Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of
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 in northern
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
along the
Rio Grande of which ''Comecrudo'' is the best known. Very little is known about these languages or the people who spoke them. Knowledge of them primarily consists of word lists collected by
European
European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to:
In general
* ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe
** Ethnic groups in Europe
** Demographics of Europe
** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...
missionaries and explorers. All Comecrudan languages are
extinct.
Family division
The three languages were:
#
Comecrudo (also known as Mulato or Carrizo) ''(†)''
#
Garza ''(†)''
#
Mamulique (also known as Carrizo de Mamulique) ''(†)''
Genetic relationships
In
John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He ...
's 1891 classification of
North American languages, Comecrudo was grouped together with the
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 ...
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 ...
languages into a family called
Coahuiltecan
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 ...
.
John R. Swanton
John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...
(1915) grouped together the Comecrudo, Cotoname, Coahuilteco,
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 ...
,
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. ...
,
Atakapa, and
Maratino languages into a Coahuiltecan grouping.
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States.
Sap ...
(1920) accepted Swanton's proposal and grouped this hypothetical Coahuiltecan into his
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 ...
stock.
After these proposals, documentation of the Garza and Mamulique languages was brought to light, and Goddard (1979) believes that there is sufficient similarity between them and Comecrudan for them to be considered genetically related. He rejects all other relationships.
Powell's original Coahuiltecan, renamed Pakawan and extended with Garza and Mamulique, has been defended by Manaster Ramer (1996), who also sees a relationship with Karankawa probable and Atakapa as a more distant possibility. This proposal has been challenged by Campbell, who considers its sound correspondences unsupported and considers that some of the observed similarities between words may be due to borrowing.
Evidence
The following table of common
core vocabulary
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
constitutes the complete evidence given by Goddard (1979: 380) in support of a Comecrudan family.
Berlandier's manuscripts contain the only existing records of
Mamulique and
Garza.
[Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1850). Luis Berlandier and Rafael Chovell. ''Diario de viage de la Commission de Limites''. Mexico.
]
References
Bibliography
Archives
National Anthropological Archives, MS 297: Comecrudo and Cotoname Vocabularies
National Anthropological Archives, MS 2440: English-Comecrudo Vocabulary
National Anthropological Archives, MS 4279: Correspondences between the Three Dialects of Coahuiltecan: Cotoname, Comecrudo, and Coahuilteco
Secondary literature
* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. .
* Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). ''The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment''. Austin: University of Texas Press.
* Goddard, Ives. (1979). The languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.) ''The languages of native America'' (pp. 355–389). Austin: University of Texas Press.
* Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). ''Languages''. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. .
* Goddard, Ives. (1999). ''Native languages and language families of North America'' (rev. and enlarged ed. with additions and corrections). ap Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Smithsonian Institution). (Updated version of the map in Goddard 1996). .
* Manaster Ramen, Alexis. (1996). Sapir's Classifications: Coahuiltecan. ''Anthropological Linguistics'' ''38/1'', 1–38.
* Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); .
* Saldivar, Gabriel. (1943). ''Los Indios de Tamaulipas''. Mexico City: Pan American Institute of Geography and History.
* Sapir, Edward. (1920). The Hokan and Coahuiltecan languages. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''1'' (4), 280-290.
* Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). ''Handbook of North American Indians'' (Vol. 1-20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published).
* Swanton, John R. (1915). Linguistic position of the tribes of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. ''American Anthropologist'', ''17'', 17–40.
See also
* 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 ...
* Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas
*
* Coahuiltecan
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 ...
{{Language families
Language families
Indigenous languages of Mexico
Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States
Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest