LINGUISTIC AND TRIBAL AFFINITIES 23 



prominent tribe to form the title for the family. The Coahuillas were 

 and are the most powerful and best known of all these tribes. They 

 are the only one that preserved in common use their own designation 

 of themselves, and they are the only people of this family, except the 

 Luisenos, who have survived as a nation to the present time. For 

 all these reasons I consider the designation a good one. 



In announcing this widespread linguistic relationship I am simply 

 reiterating, after the most general study possible, a fact previously 

 understood and stated, as has already appeared. 



Major McKinstry, writing in the San Francisco Herald under date 

 of June, 1853, spoke of the immense area of San Diego county as con 

 taining 



about 3,000 Indians, divided into three distinct nations or tribes: Yumas, 

 500; Coahuillas, 2,000; Dieguinas, 500. The two last-named tribes are 



again subdivided into mission or Christianized Indians and gentiles 



The Dieguinas reside in the southern part of the county, and claim the land 

 from a point on the Pacific to the eastern foot of the mountains impinging on 

 the desert. The Coahuillas reside in the northern half of the county and 

 southern part of Los Angeles ; they claim a strip of country commencing on 

 the coast and extending to within fifty miles of the Colorado river, following 

 the eastern base of the mountains. The division of territory is well known 

 to, and recognized by, the Indians. 



About 500 of the Coahuilla nation originally belonged to the mission of 

 San Luis Rev, and are now residing at Pala, Temecula, Ahuanga, Agua 

 Caliente, San Jacinto, and some few at and about the missions. A portion of 

 the Coahuillas never acknowledged allegiance to the missions, and, of course, 

 were not subservient to the will of the friars. Yet no villages of theirs, not 

 excepting those on the desert east of the mountains, fail to send forth repre 

 sentatives during the harvest in the southern counties of the state. 1 



9. It is important to understand the peculiar connection of the Coa 

 huillas with the Pah Ute and Chemehuevi branches ; because, this being 

 true, we shall expect to find their mode of life, their foods, and their 

 ethno-botany in general influenced by these desert tribes, and we shall 

 not be surprised to discover among the Coahuillas many ethnographic 

 details that suggest the life of Indians living far to the east of them. 

 It is important to notice that the Coahuillas have remained in close 

 and constant connection with their Shoshone kinsmen. In spite of 

 Buschmann s conclusion that the &quot;Chemehuevi and the Cahuillo lan 

 guages are so foreign to one another that they possess for nearly all ideas 

 wholly different words,&quot; it is true that the relations of the Coahuillas with 



1 Quoted in the California Farmer , February 15, 1861. 



