Accepting Money From All The Wrong Places

Accepting Money From All The Wrong Places

(Written for Inside Higher Ed, April 2020) Would you take “dirty” money to fund your research? In the late eighteenth century, the Spanish attempted to commit genocide on the Karankawa Indians of the Texas Gulf Coast. I had located the evidence—I just needed to travel and see the documents first-hand.…
The Most Influential Text on Cannibalism: An Analysis of William Arens’s The Man-Eating Myth

The Most Influential Text on Cannibalism: An Analysis of William Arens’s The Man-Eating Myth

(Written for History News Network, October 2019) In the 1970s, a student at Stony Brook University asked his anthropology professor, William Arens, why he “lectured on kinship, politics and economics instead of more interesting things like witchcraft, fieldwork experiences and cannibalism.”[1] Arens listened to the student, reevaluated what he taught, and…
Manuel Alegre

Manuel Alegre

(Written for Handbook of Texas, November 2020) In my most recent article, “The Karankawa-Spanish War from 1778 to 1789: Attempted Genocide and Karankawa Power,” I prominently feature two Karankawa individuals: Joseph María and Manuel Alegre. In the war, Joseph María fought against the Spaniards. Manuel Alegre, contrarily, aided the Spaniards.…
Karankawa Indians Handbook of Texas

Karankawa Indians Handbook of Texas

The editors at the Handbook of Texas kindly provided me the opportunity to revise their entry on "Karankawa Indians." While sharing all my edits is a bit cumbersome, the most significant change is visible in the final paragraph which refutes the Karankawas' extinction: Generally, Karankawas either incorporated themselves into the…
Antonio Diego Treviño

Antonio Diego Treviño

In my current book project, Wrangling Pelicans: Life as an Eighteenth-Century Texas Presidial Soldier, I follow the life of a trooper named Antonio Treviño. During my research, I uncovered another individual who shared the same name and lived in the same proximity. The two men, Antonio Diego Treviño “Termino” and…
Historiography of the Karankawa Indians

Historiography of the Karankawa Indians

This article is a history of the historical works about the Karankawa Indians of the Texas Gulf Coast. Recently, the Karankawas' image in the historical record has improved greatly, but I argue there is still an immense amount of work to do. Scholars need to better integrate Karankawa historical actors…