Cana Indians

Type: General Entry

Published: 1976

Updated: June 1, 1995

The Cana (Cano) Indians are known only from records pertaining to San José y San Miguel de Aguayo Mission at San Antonio. It is said that they were among the Indians for whom this mission was founded in 1720. This rather clearly indicates that they were Coahuiltecans. It has been assumed by some writers that the Canas were the same as the Sanas, but the Sanas were not Coahuiltecans and did not appear at San Antonio missions until after 1740. In 1691 a group known as Canu was reported as living eighty leagues southwest of the Hasinai Indians of eastern Texas, but it cannot be proved that Canu and Cana were names for the same people. It seems likely that the Canas originally lived in the vicinity of San Antonio, perhaps to the west or southwest.

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Charles W. Hackett, ed., Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas (4 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1931–46). Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (2 vols., Washington: GPO, 1907, 1910; rpt., New York: Pageant, 1959). Gaspar José de Solís, "Diary," trans. Margaret Kenny Kress, Southwestern Historical Quarterly 35 (July 1931). 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).

Categories:

Peoples
Native American
Tribes (Other)

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.

Thomas N. Campbell, “Cana Indians,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed May 21, 2022, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/cana-indians.

Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Original Publication Date:: 1976
Most Recent Revision Date:: June 1, 1995

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