As a small fishing boat bounced across the surface of Corpus Christi Bay, Clara “Cari” Villarreal Varner admired a stretch of wooded coast last June.
For the first time, Varner, a member of the Karankawa Tribe of Texas, was viewing the shoreline of a 3-square-mile area near Ingleside on the Bay, where archaeologists had discovered thousands of Karankawa artifacts in recent decades, including pottery shards, stone tools, and other pieces of evidence that this was once a frequently inhabited settlement.
“We see this beauty,” Varner said. “We can imagine that our ancestors were all … living their lives. And then, fast-forward.”
