Tag Archives: Coahuiltecan

Landwork

Horned Serpents

Tomorrow, I’m heading to Hamilton Pool to at least begin an attempt to “do the thing“. For some time now, I’ve been aware of the principle that a people’s sovereignty, in the landwork sense, is typically associated with a particularly important pool of water- a “sacred well“.

Specifically, there is some kind of a meeting at this location between a representative of the people and a powerful entity or deity who controls the region. What happens during that meeting varies wildly- depending on the mythology in question, the specific individuals involved, and the reporter. The events run the gamut from sacred marriages to chaoskampf-style battles to the death.

I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to figure out where this “well” was for Central Texas, and I kept coming back to Hamilton Pool. To be fair, most landscapes have lots of smaller sites that might be associated with a homestead, hearthing, or village. There are lots of important springs in Central Texas to be sure- such as Aquarena Springs, sacred to a number of bands of the Coahuiltecan peoples.

I’m after the big one- the one that links the smaller sites in the affected region.

In Central America and up into parts of the desert Southwest, the most important water holes are often cenotes.

Here in Central Texas, many of the smaller springs are along the edge of the Balcones Fault, which runs roughly parallel to Interstate-35. Hamilton Pool is upstream of nearly all of them.

Damn. I just rediscovered a site directly next to Hamilton Pool (Westcave) that I may need to visit as well. It’s also a cenote, or as they like to call it, a grotto.

Note that grottoes were common sacred sites in the Old World as well. Many of Apollo’s oracular sanctuaries were built near or around spring-fed caverns. Delphi, in particular, was the home of Python, a great serpent slain by Apollo in one of those chaoskampf events I mentioned earlier.

Why are cenotes or grottoes so important? Aside from their mysterious ability to remain full of clean water even during long droughts, they are almost universally recognized as liminal places. Typically they connect the human world with the underworld, which in many mythologies is also the source of all water.

Here in the Americas this is a common belief, but we find it in many parts of the world. Some Hindus and Buddhists, for instance, hold that all of the world’s freshwater springs originate in Patala, the underworld home of the Nagas.

In the Dindsenchas, the River Boyne is said to be the source of all the world’s great rivers and to have been created when Boann angered a vitally important sacred well which was home to dreadful magic.

Back to Greece, Heracles fought the Lernaean Hydra in a region of springs. Lake Lerna itself was associated with the cleansing of miasma and was an entrance to the underworld (Hades).

In Japan, Susano’o slew a great serpent or water dragon at the headwaters of a river. From its tail, He drew the sacred sword which was later handed down via the imperial line.

In Scandinavia and even into England, lindworms and knuckers were often associated with waterways, wells, and caverns.

There are plenty of non-serpents associated with sacred waters, but the serpents show up a LOT, especially in regard to the sites of greatest importance.

The Americas are no exception as far as dangerous giant serpents associated with waterways, cenotes, and grottoes.

A recurrent motif, the horned or plumed serpent, appears throughout much of the New World. The Lakota tell of Unhcegila and Unk Tehi, who rose out of the Atlantic and crossed half the continent spreading blindness, insanity, flooding, and death until they were stopped by one or more brave heroes or by Thunderbirds.

The Cherokee have Uktena, while the Abenaki know Pita-Skog. The Ojibwe have Mishi-ginebig and the Menominee speak of Misikinubik. In Central America we have Kukulkan and Quetzalcoatl, though They tend to bridge not only underworld and human world but also the overworld/sky as well.

So to with Avanyu of the Tewa peoples of the desert Southwest, most especially the Rio Grande Valley.

In some cases, these entities are considered deities, whereas in other traditions they are simply inhabitants of great power. The legends differ on humans’ ability to deal diplomatically with these powerful beings.

I honestly don’t know what to expect tomorrow, now later today. In all likelihood, I won’t notice anything going on. Indeed, I fear that as failure. On the other hand, Hamilton Pool has a long history of mysterious drownings- and Westcave won’t even allow people to their cenote without guides.

As far as offerings, roasted corn and tobacco might be traditional, but I don’t know for sure. Certain of these beings appear to accept these offerings just fine. On the other hand, because tobacco could be considered aerial if burnt, it might be offensive to the purely chthonic sort, even in a non-burning form.

