Description
In the second half of the eighteenth century the Cotoname (Catanamepaque, Cotomane, Cotonan) Indians lived on both sides of the Rio Grande below the sites of Camargo and future Rio Grande City, where they were sometimes called Carrizo, a Spanish name applied to many Coahuiltecan groups along the Rio Grande below Laredo.
Language
Cotoname was a Pakawan language spoken by Native Americans indigenous to the lower Rio Grande Valley of northeastern Mexico and extreme southern Texas. Today it is extinct.
Culture
They were hunter-gatherers, and their villages were positioned near rivers and similar bodies of water. In the late 1600s, growing numbers of European invaders displaced northern tribal groups who were then forced to migrate beyond their traditional homelands into the region that is now South Texas. Northern newcomers such as the Lipan Apaches, the Tonkawa, and the Comanches would also eventually encroach Payaya territory. Conflict between rival tribes as well as with European colonizers, combined with newly introduced European diseases, decimated Indigenous populations.