NABEDACHE INDIANS. The Nabedache (Navedacho, Naoudiche) Indians, a Hasinai-Caddoan group found by Henri Joutel in 1686 living near the headwaters of the Neches River in the area of present Houston County, were a major group of the Hasinai confederacy. For a century or more after European contact, the Nabedaches lived in a village called San Pedro forty-five miles southwest of the location mentioned by Joutel and twelve or fifteen miles west of the Neches. In May 1690 Fray Damián Massanet and Domingo Ramónqqv founded the San Francisco de los Tejas Mission at the Nabedache village. In 1690-91 the Nabedache Indians suffered an epidemic. Stephen F. Austin's map of 1829 indicated that the group moved up the Neches; letters in the Bexar archives indicate that the move occurred after 1779 and before 1784. The remnants of the group were finally moved to the Wichita reservation in Indian Territory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (2 vols., Washington: GPO, 1907, 1910; rpt., New York: Pageant, 1959).
