Tuna Texas Quotes

THE ISLAND’S first residents were a remarkably antisocial tribe known as the Karankawas. The Karankawas patrolled a 350-mile stretch of coastline from the Rio Grande to Galveston Bay, but they lived about half the year on the Island. Except when they were raiding other villages, stealing maidens to marry and children to eat, the Karankawas went out of their way to avoid contact with other tribes. They were one of the few coastal tribes that refused to take part in the Truce of the Tunas, an annual spring mingling of otherwise hostile tribes in South Texas. When the sweet purple fruit of the prickly pear cactus—the “tunas”—ripened each May, Indians from all along the coast declared a truce. They put away their tools and their weapons of war and migrated to the scrubby cactus and mesquite country near the present town of Alice. There they gorged themselves on the succulent fruit, danced, frolicked, and generally conducted themselves like fools rather than warriors for as long as the fruit lasted.