Tickanwatic

The Tickanwatic are the Tonkawa, whose autonym Tickanwa•tic means the real people; the name Tonkawa comes from a Waco word meaning they all stay together. Their tongue was a language isolate. In 1601 they lived in northwestern Oklahoma as a loose confederation of related bands, nomadic hunters who also tended small gardens.

Around the late seventeenth century they drifted south into central Texas. Apache and Wichita pressure had pushed them as far as the Red River by 1700. In 1758 the Tonkawa joined Caddo, Wichita, Comanche and other allies in destroying the Lipan Apache mission of San Sabá.

They later reversed their old enmity and became allies of the Lipan. By the 1820s they were camped on the Colorado River near the first Anglo-American colonies, whose settlers soon clashed with them over stolen livestock and corn.