Kopane
The Kopane (also Cobane , Copane or Kopano ) are an extinct North American Indian tribe from the Gulf Coast in Texas who belonged to the Karankawa . The residential area of the Kopane was on the Texan coast on the Gulf of Mexico and ran roughly from Copano Bay to the southwest to San Antonio Bay . They led a nomadic life and followed a seasonal cycle that took them from the islands off the coast, the Barrier Islands , to around 40 to 100 kilometers inland.
Very little is known about the life of the Kopane. From records of priests we know that they lived from 1751 to 1828 in the Spanish coastal missions Nuestra Senora del Rosario and Nuestra Senora del Refugio . Here they should be taught European values, Christianity, agriculture and livestock. The mission stations formed small fortifications around the church as a religious and social center. The Spanish missions were a means to the population threshold (Engl. Frontier), which should serve to integrated the native Indians in the Spanish colonial empire. The Catholic religion and certain aspects of Spanish culture should be taught under the supervision of missionaries, with adequate protection from the state. Remains of the partly intact systems can be found in southern California , Arizona , New Mexico , Texas and northern Mexico .
Mission del Refugio was in what is now Calhoun County , north of Mission Lake and northwest of Long Mott. The Mission del Rosario was located on the San Antonio River , about 6 km west of today's Goliad . Many Indians only came to the missions in winter to receive food, but left again the following spring, especially if the rations were not available.
It is likely that after the secularization of the missions in 1831 and 1832 , the Kopane joined other Karankawa groups and gave up their identity as Kopane. Under the pressure of the rapidly growing white population in Texas, they were pushed further and further west and have been considered extinct since 1858.
literature
- William C. Sturtevant (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest Vol. 9, 1979 ISBN 0-16004-577-0
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest Vol. 10, 1983 ISBN 0-16004-579-7