Mayeye

The Mayeye were a Tonkawan people of central Texas. Their country lay inland from Matagorda Bay, between the Colorado and Brazos rivers, and extended north into the Brazos valley. Like neighboring groups, they moved through a landscape of rivers and prairies, maintaining ties with communities beyond their own settlements.

In 1745 Mayeye representatives joined other Indigenous visitors in asking a Franciscan friar to establish a mission in their own country. Some entered San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas on the San Gabriel River about 1748. After the San Gabriel missions were abandoned, some went to San Antonio de Valero; others persuaded the friars to establish a short-lived mission on the Guadalupe. In the 1770s a group of Mayeye moved to the coast and joined the Coco people along the lower Colorado.