CADDO

CADDO. The Caddo cultural pattern developed among groups occupying conjoining parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas from A.D. 700 to 1000. These groups practiced agriculture, hunting, and trading and lived in dispersed family farmsteads associated with regional temple mound centers. Their elite leadership institutions and an emblematic material culture distinguished these groups. Caddos were first contacted by members of Hernando de Soto's expedition in 1542, when their population may have included as many as 200,000 people. Sub-sequent accounts portray a well-organized society, one that traced ancestry through the mother's line, that filled leadership positions by male inheritance, that had a calendar of ceremonies associated with important social and economic activities, and that had widely extending alliances. Access to European goods stimulated production of commodities for colonial markets, and Caddo leaders played important roles in colonial diplomacy. By the nineteenth century, European diseases had reduced the Caddo population to about 500 individuals, and families had been removed to reservations in Texas and Oklahoma. In this region, the Caddo preserved key social, political, and religious institutions, despite their diminishing circumstances. In 2002, about 4,000 people represented the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, where at a tribal complex near Binger, a variety of health, education, economic development, social service, and cultural programs were maintained.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carter, Cecile Elkins. Caddo Indians: Where We Come From. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

LaVere, David. Caddo Chiefdoms: Caddo Economics and Politics, 800–1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1998.

Newkumet, Vynola B., and Howard L. Meredith. Hasinai: A Traditional History of the Caddo Confederacy. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988.

Perttula, Timothy K. The Caddo Nation: Archaeological and Ethno-historic Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.

Smith, F. T. The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542–1854. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995.

———. The Caddos, the Wichitas, and the United States, 1846– 1901. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996.