Caddo Tribe Food: What They Grew, Hunted and Traded

The Caddo grew their food and lived in permanent villages, so they were a sedentary people. Corn was their main crop, grown with squash and, later, beans, and the Texas State Historical Association adds deer as their chief meat (TSHA Handbook of Texas). The Comanche moved with the bison herds and were nomadic through their free existence. This guide covers Caddo tribe food in detail, sets it beside the Comanche way of life, and ends with a calculator for planting your own Three Sisters bed.

Were the Caddo nomadic or sedentary?

The Caddo were sedentary. Historians trace their roots to Woodland Period groups who settled into small communities, made pots for cooking and storing food, and began to raise crops. By about A.D. 800, Caddo communities were spread along the stream valleys of the Caddoan area (TSHA). The Texas Historical Commission says ancestral Caddo chose the site of today’s Caddo Mounds State Historic Site near Alto for a permanent settlement about A.D. 800, and that three earthen mounds there are still sacred to Caddo people (Texas Historical Commission).

Sedentary does not mean the Caddo never left home. After horses arrived in the late 1600s, Caddo hunters joined winter group bison hunts on the prairies west of their villages. They also traded over long distances. Home, though, stayed in fixed villages with fields beside them.

The Comanche were the opposite case. TSHA says they stayed nomadic throughout their free existence, with buffalo giving them food, clothing and shelter (TSHA, Comanche Indians). The table below sets the two side by side.

Caddo and Comanche side by side

Sources: TSHA entries on the Caddo and the Comanche, and the Oklahoma Historical Society entry on the Comanche, all linked in this guide.

What did the Caddo eat?

Caddo food came mainly from the field, with meat from the woods and prairie. TSHA says Caddo people built a farming economy on maize, beans and squash, along with native plants such as maygrass, amaranth, chenopods and sunflowers. By about A.D. 1300 most Caddo groups ate large amounts of maize, and it was clearly their most important food after that.

• Corn. Growers kept more than one type: an early “little corn” harvested in July and a flour corn harvested in September, at the harvest of the Great Corn.
• Squash and beans. TSHA lists corn and squash first and beans later in the sequence of crops.
• Native plants. Seed plants such as sunflower, maygrass and amaranth sat beside the three main crops.
• Meat. Deer was the most important source of meat. Bison and bear were used for meat and fur.

Food stores were large enough to be noticed. Spanish diarists who travelled with the De Soto expedition in 1542 described several Caddo groups as having dense populations and abundant stocks of corn (TSHA). This is a useful answer if you are asking how the Caddo got their food: they farmed it, hunted it and traded for what they lacked.

How Caddo farmers worked the land

Caddo villages stood along stream and river valleys, including the Red, Arkansas, Little, Ouachita and Sabine rivers, where the largest communities and civic centres grew. In prehistoric times, households lived in scattered farmsteads, hamlets and a few larger villages, with grass-and-cane houses (TSHA). Building a grass house took the effort of the whole town, and one or two families usually lived in each (Texas Historical Commission).

Tools came from clay, stone, bone, wood and shell. TSHA lists ground stone axes for clearing trees and turning soil, bone digging tools and hoes, and hoes made from freshwater mussel shell. Caddo pottery is counted among the finest made in North America.

The historical record in these sources shows village farming in fertile stream valleys, a mix of crops, and large corn stores noted by Spanish visitors in 1542.

Trade and ceremony

The Caddo also built long-distance trade networks. TSHA names bison hides, salt and bois d’arc bows as key trade goods, and turquoise from New Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes and marine shell from the Gulf Coast as items that arrived from far away. Leadership included the xinesi, a spiritual leader, and the caddi, the principal headman. The xinesi led certain special rites, including first-fruits, harvest and naming ceremonies.

What the Three Sisters do together

“Three Sisters” is the name for growing corn, beans and squash together. The National Park Service notes that this trio is common with tribes across the country, citing the Hidatsa gardens of North Dakota, where the foods stored well and were good for trade (National Park Service, Knife River Indian Villages). Cornell Cooperative Extension describes the best known version as an Iroquois system (Cornell Cooperative Extension, Warren County).

