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0111 Cat/10lic Heritage in T ezas
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this language Tejano or Coahuilteco,'' he says, "because, according to the missionaries, it was the one most in use in the Provinces of Coahuila and Texas, being spoken from Candela to the Rio San Antonio. The tribes who used this language were known under the names of Pajalates, Orejones, Pacaos, Tilijayos, Alasapas, Pausanes, Pacuaches, lVIescales. Pampopas, Tacames, Chayopines. Venados, Pamiquis, Pihuiques. Bor- rados, Sanipaos, and Manos de Perro."? 6 But to this limited list could be added countless others, who by the middle of the eighteenth century had either disappeared or had been absorbed by others. It was from these tribes that the missions on the San Antonio River drew a large part of their neophytes. They appear to have had a culture lower even than the Karankawas, being in the main nomads, without fixed villages or rancl1er1as, who practiced little or no agriculture and depended on fish, wild fruits, roots, small game, and loot for their living. The appearance of smallpox and the introduction of measles among them, as a result of their contact with Europeans, made heavy inroads in their already exhausted ranks, which were further depleted by the drain made on them by the missionaries. But that they were capable of becoming civilized was clearly shown by the progress they made under the patient and kind leadership of the missionaries, both in the missions on the San Antonio River and in those on the Rio Grande in the vicinity of the Presidio of San Juan Bautista. When after the middle of the eighteenth century the Lipan Apaches, forced southward by the Comanches, invaded the lands of these weak tribes, the Coahuiltecos were forced to move still farther south to the coast, where the few remaining survivors were found in the latter part of the century. The Tamique, Xaraname, and otlzers. To the east of the Coahuiltecan tribes, inland from the region occupied by the Karankawas along the coast, on either side of the lower Guadalupe River lived the Xaraname (called by the Spaniards Jaraname and Araname), the Tamique, and other related bands. This group, occupying a small area between four great stocks, the Coahuiltecan, the Karankawa, the Bidai and Arkokisa, and the Tonkawa, had difficulty in maintaining its identity, and ethnol- ogists are undetermined as to their relation to either of the four groups. 26 Francisco Pimentel, lenguas indigenas de Mexico, II, 7 s ( 187 s edition); Bol- ton, Atlranase de Mezieres, l, 27. Fray Bartolome Garcia wrote a Manual para Administrar los Sacramentos, published in Mexico in 1760, in which all we know of this language is set down. This book may rightly be called the first textbook in Texas.
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