The Hainai or Aimay lived in the postcontact period, which began
with the Spanish in the sixteenth century in what is now East
Texas, as one of the nine tribes of the Hasinai Nation, after
the migration from the place of origin or Cha-cah-nee-nah. Prior
to forced removal from their homeland in 1859, the Hainai lived
in the largest tribal village complex in the Angelina River
valley in what is now East Texas. Since forced removal, the
Hainai have integrated among the Caddo Nation in west central
Oklahoma within the Wichita-Caddo-Delaware Tribal Jurisdictional
Area. Culture is reflected in language. The Hainai dialect is
used to call the dancers in the turkey dance or nuh'-ka-oa-shun,
which relates the history and philosophy of the Caddo people and
continues to be danced in the twenty-first century. Hainai
differs dialectically from both Hasinai and Kadohadacho forms of
spoken Caddo. A little evidence was still obtainable in the form
of a few remembered differences in terms and phrases in the late
twentieth cen