![]() These numerous small northern Tamaulipas tribes appeared to speak closely-related languages and shared the same basic culture.īecause the Spaniards did not initially take an interest in describing individual native groups or classifying them into ethnic and linguistic groups, major dialectic and cultural contrasts went unclassified for a long time. Of the four cultural groups, Saldívar described the Grupos del Norte (“Groups of the North”) who inhabited the northernmost region as nomadic groups that lived mainly in the area between the Purificación and Bravo Rivers (The Río Bravo is known as the Rio Grande to Americans today). This map has been reproduced from the San Benito History website:Īccording to Saldívar, when the Spaniards arrived, they found four cultures in the area of present-day Tamaulipas. A map showing the extent of the Nuevo Santander colony in the late Eighteenth Century is shown on the following page. The San Antonio River represented the northernmost reaches of the Nuevo Santander colony. They are the ancestors of many Tejanos living today. Many famous Tejano families – de la Guerra, de la Pena, Benavidez, Villarreal, Leal, Montemayor, Longoria, Trevino and Guerra – were part of the original settlement and later moved northward to other parts of Texas. Matamoros (originally settled in 1749 the Catholic parish was founded in 1793)īy 1800, Nuevo Santander had one city, 25 villas, 3 mining districts, 17 haciendas, 437 ranchos and eight missions – and consisted of about 30,000 people. The settlements along the lower Rio Grande Valley included: The whole colony was settled with remarkable speed. In a period of seven years from 1747 to 1755, Escandón would establish 23 settlements and 15 missions with 1,337 families (6,000 colonists) along the Rio Grande in Tamaulipas. On June 1, 1748, he was officially appointed the Governor of Nuevo Santander, named for his home province in Spain. In 1747, Escandón engineered a seven-point penetration from southern Tamaulipas with a convergence of all the expeditions at the mouth of Rio Grande. In September 1746, José Escandón (1700-1770) – a native of Cantabria Province in Spain – received word that he had been appointed to head the colonization project known as “Nuevo Santander” – the establishment of small settlements along the Rio Grande that would commence in the next year. In 1943, musicologist, teacher and historian, Gabriel Saldívar Silva, wrote Los Indios of Tamaulipas, to provide the names of many of these indigenous groups, most of which were eventually assimilated into colonial society and disappeared as distinguishable cultural entities. įrederick Henry Ruecking, The Coahuiltecan Indians of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico (Master’s Thesis: The University of Texas, August 1955).Īlong the Texas-Tamaulipas boundary lived a multitude of small tribes in the mid-Eighteenth Century. Skowronek (editors), Native American Peoples of South Texas (Edinburg, Texas: The University of Texas – Pan American, 2014). González, Roseann Bacha-Garza and Russell K. Martin Salinas, Indians of the Rio Grande Delta: Their Role in the History of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).īobbie L. 10 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1983). ![]() “Coahuiltecans and Their Neighbors,” in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. Troike, “Notes on Coahuiltecan Ethnography,” Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society 32 (1962).Ĭampbell, Thomas N. Swanton, Linguistic Material from the Tribes of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1940). ![]() Gabriel Saldivar, Los Indios de Tamaulipas (Mexico City: Pan American Institute of Geography and History, 1943). However, the following works can provide some information about the Rio Grande tribes that we will discuss below: However, by the middle of the 19th Century, the culture and languages of many of these people had disappeared, and our information about them is very limited today. This boundary was finalized in 1848, but a century earlier, much of the Rio Grande River area was being settled by Spanish and Mexican settlers who had come from other parts of Mexico to settle the lands that were already inhabited by many tribal groups.įor anyone who is researching their Tejano roots, the names of these indigenous tribes along the Rio Grande can be significant because each Tejano researcher is likely to be descended from some of these tribal groups. For thousands of years, Native American tribes either lived along this river or passed over it on their way south (or north). The American state of Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas share a long border along the Rio Grande River. ![]()
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