MASON, TEPECANO, A PIMAN LANGUAGE OF MEXICO 31 



INTRODUCTION 



The Tepecano Indians compose one of the smaller native groups 

 indigenous to the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental of western 

 Mexico. To-day they are confined to the unimportant village of 

 Azqueltiin and the adjacent fields. These lie in the barranca or canon 

 of the Bolanos River in the northern part of the Mexican state of 

 Jalisco, near the well known mine of Bolanos and adjoining the 

 country of the Huicholes which lies to the west. Here the remnants 

 of this formerly more extensive tribe dwelt in comparative isolation 

 until about 1904 when the rapid growth of neighboring settlements 

 raused a sudden breaking down of their isolation. 



To-day the remaining representatives of the group differ little 

 from their neighbors. For the most part they own their rocky and 

 infertile hillsides on which they grow corn in coamiles without the 

 use of ploughs. Houses of adobe are frequent but those of the 

 aboriginal thatch-roof type are more common. The medium of com- 

 munication to-day is exclusively Spanish and only the old or middle- 

 aged retain fluency in the aboriginal tongue. The older religion 

 exists only in the memory of the conservative, much mixed with 

 Christian ideas, but akin to the other native religions of this region, 

 particularly to that of the Cora. 



The earliest references to the Tepecano are found in the Fran- 

 ciscan Relations reported by Orozco y Berra. 2 According to these, 

 the earliest settlements made in the neighborhood of Azqueltan were 

 in the territory of the Teules-Cljichimecos who spoke Tepecano. 

 Other languages of this group are given as Cazcan and Tecuexe. 

 Orozco y Berra accordingly allots territory on his map to Tepecano, 

 Colotlan, Teul-Chichimec-Cazcan and Coca-Tecuexe. All of these he 

 reports as extinct tongues, showing to what insignificance the group 

 had sunk by 1864. Tepecano and Colotlan specifically, and the 

 others by inference, he considers as dialects of Cora. 



Nothing further was heard of the Tepecanos until the visits of 



1 Manuel Orozco y Berra: -'Geografia do las Lenguas y Carta Etnografica de Mexico, 

 pp. 49, 279, 282; Mexico, 1864. 



