Irritila

The Irritila, called Laguneros by the Spanish, were the lagoon dwellers of the Comarca Lagunera, where Coahuila meets Durango. Their villages stood around the Laguna de Mayrán and the Nazas River, amid the shallow lakes that gave them their name.

Jesuit chronicles noted they were not one people but more than twelve tribes of different tongues using Nahuatl as a common language. They lived by hunting deer and rabbits, gathering tunas and mesquite, and fishing with basket traps; some hunters swam submerged with a reed to breathe and pulled ducks under by the feet.

After the Spanish founded Zacatecas in 1557 and Durango in 1563, mining expeditions reached the lagoons; in 1594 Philip II authorized Jesuit missions there. After the Jesuit expulsion around 1687 the mission villages emptied, and the Irritila drifted into the backcountry and vanished as a distinct people.