Life Among the Texas Indians: The WPA Narratives

Historian David La Vere has gathered a wealth of vivid detail about life among the former Texas Indian peoples, including the Kiowas, Comanches, Wichitas, Caddos, Tonkawas, and Lipan Apaches. Culled from 112 volumes of the Indian-Pioneer Histories in the Indian Archives at the Oklahoma Historical Society, these oral histories also include interviews with non-Indian neighbors. Together, their recollections provide an exceptional picture of the details of daily life-war and raiding, hunting and planting, foodways, dress, parties and spiritual practices, education, health, and housing. La Vere sets the stage for this ethnographic detail with a lively, readable history of the succession of peoples who lived in Texas from the Paleo-Indians until the present. It is a clear overview of the basic social structures of the tribes, the relations among tribes and, later, of the Indians with the Europeans who came to the region.