The Karankawa and the Power of Narrative: How History Misrepresented a People

“Seven-foot-tall giants.” “Cannibals.” “Hostile.” “Extinct.” These words have long been used to describe the Karankawa people of Texas shaping public perception for centuries. But how accurate are these portrayals? A closer examination of historical and archaeological evidence reveals that many of these labels were exaggerations, misunderstandings, or deliberate distortions used to justify violence and dispossession. Rather than a savage and vanished people, the Karankawa were skilled coastal inhabitants whose story has been deeply misrepresented by colonial narratives. 

The Karankawa people are a group of Texas tribes whose native homeland stretches along the Texas Gulf Coast from Houston to Galveston Bay, to Corpus Christi. While not one single tribe, the name Karankawa is used to describe the groups of coastal bands who share a similar culture and language called Karankawan. These pre-classical groups include the Cocos, Carancahuas, Cujanes, Coapites, and Copanos. 

Although not unified under a single tribal name, “Karankawas” became a collective term assigned to these groups who viewed themselves as autonomous entities. It was not until the Spanish arrived in Texas and attempted a full genocide of the Karankawa in the late eighteenth century did the bands unite to fight one enemy, and thus a single name was assigned to the group as a whole. Once the Spanish were no longer a threat, the independent bands would return to governing themselves independently, but the name “Karankawa” remained as the name given to the entire group in the region.

The Karankawa lived as semi-nomadic people who skillfully adapted to their coastal environment. While they practiced some agriculture, they relied heavily on the abundant marine resources of bays, estuaries, and lagoons, and using dugout canoes, nets, traps, and bows and arrows, they fished efficiently in shallow waters. They also hunted bison and deer and gathered native plants such as tubers, fruits, roots, and nuts. The Karankawa people were semi-nomadic and allowed themselves to be mobile to follow the best resources depending on the season.  

With their sustained high-protein diet, evidence has been found supporting one of the myths that the Karankawa were in fact taller than average. Archaeological evidence of skeletal remains suggests that the Karankawa people may have ranged in height from 5’5’” to 5’11”, making them taller than the average Spaniard whose average height at the time of first contact is estimated between 5’3” and 5’5”.2 Anthropologists hypothesize that the high protein diet of the Karankawa allowed for their increased height, while many Europeans at the time often struggled with malnutrition and disease and were thus shorter in stature. While modern evidence may lend to the myth of seven-foot-tall giants, several colonizing groups would use this myth of towering, fearsome giants living on the coast as a means to justify hostilities, oppression, and attempted extermination of the Karankawa people.  

The Karankawa’s height and appearance was first recorded by Cabeza de Vaca as being “tall and well formed” and that the men pierced their nipples with reeds.3 Most other descriptions from Europeans agree that the Karankawa generally wore little to no clothing by modern standards, and in cold weather they employed a buffalo hide robe or blanket for warmth. A common description of the Karankawa involves the practice of tattooing. One such description described tattoos on the face, hands, arms, as well as other places on the body. These tattoos would have been made on the body with a combination of the charcoal of willow wood and water to ink the body with pricks made by a sharp thorn. 

Even more controversial than their height is the accusation of cannibalism. But is there any truth in the claim that Karankawa practiced the act of eating other human beings? While few can produce true firsthand accounts, many would cite the tales told by those who claimed they knew of the gore filled details, such as Franciscan Friar Fray Gaspar Jose, who described the Karankawa as “so savage, indolent and lazy, and who are so greedy and gluttonous that they devour meat that is parboiled, almost raw and dripping blood.”

For generations, this was the accepted and taught picture of the Karankawa people as bloodthirsty, violent, vicious cannibals, but not all historians agree. Many modern historians have moved to disprove the idea that members of the Karankawa practiced cannibalism but Tim Seiter, a researcher of the Karankawa, argues for a more nuanced interpretation. He suggests that the Karankawa practiced limited ritual cannibalism as part of funerary rites or warfare rituals, not as a means of sustenance.  

Seiter’s research has led him to believe that the Karankawa practiced a form of cannibalism known as endocannibalism, the ritualistic practice of consuming the remains of community members as a part of funeral rites to honor the dead. Cabeza de Vaca recorded a part of this practice in his book:  

“Their custom is to bury the dead, except those among them who are medicine men, whom they burn. While the fire is burning, they all dance and have a big festival. They grind the bones to powder and at the end of the year when they celebrate the anniversary, they scarify themselves and give the relatives the pulverized bones to drink in water.”

This is not the only account of ritualistic cannibalism that has survived history. Young Jean-Baptiste Talon, a ten-years child from a French fort was abducted and then adopted by a Karankawa tribe, witnessed the daily lives of a tribe for two and a half years. After his return to fellow Frenchmen, he recounted the following: “The only meals that horrified him were those [The Karankawas] made of human flesh, as they were all cannibals, but toward their savage enemies only. They never ate a single Frenchmen that they had killed because, they said, they do not eat them.”

These practices of ritualistic anthropophagy (eating human beings) recorded by Cabeza de Vaca and Talon tell a vastly different story than the tales of cannibalism that are commonly told in Texas history books. To Seiter, this form of limited anthropophagy was meant purely for absorbing the power of one’s enemy and dishonoring him and not for means of survival. Instead, it is a ritualistic practice not uncommon to that of other cultures in North America and around the world.  

While no records of this practice persist past the eighteenth century, the infamy of cannibalism remains associated with the Karankawa to this day. Ideas such as this allowed writers like Ed Kilman to publish books like Cannibal Coast, in which he described the Karankawa as “the meanest, greediest, laziest, most treacherous, lecherous, vicious, cowardly, insolent aborigines of the Southwest, the scourge of the Frontier.”8 Historians today consider this view sensationalized at best, and racist at worst. 

With the increasing number of Europeans making their way to this new Frontier, the number of interactions between the Spanish, French, and the “hostile” Karankawa continued to increase. Unbeknownst to the Karankawa, their homeland lay in what would become a highly disputed territory between the Spanish and the French. When the French expedition led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle established Fort St. Louis near Matagorda Bay in 1685, he placed himself in the middle of Karankawa territory. When one of the expeditions ships, Aimable, broke apart in the bay, many of the Karankawa quickly acquired debris from the wreckage. La Salle sent a party to reclaim the stolen goods from the Karankawa, and not only did they recover their own stolen goods, but they took canoes and other items from the Karankawa, as well. This led to an armed conflict between the two groups and repeated attacks on the French, causing much suffering amongst the French settlers and beginning the notion of the Karankawa as “hostile” people.

As the Spanish sought to establish their dominance in the same region, they founded the Nuestra Señora de Loreta Presidio and Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission in 1721 near the former site of the French Fort St. Louis. Together, these missions would become known as La Bahía, and they would start their mission to “civilize” and spread Christianity to the Karankawa of the region. These attempts at “civilizing” involved detaining Karankawas within the missions and forcible conversion to Christianity. Any who tried to escape were hunted and recaptured, creating hostilities between the two groups that would devolve into a full scale Karankawa-Spanish War by 1779. While most Karankawa would have preferred to pursue peace, the Spanish saw this as their opportunity to liberate themselves of the Karankawa threat and take the land they sought for themselves by force until a cease-fire was negotiated in 1790. 

The Karankawa would continue to face new threats as their land would change hands from Spain to Mexico, and Stephen F. Austin would begin to bring new settlers who would have no interest in making peace with the Karankawa and provided exodus or extermination as the only viable options. By 1824, Austin was personally leading an expedition to rid the area of Karankawa and was encouraging other settlers to do the same as he declared the Karankawa unfit to remain in Texas: “The Karanquas may be called universal enemies to man – they killed of all nations that came into power, and frequently feast on the bodies of their victims…there will be no way of subduing them but extermination.”10 With this single sentiment, Austin demonized and de-humanized an entire group to justify his attempted genocide. 

Realizing that no one was willing to provide protection for their people, land or resources, many Karankawa chose to incorporate themselves into other Native American groups for support, or to move south to Mexico or west to California to escape the incoming settlers. No matter what their destination, the Karankawa were met with disdain and hostility. Despite attempts to settle near Rio Grande City in 1858, locals lead by Juan Nepomuceno Cortina attacked the small group of Karankawa, causing many to believe they had left Texas for good.  

It is from this moment on that most accounts consider the Karankawa extinct, but this is yet another instance that history has been wrong. Although displaced, those who left Texas did so for extended periods of time before returning to find each other when they felt it was safe to do so. The surviving Karankawa persist and still maintain aspects of their culture that they pass down generation after generation.  

The modern day Karankawa now gathers and meets with individuals who believe they are of Karankawa descent as they share their reconnecting journeys filled with personal research results, oral history, and mission records with hopes of reconnecting to their tribal family. More importantly, contemporary Karankawa collaborate with academic historians, archeologists, geologists, and others to help correct the disparagingly inaccurate history that has been written about them to: not 7 foot tall giants, but tall and well-formed masters of their environment; not cannibals, but those who practiced limited anthropophagy not uncommon to other cultures around the world; not hostile, unless provoked by territorial disputes; not extinct, but rather still very much here in present times. 

Karankawa: Voices from the Texas Gulf Coast runs from May 16 through September 13, 2026