Coahuiltecan facts for kids
Coahuiltecan territories in the 16th and 17th centuries
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| merged into other groups by 1900 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| San Antonio, South Texas, U.S.; Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, and northeastern Coahuila, Mexico | |
| Languages | |
| Coahuiltecan languages | |
| Religion | |
| Indigenous religion, Roman Catholicism |
The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Native Americans who inhabited the area of what is now southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. 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 wars fought against the Spanish, criollo, Apache, 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. They were living near Reynosa, Mexico.
Contents
Name
This name given to the Coahuiltecans is derived from Coahuila, the state in New Spain where they were first encountered by Europeans. This name was derived by the Spanish from a Nahuatl word.
Territory
The Coahuiltecan lived in the flat, brushy, dry country of southern Texas, roughly south of a line from the Gulf Coast at the mouth of the Guadalupe River to San Antonio and westward to around Del Rio. They lived on both sides of the Rio Grande. Their neighbors along the Texas coast were the Karankawa, and inland to their northeast were the Tonkawa. Both tribes were possibly related by language to some of the Coahuiltecan. To their north were the Jumano. Later the Lipan Apache and Comanche migrated into this area. Their indefinite western boundaries were the vicinity of Monclova, Coahuila, and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and southward to roughly the present location of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, the Sierra de Tamaulipas, and the Tropic of Cancer. People of similar hunting and gathering cultures lived throughout northeastern Mexico and southeastern Tejas, which included the Pastia, Payaya, Pampopa, and Anxau.
Although living near the Gulf of Mexico, most of the Coahuiltecan were inland people. Near the Gulf for more than 70 miles (110 km) 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.
History
In the early 1530s Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions were the first Europeans known to have lived among and passed through Coahuiltecan lands.
In 1580, Carvajal, governor of Nuevo Leon, began conducting regular slave raids to capture Coahuiltecan along the Rio Grande. The Coahuiltecan often raided Spanish settlements too, and they drove the Spanish out of Nuevo Leon in 1587. However, 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 system.
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) 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, Comanche, and Wichita raiders from the north. The five missions had about 1,200 Coahuiltecan and other Indians in residence from 1720 until 1772.
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.
In 1827 only four property owners in San Antonio were listed in the census as "Indians."
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 Roman Catholic 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.
Language
Most modern linguists 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.
Settlement and housing
The Coahuiltecan were nomadic hunter-gatherers, carrying their few possessions on their backs as they moved from place to place. 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.
Most of the Coahuiltecan seemed to have had a regular round of travels in their food gathering. The Payaya 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.
Religion
Little is known about the original religion of the Coahuiltecan. They came together in large numbers on occasion for all-night dances called mitotes. During these occasions, they danced and took peyote as medicine.
Warfare
The meager resources of their homeland resulted in intense competition and frequent, although small-scale, warfare.
Cuisine
Coahuiltecan peoples hunted deer, bison, peccary, armadillos, rabbits, rats, mice, snakes, lizards, frogs, salamanders, and snails for meat. They fished and caught shellfish. Fish was probably most important as food for groups living near the Rio Grande delta.
Most foods could be eaten raw, but they used an open fire or fire pit when cooking.
Plants provided most of their diet. Pecans were an important protein source, gathered in the fall and stored for future use. They cooked the bulbs and root crowns of the maguey, sotol, and lechuguilla in pits, and ground mesquite beans to make flour.
Prickly pear was an important summer food, from its paddles to its fruits. It also provided water when that resource was scarce. In the winter, plant roots provided important sustenance.
See also
In Spanish: Coahuiltecos para niños
