Description
The Adai were a Native American people of northwestern Louisiana and northeastern Texas. They were an Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands and part of the Caddo Confederacy.The name Adai derives from the Caddo word hadai meaning 'brushwood'. French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville called them the Natao. The Adai were among the first peoples in North America to experience European contact and were profoundly affected. In 1530, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca wrote of them using the name Atayos. Some Adai joined the Mission of San Francisco de los Tejas, that the Spanish founded in 1690 in San Antonio, Texas.
Language
The extinct Adai language was once thought to be Caddoan, but may be a language isolate and remains unclassified because of a lack of attestation. John Sibley wrote that the Adai language "differs from all others, and is so difficult to speak or understand that no nation can speak ten words of it." A list of approximately 250 words in Adai was recorded.
Culture
they lived in villages along the Red River from Louisiana into Texas past the Sabine River. Conflicts between the French and Spanish, introduced diseases, and alcohol took a toll on the Adai, and they are almost gone by 1778. Archaeologists have identified their pottery styles in the 1770s as being increasingly tempered with bone and named their ceramic types "Patton Engraved" and "Emory Incised". Around 1792, 14 Adai families migrated to Presidio San Antonio de Bexar in San Antonio, Texas, where they assimilated into other tribes. Surviving Adai families near Nacogdoches, Texas, merged into the Caddos. Little is known how the Adai as an independent Indian Nation having a notable role in shaping American culture and influencing the destinies of both Texas and Louisiana territories.