NAKANAWAN INDIANS. Nakanawan (Nakahanawan) is the name of a Caddoan group obtained by J. Mooney from a Caddo informant in the 1870s. This informant later told J. R. Swanton that Nakanawan was another name for the Hainai, but Swanton believed that the name referred to some other Caddoan group that had been absorbed by the Hainais. This seems likely inasmuch as the Hainai Indians absorbed remnants of several Caddo tribes. On the basis of sound correspondences in the names, Swanton has suggested that the Hacanac, Lacane, Nacachau, Nacau, Nacaniche, Nacono, and Nakanawan Indians were probably fragments of the same Caddoan tribe. This cannot be verified by such documentary evidence as is now available.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1896). 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).
