaches.  This makes a 17th-century southern migration of the Tonkawa, and therefore a northern location in 1601, highly plausible.

I can be more specific on this point.  Consider the following: according to the testimony of Miguel, in 1601 the Tancoa inhabited the Rice County district of Kansas.  Six decades earlier, during the time of the Coronado expedition, this same district was inhabited by two bands of Wichitas, one of them the "Teucarea" or Tawakoni (Wedel 1982).  By 1719, these same Tawakonis were in the Three Forks area of eastern Oklahoma, and by the 1770's had moved to south-Central Texas, between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers.  Do you know who else was living in south-Central Texas between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers in the 1770's, practically next-door neighbors of the Tawakoni?  The Tonkawa.  If the Tawakoni Wichita were able to make this exodus from Quivira to Texas in 230 years, what was there to stop the Tancoa/Tonkawa from making it in 170 years? 

Tawakoni and Tonkawa migrations, 1541-1770 (Prikryl 2001, Vehik 1992)

There is also another matter: the Tonkawas are mentioned not once, but twice, on the Miguel Map.  Kind of.  Let me explain: the Tonkawa in Texas didn't originate as one single people, but were a congeries of several smaller tribes that had originally been distinct.  The exact nature of this confederation isn't precisely known, nor is the list of all its tribal constituents.  However, that list is usually said to include the Ervipiame (a Coahuiltecan tribe from Coahuila that fled north into Texas to escape the invading Spaniards and Apaches), and the Emet, Cava, Cantona, Mayeye, Sana, Toho, and Tohaha (who may have been among the "Eastern Sanans" indigenous to south-Central Texas—see my previous post.)  Then there was the eponymous constituent: the Tonkawa proper, or "Titskanwatits" (Tickanwá·tic) as they called themselves.

In addition, there was one other constituent of the Tonkawa nation: the Yojuane, who were neither natives of south-Central Texas nor refugees from Coahuila.  Like the Wichita and the Tonkawa, the Yojuane had spent the 18th century gradually drifting southward from an original location near the Red River in the early 1700's (Campbell 2010).  And in the 1600's, they must have been further north still, because when the Indian Miguel drew his map in 1602 he positioned half a dozen settlements along a river (which Blakeslee identifies as the Salt Fork in northern Oklahoma), one of which was called "Yuhuanica".  Newcomb & Campbell interpret the Yuhuanica as being the Yojuane, and as far as I know Donald Blakeslee doesn't contest this.

The Miguel Map, re-oriented, with locations identified on a modern map of Kansas-Oklahoma (from Blakeslee 2017)

An important point is that, according to Newcomb & Campbell's interpretation of the Oñate documents, these Yojuane were originally yet another band of Wichitas:

"One of the Aguacane sub-groups named by Miguel is Yuhuanica, which may signify the people later known as Yojuane, who have generally been identified as a Tonkawan group.  Miguel's data suggest that perhaps the Yojuanes of later times were a Wichita group that became associated with the Tonkawas and were eventually absorbed by them."

It appears, then, that not only do we have one tribe (the Tawakoni) moving from Rice County, Kansas to the vicinity of south-Central Texas; but we have another tribe (the Yojuane) moving from northern Oklahoma to the vicinity of south-Central Texas and becoming a member of the Tonkawa-et-al. tribal conglomeration.  And I haven't even talked about the Kitsai, who also migrated south from Oklahoma into south-Central Texas, but I think I've made my point.  The idea that the Tonkawa were as far north as Kansas at the dawn of the 17th century is not at all implausible.

Before I finish on the Tonkawas, there's one more thing I want to mention.  Allegedly, the name "Tonkawa" comes from a Waco-dialect Wichita word tonkawéya, meaning "they will stay together" (Hoijer 1933).⁹  In the Caddo language, the word for the Tonkawas is tankaway (Wallace Chafe, pers. comm.).  Assuming the name is originally from a Wichita construction, then Caddo tankaway would appear to be a borrowing and not a native Caddo construction.  However, if the Tonkawas have always lived in Central Texas as the Caddos' next-door neighbors, then why would the Caddos have used a word borrowed from the Wichitas to refer to them?  Etymologies of proper names can be a tricky business, so this doesn't exactly prove anything, but in my opinion the Caddo designation "tankaway" is evidence that the Tonkawas are not native to Texas.¹⁰

