The Aranama were an Indigenous people who lived along the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers of present-day Texas, near the Gulf Coast.

Language

Aranama people spoke the

Aranama language Aranama (Araname), also known as Tamique, is an extinct unclassified language of Texas, USA. It was spoken by the Aranama and Tamique peoples at the Franciscan mission of Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga. It is only known from a two-word phrase from ...

, a poorly attested language that went extinct in the mid-19th century. It may have been a

Coahuiltecan language Coahuiltecan was a proposed language family in John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of Native American languages. Most linguists now reject the view that the Coahuiltecan peoples of southern Texas and adjacent Mexico spoke a single or related ...

but remains unclassified.

History

Many Aranama people moved to

Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga, also known as Aranama Mission or Mission La Bahía, was a Roman Catholic mission established by Spain in 1722 in the Viceroyality of New Spain—to convert native Karankawa Indians to Chris ...

at its second and third locations. Several times, they left the mission to move north, and occasionally joined the Tawakonis. Each time, the Spanish colonists convinced them to return. Some Aranama people also joined San Antonio de Valero in San Antonio and Nuestra Señora del Refugio in Refugio.

References

{{authority control Extinct Native American peoples Indigenous peoples of Aridoamerica Native American history of Texas Native American tribes in Texas