All about the ancient tribes
Caddo Ritual and Religion. In the late 17th century the Hasinai were said to believe in a supreme god called the Caddi Ayo or Ayo-Caddi-Aymay, sometimes translated as “captain of the sky.” The Caddi Ayo was believed to be the creator of all things and was held in great deference.
Caddo people were sedentary farmers, salt makers, hunters, traders, craftsmen, and creators of exquisite pottery who buried their dead in mounds and cemeteries with solemn ritual and a belief that the dead traveled to a world beyond this.
The Caddo Nation of the late 1990s was a union of the Kadohadacho, the Hasinai, and the Natchitoches peoples. The Caddo are governed by a constitution and an eight-member elected board, although every tribal member has a say in the decision-making process.
Caddo, one tribe within a confederacy of North American Indian tribes comprising the Caddoan linguistic family. Their name derives from a French truncation of kadohadacho, meaning “real chief” in Caddo. The Caddo proper originally occupied the lower Red River area in what are now Louisiana and Arkansas.
The Caddo people had a diet based on cultivated crops, particularly maize (corn), but also sunflower, pumpkins, and squash. These foods held cultural significance, as did wild turkeys. They hunted and gathered wild plants, as well.
Today, the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribe with its capital at Binger, Oklahoma. The several Caddo dialects have converged into a single language. Today, there are nearly 5,000 enrolled members of the nation.
The Caddos were the most advanced Native American culture in Texas. They lived in tall, grass-covered houses in large settlements with highly structured social, religious and political systems. The Caddos raised corn, beans, squash and other crops.
For hundreds of years, the ancient Caddo people built earthen mounds in the special places where their leaders and priests lived. Some mounds were platforms for grass-thatched temples on top, where priests lived and held special rituals. In other mounds, the Caddo people buried their leaders inside elaborate tombs.
According to some sources, the Karankawa practiced ritual cannibalism, in common with other Gulf coastal tribes of present-day Texas and Louisiana. The Karankawa people were shocked at the Spanish cannibalism, which they found to be repugnant.
Caddo farmer Caddo women harvested crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and sunflowers. Caddo men hunted for deer, buffalo, and small game and went fishing in the rivers. Traditional Caddo foods included cornbread, soups, and stews.
For hundreds of years, the Caddo Indians built huge dome-shaped houses, temples, and other structures without using modern equipment or tools! They had no chainsaws or metal axes to cut down the tall pine trees from the forests. They had no metal hammers and nails to join the pieces of their houses together.
Their enemies were the Sioux and the Osage tribes to the North. The weapons used by the Caddo included axes, war clubs, maces, knives, pikes and bows and arrows, commonly made of bois de arc wood.
The Aztec, Maya, and Inca were very advanced. The had been empires prior to European contact. Teotihuacan was larger and earlier than Cahokia.
The Nacogdoche (Nacadocheeto, Nacodissy, Nacodochito, Nagodoche, Nasahossoz, Naugdoche, Nocodosh) Indians, a Caddoan tribe of the Hasinai group in eastern Texas, lived in the vicinity of present Nacogdoches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Dehahuit (? –1833) Dehahuit, hereditary chief of the Kadohadacho Caddo community of Native Americans at the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, is remembered as an effective, respected leader of the Caddo during turbulent times.