Coahuilteco

The Coahuilteco, also called Pakawa by the Spanish, were not a single tribe but a loose web of perhaps two hundred small nomadic bands across Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Texas. Most camped along rivers and lagoons, hunting bison and deer and gathering mesquite and agave, with farming only in southern Tamaulipas.

The missionary Damián Massanet in 1690 and 1691 counted thirty-nine groups and found they all spoke the same language; a Coahuilteco worship manual followed in 1760. Once they learned to ride, many bands raided ranches for horses and mules and melted back into the desert.

From the late seventeenth century Lipan Apache expansion drove Coahuilteco refugees into the Spanish missions around San Antonio. As the missions closed from the late eighteenth century, by 1800 only a handful of named bands remained, their identity dissolving into the mission and ranch populations.