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 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 and Tonkawa. Linguistic connections were proposed with Hokan, a language family of several Native American peoples living in California, Arizona, and Baja California. Most modern linguists, by contrast, see the Coahuiltecan region as one of linguistic diversity. A few words are known from seven different languages:

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 wh ...

, Cotoname, Aranama, Solano, Mamulique, Garza, and Coahuilteco 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 established at San Antonio 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 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,

Pajalat The Pajalat were a Native American group who lived in the area just south of San Antonio, Texas, prior to the arrival of the Spanish to the region in the 18th century. Language The Pajalat spoke a dialect of the Coahuiltecan language. They spo ...

, Quems,

Quepano The Quepano were a band of Coahuiltecan people of American Indians from what is now Nuevo León, Mexico and Texas, United States. Names The name ''Quepano'' has also been written Cuepano and Quepana. History In the late 17th century, the ...

, Solano, and

Xarames The Xarames were a Native American people of the San Antonio, Texas region. They were the dominant Native American group during the early history of Mission San Antonio de Valero The Alamo is a historic Spanish missions in the Americas, Spani ...

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