Annual Caddo meeting features research, art
February 28, 2010
Real East Texas living is unearthed for the public in an archeological seminar on Caddo culture coming in March.
"This heritage belongs to everyone, even if you're not a lineal descendant," said George Avery, a staff archeologist with Stephen F. Austin State University and participant in the 52nd Annual Caddo Conference at Tyler's Ornelas Center.
The three-day conference, joined this year with the annual conference of the East Texas Archeological Society, offers more than dry lectures and presentation of research, Avery and other participants said.
"They didn't start out that way," he confessed to the dryness of some of the subject matter. "They started out as pure archeology."
But this is not your great-great-great-grandfather's archeological conference.
During the day, the Ornelas grounds will host Caddo arts and crafts exhibits. The cheekily named Caddo Culture Club, one of a host of representatives coming from the tribe's home in Anadarka, Okla., will be inviting visitors to join daily dances.
The club of 40 authentic tribal dancers will be performing each afternoon outside the Ornelas Center, and from 1-3 p.m. Saturday at the Tyler State Park amphitheater.
The Culture Club will bring a traditional turkey dance, which must be completed by dark, as well as social dances, " ...in which my 4-year-old son can join in and become one of the dancers," said Thomas Guderjan, an organizer of the conference.
"What we're trying to do is attract a lot of families and kids," said Guderjan, associate professor of anthropology at the hosting University of Texas at Tyler. "We're promoting awareness of the prehistoric North American people of East Texas. ... The fact that there were people here thriving and doing well a thousand or more years before the Europeans showed up is lost on our folks."
Mark Walters, a retired farmer near the Gregg/Smith county line turned amateur archeologist, said the Caddo Conference is unique among archeological seminars in attracting members of the culture it studies.
"They are very much interested in their history," he said. "And they like to learn more about what their ancestors were like. And they like to come back to East Texas, because this was their original home."
The tribe, whose population when Europeans arrived is difficult to estimate because small pox and other Western diseases decimated their numbers, made themselves useful to French and Spanish settlers. According to the Texas Library Association, they introduced themselves as Tayshas, their word for 'ally,' leading settlers to mistake that for their tribe's name and giving birth to the name of the Lone Star State.
The peaceful allies acted as diplomats between those Europeans and more hostile native tribes and were ready trading partners.
The wave of American immigration following the 1805 Louisiana Purchase pushed the Caddo from their lands, however.
"Our textbooks don't talk much about that," Walters said. "But it was a sad day in our history."
That's one reason he and other conference participants hope today's East Texans will attend, or visit, the seminar.
"We try to really encourage the general public to come and be involved in it. These are things that should be interesting to everybody that lives in East Texas," Walters said. "It will be more than to see the Caddo. You can participate in the dance, too."
****
If you go
- What: 52nd Annual Caddo Conference and 17th Annual East Texas Archeological Conference
- When: March 18-20
- Where: Ornelas Center, Old Omen Road in Tyler (near University of Texas at Tyler campus)
- Cost: $20 to attend seminars; free activities on grounds
- Contact: go to www.52ndcaddo17thetac.com
- Lodging: call (903) 581-8646