Caddo Archaeological Sites on San Pedro Creek in Houston County, Texas: San Pedro de los Nabedaches

Abstract

The Nabedache Caddo that lived on San Pedro Creek in Houston County in the East Texas Pineywoods were a prominent nation during the early years of European contact, from ca. A.D. 1687-1730. Their villages, hamlets, and farmsteads sat astride an aboriginal trail that came to be known as El Camino Real de los Tejas, and thus their community was a principal gateway to Europeans and other Native American tribes who came from the west in Spanish Texas to meet with the Tejas or Hasinai Caddo peoples. The first Spanish mission in East Texas was established amidst the Nabedache Caddo community. The archaeology of the Nabedache Caddo, or that of their pre-A.D. 1542 ancestors, is not well understood, primarily because of the dearth of intensive investigations at a range of Nabedache Caddo sites. Work that has been completed, primarily on sites at Mission Tejas State Park, have included surveys and limited test excavations at a few sites that have Caddo material culture remains (sherds from ceramic vessels, chipped stone tools, etc.) and European trade goods, including glass beads, gunflints, lead balls and sprue, an iron hoe, an iron rowel, a possible strike-a-light, an iron gun cock, trigger plate, butt plate finial, and gun barrel fragments, iron cast iron kettle fragments, iron knife fragments, wrought iron nails, brass tinklers, and Spanish majolica sherds. In this article, I discuss the archaeological material culture remains from several Nabedache Caddo sites along San Pedro Creek that are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin.