Answers to Go

SAN MARCOS PUBLIC LIBRARY 625 E. HOPKINS ST. 512-393-8200

Q.What is known about the indigenous Americans who inhabited the headwaters of the San Marcos river before the Spanish settlers arrived?

A. According to Riddles of the Past: The Archeology of Hays County by Dee Ann Story (available in the San Marcos Public Library’s local history collection), archaeological evidence has been found in Spring Lake to indicate the Clovis people occupied the area during the Paleo-Indian period (approximately 12,000 to 10,000 BC).

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact tribes that lived near the springs after the Paleo-Indian period. No early expeditions passed through the area until 1691 when Domingo Terán de los Rios, the first governor of the Spanish province of Tejas, led an expedition from Coahuila to explore the northeastern province.

The Indigenous Culture Institute was kind enough to send me their research compiled by Ruben A. Arellano. According to this research, when Terán’s expedition reached the San Marcos Springs “the Cantona Indians approached and befriended the Spaniards. The Cantona were but one of a number of central Texas Indians that routinely set upon the springs, but it’s clear from the Spanish account that they were one of the principal groups that used them. During the interaction, Terán was informed by the Cantona that their name for the springs was ‘Canocanayestatetlo,’ which translates to ‘hot springs.’”

According to the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas, the Cantona Indians were known to the Spanish by a variety of names, including Cantanual, Cantujuana, Cantauhaona, Cantuna, Mandone, and Simaomo.

There has been much discussion on which larger tribe the Cantonas belonged to. They are most often associated with the Coahuiltecan, Karankawa, and Tonkawa. The Indigenous Culture Institute says it’s most likely they were affiliated with the former. “The Cantona were either a northernmost band of Coahuiltecans or were very similar in culture to be indistinguishable from them.”

By the late 18th century, the Cantona Indians had been ethnically erased as a distinct group after becoming assimilated into the emergent Hispanicized Tejano culture.