Native American tribes in Texas are the Native American tribes who are currently based in Texas and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas who historically lived in Texas.
Many individual Native Americans, whose tribes are headquartered in other states, reside in Texas.
The state formed the Texas Commission for Indian Affairs in 1965 to oversee state-tribal relations; however, the commission was dissolved in 1989. [1]
Texas has three federally recognized tribes. They have met the seven criteria of an American Indian tribe:
The three federally recognized tribes in Texas are:
These are three Indian Reservations in Texas:
Texas has "no legal mechanism to recognize tribes," as journalists Graham Lee Brewer and Tristan Ahtone wrote. [4] State-recognized tribes do not have the government-to-government relationship with the United States federal government that federally recognized tribes do. Texas has no state-recognized tribes. [5]
Texas Senate Bill 274 to formally recognize the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, introduced in January 2021, died in committee. [6]
These are some of the tribes that have existed in what is now Texas. Many were forcibly removed to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, in the 19th century, and few to New Mexico. Others no longer exist as tribes but may have living descendants.
More than 30 organizations claim to represent historic tribes within Texas; however, these groups are unrecognized, meaning they do not meet the minimum criteria of federally recognized tribes [3] and are not state-recognized tribes. [42] Some of these cultural heritage groups form 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.
The Kickapoo people are an Algonquian-speaking Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe, originating in the region south of the Great Lakes. Today, three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes are in the United States: the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. The Oklahoma and Texas bands are politically associated with each other. The Kickapoo in Kansas came from a relocation from southern Missouri in 1832 as a land exchange from their reserve there. Around 3,000 people are enrolled tribal members.
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as a sovereign independent state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
Lipan Apache are a band of Apache, a Southern Athabaskan Indigenous people, who have lived in the Southwest and Southern Plains for centuries. At the time of European and African contact, they lived in New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and northern Mexico. Historically, they were the easternmost band of Apache. Early adopters of horse culture and peyotism, the Lipan Apache hunted bison and farmed.
The classification of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas is based upon cultural regions, geography, and linguistics. Anthropologists have named various cultural regions, with fluid boundaries, that are generally agreed upon with some variation. These cultural regions are broadly based upon the locations of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from early European and African contact beginning in the late 15th century. When Indigenous peoples have been forcibly removed by nation-states, they retain their original geographic classification. Some groups span multiple cultural regions.
The Wichita people, or Kitikiti'sh, are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. Historically they spoke the Wichita language and Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. They are indigenous to Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.
The Atakapa or Atacapa were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who spoke the Atakapa language and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico in what is now Texas and Louisiana.
The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe indigenous to present-day Oklahoma. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct, is a linguistic isolate.
State-recognized tribes in the United States are organizations that identify as Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by a process established under assorted state government laws for varying purposes or by governor's executive orders. State recognition does not dictate whether or not they are recognized as Native American tribes by continually existing tribal nations.
The Texas–Indian wars were a series of conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians during the 19th-century. Conflict between the Plains Indians and the Spanish began before other European and Anglo-American settlers were encouraged—first by Spain and then by the newly Independent Mexican government—to colonize Texas in order to provide a protective-settlement buffer in Texas between the Plains Indians and the rest of Mexico. As a consequence, conflict between Anglo-American settlers and Plains Indians occurred during the Texas colonial period as part of Mexico. The conflicts continued after Texas secured its independence from Mexico in 1836 and did not end until 30 years after Texas became a state of the United States, when in 1875 the last free band of Plains Indians, the Comanches led by Quahadi warrior Quanah Parker, surrendered and moved to the Fort Sill reservation in Oklahoma.
The Fort Sill Apache Tribe is the federally recognized Native American tribe of Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache in Oklahoma.
Teyas were a Native American people living near what is now Lubbock, Texas, who first made contact with Europeans was the 1541 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado Expedition.
The Deadose were a Native American tribe in present-day Texas closely associated with the Jumano, Yojuane, Bidai and other groups living in the Rancheria Grande of the Brazos River in eastern Texas in the early 18th century.
Jumanos were a tribe or several tribes, who inhabited a large area of western Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico, especially near the Junta de los Rios region with its large settled Indigenous population. They lived in the Big Bend area in the mountain and basin region. Spanish explorers first recorded encounters with the Jumano in 1581. Later expeditions noted them in a broad area of the Southwest and the Southern Plains.
The Mayeye were a Tonkawa language–speaking Native American people, who once lived in southeastern Texas. Coastal Mayeyes likely were absorbed into Karankawa communities. Inland Mayeyes likely joined larger Tonkawa communities.
The Battle of the Two Villages was a Spanish attack on Taovaya villages in Texas and Oklahoma by a Spanish army in 1759. The Spanish were defeated by the Taovaya and other Wichita tribes with assistance from the Comanche.
Apachería was the term used to designate the region inhabited by the Apache people. The earliest written records have it as a region extending from north of the Arkansas River into what are now the northern states of Mexico and from Central Texas through New Mexico to Central Arizona.
The Comecrudo people were an Indigenous people of Mexico, who lived in the northern state of Tamaulipas. They were a Coahuiltecan people.