The book was called Cannibal Coast. It was written by Ed Kilman and published in 1959 by the Naylor Company, in San Antonio, which specialized in books about Texas and the Southwest. For kids like me living along the Gulf and just discovering its gruesome historical secrets, the book’s title alone was titillating. So was its cover, which depicted a trio of stereotypical russet-skinned Indians crouching in the dune grass with their lances and bows, eyeing the approach of a Spanish sailing ship. Kilman’s book presented itself as a history of the Karankawa, the people who inhabited the coastal plains and barrier islands of Texas, from Corpus Christi to Galveston, long before Europeans first arrived. But the book was more an indictment than a history. “They…
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