[2] Prior to European contact, they were the Caddoan Mississippian culture, who constructed huge earthwork mounds at several sites in this territory, flourishing about 800 to 1400 CE.

By 1200, the many villages, hamlets, and farmsteads established throughout the Caddo world had developed extensive maize agriculture, producing a surplus that allowed for greater density of settlement.

An old Caddo man carried a drum, a pipe, and fire, all of which have continued to be important religious items to the people.

[2] A Caddo woman, Zacado, instructed the tribe in hunting, fishing, building dwellings, and making clothing.

[15] Centuries before extensive European contact, some of the Caddo territory was invaded by migrating Dhegihan Siouan–speaking peoples: the Osage, Ponca, Omaha, Quapaw, and Kaw.

They moved west beginning about 1200 CE after years of warfare with the Haudenosaunee nations in the Ohio River area of present-day Kentucky.

[16] The Osage in particular fought the Caddo, pushed them out of some former territory, and became dominant in the region of present-day Missouri, Arkansas, and eastern Kansas.

The Piney Woods are a dense forest of deciduous and pinophyta flora covering rolling hills, steep river valleys, and intermittent wetlands called "bayous".

[17] The Caddo people had a diet based on cultivated crops, particularly maize (corn), but also sunflower, pumpkins, and squash.

The men hunted year round, while the young and healthy women were responsible for the gathering of fruits, seeds, and vegetables for the tribe.

[18][19] The men used handcrafted bows and arrows to hunt animals such as wild turkey, quail, rabbits, bears, and bison during winter months.

Men favored body modifications and ornamentation such as the painting of skin, jewelry, ear piercing, and hair decorations, like braids, adorned with bird feathers or animal fur.

While the women of the tribe wore some jewelry and styled their hair similarly to men, most used the art of tattooing to decorate their bodies.

All Franciscan missions were set up in peripheral locations in relation to temples complexes which were the center of the Caddo's world.

As the Caddo peoples had no acquired immunity to such new diseases, they suffered epidemics with high fatalities that destroyed the tribal populations.

Having given way over years before the power of the former Ohio Valley tribes, the later Caddo negotiated for peace with the waves of Spanish, French, and finally Anglo-American settlers.

After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, by which the United States took over the former French colonial territory west of the Mississippi River, the US government sought to ally with the Caddo peoples.

Due to the Caddo's neutrality and their importance as a source of information for the Louisiana Territory government, the US forces left them alone.

[24] In 1835 the Kadohadacho, the northernmost Caddo confederacy, signed a treaty with the US to relocate to independent Mexico (which then included present-day Texas).

The area for their reservation in East Texas had been lightly settled by Mexican colonists, but there was rapidly increasing immigration of European Americans here.

At that time, the US federal government forced the Hasinai and the Kadohadacho, as well as remnants of allied Delaware (Lenape) and Yowani to relocate onto the Brazos Reservation.

After the Civil War, the Caddo were concentrated on a reservation located between the Washita and Canadian rivers in Indian Territory.

[2] In the late 19th century, the Caddo adopted the Ghost Dance religion, which was widespread among American Indian nations in the West.

Practitioners believed that the dance would help them return to their traditional ways and to stop European-American intrusions into their land and culture.

It authorized the break up and distribution of tribal communal landholdings into 160-acre allotments for individual households in order for them to establish subsistence family farms along the European-American model.

At the same time, tribal governments were to be ended, and Native Americans were to be accepted as US citizens, subject to state and federal laws.

The Caddo and other Native American peoples suffered greatly from the disruption of their traditional cultures, and lost much of their lands in the decades after allotment.

During the 20th century, Caddo leaders such as Melford Williams, Harry Guy, Hubert Halfmoon, and Vernon Hunter have helped shape the tribe.

In August 2013, a group led by Philip Smith attempted to recall Brenda Shemayme Edwards, the chairman of the Tribal Council.

The Court of Indian Offenses, which had been overseeing issues for a year because of the internal conflict, in October 2014 ordered a new election for all positions.