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. Accounts of these people state that they lived in very dirty and smelly camps and were seen eating rotten meat, dirt, maggots, and bugs. Many 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. Río Bravo redirects here. ... This article is about the insect. ... The term disease refers to an abnormal condition of an organism that impairs function. ...

Language family

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. Coahuilteco (also Pajalate) was a language isolate that was spoken in southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. ... Map indicating where Cotoname is spoken Cotoname is a Southwestern language family, spoken by Native Americans indigenous to the lower Rio Grande Valley of northeastern Mexico and extreme southern Texas (United States). ... Comecrudan languages Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of Texas and in northern Mexico along the Rio Grande. ... Karankawa A group of Indian tribes, now extinct, known collectively as the Karankawa (also Karankawan, Clamcoëhs), played a pivotal part in early Texas history. ... Seal of the Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma Tonkawa The Tonkawa are a people native to central Texas, speaking the Tonkawa language. ...

It is now generally believed that all of these languages are unrelated language isolates, with Comecrudo now part of the Comecrudan family. A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or genetic) relationship with other living languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common to any other language. ...

The Coahuiltecan proposal appeared in John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of Native American languages. John Wesley Powell, second Director of the USGS. Served from 1881-1894. ... Native American languages are the indigenous languages of the Americas, spoken by Native Americans from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland. ...

See also

• Coahuilteco

Coahuilteco (also Pajalate) was a language isolate that was spoken in southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. ...

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.

The Handbook of Texas (ISBN 0-87611-151-7) is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Texas geography, history, and historical persons published jointly by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) and the General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin. ... The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to today as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in 1913 by The Encyclopedia Press. ...

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.