Karankawa

The Karankawa were bands of the Gulf coast of southern Texas, among them the Capoque of Galveston Bay. They did not explain their rites to outsiders: when La Salle's companion Joutel asked about their beliefs, they only pointed at the sky.

Observers saw them stare at the sun as it vanished into the sea and smoke tobacco through the nostrils. A chief was chosen by a trial in which candidates were slashed with sea-fish spines and bound to a pole, which a Spanish friar thought might equally be a puberty rite.

The Capoque nursed Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and other Narváez survivors on Galveston Island in 1528. A mission, Rosario, was founded among the Karankawa in 1754, but they fled when punished and stayed free of it.