The sources on the Caddo name corn, squash and beans as their crops. They do not describe how the Caddo laid out a bed, so treat the planting layout below as the general Three Sisters method, not a record of one Caddo village.

• Corn gives the beans something to climb.
• Beans are legumes, which take nitrogen from the air and convert it to a form plants can use. Cornell notes corn, which needs a lot of nitrogen, benefits most.
• Squash leaves shade the soil, hold moisture, and Cornell says they limit weed growth. WVU Extension calls the vines living mulch.

The meal works too. West Virginia University Extension says cornmeal supplies carbohydrates, beans are a good source of protein and squash adds other nutrients (WVU Extension). A University of California Master Gardener guide adds that corn lacks niacin and tryptophan, and that beans supply niacin, tryptophan and lysine (UC Master Gardener Program).

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Plant a small Three Sisters bed

You can try the method on a patch of garden. Wait until the soil has warmed to about 60 F, which is around mid-May in West Virginia. Texas planting dates differ by region, so check your local extension office. The steps below follow West Virginia University Extension.

1. Pick a site with 6 to 8 hours of sun and water close by. The UC guide asks for at least 8 hours.
2. Work compost into the hills. Make mounds 12 to 18 inches wide and at least 2 to 3 feet apart, as the UC guide suggests.
3. Plant 4 to 7 corn seeds, 6 inches apart, in the centre of each mound.
4. When the corn is 4 to 6 inches high, plant 3 to 4 pole bean seeds in a circle about 6 inches from the corn.
5. Plant 4 squash seeds around the outside of each mound, with the squash 3 to 4 feet apart. Thin beans to the 3 or 4 strongest seedlings.

Seed varieties, fertilizer and pest control depend on your soil and county, so follow seed-packet directions, any product label and local extension advice.

Try the numbers for your own farm below.

Comanche food and the bison

The Comanche came onto the Great Plains after acquiring horses in the late 1600s. TSHA explains that horses let them leave the mountains of the Great Basin and move to the plains of eastern Colorado and western Kansas, then south, where mustangs, warm weather and abundant buffalo drew them. Across the South Plains the region became Comanchería.

Buffalo gave food, clothing and shelter. The tepee, TSHA says, was a cover of tanned buffalo hide stretched over sixteen to eighteen poles. Their meat-heavy diet was supplemented with wild roots, fruits and nuts, or with produce traded from neighbouring agricultural peoples, mainly the Wichita and Caddo to the east and the Pueblos to the west. Comanche traders controlled much of the commerce of the Southern Plains, swapping buffalo products and horses for manufactured goods and foodstuffs.

This is why the Comanche are a good contrast with the Caddo. They did not lack knowledge of plants: they gathered roots, fruit and nuts. Their economy simply centred on the herds and on trade, and the farms of neighbours supplied farm produce.

Bands and homelands

TSHA says the Comanche arrived on the Southern Plains as family groups, not one body, and as many as thirteen bands were recorded. Five major bands mattered most in the records: the Penateka in the south, the Nokoni, the Kotsoteka, the Yamparika in the north, and the Quahadi on the Llano Estacado. The Oklahoma Historical Society adds that by the 1780s Eastern Comanche villages stood along the Red River and in the Wichita Mountains (Oklahoma Historical Society).

Caddo foodways today

Caddo culture is living, not only historical. Texas Parks and Wildlife says the Caddo population rebounded to more than 5,000 after disease cut it to fewer than 1,000, and many people still speak the language, keep customs and attend dances. Its Caddo education panel lists Caddo words for foods, including kisi for corn, dabas for beans, dush kut for bread and ka-kee-kus-nee for pumpkin, and points visitors to the Caddo Nation website to learn more (Texas Parks and Wildlife Department). For current food and garden programmes, check the Caddo Nation’s own website.

Other peoples of Texas

Two other peoples appear in the sources used here.

• Wichita. TSHA says the Wichita depended on both farming and hunting. They lived in villages of dome-shaped grass houses, grew corn, tobacco and melons along streams and left on yearly hunts, storing farm goods in the ground (TSHA, Wichita Indians).
• Kickapoo. The Kickapoo did not legally hold land in Texas until 1985. A federal law of 1983 granted lands near El Indio, Texas, and recognised the Texas Band of the Oklahoma Kickapoos. In the 1600s the Kickapoo split the year between village life, when they practised horticulture, and prairie time in small family bands that hunted game and gathered wild foods (TSHA, Kickapoo Indians).