So that's my rebuttal to Donald Blakeslee.  Is he wrong?  Ehh.... I really don't know.  There's actually good reason for thinking he's right.  If he is, then that means the "Tancoa" were probably not Tonkawas, but were a Wichita group of some sort.  It's also not impossible, by the way, for the same name to refer simultaneously to one Indian tribe as well as to a sub-division of another: see the "Arikara" band of Kiowas, or the "Blackfoot" band of Teton Lakotas, for example.  Furthermore, the Miguel Map is not as informative as one might think: of the 11 settlements named on the map, only 3 (Aguacane, Yuhuanica, and Tancoa) can be identified with known, historical groups.  The remaining 8 (Eguasapac, Cochpane, Cochizta, Ahacapan, Ahaccache, Yahuicache, Vyana, and Etzanoa) are, as far as I know, unidentifiable as tribal or band designations.  The Miguel Map also has a 12th name I haven't mentioned, "Encuche", but that one is very... iffy.  Probably best just to ignore it (see Blakeslee 2017).  And notably, no variants of "Tawakoni" or "Tawehash/Taovaya" appear to be on the Map, even though the Coronado documents show that Wichita groups bearing both those names existed as early as 1541 (Wedel 1982).

The list of unknown names from the Miguel Map obviously contrasts with the list of Wichita bands known a century later (which were, to recap: Wichita proper, Tawakoni, Tawehash, Iscani, Adeco, and Honecho... plus, as we've seen: the Aguacane, the Yojuane, and maaaybe the Tancoa).  This might suggest that a consolidation or re-organization of Wichita bands occurred in the 17th century.  Such a re-organization did occur in the 18th century, when the Aguacane merged with the Iscani, the Waco split from the Tawakoni, the Yojuane left to go join the Tonkawas, and the Adeco, Honecho, and Tancoa disappeared or something.  However, that's far from the only conclusion one can draw from the Miguel Map.  The map may list sub-divisions of Wichita bands rather than bands themselves, or maybe the names aren't supposed to be ethnic or clan designators at all.  It's a mystery.

So were the Tonkawas in Texas in 1600? 

I have my own hypothesis (and, just to be clear, I'm not echoing the opinion of any scholar here—this is just me, a layman, recklessly speculating).  I think that the Tonkawa and the Titskanwatits were originally different people.  I think that in the 17th century, there was a band of Wichitas in Kansas—call them the "Tancoa".  These Tancoas, along with their relatives the Yojuane, eventually moved south into Texas and joined together with the Emet, Cava, Yohaha, etc. to form a new tribal confederation—call this tribal confederation the "Tonkawa".  Neighboring tribes like the Caddo and Wichita continued using the old name for the Tancoa (tankaway, tonkawéya, etc.) to refer to this new confederation (this name was eventually borrowed into English as Tonkawa), even though the Tancoa were but one of several constituents making up the Tonkawa.  Meanwhile, the original speakers of Titskanwatits were another constituent of the confederation—who these original Titskanwatits were, I don't know, but they may have been one of the other known Tonkawa bands (Emet, Cava, etc.) under a different name.  Over time, both the language and the self-designation of the Titskanwatits grew into general use within the Tonkawa tribe, such that it was forgotten completely that the Tonkawas/Tancoas themselves had ever spoken anything else.  In other words, Blakeslee is right: Miguel's "Tancoas" were a Wichita band; but Newcomb & Campbell are also right: these "Tancoas" were the very same people as the "Tonkawas" known later in history.

I don't think it's implausible that a tribe can be named for one people but speak the language of another.  Think about it: France is named for a Germanic people, but the French speak a Romance language; Scotland is named for a Celtic people, but the Scots speak a Germanic language; Mexico is named for a Uto-Aztecan people, but the Mexicans speak a Romance language; Russia is named for a Scandinavian people, but the Russians speak a Slavic language.

Also, if you look at the first three times that the Tonkawa undisputably appear in the historical record—as the "Tanquaay" in Fray Francisco Casañas' account of 1691, as the "Tancahoe" in Louis de St. Denis's declaration of 1717, and as the "Tancaoye" in Bénard de La Harpe's account of 1719—the Tonkawa are never mentioned in isolation, but are always listed alongside several other tribes.  Most of the other names listed are of groups who either are, or have been hypothesized to be, Caddoans of one stripe or another: all three accounts name the Yojuane and Kitsai, for instance.  Importantly, however, none of these other tribes listed are ever the Emet, Cava, or any other "proto-Tonkawa" constituent.¹¹  If these three documents were the only evidence we had of these "Tanquaays", I think historians would probably suppose that they had been Caddoans.

