Owing to their small numbers, their remoteness from lines of travel, and their unwarlike character the Adái have cut but a small figure in history, and accordingly the known facts regarding them are very meager. The first historical mention of them appears to be by Cabeça de Vaca, who in his “Naufragios,” referring to his stay in Texas, about 1530, calls them Atayos. Mention is also made of them by several of the early French explorers of the Mississippi, as d’Iberville and Joutel.
The Mission of Adayes, so called from its proximity to the home of the tribe, was established in 1715. In 1792 there was a partial emigration of the Adái to the number of fourteen families to a site south of San Antonio de Bejar, southwest Texas, where apparently they amalgamated with the surrounding Indian population and were lost sight of. (From documents preserved at the City Hall, San Antonio, and examined by Mr. Gatschet in December, 1886.) The Adái who were left in their old homes numbered one hundred in 1802, according to Baudry de Lozieres. According to Sibley, in 1809 there were only “twenty men of them remaining, but more women.” In 1820 Morse mentions only thirty survivors.
ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.
> Algonkin-Lenape, Gallatin in Trans. Am. Antiq. Soc., II, 23, 305, 1836. Berghaus (1845), Physik. Atlas, map 17, 1848. Ibid, 1852.
> Algonquin, Bancroft, Hist. U. S., III, 337, 1840. Prichard Phys. Hist. Mankind, V, 381, 1847 (follows Gallatin).
> Algonkins, Gallatin in Trans. Am. Eth. Soc., II, pt. 1, xcix, 77, 1848. Gallatin in Schoolcraft Ind. Tribes, III, 401, 1853.
> Algonkin, Turner in Pac. R. R. Rept., III, pt. 3, 55, 1856 (gives Delaware and Shawnee vocabs.). Hayden, Cont. Eth. and Phil. Missouri Inds., 232, 1862 (treats only of Crees, Blackfeet, Shyennes). Hale in Am. Antiq., 112, April, 1883 (treated with reference to migration).
< Algonkin, Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc., Lond., 1856 (adds to Gallatin’s list of 1836 the Bethuck, Shyenne, Blackfoot, and Arrapaho). Latham, Opuscula, 327, 1860 (as in preceding). Latham, Elements Comp. Phil, 447, 1862.
< Algonquin, Keane, App. Stanford’s Comp., (Cent. and S. Am.), 460, 465, 1878 (list includes the Maquas, an Iroquois tribe).