Hasinai
Template:Short description Template:Infobox ethnic group The Hasinai Confederacy (Caddo: Template:Lang<ref>Edmonds 27</ref>) was a large confederation of Caddo-speaking Native Americans who occupied territory between the Sabine and Trinity rivers in eastern Texas. Today, their descendants are enrolled in the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and the Natchitoches Tribe of Louisiana.
Name
The name Hasinai means "our own people" in Caddoan. The Spanish knew the Hasinai as the Tejas or Texas, from a form of greeting meaning "friend", which gave the state of Texas its name.<ref name="TSHA">Template:Cite web</ref>
Variants of Hasinai include: Hasini, Asenai, Asinai, Assoni, Asenay, Cenis, Senis, Sannaye,<ref name="TSHA" /> Asinaiz, Asinayes, Assinais, Azinais, Azinays.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Government
When the Spanish and the French encountered the Hasinai in the 1680s, they were a centrally organized chiefdom under the control of a religious leader, known as the Grand Xinesi. He lived in a secluded house and met with a council of elders.
The chieftainship consisted of several subdivisions, which have been designated "cantonments". Each was under the control of a Caddi. There were also men designated as Canahas and Chayas, who helped the Caddi run the system.<ref>Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999) p. 44</ref>
History
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During the 17th century, the Hasinai traded with the Jumano at the western Hasinai city of Nabedache.<ref>Anderson, The Indian Southwest, p. 47</ref> Some consider the residents of Nabedache to have been a distinct people designated by that name.
Historic populations
It is estimated that in 1520, the people who would become the Hasinai, the Kadohadacho and the Natchitoches, numbered about 250,000.<ref>Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007) p. 20</ref> Over the next 250 years, the population of these Caddoan-speaking peoples was severely reduced by epidemics of endemic diseases carried by Spanish and French colonists and spread through indigenous trading networks. Native Americans had no acquired immunity to the new diseases, and suffered high mortality.
In 1690, the Hasinai numbered in the vicinity of 10,000 people or a little more. By 1720, as a result of infectious diseases such as smallpox, the Hasinai population had fallen to 2,000.<ref>Anderson, The Indian Southwest, p. 57</ref>
Closely related peoples
See also
- Caddoan Mississippian culture
- Caddo
- Caddo language
- Yowani Choctaw
- El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail
Notes
References
- Edmonds, Randlett. Nusht'uhtiʔtiʔ Hasinay: Caddo Phrasebook. Richardson, TX: Various Indian Peoples Publishing, 2003. Template:ISBN.
External links
- The Hasinai Society of the Caddo Nation Template:Webarchive
- Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture — The Hasinai Template:Webarchive
- Tides.sfasu.ed−Texas Tides: Location of the Tribes of the Hasinai Confederacy in 1716
- Texasbeyondhistory.net: Life and Times of the Caddo
Template:Caddo Template:Native American Tribes in Texas Template:Mississippian and related cultures Template:Pre-Columbian North America