3 Cabeza de Vaca’s Narrative, 1542
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative, written about five years after his travels across what is now South Texas, provides an early written source about this region’s indigenous cultures.
CHAPTER 39:
Indian Warfare
ALL THESE tribes are warlike and have as much strategy for protection against enemies as if they had been reared in Italy in continual feuds. When in a part of the country where enemies might attack, they place their houses on the skirt of a scrub wood “forest,” the thickest and most tangled they can find, and dig a ditch in which they sleep. The warriors cover themselves with small brush, leaving loopholes, and are so camouflaged that, if come upon, they are not discovered.
They open a very narrow pathway into the interior of the scrub stand, where a spot is prepared for the women and children to sleep. At nightfall they kindle fires in their lodges to make possible spies think the tribe is inside them. Before daybreak they relight these fires. Should an enemy come to assault the lodges, the defenders in the ditch sally out and inflict much injury before they are seen or located. When no timber presents itself for this kind of shelter and ambush overnight, they arrange themselves on selected open ground and invest it with trenches covered with brush, spacing apertures to shoot arrows through.
Once while I was with the Aguenes [Doguenes], their [Quevene] enemies fell upon them suddenly at midnight, killed three, and wounded many. The Aguenes ran from their houses into the fields facing. When they perceived their assailants had retired, they went back to pick up all the arrows the latter had shot and followed after them so stealthily that the aggressors did not suspect their arrival in the village that night. At 4 A.M. the Aguenes attacked, killed five, and wounded quite a few. The Quevenes fled from their houses, leaving their bows and all they owned behind. In a little while, the wives of the Quevene warriors came to the Aguenes and made a treaty of friendship. The women, on the other hand, sometimes are the cause of war. All these nations, when they have personal enmities and are not related, assassinate at night, waylay, and inflict gross atrocities on each other
CHAPTER 40:
An Enumeration of the Nations and Tongues
I SHOULD LIKE TO catalog the natives and their languages all the way from the Island of Doom (Galveston Island) to the farthest Cuchendados. (These are names he recalled of some of the Native Americans of the Texas Gulf Coast).
Two languages are found on the island: those spoken by the Capoques and Han. On the mainland over against the island are the Charruco, who take their name from the forests where they live. Advancing along the coast, we come to the Deguenes and, opposite them, the Mendica. Farther down the coast are the Quevenes and, behind them inland, the Mariames. Continuing by the coast: the Guaycones and, behind them inland, the Yeguaces. After these come the Atayos, in thei