DUANE
Duane's take
Now, I'm gonna tell this one just the way the marker tells it — you be the judge of what it means. This here is the story of the Dietz Archeological Site, an Indian burial ground in Kleberg County, and the people who called this stretch of Texas coast home for centuries. The Karankawas.
Say that name out loud and let it sit a moment. Centuries old, this burial ground once belonged to them — a coastal tribe that most history books barely pause on. Little-known, the marker calls them, and that might be the saddest two words on the whole plaque.
But here's what we do know. When the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on the Texas coast in 1528 — shipwrecked, stranded, at the mercy of a land and a people he did not know — it was the Karankawas who cared for him. Sit with that a second.
The man survives the wreck, and these so-called primitives are the ones who see him through it. Now, European explorers who encountered the Karankawas noted they were unusually tall and muscular. Formidable people, by any measure.
But those same explorers? Repelled — the marker's word, repelled — by the tribe's habits of tattooing and painting their bodies, and by the practice of smearing themselves with alligator grease to keep off the insects. Which, I'll point out, is a perfectly sensible thing to do on a Texas coast, but nobody asked me.
The Karankawas took death seriously. Especially the death of boys and young men. Those losses were mourned for an entire year.
Three times a day, the family wept for the departed youth. Every single day. Three times.
For a year. And at the end of that year, the mourners didn't just move on — they purified themselves with smoke in a special rite. That is a people who understood grief and gave it its full weight.
Ordinary persons were buried in shallow graves, accompanied by tools and ornaments for whatever came next. But shamans — the medicine men — they received something different. They were cremated during a ceremonial dance.
The whole community in motion, sending them off. When archeologists excavated this site in 1927 and later, they found over twenty skeletons, even though the site had already been looted before they got there. They also found large quantities of burned human bones — which the marker notes suggests ritual cannibalism — along with potsherds, arrowpoints, flint tools, fire implements, and shells.
Centuries of living and dying, right here in Kleberg County. The Karankawas were never very numerous, the marker tells us. And then came the white man's diseases.
And the enmity. Those are the marker's words too — diseases and enmity — and together they reduced this people to a handful of survivors. That handful drifted into Mexico.
A tribe that cared for a shipwrecked stranger in 1528. A tribe with elaborate mourning rites and ceremonial dances and a full year set aside for grief. Gone.
And what's left is a burial ground in Kleberg County, a marker alongside a Texas road, and the name Karankawa — if you'll say it out loud, and let it sit.
What the marker says
Centuries old, this burial ground was once used by the primitive Karankawa Indians. A little-known group, this coastal tribe cared for Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca when he was shipwrecked in Texas in 1528. Although previously looted, the site produced over 20 skeletons when excavated by archeologists in 1927 and later. Also found were large quantities of burned human bones (suggesting ritual cannibalism), potsherds, arrowpoints, flint tools, fire implements, and shells. European explorers found the Karankawas unusually tall and muscular, but were repelled by their habits of tattooing and painting their bodies and smearing themselves with alligator grease to keep off insects. Much ritual attended Karankawa death, especially that of boys and young men, who were mourned for an entire year. Three times a day the family wept for the departed youth. After a year, the mourners purified themselves with smoke in a special rite. Ordinary persons were buried in shallow graves with some tools and ornaments, but shamans (medicine men) were cremated during a ceremonial dance. Never very numerous, the Karankawas drifted into Mexico after the white man's diseases and enmity reduced them to a handful of survivors.