A Coahuiltecan Indian holds a rabbit felled by the wooden "rabbit stick" in his hand, while his son holds a net carrying bag. Artist Frank Weir.
Coahuiltecan people is a collective name for the many small, autonomous bands of Native Americans who inhabited southernmost Texas, the Rio Grande valley and adjacent Mexico. The Coahuiltecans were hunter-gatherers. First encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth century, they became victims of disease and slavery or were killed during the long wars against the Spanish, criollo, Apache or other Coahuiltecan groups. The survivors were absorbed into the Hispanic population of southern Texas or northern Tamaulipas.
The name given to the Coahuiltecans derives from Coahuila, the state in which some of them lived. The word Coahuila derives from a Nahuatl word.
The Coahuiltecans lived in the flat, brushy, dry country of southern Texas, roughly south of a line from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico at the nose of the Guadalupe River to San Antonio and hence westwards to around Del Rio. They lived on both sides of the Rio Grande. Their neighbors along the Texas coast were the Karankawa, and inland to their northeast were the Tonkawa, both tribes possibly related by language to some of the Coahuiltecans. To their north were the Jumano and, later, the Lipan Apache and Comanche. Their indefinite western boundaries were the vicinity of Monclova, Coahuila, and Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, and southward to roughly the present location of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, and the Sierra de Tamaulipas. People of similar hunting and gathering livelihood lived throughout northeastern Mexico.
Although living near the Gulf of Mexico, most of the Coahuiltecans were inland people. Near the Gulf for more than 70 miles (110 km) both north and south of the Rio Grande, there is little fresh water, which limited the opportunity to live near and exploit coastal resources.
Coahuiltecan lifeways, in the words of one scholar, “represent the culmination of more than 11,000 years of a way of life that had successfully adapted to the climate and resources of south Texas.”They shared the common traits of being non-agricultural and living in small autonomous bands with no political unity above the level of the band and the family. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers, carrying their meager possessions on their backs as they moved from place to place to exploit sources of food that might be available only seasonally. At each campsite, they built small circular huts with frames of four bent poles which they covered with woven mats. They wore little clothing. At times, they came together in large groups of several bands and hundreds of people, but most of the time their encampments were small, consisting of a few huts and a few dozen people. Along the Rio Grande the Coahuiltecans lived more sedentary lives, perhaps constructing more substantial dwellings and utilizing palm fronds as a building material.
Little is known about the religion of the Coahuiltecans. They came together in large numbers on occasion for all-night dances called mitotes in which peyote was eaten to achieve a trance-like state. The meager resources of their homeland led to intense competition and frequent, although small scale, warfare.
CAUAC
Kin 99: Blue Galactic Storm
I harmonize in order to catalyze
Modeling energy
I seal the matrix of self-generation
With the galactic tone of integrity
I am guided by the power of abundance.
By exerting mental and spiritual energy, you are creating space in your mind so you do not have to manufacture thoughts.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2015-2016.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Sahasrara Chakra (Dali Plasma)
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