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The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Native Americans who inhabited the
Rio Grande valley The Lower Rio Grande Valley ( es, Valle del Río Grande), commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. ...
in what is now southern
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
and northeastern
Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
. The various Coahuiltecan groups were hunter-gatherers. First encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth century, their population declined due to imported European diseases, slavery, and numerous small-scale wars fought against the
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, criollo,
Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño a ...
, and other Coahuiltecan groups. After the Texas secession from Mexico, the Coahuiltecan culture was largely forced into harsh living conditions. It is because of these harsh influences that most people in the United States and Texas are not familiar with Coahuiltecan or Tejano culture outside of the main population groups mostly located in South Texas, West Texas, and San Antonio. In 1886, ethnologist Albert Gatschet found the last known survivors of Coahuiltecan bands: 25
Comecrudo Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of Texas and in northern Mexico along the Rio Grande of which ''Comecrudo'' is the best known. Very little is known about these languages or the people ...
, 1
Cotoname Cotoname was a Pakawan language spoken by Native Americans indigenous to the lower Rio Grande Valley of northeastern Mexico and extreme southern Texas ( United States). Today it is extinct. Vocabulary The following vocabulary list of Coton ...
, and 2 Pakawa. They were living near
Reynosa Reynosa () is a border city in the northern part of the state of Tamaulipas, in Mexico. It is also the municipal seat of Reynosa Municipality. The city is located on the southern bank of the Rio Grande in the international Reynosa–McAllen Me ...
, Mexico.


Brief overview

This name given to the Coahuiltecans is derived from
Coahuila Coahuila (), formally Coahuila de Zaragoza (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza), is one of the 32 states of Mexico. Coahuila borders the Mexican states of N ...
, the state in New Spain where they were first encountered by Europeans. This name was derived by the Spanish from a
Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...
word. The Coahuiltecan lived in the flat, brushy, dry country of southern Texas, roughly south of a line from the
Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, is the coast, coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The list of U.S. states and territories by coastline, coastal states that have a shor ...
at the mouth of the Guadalupe River to
San Antonio ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_ ...
and westward to around Del Rio. They lived on both sides of the Rio Grande. Their neighbors along the Texas coast were the
Karankawa The Karankawa were an Indigenous people concentrated in southern Texas along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, largely in the lower Colorado River and Brazos River valleys."Karankawa." In ''Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures,'' edited by John ...
, and inland to their northeast were the
Tonkawa The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe indigenous to present-day Oklahoma. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct, is a linguistic isolate. Today, Tonkawa people are enrolled in the federally recognized Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. ...
. Both tribes were possibly related by language to some of the Coahuiltecan. To their north were the Jumano. Later the
Lipan Apache Lipan Apache are a band of Apache, a Southern Athabaskan Indigenous people, who have lived in the Southwest and Southern Plains for centuries. At the time of European and African contact, they lived in New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and ...
and
Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in ...
migrated into this area. Their indefinite western boundaries were the vicinity of
Monclova, Coahuila Monclova (), is a city and the seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. According to the 2015 census, the city had 231,107 inhabitants. Its metropolitan area has 381,432 inhabitants and a ...
, and
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon Monterrey ( , ) is the capital and largest city of the northeastern state of Nuevo León, Mexico, and the third largest city in Mexico behind Guadalajara and Mexico City. Located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the city is anc ...
, and southward to roughly the present location of
Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas Ciudad Victoria () is the seat of the Municipality of Victoria, and the capital of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. It is located in the northeast of Mexico at the foot of the Sierra Madre Oriental. It borders the municipality of Güémez to t ...
, the
Sierra de Tamaulipas The Sierra de Tamaulipas is an isolated, semi-tropical mountain range in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Its highest point is . There are no cities or towns in the Sierra and the small population is largely agricultural. The higher elevations o ...
, and the
Tropic of Cancer The Tropic of Cancer, which is also referred to as the Northern Tropic, is the most northerly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This occurs on the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towa ...
. People of similar hunting and gathering cultures lived throughout northeastern Mexico and southeastern Tejas, which included the Pastia,
Payaya The Payaya people were Indigenous people whose territory encompassed the area of present-day San Antonio, Texas. The Payaya were a Coahuiltecan band and are the earliest recorded inhabitants of San Pedro Springs Park, the geographical area tha ...
, Pampopa, and Anxau. Although living near the Gulf of Mexico, most of the Coahuiltecan were inland people. Near the Gulf for more than both north and south of the Rio Grande, there is little fresh water. Bands thus were limited in their ability to survive near the coast, and were deprived of its other resources, such as fish and shellfish, which limited the opportunity to live near and employ coastal resources.