I guess we’ll find out.

-In Deos Confidimus

 

Research, Troubleshooting

Who Lived Here?

In researching the Texas Problem, and the seemingly contradictory Waco Problem, one significant question arises- who lived here before Europeans?

Specifically, which group or groups were indigenous- having inhabited Central Texas for the longest time before the Spanish and Anglos arrived?

Casual Internet searching delivers an absolute mess, such as this map on Wikipedia:

Digging deeper, there are a large number of errors with this map, which purports to describe the situation in Texas around the year 1500.

The Apache were present in the Texas Panhandle as nomadic bands by 1500, having migrated from the northwest in prior centuries. The Tonkawa, incorrectly represented here as Coahuiltecan, are now thought to have lived in much the same area as the Apache until forced out by the Commanche around the turn of the 18th Century.

The Jumano, upon further review, seem to have been a cross-cultural melting pot of people from various tribes who formed a diverse trading and diplomatic society at the meeting point of numerous linguistic traditions.

Other maps represent Comancheria as having been in existence pre-contact. However, there’s significant evidence that the Commanche were still living in the vicinity of Montana in 1500 and did not venture south until acquiring horses by trade after the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico.

Part of the issue confusing pre-contact maps is the tendency, by Anglos and Spaniards to confuse bands, tribes, and nations. Imagine if a traveler met a group identified as “Round Rock” or “Austin” and decided that Austin was a great city of the Round Rock nation.

Students of European history should know better, as it was not that long ago when a single barony might sway back and forth between two, three, or even four kingdoms, any of which might later be considered counties or duchies in a still-larger kingdom.

The same applies with native peoples, who might share kinship and political cooperation with a sizeable number of other bands, collectively a tribe, and a group of tribes, sharing a common linguistic heritage and a more or less peaceful coexistence might be considered a nation.

To be fair, all of these distinctions are muddy, both for native peoples and European-style nations. For the sake of not bogging down too much in technicalities I am concerning myself with native nations in the sense of large linguistic groups who were allied with each other. That said, internecine conflict still occurred within nations, as it did between villages in Europe and still sometimes does here in the U.S.

This is the map I come up with:

Pre-contact borders by Keith's estimation.

As you can see, there is a huge area that is “international”. There were definitely important sites linked to various nations within that zone- for instance Aquarena Springs which is sacred to certain Coahuiltecan bands and Hueco Springs to the south, which by some accounts was used by people related to the Waco village at, well, Waco.

Similarly, the Jumano and Coahuiltecan areas seem to have been populated by a number of different peoples who spoke different languages. While the Coahuiltecan bands seem to have shared similarities in diet and lifestyle, historians are unsure about Jumanos. In some cases they are described as settled farmers and in other cases as nomadic hunters.

It is entirely possible that the Jumanos region was actually much larger and included both settled peoples and nomads who traded extensively. We have written accounts of the Apache and Pueblo peoples trading this way, and of Apache bands camping near the Pueblos in colder months.

Likewise, the Tonkawa probably moved about in the “international” zone until the Comanches forced them and the Apaches south around the turn of the 18th Century.

If I am even remotely correct, the indigenous peoples in the area of concern were a combination of nomadic Coahuiltecan bands and villages of Wichita-related folks like those who lived at Waco.

The area of concern compared with New England.

Survivors of the Coahuiltecan peoples remain a part of the local population, often considered “Mexican” because their ancestors were forced to speak Spanish and to convert to Catholicism.

The Wichita bands were largely driven out of the area in the early 1800s by both Anglos and eastern native peoples being pushed into the area by Anglos. The main village at Waco was apparently deserted sometime in the 1830s after being  sacked by another native people- either the Cherokee or Comanche.

By the 1870s, almost all the free native peoples in Texas were being forced onto reservations in Oklahoma. This included the Wichita-speaking tribes, their Caddo cousins to the east, the Tonkawa, and various other pockets that had survived earlier conquests.

Given the decentralized, nomadic lifestyle of the Coahuiltecan bands versus the more settled agriculture of the Wichita-speakers, I’m inclined to focus my research on the latter. I suspect that whatever happened at Waco in the 1830s is somehow connected to the larger issue I’m trying to solve.

-In Deos Confidimus