Adai

Cropped detail map from a 1718 map by Guillaume Delisle. Adaie on left side.
Total population
extinct as a tribe, some merged into the Caddo[1]
Regions with significant populations
southwest Louisiana, northeast Texas
Languages
Adai language[2]
Religion
Indigenous religion
Related ethnic groups
possibly other tribes within the Caddo Confederacy[1]

The Adai were a Native American people of northwestern Louisiana and northeastern Texas. They were an Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands and part of the Caddo Confederacy.^[1][2]

Name

The name Adai derives from the Caddo word hadai meaning 'brushwood'.^[3] French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville called them the Natao.^[1]

Adai's name has also been written Adaizan, Adaizi, Adaise, Adahi, Adaes, Adees, Atayos, and Nadais.^[4]

Language

The extinct Adai language was once thought to be Caddoan,^[1] but may be a language isolate and remains unclassified because of a lack of attestation. John Sibley wrote that the Adai language "differs from all others, and is so difficult to speak or understand that no nation can speak ten words of it."^[2] A list of approximately 250 words in Adai was recorded.^[2]

History

16th century

The Adai were among the first peoples in North America to experience European contact and were profoundly affected. In 1530, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote of them using the name Atayos.^{[citation needed]}

17th century

Some Adai joined the Mission of San Francisco de los Tejas, that the Spanish founded in 1690^[1] in San Antonio, Texas. In 1699, Iberville encountered the Adai in Louisiana along the Red River.^[1]

18th century

In 1716, Spanish colonists founded the Mission of San Miguel de Linares, also known as the Mission of Adayes,^[2] to convert the Adai, Natchitoches, and other Caddo people to Roman Catholicism.^[1] The French and their Native allies destroyed that mission in 1719 but the Spanish rebuilt in 1721.^[1] The Spanish later built the Presidio of Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Los Adaes,^[1] near Natchitoches, Louisiana.

French explorer Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe wrote in 1719 that the Adai were helpful to French traders. Then, they lived in villages along the Red River from Louisiana into Texas past the Sabine River.^[1] Conflicts between the French and Spanish, introduced diseases, and alcohol took a toll on the Adai, and they are almost gone by 1778.^[1]

Archaeologists have identified their pottery styles in the 1770s as being increasingly tempered with bone and named their ceramic types "Patton Engraved" and "Emory Incised".^[4]

Around 1792, 14 Adai families migrated to Presidio San Antonio de Béxar in San Antonio, Texas, where they assimilated into other tribes.^[1][2] Surviving Adai families near Nacogdoches, Texas, merged into the Caddos.^[1]

19th century

American Indian agent John Sibley recorded a small Adai village that became known as the Lac Madon site, which was populated through 1820.^[4] He wrote that there were only "twenty men of them remaining, but more women," while Rev. Jedidiah Morse recorded only 30 surviving Adai by 1820.^[2]

State-recognized tribe

The State of Louisiana designated the Adai Caddo Indians of Louisiana based in Robeline, Louisiana, as a state-recognized tribe.^[5]