The CADDO Indians
By Anne Ford
The first men to live along the Red River were part of an advanced civilization composed of about two dozen Indian tribes who formed a loose-knit province or kingdom. The east Texas group know as the Kadohadacho (later shortened to Caddo) as described by Mildred Gleason in her book, Caddo. 
The Caddoes, members of the Southeastern area culture, were the earliest inhabitants of today's Marion County, Texas. Despite their collapse before Texas became a state, they were the most important of the state's natives in their level of cultural development, advanced techniques and tools, and success in agriculture.
Although the Caddo archeology has not been totally resolved, enough is known to draw some broad conclusions. It is probable that they were a part of the Mississippi Pattern, an advanced and vigorous Caribbean people who migrated by sea and established themselves along the Gulf Coast sometimes before AD 500. In this new land, the transplanted culture was highly successful, the people multiplied, and spread, in time, to the Trinity River in Texas on the west, and the Atlantic on the east.
This Mississippi pattern was characterized by a well-developed, productive agriculture, high population density, and large ceremonial centers clustering around temple mounds. To the archeologists, these ceremonial centers suggest a well-developed political and economic system and a stratified society divided along occupational and hereditary lines (Gleason, p.2).
These Indians were never called savages, even by the earliest French and Spanish explorers who encountered them. In fact, they enjoyed a reputation that excited the imagination of the Spanish governor of the New Province of Texas. Domingo Teran de los Rios, made a trip to visit the Caddos in 1691.
He found a civilization known as Tejas, formed with an organized government, living in round wood and thatch dwellings and cultivating crops, including beans, corn, pumpkin, melons, and tobacco. They wore clothing of tanned deerskin, and made beautiful black leather using the brains of deer and buffalo. They decorated clothing with small white beads and fringe work and wore turkey feather garments on special occasions (Gleason). The Caddo were well-respected among other Indians for the beauty of their leather goods and pottery. They conducted annual trade fairs in their riverside communities, drawing tribesmen from other nations in for commerce. In addition to utilitarian items, they offered art pieces made of wood, shell and ceramics (Newkumet and Meredith 1988)
In spite of the Caddo's successful adaptation to life in a swampy, river bottom environment, the sudden shifts of the flood-prone bayous and river valleys caused problems. One of their largest villages was under what became Caddo Lake. Some Indian legends claim that the village sank overnight in a violent upheaval that sounds like an earthquake. No evidence can be found for an earthquake in the lake bed, however, and it is more likely another more insidious cause wiped out the village and created the lake. The enemy was a vast floating raft of driftwood. Florence Dorsey in, Master of the Mississippi, writes:
The Indian guides said that the Raft had always been there. Their oldest tribal stories mentioned it. Each year it grew upstream, the swamp creeping beside it. Where their ancestors had once had their largest village, Caddo Lake now ripples. This cursed barrier would always crawl on and on, devouring the river, ruining the country, and driving out the game. The gods themselves could not stop it (Dorsey, p. 167).
The story of how and when this barrier was finally destroyed is told in the September/October, 1997 Newsletter HOPPCI.
Bibliography
Bludworth, G. T. (19--)A History of Texas Rivers: Chapter IV-The Red River, The Watchtower, Barker History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Cohen, Peter Z. (1955) The Great River Raft . Niles, Illinois: Albert Whitman and Company.
Dean, Winnie Mimms. (1953) Jefferson Texas: Queen of the Cypress. Dallas, Texas: Mathis, Van Nort and Company.
Dorsey, Florence L. (1941) Master of the Mississippi. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Gleason, Mildred (19--) Caddo.
Hartung, A. M. (1948) Red River Natural Boundary Line. Cattleman Magazine . May. Barker History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Haurwitz, Ralph. (1993) Selling the Beauty of Caddo . Austin American-Statesman, March 26, 1993.
Newkumet, V. B. and Meredith, H. L. (1988). A Traditional History of the Caddo Confederacy. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Tarpley, Fred. (1983) Riverport to the Southwest . Austin, Texas, Eakin Press.
Tyson, Carl (19--) The Red River in Southwestern History.