CHAPTER PROGRAM: Lifeways of Indigenous People on the Southeast Texas Coastal Landscape, in the Early Historic and Prehistoric eras

The public is invited to join us in-person at the Rosenberg Civic Center for our September 1 program by Dr. Dan Worrall:  Lifeways of Indigenous People on the Southeast Texas Coastal Landscape, in the Early Historic and Prehistoric eras

NOTE: NEW MEETING TIME & LOCATION!  Coastal Prairie Chapter programs are free and open to the public.   Our September meeting will be held at the Rosenberg Civic Center and the public is invited!  Social time starts at 6 pm and the program starts at 7 pm.   This meeting will also be hybrid with streaming available via Zoom.  

Coastal Texas people in early historic time – including the Akokisa in the San Jacinto and Lower Trinity River drainage basins and the Coco along the Brazos and Colorado rivers – practiced a seasonal round where they lived along the coast most of the year but migrated into the interior prairies in the Fall to hunt bison as well as gather pecans and other nuts.

In an earlier era before horses and bows and arrows, they hunted on foot, and used prairie fire to herd groups of bison into small creeks and bayous that had steep banks, where they were harvested by waiting hunters. In effect, these Native American groups were ranching on a vast scale, and some of these favored hunting sites were used over and over again for thousands of years. This seasonal burning had a side effect of keeping the prairies free of woody plants, which for millennia allowed prairies to flourish that otherwise may have regressed to woodland in our humid climate. Our prairie landscape is their legacy.

Dan Worrall is a retired geologist and avid historian, and lives with his wife on a farm in the lower Brazos River Valley. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Rice University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, both in geology.  He has been a member of the Harris County Historical Commission since 2014 and is a member of the Houston and Fort Bend archeological societies. He has written two works on local history: Pleasant Bend: Upper Buffalo Bayou and the San Felipe Trail in the Nineteenth Century (2017) and A Prehistory of Houston and Southeast Texas: Landscape and Culture (2021). The latter work involves the use of the coastal landscape by Indigenous people in prehistory and discusses the effects on prehistoric people of rising sea level and a changing Gulf coast shoreline.  Here is an interesting article about Dr. Dan Worrall:  https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/columnists/native-texan/article/Local-author-takes-a-long-long-look-back-at-16025084.php

NOTE: Coastal Prairie Chapter programs are free and open to the public.   This program will be held at the Rosenberg Civic Center in Room B of the Main Hall.  Social hour starts at 6 pm and the meeting starts at 7.   The public is invited to attend, hear the program and learn about the Coastal Prairie Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists.  

This meeting will also be hybrid with streaming available via Zoom.  Advance registration is required.  Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqfuuhpj4rGtM-wtdyHSHouThVPGT7ovBJ

The Texas Master Naturalist program is sponsored by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.

[TMNCPC members in attendance should record their Advanced Training (AT) hours under “AT: Chapter Meeting-Coastal Prairie”, and the VSP hours for the business meeting under “Chapter Business: Chapter Meeting”.]