Tonkawa

The Tonkawa are a Native American nation whose history runs from the southern Plains of Oklahoma through central Texas and back to northern Oklahoma, where the Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma is based today. Their own name, Tickanwa•tic, means "real people"; the name Tonkawa comes from a Waco word usually translated "they all stay together". Their language is an isolate, with no known relatives.

The Tonkawa were long assumed to be ancient residents of Texas, but historians now think they moved into the state only in the late 17th century, arriving in central Texas around the time of early European contact. In 1601 they were living in what is now north-western Oklahoma as a set of related, largely nomadic bands who practised some horticulture. By 1700 pressure from the Apache and Wichita had pushed them south towards the Red River. Their numbers, perhaps around 1,900 in the 16th century, fell to roughly 1,600 by the late 17th century through disease and war.

Many bands came to be counted as Tonkawa, among them the Mayeye, Yojuane, Ervipiame, Sana and Tonkawa proper. In the 1740s some settled at the Spanish San Gabriel missions in Texas. In 1758 Tonkawa warriors joined the Caddo, Wichita, Comanche and others in an attack on the Lipan Apache that destroyed the mission of Santa Cruz de San Sabá. Later in the century, as they pressed further south, they allied with the Lipan instead.

In the era of Anglo-American colonisation the Tonkawa often fought beside Texans against other nations, though relations were uneasy: in the mid-1820s colonists around San Felipe de Austin clashed with them over stolen livestock and corn. They fought alongside Texas forces against the Comanche at Plum Creek in 1840 and Little Robe Creek in 1858, and in 1842 were mustered with the Lipan to support the Republic of Texas against a Mexican incursion. Around 1838 their main camp lay near Bastrop, where an English visitor in 1843 found them trading busily with townspeople.

In 1859 the United States forced the Tonkawa and other Texas nations north to the Wichita Agency in Indian Territory. During the American Civil War they sided with the Confederacy, and on 24 October 1862 pro-Union Delaware, Shawnee and Osage fighters attacked them in what became known as the Tonkawa Massacre. Survivors drifted back to Texas, were settled near Fort Griffin in 1867, and in 1884 were moved again to the Oakland Agency in what is now Kay County, Oklahoma, arriving in 1885. The tribe still marks that removal, its own Trail of Tears, with an annual powwow at the end of June.

By 1921 only 34 tribal members were left. The tribe organised under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act in 1938 and had grown to close to 950 citizens by 2023. An elected president and council govern it; the tribe runs casinos and other businesses, and keeps a tribal museum in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. In 2023 it bought Sugarloaf Mountain in Milam County, Texas, a site in its origin story, to become a historical park. The language has had no first-language speakers since the mid-20th century, but revitalisation is under way.

Our maps for 1492, 1530, 1600, 1650, 1700 and 1715 draw an approximate Tonkawa territory in central Texas; the early years fall before the Tonkawa are thought to have arrived there. On the 1650 map it borders the Atakapa, the Caddo, the Comanche, the Lipan and the Wichita; on the 1492 map the Jumanos lie to the west and the Coahuiltecan peoples to the south-west.