The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 180
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
nearly two-thirds of their population. The declining Spanish neglected
them throughout the rest of the eighteenth century by neither provid-
ing them with protection from the powerful Osage tribe nor supplying
them with enough firearms and ammunition to protect themselves."
Although weakened by war and disease in the final quarter of the
eighteenth century, the Caddo retained their pride and maintained
their culture in the face of much interference. The tribe proved suc-
cessful in this effort because the various confederacies gradually
aligned themselves more tightly behind the firm leadership of the Ka-
dohadacho and their impressive caddz, Dehahuit.
The gradual dominance of the Kadohadacho is one of the most im-
portant trends of this period. They were by far the largest of the Caddo
tribes, consisting of between five and six hundred people with about
one hundred warriors. The Kadohadacho, now reduced to only one re-
maining tribe, had been forced by the Osage onslaught to move down-
stream from their former villages at the bend of the Red River. In 1803
they lived about 120 miles above Natchitoches on Sodo Bayou, thirty-
five miles west of the Red River. One contemporary Spanish observer,
Juan Antonio Padilla, claimed the Kadohadacho "of all the Indians,
perhaps are the most civilized." Doctor John Sibley, who was to become
the United States Indian agent for the area, expressed his belief that
the Kadohadacho warriors were "looked upon somewhat like Knights
of Malta, or some distinguished military order." The Kadohadacho
were predominant over the Caddo tribes, "who look up to them as fa-
thers, visit and intermarry among them, and join them in all their
wars." "
An important reason that the Kadohadacho had become so powerful
is that, unlike the Hasinai tribes, the office of the caddi had remained
intact and in the hands of a few long-lived, capable individuals. While
many Hasinai leaders had met with untimely deaths in the last years of
the eighteenth century, the Kadohadacho had had only two caddices
from 1770 to 18oo." The present Kadohadacho caddz, Dehahuit, en-
')Agreement Made with the Indian Nations in Assembly, April 21, 1770, in Herbert Eugene
Bolton (ed ), Athanase de Mzizies and the Loutsrnna-Texas Fonte, 1768-1780 (2 vols,
Cleveland. Arthur I-i Clark Co , I 14), I, 157-158 I his period can be documented in Bolton,
Athanase de MIzies, and Lawrence Kinnaird (cd ), Spain in the Moissisrpp Valley, 1765-1794,
Annual Repoit of the American Historical Association for the Year 1945 (3 vols., Washington,
D C : Government Prl'ting Ofhce, 1946)
"'John Sibley, "Iistorical Sketches of the Several Indian tribes in Louislana, south of the
Arkansas, and between the Mississsippl and River G(;i ande," Apr 5, 1805, American State Papers,
Class II, Indian AfJaui (Washington, D1) C ' ales and Seaton, 1832), 721 (2nd and 3rd quota-
tlons); John Sibley, A Report Fom Natchitoches in 18o7, ed. Annie Heloise Abel (New York: Mu-
seum of the Ameri(an Indian Foundation, 1922), 95, Juan Antonio Padilla, "'Texas in 1820,"
trans Mattle Austin Hatcher, SIIQ, XXIII (July, 1919), 48 (1st quotation)
'' The Hasinal leaders continued to die often in the period covered by this paper-Blanco in
18o9 and his successor in 1812 See Manuel de Salcedo to Bernardo Bonavla, June 16, 1809
(BAM, roll 36); Bernardo Montero to Salccdo, May 13, 1812 (BAM, roll 51).180
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992, periodical, 1992; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117153/m1/226/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.