Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of Texas and in northern Mexico along the Rio Grande. Comecrudo is the most well-known.
Very little is known about these languages or the people who spoke them. Knowledge of them primarily consists of word lists collected by European missionaries and explorers.
All Comecrudan languages are now extinct.
Family division
The three languages were:
- Comecrudo (also known as Mulato or Carrizo) (†)
- Garza (†)
- Mamulique (also known as Carrizo de Mamulique) (†)
Comecrudo
The name Comecrudo is derived from Spanish meaning "eat-raw". Carrizo is from Spanish meaning "reed". Garza is from Spanish meaning "heron".
Comecrudo, the most well-known, was the name of a language recorded (a list of 148 words) in 1829 by French botanist Jean Louis Berlandier (Berlandier called it "Mulato") (Berlandier et al. 1828–1829). It was spoken on the lower Rio Grande near Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in Mexico.
Much earlier, some Comecrudo tribal names were recorded in 1748 (Saldivar 1943):
Later in 1861, German Adolph published a travelogue with some vocabulary (Adolph called the language Carrizo) (Adolph 1961: 185–186). In 1886, Albert Gatschet recorded vocabulary, sentences, and a text from the descendants (who were not fluent) of the last Comecrudo speakers near Camargo, Tamaulipas, at Las Prietas (Swanton 1940: 55–118). The best of these consultants were Emiterio, Joaquin, and Andrade.
Garza
Garza is known from two tribal names and twenty-one words recorded from the chief of the Garza by Berlandier in 1828 (Berlandier et al. 1828–1829, 1850: 143–144). At that time, the Garza all spoke Spanish and were acculturated. The Garza may have been the same as the Atanguaypacam tribe (of the Comecrudo) recorded in 1748. The Garza were called something like Meacknan or Miákan by the neighboring Cotoname (Gatschet 1886: 54) while they called the Cotoname Yué.
Mamulique
Mamulique (called Carrizo by Berlandier) was recorded in a twenty-two-word vocabulary (in two versions) from Native Americans near Mamulique, Nuevo León, by Berlandier in 1828 (Berlandier et al. 1828–1829, 1850: 68–71). These speakers were a group of about forty-five families who were all Spanish-speaking Christians.
Genetic relationships
In John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of North American languages, Comecrudo was grouped together with the Cotoname and the Coahuilteco languages into a family called Coahuiltecan.
John R. Swanton (1915) grouped together the Comecrudo, Cotoname, Coahuilteco, Karankawa, Tonkawa, Atakapa, and Maratino languages into a Coahuiltecan grouping.
Edward Sapir (1920) accepted Swanton's proposal and grouped this hypothetical Coahuiltecan into his Hokan stock.
After these proposals, documentation of the Garza and Mamulique languages was brought to light. It is now thought that the Comecrudan languages are not part of any of the proposed larger groupings mentioned above. Goddard (1979) believes that there is sufficient similarity between Comecrudan, Garza, and Mamulique for them to be considered genetically related.
See also
Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
- Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Goddard, Ives. (1979). The languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.) The languages of native America (pp. 355-389). Austin: University of Texas Press.
- Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9.
- Goddard, Ives. (1999). Native languages and language families of North America (rev. and enlarged ed. with additions and corrections). [Map]. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Smithsonian Institute). (Updated version of the map in Goddard 1996). ISBN 0-8032-9271-6.
- Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
- Saldivar, Gabriel. (1943). Los Indios de Tamaulipas. Mexico City: Pan American Institute of Geography and History.
- Sapir, Edward. (1920). The Hokan and Coahuiltecan languages. International Journal of American Linguistics, 1 (4), 280-290.
- Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978-present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1-20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1-3, 16, 18-20 not yet published).
- Swanton, John R. (1915). Linguistic position of the tribes of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. American Anthropologist, 17, 17-40.
Comecrudo
- Berlandier, Jean L. (1969). The Indians of Texas in 1830. Ewers, John C. (Ed.). Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
- Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1828-1829). [Vocabularies of languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande]. (Additional manuscripts, no. 38720, in the British Library, London.)
- Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1850). Luis Berlandier and Rafael Chovell. Diario de viaje de la Comisión de Límites. Mexico.
- Gatschet, Albert S. (1886). [Field notes on Comecrudo and Cotoname, collected at Las Prietas, Tamaulipas]. Smithsonian Institute, National Anthropological Archives Ms. no. 297.
- Swanton, John. (1940). Linguistics material from the tribes of southern Texas and northern Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin, 127 (pp. 1-145).
- Uhde, Adolph. (1861). Die Länder am untern Rio Bravo del Norte. Heidelberg: J. C. B. Mohr.
Garza
- Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1828-1829). [Vocabularies of languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande]. (Additional manuscripts, no. 38720, in the British Library, London.)
- Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1850). Luis Berlandier and Rafael Chovell. Diario de viage de la Commission de Limites. Mexico.
- Gatschet, Albert S. (1886). [Comecrudo and Cotoname vocabularies, collected at Las Prietas, Tamaulipas]. Ms. 297, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
- Saldivar, Gabriel. (1943). Los indios de Tamaulipas. Instituto panamerico de geografía e historia, Publication 70.
Mamulique
- Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1828-1829). [Vocabularies of languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande]. (Additional manuscripts, no. 38720, in the British Library, London.)
- Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1850). Luis Berlandier and Rafael Chovell. Diario de viage de la Commission de Limites. Mexico.
