Internet Resources
- Caddo: BritannicaLearn more about the Caddo people from Britannica.
- Caddo IndiansLearn more about the Caddo Indians from the Texas State Historical Association.
- Caddo Mounds State Historic SiteMore than 1,200 years ago, a group of Caddo Indians known as the Hasinai built a village 26 miles west of present-day Nacogdoches. The site was the southwestern-most ceremonial center for the great Mound Builder culture. Today, three earthen mounds still rise from the lush Pineywoods landscape, where visitors discover the everyday life and the history of this ancient civilization.
- Early Caddo HistoryThe Caddo originated in the lower Mississippi Valley and spread west along the river systems. Sometime between 700 and 800 they settled the area between the Arkansas River and the middle reaches of the Red, Sabine, Angelina, and Neches rivers and adopted agriculture. They grew corn and pumpkins as primary crops which, later combined with beans and squash, stimulated population growth.
- Caddo NationInformation from the Caddo Nation, the official website of the tribe.
Streaming Media
- Caddo Language RevitalizationAlaina Tahlate is a Caddo language revitalizationist. Join her to learn what the Caddo people are doing to keep their language alive.
- Caddo Mounds State Historic SiteMore than 1,200 years ago, a group of Caddo Indians known as the Hasinai built a village 26 miles west of present-day Nacogdoches. The site was the southwestern-most ceremonial center for the great Mound Builder culture. Today, three earthen mounds still rise from the lush Pineywoods landscape at Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, where visitors discover the everyday life and the history of this ancient civilization.
- Koo Hoot Kiwat-Caddo Grass HouseUPDATE: Unfortunately, the subject of this video—the traditional grass house at Caddo Mounds State Historic Site—was wiped out by an EF3 tornado that directly hit the site on April 13, 2019. Learn more about what the grass house meant to the Caddo people and the community around Caddo Mounds in this video, and learn more about the disaster recovery efforts at www.visitcaddomounds.com.
Journals & Reference Materials (Log in Required)
- Caddo: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on the Caddo. This page includes links to articles, reference works, and a mind map.
- Encounters and Images: European Contact and the Caddo IndiansThe Scholarship of Cultural Contact: Decolonizing Native American History / Edited by M. A. Jaimes Guerrero and Joel Martin
Perspectives
Caddo Indians: Where We Come From
Carter, Cultural Representative of the Caddo tribe of Oklahoma, creates vivid pictures of daily life in the three branches of the Caddo nation, and introduces past and present Caddo leaders. Drawing on archaeological data, oral histories, and descriptions by European and American explorers, missiona
The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760
With essays by Stephen Davis, Penelope Drooker, Patricia K. Galloway, Steven Hahn, Charles Hudson, Marvin Jeter, Paul Kelton, Timothy Pertulla, Christopher Rodning, Helen Rountree, Marvin T. Smith, and John Worth The first two-hundred years of Western civilization in the Americas was a time when fundamental and sometimes catastrophic changes occurred in Native American communities in the South. In The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists provide perspectives on how this era shaped American Indian society for later generations and how it even affects these communities today. This collection of essays presents the most current scholarship on the social history of the South, identifying and examining the historical forces, trends, and events that were attendant to the formation of the Indians of the colonial South. The essayists discuss how Southeastern Indian culture and society evolved. They focus on such aspects as the introduction of European diseases to the New World, long-distance migration and relocation, the influences of the Spanish mission system, the effects of the English plantation system, the northern fur trade of the English, and the French, Dutch, and English trade of Indian slaves and deerskins in the South. This book covers the full geographic and social scope of the Southeast, including the indigenous peoples of Florida, Virginia, Maryland, the Appalachian Mountains, the Carolina Piedmont, the Ohio Valley, and the Central and Lower Mississippi Valleys. Robbie Ethridge is an assistant professor of anthropology and southern studies at the University of Mississippi. Charles Hudson is Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History at the University of Georgia.
Traditions of the Caddo
Hernando de Soto encountered the Caddos in the sixteenth century, and survivors of Sieur de La Salle's last voyage in the late seventeenth century gave the first full description of them. By 1903, when George A. Dorsey was investigating their customs and beliefs, the Caddos, numbering 530, were living on a reservation in Oklahoma. The Caddoan tribes, found along the Red River and its tributaries in present-day Louisiana and Arkansas, practiced agriculture long before they hunted buffalo. The tales collected for this book, first published in 1905, reflect the women's horticultural practices (supplemented by the men's hunting), village life distinguished by conical grass lodges, family and social relationships, connection to nature, and ceremonies. The tales vibrate with earthly and unearthly forces: Snake-Woman, who distributes seeds; Coyote, who regulates life after death; the Effeminate Man, who brings strife to the tribe; Coward, son of the Moon; the Man and the Dog who become Stars; the Old Woman who kept all the pecans; Splinter-Foot Boy and Medicine-Screech-Owl; water monsters; animal-people; and cannibals.