NACANICHE INDIANS. The Nacaniche (Nacan, Nacanish, Naconicho) Indians were a tribe of the southwestern or Hasinai group of Caddo Indians who lived in eastern Texas during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The precise location of their settlements remains unknown, but Naconiche Bayou in Nacogdoches County probably indicates one of their favored localities. J. R. Swanton believed that their remnants were probably absorbed by the Hainai Indians. He also thought that Nacaniche might be a later form of Lacane, the name of a group encountered by the Moscoso Expedition^qv in 1542 somewhere in northeastern Texas or in the adjoining parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. In fact, on the basis of sound correspondences in the names, Swanton has suggested that Hacanac, Lacane, Nacachau, Nacaniche, Nacao, Nacono, and Nakanawan Indians were probably fragments of the same Caddoan tribe. This cannot be verified by such documentary evidence as is now available.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 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).

Thomas N. Campbell