Copyright by Paul Shawn Joseph Marceaux 2011 - Repository ...

harvest, success in warfare, and other appeals to the Ayo‐Caddi‐Aymay on behalf
of the Hasinai Caddo. The xinesí invited all of the important members in Hasinai
society to the large house where they kept the sacred fire burning day and night.
In this house, they used ceremony and ritual, including singing, small reed boxes
associated with the children, and rattles, to communicate with the children.
Contact, Disease and Disruption
Historic accounts recorded epidemic diseases among the Caddo in 1691,
1718‐1719, 1731, 1759, 1777‐1778, and in 1801‐1802, and document the rapid
demographic changes that played a role in the shifting structure and
organization of the Hasinai alliance. For example, between January and March of
1691 an epidemic killed between 300‐400 Hasinai. Perhaps as many as 3,000
people died from the other Caddo groups, and in the following summer, around
200 more Caddo were killed (Hatcher 1927:294‐295; Smith 1998:175). At least
another 100 Hasinai died years later, in an epidemic during the winter of 1717‐
1718 (Hatcher 1927). Still, the Hasinai were resilient and though reduced to
around 1,500 members by 1721 only one of the original nine groups of the
alliance (Nabitis) had vanished from the historic record.
The spread of disease among the Hasinai Caddo continued through the
mid‐18 th century. An epidemic struck the Hasinai Caddo groups’ authority
figures particularly hard in 1777, killing nearly a third of the Hasinai, including
Bigotes and a Nabedache chief (Bolton 1914; Carter 1995; Kinnaird 1949; Smith
1998:176). Bigotes, the Hainai caddi and leader of the Hasinai Caddo alliance, was
an important political figure (Carter 1995:179) who had helped to bring about
peace in a period characterized by Native hostilities and epidemics. According to
Smith (1998:176), there were only around 1,000 Hasinai Caddo by the 1770s,
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