Language

In the mid-20th century, linguists theorized that the Coahuiltecan belonged to a single language family and that the
Coahuiltecan languages 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 relate ...
were related to the Hokan languages of present-day
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
,
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, and
Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...
. Most modern linguists, however, discount this theory for lack of evidence; instead, they believe that the Coahuiltecan were diverse in both culture and language. At least seven different languages are known to have been spoken, one of which is called Coahuiltecan or Pakawa, spoken by a number of bands near San Antonio. The best known of the languages are Comecrudo and Cotoname, both spoken by people in the delta of the Rio Grande and Pakawa. Catholic Missionaries compiled vocabularies of several of these languages in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the language samples are too small to establish relationships between and among the languages. (See
Coahuiltecan languages 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 relate ...
)


Population

Over more than 300 years of Spanish colonial history, their explorers and missionary priests recorded the names of more than one thousand bands or ethnic groups. Band names and their composition doubtless changed frequently, and bands often identified by geographic features or locations. Most of the bands apparently numbered between 100 and 500 people. The total population of non-agricultural Indians, including the Coahuiltecan, in northeastern Mexico and neighboring Texas at the time of first contact with the Spanish has been estimated by two different scholars as 86,000 and 100,000. Possibly 15,000 of these lived in the Rio Grande delta, the most densely populated area. In 1757 a small group of African blacks was also recorded as living in the delta, apparently refugees from slavery. Smallpox and slavery decimated the Coahuiltecan in the Monterrey area by the mid-17th century. Due to their remoteness from the major areas of Spanish expansion, the Coahuiltecan in Texas may have suffered less from introduced European diseases and slave raids than did the indigenous populations in northern Mexico. But, the diseases spread through contact among indigenous peoples with trading. After a
Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...
Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
Mission was established in 1718 at San Antonio, the indigenous population declined rapidly, especially from smallpox epidemics beginning in 1739. Most groups disappeared before 1825, with their survivors absorbed by other indigenous and mestizo populations of Texas or Mexico.


Culture and subsistence

In the words of one scholar, Coahuiltecan culture represents "the culmination of more than 11,000 years of a way of life that had successfully adapted to the climate, resources of south Texas.” The peoples shared the common traits of being non-agricultural and living in small autonomous bands, with no political unity above the level of the band and the family. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers, carrying their few possessions on their backs as they moved from place to place to exploit sources of food that might be available only seasonally. At each campsite, they built small circular huts with frames of four bent poles, which they covered with woven mats. They wore little clothing. At times, they came together in large groups of several bands and hundreds of people, but most of the time their encampments were small, consisting of a few huts and a few dozen people. Along the Rio Grande, the Coahuiltecan lived more sedentary lives, perhaps constructing more substantial dwellings and using palm fronds as a building material. During times of need, they also subsisted on worms, lizards, ants, and undigested seeds collected from deer dung. They ate much of their food raw, but used an open fire or a fire pit for cooking. Most of their food came from plants. Pecans were an important food, gathered in the fall and stored for future use. In summer, large numbers of people congregated at the vast thickets of prickly pear cactus south-east of San Antonio, where they feasted on the fruit and the pads and interacted socially with other bands. They cooked the bulbs and root crowns of the
maguey Maguey may refer to various American plants: * Genus '' Agave'', especially ** Species ''Agave americana'', the century plant ** Species ''Agave salmiana ''Agave salmiana'' (also known as ''maguey pulquero'' and green maguey) is a species of the ...
,
sotol Sotol is a distilled spirit from the Chihuahuan desert northern Mexico, western Texas sourced from the family of Asparagaceae; the genus Dasylirion and several species, most commonly: ''Dasylirion wheeleri'', Dasylirion durangense, '' Dasyliri ...
, and
lechuguilla ''Agave lechuguilla'' (common name in Chihuahua: ''lechuguilla'', meaning "small lettuce") is an ''Agave'' species endemism, found only in the Chihuahuan Desert. The plant flowers once in its life and then dies. Description The plant reprodu ...
in pits, and ground
mesquite Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus '' Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under gr ...
beans to make flour. Most of the Coahuiltecan seemed to have had a regular round of travels in their food gathering. The
Payaya The Payaya people were Indigenous people whose territory encompassed the area of present-day San Antonio, Texas. The Payaya were a Coahuiltecan band and are the earliest recorded inhabitants of San Pedro Springs Park, the geographical area tha ...
band near San Antonio had ten different summer campsites in an area 30 miles square. Some of the Indians lived near the coast in winter. In the summer they would travel 85 miles (140 km) inland to exploit the prickly pear cactus thickets. Fish were perhaps the principal source of protein for the bands living in the Rio Grande delta. Little is known about the religion of the Coahuiltecan. They came together in large numbers on occasion for all-night dances called ''mitotes''. During these occasions, they ate
peyote The peyote (; ''Lophophora williamsii'' ) is a small, spineless cactus which contains Psychoactive cactus, psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline. ''Peyote'' is a Spanish word derived from the Nahuatl (), meaning "caterpillar Pupa#Cocoo ...
to achieve a trance-like state for the dancing. The meager resources of their homeland resulted in intense competition and frequent, although small-scale, warfare.


