Caddo Indians in Hunt County

The plaque describes the Caddo ancestors who lived here but not what became of their descendants. The Handbook of Texas says that by the early 1840s all Caddo groups had moved to the Brazos River to escape Anglo-American pressure and settlement. They were placed on the Brazos Indian Reservation in 1855, and in 1859 about 1,050 Caddos were removed to the Washita River in Indian Territory. The Caddo reservation there was divided into allotments in 1902. Caddo people live mainly in Caddo County, Oklahoma. Caddo comes from Kadohadacho, meaning real chief.

What the plaque says

Caddo Indians in Hunt County Four hundred years ago, the valleys and tributaries of the Ouachita, Red, Sabine and Neches rivers in what is today northeast Texas, northwest Louisiana, southwest Arkansas, and southeast Oklahoma were home to ancestors of the people known today as the Caddo. This extraordinary society of farmers, warriors, potters, priests, and traders played a vital role in the early political and cultural history of the region. Highly successful agriculturalists, the Caddo established themselves through much of the Piney Woods of east Texas by 500 AD. While primarily dependent on agriculture, they supplemented their diet through hunting, fishing, and gathering. Caddo villages were distinctive for their beehive-shaped homes constructed of long-stemmed prairie grasses. The Caddos were known for bow making, pottery production, and many other crafts, and were identifiable by facial and body tattoos and body painting. Most Caddo clothing was made of tanned deerskin. Europeans first encountered the Caddos in 1541, when conquistador Hernando de Soto fought a group in what is now Arkansas. Later encounters accentuated the friendly nature of the Caddos. The word "Texas" is said to originate from the Hasinai confederation of Caddos, who used the work "Tayshas," meaning "allies" or "friends." By AD 800, Caddo groups appear to have moved into the upper and middle Sabine drainage basin. Artifacts found in Hunt County suggest the presence of Caddoan peoples between 800 and 1700 AD; other, earlier peoples also used this region prior to the Caddo. Today, this area and artifacts discovered in it continue to emphasize the legacy of the Caddo peoples. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 8.3 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 27 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 27 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 30 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Lone Oak Baptist Church — 4.2 mi
• Center Point Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — 4.7 mi
• Majors Army Airfield — 4.9 mi
• William Lane — 6.3 mi