Three Mid-1800s Caddo Vessels from the Brazos Reserve

Abstract

Although a considerable body of historic archival and documentary information is available on the Caddo Indian peoples that lived in Texas between ca. 1836 and 1859 -- the removal period -- not much archaeological evidence has been uncovered for their settlements. By the late 1830s and early 1840s, most of the Caddo groups had been removed from Northeast Texas as their traditional homelands were taken and settled by Anglo-American farmers and planters. Instead, they took up residence in Oklahoma, or settled with other affiliated groups (such as the Delaware, Cherokee, and others) on the Brazos River in north central Texas. There they continued to farm and hunt bison, even after they had been placed on the Brazos Reserve (in present-day Young County, Texas) in 1854. The Caddo peoples on the Reserve, about 1050 in number, were removed in August 1859 to the Indian Territory and the Wichita agency in western Oklahoma. In this paper, I discuss three ceramic vessels in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. They were apparently collected in the rnid-1850s from the Caddo peoples living on the Brazos Reserve. As such, the vessels provide a unique record and look at the kinds of ceramic vessels being manufactured by the Caddo immediately before they were removed to Oklahoma, and has considerable cultural and archaeological significance.