Coahuiltecan
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Coahuiltecan is a general name for a group of people who previously lived in the southern Texas region near the Rio Grande river. The earliest Spanish explorers to make contact with the natives in this region describe a prosperous and friendly people. However, they are most often described in their post-contact condition which left them in a state very similar to a society that has survived a terrible disaster. They ate anything they possibly could, for example, they ate ant eggs, rotten wood, deer dung, spiders, rattle snakes, lizards, worms, and even dirt.[citation needed] Scholars now believe that as many as 90% of these people have lost their lives due to European disease which in turn may account for how they existed after contact was made. The Coahuiltecan language and culture are now extinct although their descendants are absorbed into the Hispanic populations living in the south Texas region today. A group called the Quems were also recorded as having settled along both banks of the Rio Grande.
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Coahuiltecan
Coahuiltecan (also Paikawa) was a proposed language family that consisted of Coahuilteco and Cotoname. A later proposal expanded the family to also include Comecrudo (Comecrudan), Karankawa, and Tonkawa.
It is now generally believed that all of these languages are unrelated language isolates, with Comecrudo now part of the Comecrudan family.[citation needed]
The Coahuiltecan proposal appeared in John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of Native American languages.
See also
Bibliography
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
External links
- Coahuiltecan Indians from the Handbook of Texas Online
- Reassessing Cultural Extinction: Change and Survival at Mission San Juan Capistrano, Texas — Chapter 8: Linguistics
- "Pakawá Indians". Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11402a.htm.