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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 best known.
Contents
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 extinct.
Family division
The three languages were:
- Comecrudo (also known as Mulato or Carrizo) (†)
- Garza (†)
- Mamulique (also known as Carrizo de Mamulique) (†)
Genetic relationships
In John Wesley Powell's 1891 classification of North American languages, Comecrudo was grouped together with the Cotoname and 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.