= Coahuilteco, Orozco y Berra, Geografía de las Lenguas de México,
map, 1864.
= Tejano ó Coahuilteco, Pimentel, Cuadro Descriptivo y Comparativo de
las Lenguas Indígenas de México, II, 409, 1865. (A preliminary notice
with example from the language derived from Garcia’s Manual, 1760.)
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.
[Footnote 33: Geografía de las Lenguas de México, map, 1864.]
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.