CAIASBAN INDIANS. The Caiasban Indians are known only from the 1687 records of the La Salle expedition, which merely list these Indians as enemies of the Kadohadachos on the Red River. They may be the same as the Caais, named in a 1691 Spanish missionary report as one of the groups that lived southwest of the Hasinais, and also the Caisquetebanas, who in 1690 lived north of Matagorda Bay between the Guadalupe and Colorado rivers. These identifications cannot be demonstrated. If the names all refer to the same group of Indians, then a considerable north-south range is indicated. The affiliations of the three groups remain unknown.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New York: Scribner, 1908; rpt., New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959). Pierre Margry, ed., Découvertes et établissements des Français dans l'ouest et dans le sud de l'Amérique septentrionale, 1614-1754 (6 vols., Paris: Jouast, 1876-86). John R. Swanton, Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 132, Washington: GPO, 1942).