That's my layman theory, anyway.  I could be wrong.

I have to make a decision, however, on where to put the Tonkawas on my map.  Were the Tonkawas in Texas in the year 1600?  Notwithstanding Donald Blakeslee's objections and my own loony theory, I think the best course of action is to rely on the authority of W. W. Newcomb, Jr. and T. N. Campbell here, and decide that no, the Tonkawas were not in Texas in the year 1600.  More practically, the answer probably depends on what you mean by the word "Tonkawa".  If you mean the Tonkawa Tonkawas—the Tancoas, Tanquaays, etc.—then the answer is probably no.  But if you mean the tribes which made up the core of the historic Tonkawa tribe—the Emets and the Cavas and so on—then the answer is mostly yes, aside from the tribes that came from Coahuila.  But that's too much nuance to fit on a single map label.

I still have more to say about Central Texas, but I'll finish this post here—I mostly just wanted to say everything I felt needed to be said about the Escansaque and the Tonkawa, because an awful lot has been written about both of them and much of it is unsatisfactory.  The eastern half of Central Texas will be the topic of a future post—that will require going into the French sources, which I am still familiarizing myself with.

Notes

[1]  According to Susan Vehik (2006), the Waco originated as a sub-band within the Tawakoni.

[2]  "...y los yndios de paz de la comarca de San Grabiel [sic] llaman a los d[i]chos yndios de la poblaçon los jumanes, porque a todos los rrayados llaman asi" ~ "...and the pacified Indians of the region of San Gabriel call the said Indians of the town Humanas, because that is what they call all those who are striped," from the Valverde Interrogatory [1602] (Craddock 2013: 95,181,335).  This sentence is the reason why so many people think the Jumanos (and the Teyas) were Wichitas.

[3]  Blakeslee (2017: 16n8) comments: "Newcomb and Campbell... read this name as Uayam.  Craddock (2013) has it as Avyam, but in the transcript of Miguel's interview, it is clearly Vyana.  Avyam and Uayam are mistranscriptions."  I don't quite understand why a stenographer's transcript of an interview should be more accurate than a name written directly on the map immediately after Miguel pronounced it... but I'm gonna put my trust in Blakeslee here and accept that it should be "Vyana".

[4]  The Aguacane = Huanchane connection is made by Newcomb & Campbell, however it occurs to me that "Huanchane" might also refer to the Honecho... unless the Honecho were also the same as the Aguacane.

[5]  Wiktionary defines "ahijado" as "godson" rather than "adoptee", so the meaning may have changed over the past 400 years.

[6]  "Cuitoa" is very similar to "Cuitoat", the name of a Papago (O'odham) settlement in southern Arizona recorded in 1775 (Hodge 1910), but that, I think, is obviously unrelated.

[7]  Newcomb (1993) gives this name as "Caunuche", and says it "was the natives' term for Frenchmen" (p 34).  I can't find any other reference supporting this, though it does resemble Caddo ká:nuš 'Frenchman', said by Chafe (2004) to derive from Tonkawa ka:nos 'Mexican' (ultimately from Spanish mexicanos).  Regardless, however, it is next to impossible that a population of Frenchmen would have been living among the Wichitas on the Arkansas River already by the time La Harpe arrived, or that he would have failed to mention a similar population of Spaniards in his account.

[8]  The Wichitas eventually formulated a truce with the Comanches in 1746 (Smith 2000: 26).

[9]  Thomas Wier's Tonkawa sketch and edition of Hoijer's Tonkawa texts translates this as "they stay together", omitting the future auxiliary.  I have no idea why.  Also, when I contacted David Rood about this, he says that the word "tonkawéya" is unanalyzable and phonologically-impermissible in the modern Kirikirʼis dialect of Wichita, but also said that he didn't know enough about the Waco dialect to say anything for certain.

[10]  For what it's worth, when I contacted Wallace Chafe about this, he said that he thinks the Tonkawa have always lived directly west of the Caddo.

[11]  St. Denis does mention the Sana, Toho, Emet, and Ervipiame, but in a separate section.

Primary Sources

[anonymous], "St. Denis's Declaration Concerning Texas in 1717" [1717], translated in Charmion Clair Shelby (1923).

Alsonso de Benavides [1630], translated by Emma B. Ayer (as "Mrs. Edward E. Ayer"), in "The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides 1630," annot. Frederick Webb Hodge & Charles Fletscher Lummis (1916).

