Tim Seiter – Ph.D. student at SMU studying colonial Texas

The Karankawa-Spanish War from 1778 to 1789: Attempted Genocide and Karankawa Power

Southwestern Historical Quarterly has published my latest article on the Karankawa-Spanish War. The following is an abstract: This article is a narrative history of the little-known Karankawa-Spanish War. It has two primary purposes. The first is to uncover and name the actions attempted by the Spaniards against the Karankawas as genocidal…

La Salle’s Doomed 17th Century French Colony on the Texas Gulf Coast

By Tim Seiter KarankawasNo Comments

In 1684, the famed explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle embarked from France to establish a military settlement on the lower reaches of the Mississippi River.[1] Roughly two hundred and eighty souls on four vessels accompanied La Salle—only a handful would survive the expedition. From a present-day perspective, the…

Accepting Money From All The Wrong Places

By Tim Seiter Higher EdNo Comments

(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.…

Twelve Things I Learned From My First Semester as a Ph.D. Student

By Tim Seiter Higher EdNo Comments

(Written for Inside Higher Ed, January 2020) As an undergraduate, I seldom felt overwhelmed by coursework. I found praise easily. I graduated summa cum laude and wrote an award-winning honors thesis. When I heard horror stories about graduate school, I knew I would be an exception. I was wrong. Although…

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

By Tim Seiter Higher EdNo Comments

(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

By Tim Seiter KarankawasNo Comments

(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

By Tim Seiter KarankawasNo Comments

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

By Tim Seiter BorderlandsNo Comments

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

By Tim Seiter KarankawasNo Comments

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…

Joseph María, the Most Prominent Karankawa Chief During the Karankawa-Spanish War (1778-1789)

By Tim Seiter KarankawasNo Comments

There exists a multitude of eminent Karankawa men and women in history: Mateo, Jose Luis María, Manuel Alegre, Prudencia, Llano Grande, the daughter of Big Chief, to name a few. In past writings about these coastal Indians, authors often neglect to highlight these Natives. In an on-going effort to reorient…