Anathagua Indians

The Anathagua (Anatagu) Indians are known from a Spanish document of 1748 that lists twenty-five Indian groups of east central and southeastern Texas who had asked for missions in that general area. About half the names on this list, including Anathagua, cannot be identified. It is possible but not demonstrable that the Anathaguas were the same as the Quanataguos reported at San Antonio de Valero Mission at San Antonio in the 1720s. J. R. Swanton included the Quanataguos in his list of Coahuiltecan groups, apparently because one Quanataguo woman was said to have married a Coahuiltecan. The list of twenty-five groups that includes Anathagua contains no names that can be identified as Coahuiltecan; the identifiable names indicate only Caddoans (including Wichita), Tonkawans, Atakapans, and Karankawans. Both Anathagua and Quanataguo bear some resemblance to Quiutcanuaha, the name of a group identified in 1691 as living an unspecified distance southwest of the Hasinai Indians of eastern Texas, but no identities can be established. The affiliations of all three groups remain undetermined.