Table of Contents
What kind of shelter did the Coahuiltecans live in?
For shelter, the pre-holocaust Coahuiltecans used wickiup huts sometimes. There are Spanish descriptions of these huts called wickiups. Check out our Wickiup page to see one of these huts being built. Before the climate changed there was more food and sometimes it was possible to camp in one place for a longer time.
Did the Coahuiltecans live in a dry area?
The Coahuiltecan lived in the flat, brushy, dry country of southern Texas, roughly south of a line from the Gulf Coast at the mouth of the Guadalupe River to San Antonio and westward to around Del Rio.
What animals did Coahuiltecans hunt?
The men hunted animals like deer and rabbits with bows and arrows. They used simple traps to catch small animals. They also hunted lizards, snakes, and insects for food.
What kind of habitat did the Coahuiltecan live in?
Along the Rio Grande, the Coahuiltecan lived more sedentary lives, perhaps constructing more substantial dwellings and using palm fronds as a building material. Prickly pear cactus grew in huge thickets in the south Texas brushlands. The pads and fruit were an important summer food for the Coahuiltecan.
What did the Coahuiltecan Indians call each other?
Now for another new fact, many of these Coahuiltecan cultures were not tribes at all. A tribe is a large number of people with a chief. Most of people we are calling Coahuiltecans were organized into hundreds of small bands or groups.
Who was the first person to live in Coahuiltecan?
In the early 1530s Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions, survivors of a failed Spanish expedition to Florida, were the first Europeans known to have lived among and passed through Coahuiltecan lands. In 1554, three Spanish vessels were wrecked on Padre Island.
Why did the Coahuiltecan die in the 17th century?
Smallpox and slavery decimated the Coahuiltecan in the Monterrey area by the mid-17th century. Due to their remoteness from the major areas of Spanish expansion, the Coahuiltecan in Texas may have suffered less from introduced European diseases and slave raids than did the indigenous populations in northern Mexico.