Caddo Sun Accounts across Time and Place

Abstract

Billy Day, a Tunica/Biloxi, recently described the signifi cance of the sun for Caddoan people. Day quoted an “old Caddo relative” of his who said: “I used to go outside and hold my hands up and bless myself with the sun—a’hat. Well, I can’t do that anymore because they say we are sun worshipers. We didn’t worship the sun. We worshiped what was behind it—the power behind it.” Day’s comments, recorded in the documentary series 500 Nations, served to illustrate the centrality of the sun among ancient Caddoans, but it also hinted at change over time as well as resistance to that change. This essay uses sun accounts as a prism into Caddo history. It asks, In what ways did sun stories change over time? My main argument is that constructing a simple cause-and-effect transformation model does not adequately refl ect Caddo history. The Caddos had more than one people, more than one sun account, more than one history, and more than one way of recording history. In Caddo Indians: Where We Came From, ethnohistorian and Caddo Cecile Elkins Carter documented a disjuncture between Caddo ways of doing history and her academic education. When Carter interviewed Caddo elders, they explained that “God gave special ways to the white man and special ways to the Indian.” The “white man” wrote things down, but the “Indian” told what happened and expected “children to listen and remember.” Carter noted that many of her informants confused historical events such as the Indian Removals and the Civil War, but she also feared that the “Indian way of preserving history was weakening.” Her book sought to resolve the problem by drawing on both Native American and European sources and juxtaposing past and present events. Carter described her project as putting together “the broken