Tonkawa Culture

The Tonkawa Indians were actually a group of independent bands, the Tonkawas proper, the Mayeyes, and a number of smaller groups that may have included the Cava, Cantona, Emet, Sana, Toho, and Tohaha Indians. The remnants of these tribes united in the early eighteenth century in the region of Central Texas near Austin. The Tonkawa were hunters and fishermen, they did not farm. They hunted buffalo, deer, turkey and rabbits and caught fish, mussels and fresh water prawns. They also gathered and ate a number of herbs, roots, fruit, seeds, acorns, and pecans. When Anglo settlers moved into their region, pecans became an item of barter.

In aboriginal days the Tonkawas lived in short, squat tepees covered with buffalo hides. As the buffalo became scarce, brush arbors, resembling the tepee in structure but covered with brush branches and grass, replaced the buffalo-skin tepee. Still later, these structures were replaced with simple flat-topped huts covered with brush. The Tonkawas intermarried with Lipans and other Indians or whites to the extent that they were no longer distinguishable as a separate tribe by 1951.

More information on the Tonkawa can be found at The Tonkawan Indians of Texas.

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