CAAI INDIANS. The Caai Indians are known from a single 1691 Spanish missionary report. The name occurs on a short list of groups that lived an unspecified distance southwest of the Hasinais. The Caais may be the same as the Caisquetebanas, reported in 1690 as living north of Matagorda Bay and between the Guadalupe and Colorado rivers and also the Caiasbans, named in documents (1687) of the La Salle expedition as enemies of the Kadohadachos on the Red River. These identifications cannot be demonstrated. If the names all refer to the same group of Indians, a considerable north-south range is indicated. The affiliations of these groups remain unknown.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New York: Scribner, 1908; rpt., New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959). Pierre Margry, ed., Découvertes et établissements des Français dans l'ouest et dans le sud de l'Amérique septentrionale, 1614-1754 (6 vols., Paris: Jouast, 1876-86). John R. Swanton, Source Material on the History and Ethnology of the Caddo Indians (Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 132, Washington: GPO, 1942).
