Coahuilteco

The Coahuilteco religion is the traditional belief of the Coahuiltecans, a loose network of hunter-gatherer bands who roamed Coahuila, Tamaulipas and southern Texas. On occasion they gathered in large numbers for all-night dances called mitotes, taking peyote as medicine.

From 1580 Carvajal, governor of Nuevo León, and his men raided the Rio Grande bands for slaves. In 1718 Spain founded Mission San Antonio de Valero, later the Alamo, to evangelize them, and with four more missions it held about 1,200 Coahuiltecans and other Indians at its height. Many fled, smallpox from 1739 cut the population further, and the San Antonio missions were secularized in 1824.