We’re Still Here

With cane ornaments piercing their noses and nipples, Karankawa warriors were the stuff of nightmares. Reports of their savagery date to the accounts of French and Spanish explorers in the 17th and 18th centuries. The indigenous inhabitants of a strip of Texas coastal inlets, marshes, and forests from Galveston Bay to Corpus Christi Bay, the Karankawa were described as wearing breechcloths or nothing at all, revealing muscular bodies covered in tattoos and paint. The men were said to have frequently topped 7 feet in height, described as fleet of foot and powerful wrestlers. They coated themselves in a poultice made of either shark oil or alligator grease, which warded off mosquitoes and also gave them a pungent aroma. Their red cedar longbows were almost as tall as they were, and their strings sent steel-tipped, goose-feather guided arrows hissing with unerring accuracy through the bodies of their prey and combatants alike. And on top of everything else, we were told, the Karankawa were voracious cannibals.

“Ask any school-aged child in a Texas public school what they know about the Karankawa and you will, most likely, receive a testimony about their despicable savagery, gruesome cannibalism, and general lack of civility and appeal,” wrote Vivien Geneser, a former Texas A&M-San Antonio associate professor of early childhood education, in the.