History

In the early 1530s
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (; 1488/90/92"Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez (1492?-1559?)." American Eras. Vol. 1: Early American Civilizations and Exploration to 1600. Detroit: Gale, 1997. 50-51. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 Decembe ...
and his three companions, survivors of a failed Spanish expedition to Florida, were the first Europeans known to have lived among and passed through Coahuiltecan lands. In 1554, three Spanish vessels were wrecked on Padre Island. The survivors, perhaps one hundred people, attempted to walk southward to Spanish settlements in Mexico. All but one were killed by the Indians. In the early 1570s the Spaniard Luis de Carvajal y Cueva campaigned near the Rio Grande, ostensibly to punish the Indians for their 1554 attack on the shipwrecked sailors, more likely to capture slaves. In 1580, Carvajal, governor of Nuevo Leon, and a gang of "renegades who acknowledged neither God nor King", began conducting regular slave raids to capture Coahuiltecan along the Rio Grande. The Coahuiltecan were not defenseless. They often raided Spanish settlements, and they drove the Spanish out of Nuevo Leon in 1587. But they lacked the organization and political unity to mount an effective defense when a larger number of Spanish settlers returned in 1596. Conflicts between the Coahuiltecan peoples and the Spaniards continued throughout the 17th century. The Spanish replaced slavery by forcing the Indians to move into the
encomienda The ''encomienda'' () was a Spanish labour system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. The labourers, in theory, were provided with benefits by the conquerors for whom they laboured, including military ...
system. Although this was exploitative, it was less destructive to Indian societies than slavery. Smallpox and measles epidemics were frequent, resulting in numerous deaths among the Indians, as they had no acquired immunity. The first recorded epidemic in the region was 1636–39, and it was followed regularly by other epidemics every few years. A 17th-century historian of Nuevo Leon, Juan Bautista Chapa, predicted that all Indian and tribes would soon be "annihilated" by disease; he listed 161 bands that had once lived near Monterrey but had disappeared. Spanish expeditions continued to find large settlements of Coahuiltecan in the Rio Grande delta and large-multi-tribal encampments along the rivers of southern Texas, especially near San Antonio. The Spanish established
Mission San Antonio de Valero The Alamo is a historic Spanish mission and fortress compound founded in the 18th century by Roman Catholic missionaries in what is now San Antonio, Texas, United States. It was the site of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, a pivotal event of ...
(the Alamo) in 1718 to evangelize among the Coahuiltecan and other Indians of the region, especially the Jumano. They soon founded four additional missions. The Coahuiltecan supported the missions to some extent, seeking protection with the Spanish from a new menace,
Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño a ...
,
Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in ...
, and Wichita raiders from the north. The five missions had about 1,200 Coahuiltecan and other Indians in residence during their most prosperous period from 1720 until 1772. That the Indians were often dissatisfied with their life at the missions was shown by frequent "runaways" and desertions. Spanish settlement of the lower Rio Grande Valley and delta, the remaining demographic stronghold of the Coahuiltecan, began in 1748. The Spanish identified fourteen different bands living in the delta in 1757. Overwhelmed in numbers by Spanish settlers, most of the Coahuiltecan were absorbed by the Spanish and mestizo people within a few decades. After a long decline, the missions near San Antonio were secularized in 1824. The Coahuiltecan appeared to be extinct as a people, integrated into the Spanish-speaking mestizo community. In 1827 only four property owners in San Antonio were listed in the census as "Indians." A man identified as a "Mission Indian," probably a Coahuiltecan, fought on the Texan side in the Texas Revolution in 1836. In the community of Berg's Mill, near the former San Juan Capistrano Mission, a few families retained memories and elements of their Coahuiltecan heritage. In the late 20th century, they united in public opposition to excavation of Indian remains buried in the graveyard of the former Mission. Archeologists conducted investigations at the mission in order to prepare for projects to preserve the buildings. In the words of scholar Alston V. Thoms, they “became readily visible as resurgent Coahuiltecans.”


Heritage groups

Several unrecognized organizations in Texas claim to be descendants of Coahuitecan people. These organizations are neither
federally recognized This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the United ...
or
state-recognized State-recognized tribes in the United States are organizations that identify as Native American tribes or heritage groups that do not meet the criteria for federally recognized Indian tribes but have been recognized by a process established unde ...
as Native American tribes.


References


External links


''Reassessing Cultural Extinction: Change and Survival at Mission San Juan Capistrano, Texas''
* *
Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coahuiltecan People Extinct Native American peoples Native American tribes in Texas Indigenous peoples in Mexico Indigenous peoples of Aridoamerica