NASAYAHA INDIANS. The Nasayaha (Nasayaya) Indians, a Caddoan tribe of the southwestern or Hasinai division, are known from a single Spanish document that was written near the end of the seventeenth century. Herbert E. Bolton's analysis of geographic data in this document led him to place the Nasayaha Indians near the site of the present boundary between Nacogdoches and Rusk counties in eastern Texas. He also suggested that the Nasayahas were probably the same as the Nasoni (lower group) Indians who lived in the same area and whose name appears frequently in later documents. J. R. Swanton somewhat reluctantly accepted Bolton's identification. The main difficulty with this interpretation is that both Nasayaha and Nasoni Indians are listed as separate tribes in the same early document, a fact which Bolton and Swanton seem to have ignored. More convincing evidence is needed in order to show that Nasayaha and Nasoni are different names for the same people.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert E. Bolton, "The Native Tribes about the East Texas Missions," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 11 (April 1908). 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).
