Derivation: From the name of the Mexican State Coahuila.
This family appears to have included numerous tribes in southwestern Texas and in Mexico. They are chiefly known through the record of the Rev. Father Bartolomé Garcia (Manual para administrar, etc.), published in 1760. In the preface to the “Manual” he enumerates the tribes and sets forth some phonetic and grammatic differences between the dialects.
On page 63 of his Geografía de las Lenguas de México, 1864, Orozco y Berra gives a list of the languages of Mexico and includes Coahuilteco, indicating it as the language of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. He does not, however, indicate its extension into Texas. It would thus seem that he intended the name as a general designation for the language of all the cognate tribes.
Upon his colored ethnographic map, also, Orozco y Berra designates the Mexican portion of the area formerly occupied by the tribes of this family Coahuilteco.[33] In his statement that the language and tribes are extinct this author was mistaken, as a few Indians still survive who speak one of the dialects of this family, and in 1886 Mr. Gatschet collected vocabularies of two tribes, the Comecrudo and Cotoname, who live on the Rio Grande, at Las Prietas, State of Tamaulipas. Of the Comecrudo some twenty-five still remain, of whom seven speak the language.
The Cotoname are practically extinct, although Mr. Gatschet obtained one hundred and twenty-five words from a man said to be of this blood. Besides the above, Mr. Gatschet obtained information of the existence of two women of the Pinto or Pakawá tribe who live at La Volsa, near Reynosa, Tamaulipas, on the Rio Grande, and who are said to speak their own language.
PRINCIPAL TRIBES.
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Alasapa. Cachopostate. Casa chiquita. Chayopine. Comecrudo. Cotoname. Mano de perro. Mescal. Miakan. Orejone. Pacuâche. |
Pajalate. Pakawá. Pamaque. Pampopa. Pastancoya. Patacale. Pausane. Payseya. Sanipao. Tâcame. Venado. |
[COPEHAN FAMILY.]
> Cop-eh, Gibbs in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, III, 421, 1853 (mentioned as a dialect).