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“Little Angel” with a Big Legacy

By: Sen. John Cornyn

Long before the first of the familiar six flags flew over Texas, this land was home to native peoples who developed productive, advanced cultures prior to the dawn of recorded history. And, their heritage forms an important foundation of modern Texas.

One of these societies, which settled in present-day East Texas, included a native woman who stood at the juncture between early civilizations and new ones, where east met west in the southern part of North America. Spanish explorers, who encountered her around the beginning of the 1700s, called her Angelina, which meant “little Angel.”

Angelina is one of the few native women specifically remembered from the Indian culture that began in Texas centuries before the arrival of European explorers. A slim biography of Angelina, often enhanced with legends, emerges from records of Spanish and French expeditions.

Both nations sought friendly relations with the Caddos in order to secure a foothold and hinder each other in this strategic location in the “new” world. Their admiration for her is one thing they agreed on. They recognized her value as a translator and guide. The Spanish called her “a learned Indian woman” and “the sagacious Indian interpreter.”

Records of a French explorer describe her as someone who spoke Spanish and “let us have some guides for hire.” Another, believed to have recuperated under her care, wrote that she “served me all the best she had, and she had as much love for me as if I had been her child.”

These descriptions of Angelina put a human face on a great society, the Caddo Nation, which occupied East Texas north to the Red River and parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Angelina’s people, the Hasinais, were a southern Caddo tribe settled in the valleys of rivers now known as the Neches and the Angelina around Lufkin. The Caddo word for friends produced the name Texas.

Compared to the far-ranging Plains Indians, Caddo tribes often stayed close to home to tend their crops. They lived in beehive-shaped huts built of poles covered with thatch. At the time of the European expeditions into East Texas, the Caddo tribes depended on farming, but also hunted, fished and gathered wild nuts, fruits and native plants. Corn was their main crop, along with beans, squash, pumpkins and sunflowers.

The Caddos, writes anthropologist W.W. Newcomb, Jr., “achieved a level of cultural development unsurpassed by other Texas Indians, possessing comparatively advanced technique and tools for exploiting the resources of nature.” Another writer describes “the prestige the Caddo Nation enjoyed among other Texas tribes.”

The Caddo culture ultimately could not withstand encroachment by settlers and the new diseases that came with them. By one estimate, the Caddo population dropped as much as 95 percent after the arrival of the Europeans.

This happened so rapidly that most of Hasinai Caddos were gone from East Texas before Angelina County was named for “the Little Angel.” Descendants of the Hasinais from Texas today live on Caddo lands in southwestern Oklahoma.

The legacy of the Caddo civilization in East Texas, though, lives on. Archeological research at the Caddoan Mounds State Historic Site west of the city of Nacogdoches, another Indian name, provides significant knowledge of a major Caddo community.

Exploring the history of Texas teaches us the value of the contributions of successive peoples and generations. Each has built on the knowledge and mistakes of others. We also have schools, libraries, museums, archives, archeologists and historians to uncover, preserve and interpret our history. Everything we learn about our past is an investment in our future.


Sen. Cornyn serves on the Armed Services, Judiciary and Budget Committees. In addition, he is Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics. He serves as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee's Immigration, Border Security and Refugees subcommittee and the Armed Services Committee's Airland subcommittee. He served previously as Texas Attorney General, Texas Supreme Court Justice, and Bexar County District Judge.