The Texas Kickapoo

About this book

The Texas Kickapoo: Keepers of Tradition is Bill Wright's latest photographic study on American Indian tribes in Texas. Historian John Gesick contributes an historical essay that tells the story of the tribe's migration from the woodlands of the northeast to the deserts of Texas and Coahuila, Mexico. Wright and Gesick followed the Kickapoo during the summer as they worked as migrant farm workers and to their sacred homeland of Nacimiento, Coahuila, where they still live in traditional wickiups and practice the religion of their forefathers. Among the many highlights of the text, is a Kickapoo story, in the oral tradition, relating Col. Ranald MacKenzie's raid into a Kickapoo hunting camp near Remolino, Mexico in 1873 - a story never before in print. A description of the Kickapoo social infrastructure, detailing the construction and meaning of their dwelling, language, religion and political organization in Texas and Mexico and an interview with two Kickapoos on the significance of deer to the tribe plus three additional stories are included. The Kickapoo of Texas pride themselves in safeguarding their traditions amid the pervasive influence of western culture. Historical photographs of the tribe were collected from family albums as well as from national museum collections to illustrate their past, while Bill Wright's contemporary photographs document their present life and culture.