Talk:Coahuiltecan languages

The text I removed

Here's a copy of the text I removed - it should be cleaned up, sourced, and incorporated into the article by someone who is knowledgeable about Native Americans. The text is below:

What was known as the Coahuiltecan Indians was actually made up ofmany bands of Native Americans that shared the same environment. The tribes of the Coahuiltecan Indians were interrelated nomadic hunting-gathering bands that lived along the coast and inland areasof Northern Mexico and Southern Texas to what is today known as San Antonio. They were spread out along the eastern side of Coahuila, Mexico,lived in the Chihuahua Desert area, along the coastline and over nearly all of Texas west of the San Antonio River. A lot of them lived along the Rio Grande region of Texas and Mexico on the dry grassy plains. At one time there were more than 200 different bands of them. Most bands were not very large but some bands of the Coahuiltecans were known to number into the hundreds. The bands were usually a single family, but the bands were related through language and culture, and other than that they probably had very few ties. Some of these groups were true tribes, made up of large families or clans with the same social customs and traditions and rules for getting along.

Housing: The Coahuiltecan Indians did not erect permanent structures, but instead they made use of natural shelters such as caves and rock overhangs, or lived in temporary structures made of animal hides, wood, or grasses. They lived in small huts they made by bending a circle of small trees to form a frame work and then covered the frames with reed, palmetto leaves or animal hides. They had a small hearth in the middle of their houses. When they were ready to move they just rolled up the animal skins and reed mats and moved on to make camp in the next place. They were simple people who owned very little things that might slow them down. Women were mostly responsible for making the houses and keeping the camp. Because they moved around so much there is not a lot of solid traces of their history.

Appearance: They were medium height and had a solid build and were fierce fighters but friendly people. Like most Indians they had brown skin, dark brown eyes, high cheek bones, straight black hair, and did not grow beards. They did not wear much clothing and what clothes they did wear was very simple clothing because the weather was hot. Women mostly wore only skirts and men sometimes wore cloths that went down to their knees and sandals made out of fibres. When the weather was bad they would wear coverings made from the hides of rabbits and coyotes or whatever was available. They decorated their bodies with tattoos and pierced their bodies.

Customs: It is hard to describe the customs of the Coahuiltecan Indians because their customs were different in each band of what is known as the same people. Each band wandered the country foraging for food on its own and they seldom got together with other bands, except perhaps by accidentally meeting. The bands would move from place to place going where they knew they might find food. They were hunter gatherers who lived off of deer meat, small game, rodents, and sometimes even insects. They ate mostly raw plant foods such as roots from plants such as the sotol and lechuguilla from the agave plant family, along with prickly pear cactus, pecans, acorns and berries and the meats in their diet was from bison, antelopes, rabbits, snakes, lizards, deer, birds, insects and seafood from along the coast. Sometimes they would hunt fish with bows and arrows. They made their bows and arrows from mesquite trees and made flint arrowheads. They hunted with bows and arrows, but a lot of them kept a club nearby for self defense. The Indians likely had no exclusive territory to forrage. Men were mostly responsible for hunting animals and women helped gather plant food. The women sometimes wove reeds together to makebaskets and used animal skins to gather food in. They lived a hand to mouth existence but prospered. The coahuiltecans used fire for light more than for cooking. They believed in many gods and had a lot of religious Indian ceremonies to worship spirit gods. They may have had foot races and played other hand games with carved bones and held contests with bows and arrows for entertainment.

Interesting facts: European settlers brought diseases to America and that was the reason for the disappearance of a great deal of deaths as well as a lot of them died in warfare. Around the 1600's is when the decline in Indian populations began. The Alamo Mission was built in 1718 and then four other missions were also built from 1720 to 1731 and the largest number of Indians in these missions were Coahuiltecans. Hunting and gathering groups such as these were displaced during Spanish colonial times and began to decline in numbers and by the 1800's much of their identity was lost. It is said that they also inhabited a region of Willacy County in theRio Grande valley of South Texas thirty miles north of Mexico for over 11,000 years.

(Addition information supplied by Peyton Wright)

Graham87 04:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

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