The Hasinais, Southern Caddoans as Seen by the Earliest Europeans

Book excerpt: Renowned as the founder of Spanish borderlands studies, Herbert Eugene Bolton was the first U.S. historian to build his research on Spanish archives and other forgotten archives in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mexico, and Cuba. Yet before that, from 1906 to 1908, Bolton studied the Hasinai Indians of Louisiana and Texas. Russell Magnaghi has edited Bolton's previously unpublished examination of the Hasinais, a settled, agricultural American Indian tribe in East Texas and one of the two major branches of the Caddoan Indians. Bolton's ethnohistorical analysis' includes chapters on the Hasinai interaction with the Spanish and the French; their economic life and social and political organization; their housing, hardware, and handicrafts; their dress and adornment; their religious beliefs and customs; and their war customs and ceremonials.