Tawakoni

The Tawakoni were a Wichita people whose villages and hunting grounds lay across the southern plains and central Texas. They grew crops near their settlements and maintained ties with related Wichita communities. In 1719 French explorer Jean-Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe encountered them on the Canadian River.

During the eighteenth century the Tawakoni moved south into Texas. They joined the Taovaya in the 1758 attack on the Spanish mission of San Sabá, and later occupied villages near the Brazos River, where they traded with neighboring Indigenous peoples of the region. In 1781 Juan Agustín Morfí recorded a Tawakoni village called Quiscat on the river’s western bank. Visitors such as Athanase de Mézières sought diplomatic relations with the Wichita communities whose influence extended across the frontier.

The later city of Dallas lies here.