The Handbook of Texas has entries on many more peoples, including the Coahuiltecan, Kiowa and Tonkawa. We do not summarise them here because each deserves its own source-led page.

What happened after European settlement

Contact brought epidemics, land loss and removal. TSHA says epidemics between 1691 and 1816 greatly reduced Caddo populations. By the early 1840s all Caddo groups had moved to the Brazos River area, away from Anglo-American colonisation. They were placed on the Brazos reservation in 1855, and in 1859 about 1,050 Caddo people were removed to the Washita River, in what is now western Oklahoma. Today the Caddo live mainly in Caddo County, Oklahoma, near Binger.

The Comanche story ran on a different timeline. In 1854 Texas set up a 23,000-acre reservation on the Clear Fork of the Brazos for about 350 Penateka Comanches. TSHA notes their band was weakened by warfare, disease and the loss of buffalo herds. Those Comanches were moved north of the Red River to Oklahoma lands in 1859. The 1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek set up a reservation in southwestern Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, and the Comanche Nation records that the last group surrendered at Fort Sill on 2 June 1875 (Comanche Nation). The Oklahoma Historical Society adds that reservation policy tried to turn individual Comanches into farmers, with little success.

Native farmers on the land today

Native producers are part of US farming now. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 78,316 producers who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, on 58,336 farms and ranches (USDA NASS, 2022 Census highlights). That was about 2% of all US producers. Oklahoma had the most, at 18,211, and Texas ranked fourth with 5,640.

Chart

American Indian or Alaska Native farm producers, top states

Producers, alone or in combination with another race, 2022; selected states from USDA’s top 15

Those counts include people who named more than one race. USDA’s state table for producers who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone shows Texas with 2,705 farms and 825,480 acres, and Oklahoma with 10,041 farms and 3,628,781 acres (USDA NASS, 2022 Census, Table 49). Dividing acres by farms gives an average of about 305 acres per farm in Texas, 361 in Oklahoma and 1,373 across the US. The census does not say which nation each producer belongs to, so these figures do not isolate Caddo or Comanche farmers.

Chart

Land operated by American Indian or Alaska Native producers

Million acres, United States, farms with producers identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native alone

Chart

Average acres per farm, producers identifying as AI/AN alone

Land in farms divided by farms, 2022; derived from the state table

Where satellite monitoring fits in

Satellite data cannot tell you what a Caddo field looked like, but it does show how crops and soil change through a season today. Farmonaut Satellite + AI Farm Monitoring System tracks vegetation index (NDVI) maps for a field, which can help a grower compare an interplanted bed with a single-crop plot over the same weeks. It shows that plants differ in vigour, not why they differ, so field walks still matter.

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FAQ

What did the Caddo tribe eat?

Maize was the main food, grown with squash and beans and with native plants such as sunflowers and amaranth. Deer was the main meat, and bison and bear were also used (TSHA).

Were the Caddo nomadic or sedentary?

Sedentary. They lived in permanent villages and farmed. They did join winter bison hunts after horses arrived in the late 1600s, then returned to their homes.

Were the Comanche nomadic or sedentary?

Nomadic. TSHA says they remained a nomadic people throughout their free existence and followed buffalo herds across the Southern Plains.

How did the Caddo adapt to their environment?

They settled the stream valleys of East Texas and the Red River region, farmed river-valley fields, used clay, stone, bone and shell for tools, and hunted deer. The valleys gave them soil and water for crops.

Did the Comanche farm?

TSHA describes no Comanche farming before the reservation era. They gathered roots, fruit and nuts, and traded for farm produce with the Wichita, Caddo and Pueblo peoples.

Where do the Caddo and Comanche live now?

The Caddo Nation is based in Caddo County, Oklahoma, and the Comanche Nation is headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. Their own websites are the best place for current news.

Related pages on our site: referral program, types of agriculture, why soil matters and regenerative farming practices.