Tonkawa Indians earliest inhabitants

Tonkawa Indians earliest inhabitants

By compiled by Jim Dawson Friday, 07 April 2006

Perhaps the earliest inhabitants of the Round Rock area were the Tonkawa Indians. As early as 8000 B.C., groups of hunter-gatherers roamed the plains from the Guadalupe River north to the headwaters of the Neches. They often made their temporary villages along the banks of rivers and streams, including Brushy Creek and the San Gabriel River.

Tonkawa derives from the Waco Indian word “Tickanwatic” which means the “most human of people.” They developed a complex social organization, primarily based on maternally-related kinship units. Children became members of their mother’s clan, and men lived with their spouse’s clans.

While they inhabited Central Texas, small game and berries were plentiful. Buffalo herds roamed the plains, and deer lived in the small meadows. The climate was temperate and water was abundant year round.

Because of the temperate climate, they wore little clothing. Children often wore no clothes. Adult males wore a long breechcloth, supplemented with buckskin or bison-hide moccasins, leggings and robes as weather demanded.

Women wore short skin skirts and often painted their faces and upper bodies. Males wore earrings, necklaces and other ornaments of shell, bone and feathers, and both sexes tattooed their bodies.

They survived as nomadic buffalo hunters and gatherers, rebuilding their teepees when they moved. They used buffalo hide for the teepees when they worked in the northern areas and brush and tree branches while in the southern regions. Dogs assisted in transporting their few belongings from site to site. As a tribe, they gathered as they moved.

They hunted small game individually, but larger game demanded a group effort.

By the mid 1800s, the Tonkawas realized the need to form a peaceful relationship with the settlers in the region. Members of the tribe became scouts for the Army and even fought with the Texas Rangers against other warring tribes, such as the Apache and Comanche.

The Tonkawas were slow to change, acquiring firearms and horses late; and they did not take to farming the land thus sealing their fate.

With the buffalo gone, and game becoming scarce, the remaining Tonkawas were removed to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1859.