Coahuiltecan was a proposed language family in John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of

Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...

. Most linguists now reject the view that the

Coahuiltecan people The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Native Americans who inhabited the Rio Grande valley in what is now southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. The various Coahuiltecan groups were hunter-gatherers. First encountered by Europ ...

s of southern Texas and adjacent Mexico spoke a single or related languages. Coahuiltecan continues to be a convenient collective term for the languages and people of this region.

Language relationships

Similarities among the cultures among the indigenous people and the physical setting of south Texas led linguists to believe that the languages of the region were also similar. The Coahuiltecan language family was proposed to include all the languages of the region, including

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

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. ...

. Linguistic connections were proposed with

Hokan The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California. Etymology The name ''Hokan'' is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan ...

, a language family of several Native American peoples living in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

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, by contrast, see the Coahuiltecan region as one of linguistic diversity. A few words are known from seven different languages: Comecrudo,

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 Cotoname ...

, Aranama, Solano, Mamulique, Garza, and

Coahuilteco Coahuilteco was one of the Pakawan languages that was spoken in southern Texas (United States) and northeastern Coahuila (Mexico). It is now extinct. Classification Coahuilteco was grouped in an eponymous Coahuiltecan family by John Wesley Po ...

or Pakawa. Coahuilteco or Pakawa seems to have been a ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

'' of Texas Coahuiltecans living at or near the

Catholic Missions Missionary work of the Catholic Church has often been undertaken outside the geographically defined parishes and dioceses by religious orders who have people and material resources to spare, and some of which specialized in missions. Eventually, p ...

established at

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= U.S. state, State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , s ...

in the 18th century. Almost certainly, many more languages were spoken, but numerous Coahuiltecan bands and ethnic groups became extinct between the 16th and 19th century and their languages were unrecorded. In 1886, ethnologist

Albert Gatschet Albert Samuel Gatschet (October 3, 1832, Beatenberg, Canton of Bern – March 16, 1907, Washington, D.C.) was a Swiss-American ethnologist who trained as a linguist in the universities of Bern and Berlin. He later moved to the United States and s ...

found perhaps the last surviving speakers of Coahuiltecan languages : 25 Comecrudo, 1 Cotoname, and 2 Pakawa. They were living near

Reynosa, Mexico 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 Met ...

. In 1690, the population of Indians in northeastern Mexico and southern Texas may have been 100,000. The Coahuiltecans were sold into slavery, died of introduced European diseases, and were absorbed by the Hispanic population. Linguists have postulated a Comecrudan language family with Comecrudo, Mamulique, and Garza as related and Coahuilteco and Cotoname possibly related. Comecrudo and Cotoname are the best known of the languages. They were spoken in the delta of the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio G ...

. Not enough information exists to classify Solano and Aranama. However, linguistic conservatives say that all these languages should be considered

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...

s, with insufficient data to establish relationships between and among the languages.Logan, Jennifer L. "Chapter 8: Linguistics" ''Reassessing Cultural Extinction: Change and Survival at Mission San Juan Capistrano'', Texas. College Station: Center for Ecological Archaeology, Texas A&M, 2001 The Coahuiltecan languages and culture are now extinct. The names of many bands have been preserved, including the

Ervipiame The Ervipiame or Hierbipiame were a Native people of modern Coahuila and Texas. Beginning in the 16th century Spanish settlement in what is today Northern Mexico and the accompanying diseases and slave raiding to supply ranches and mines with Nativ ...

Mayeye The Mayeye were a Tonkawa language–speaking Native American people, who once lived in southeastern Texas. Coastal Mayeyes likely were absorbed into Karankawa communities. Inland Mayeyes likely joined larger Tonkawa communities. Name Their nam ...

, Pajalat,

Quems The Quems were an indigenous people who lived along the Rio Grande in what is now the U.S. state of Texas and the Mexican state of Coahuila in the 17th and 18th centuries. They are known to have settled around present-day Eagle Pass and Piedras ...

, Quepano, Solano, and Xarames.

References

Bibliography

* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); .

External links

*
Reassessing Cultural Extinction: Change and Survival at Mission San Juan Capistrano, Texas – Chapter 8: Linguistics
* * {{Native American Tribes in Texas Proposed language families Extinct languages of North America Native American history of Texas Indigenous languages of Texas