Francisco Casañas de Jesus Maria, Letter and Report of Fray Francisco Casañas de Jesus Maria to the Viceroy of Mexico [1691], in John R. Swanton, Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians (1942); also translated in Mattie Austin Hatcher, "Descriptions of the Tejas or Asinai Indians, 1691-1722" (1927).

Jean-Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe [1718-20], translated in Ralph A. Smith, "Account of the Journey of Bénard de la Harpe: Discovery Made by Him of Several Nations Situated in the West" (1958-9).

Alonso de Posada [1686], translated in S. Lyman Tyler & H. Darrel Taylor, "The Report of Fray Alonso de Posada in Relation to Quivira and Teguayo" (1958).

Francisco Valverde y Mercado, "Official Hearings Conducted by the Crown's Fiscal Agent Don Francisco de Valverde" [1602], translated by John R. R. Polt, in Craddock (2013).

Secondary Sources

Jason C. Abbott, A History of the Tonkawa Indians to 1867.  M.A. thesis, Tarleton State University (1996).

Donald J. Blakeslee, "The Miguel map revisited" (2017).  In Plains Anthropologist 63 (2018).

Ronald W. Breth, "Kansa Cultural Traits and History" (1986).

Kendra June Burns, Cultural Transformation: A Study of Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Data concerning the Wichita Indians.  M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Arlington (1996).

Thomas N. Campbell, "Name All the Indians of the Bastrop Area" (1986).

—, articles in the Handbook of Texas Online (2010): "Cuitao Indians"[sic], "Quitaca Indians," "Yojuane Indians."

Jeffrey D. Carlisle, Spanish Relations with the Apache Nations east of the Rio Grande.  Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Texas (2001).

Wallace Chafe, The History and Geography of the Caddo Language (2004).

Jerry R. Craddock, The Expedition of Juan de Oñate to Quivira in 1601 as narrated in The "True Report" and the "Valverde Interrogatory" (2013, revised in 2016).

James Grime, "A meandering tale: the truth about pi and rivers," The Guardian, 14 March 2015.

Nancy Parrott Hickerson, The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains (1994).

Frederick Webb Hodge ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (1910).

Harry Hoijer, Tonkawa: An Indian Language of Texas (1933).

George E. Hyde, Indians of the High Plains (1959).

Bill Lockhart, "Protohistoric Confusion: A Cultural Comparison of the Manso, Suma, and Jumano Indians of the Paso del Norte Region."  In Journal of the Southwest 39:1 (1997).

George P. Morehouse, History of the Kansa or Kaw Indians, address before the Kansas State Historical Society (1906).

William W. Newcomb, Jr., "Historic Indians of Central Texas."  In Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society 64 (1993).

—, "Wichita."  In Raymond J. DeMallie ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains, Pt 1 (2001).

W. W. Newcomb & T. N. Campbell, "Southern Plains Ethnohistory: A Re-examination of the Escanjaques, Ahijados and Cuitoas." In Don G. Wyckoff & Jack L. Hofman ed., Pathways to Plains Prehistory: Anthropological Perspectives of Plains Natives and Their Pasts (1982).

Douglas R. Parks, "Bands and Villages of the Arikara and Pawnee."  In Nebraska History 60 (1979).

—, "Pawnee".  In Raymond J. DeMallie ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains, Pt 1 (2001).

Douglas R. Parks & Lula Nora Pratt, A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee (2008).

Daniel J. Prikryl, "Fiction and Fact about the Titskanwatits, or Tonkawa, of East Central Texas."  In Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society 72 (2001).

Albert H. Schroeder, "A Re-Analysis of the Routes of Coronado and Oñate into the Plains in 1541 and 1601."  In Plains Anthropologist 7 (1962).

Lydia Lowndes Maury Skeels, An Ethnohistorical Survey of Texas Indians (1972).

F. Todd Smith, The Wichita Indians (2000).

Susan C. Vehik, "Oñate's Expedition to the Southern Plains: Routes, Destinations, and Implications for Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptations."  In Plains Anthropologist 31 (1986).

—, "Wichita Culture History."  In Plains Anthropologist 37 (1992).

—, "Wichita Ethnohistory", in Robert J. Hoard & William E. Banks ed., Kansas Archaeology (2006).

Maria F. Wade, The Native Americans of the Edwards Plateau: 1582-1799 (2003).

Robert S. Weddle, "Dominguez de Mendoza, Juan," in the Handbook of Texas Online (2010).

Mildred Mott Wedel, "The Wichita Indians in the Arkansas River Basin" (1982).