![]() This belief in a widespread linguistic and cultural uniformity has, however, been questioned. ![]() Scholars constructed a "Coahuiltecan culture" by assembling bits of specific and generalized information recorded by Spaniards for widely scattered and limited parts of the region. This encouraged ethnohistorians and anthropologists to believe that the region was occupied by numerous small Indian groups who spoke related languages and shared the same basic culture. As additional language samples became known for the region, linguists have concluded that these were related to Coahuilteco and added them to a Coahuiltecan family. Identifying the Indian groups who spoke Coahuilteco has been difficult. In time, other linguistic groups also entered the same missions, and some of them learned Coahuilteco, the dominant language. Neither these manuals nor other documents included the names of all the Indians who originally spoke Coahuilteco. Two friars documented the language in manuals for administering church ritual in one native language at certain missions of southern Texas and northeastern Coahuila. In the mid-nineteenth century, Mexican linguists designated some Indian groups as Coahuilteco, believing they may have spoken various dialects of a language in Coahuila and Texas ( Coahuilteco is a Spanish adjective derived from Coahuila). ![]() The first attempt at classification was based on language, and came after most of the Indian groups were extinct. Thus, modern scholars have found it difficult to identify these hunting and gathering groups by language and culture. Only in Nuevo León did observers link Indian populations by cultural peculiarities, such as hairstyle and body decoration. Spaniards referred to an Indian group as a nación, and described them according to their association with major terrain features or with Spanish jurisdictional units. There was no obvious basis for classification, and major cultural contrasts and tribal organizations went unnoticed, as did similarities and differences in the native languages and dialects. The Spaniards had little interest in describing the natives or classifying them into ethnic units. ![]() During the Spanish colonial period a majority of these natives were displaced from their traditional territories by Spaniards advancing from the south and Apaches retreating from the north. The lowlands of northeastern Mexico and adjacent southern Texas were originally occupied by hundreds of small, autonomous, distinctively named Indian groups that lived by hunting and gathering. ![]()
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