Mariame

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mariame , also written Marian , Mariane or Mariave , are now extinct North American Indians from southern Texas in the USA . They were one of several hundred ethnicities belonging to the Coahuiltec tribal group and who shared a common language, Coahuilteco , and a similar culture.

residential area

The Mariame were one of eleven groups who inhabited the area between the Lower Guadelupe and Nueces Rivers in southern Texas. They lived for nine months (autumn, winter and spring) on ​​the Guadelupe River above the confluence of the San Antonio River , while in summer they moved 140 km to the southwest. All groups followed this seasonal cycle , which they harvest from prickly pears (Engl. Prickly Pears ), the fruits of prickly pears, west of Corpus Christi Bay led.

Way of life and culture

There are only two descriptions of the way of life of members of the Coahuiltec, but they come from two different centuries. The first is from Cabeza de Vaca and describes his time at the Mariame in the years 1533 and 1534. The second source is Alonso De León's general description of belonging to the coahuiltecan people indigenous groups he as a soldier in front of 1,649 Nuevo Leon in Mexico met .

Around 1534, the Mariame numbered around 200 people who lived in a settlement of 40 houses. The houses were dome-shaped, round and consisted of a framework of four flexible rods that were stuck into the ground, bent, tied together at the top and covered with mats. The poles and mats were taken away when the group moved. During his stay with the Mariame, Cabeza de Vaca did not mention bison hunting, but he did notice bison fur. The preferred game were deer. On the Guadelupe River, the Indians went on two-day hunting trips, which took place two or three times a year, and which took them from the wooded river valley to the neighboring grasslands. They took firewood and drinking water with them. They staged a drive hunt, in which they drove the game by burning the grass.

When they went south in the hunt, the Mariame would follow the coastline of Copano Bay . When the wind blew offshore , the hunters spread out, drove the deer into the water until they drowned, and dragged them into their boats. The Indians killed rats, mice and snakes, the bones of which they ground into powder. They also ate snails, frogs, lizards, spiders, and insects. They searched the cactus fields for insects and their eggs and larvae. Occasionally, during times of hunger, they ate soil, wood and deer excrement. After the floods in April and May, they caught fish in shallow waters after the floods had drained. Pecans ( Carya illinoensis ) and cactus fruits were extremely important to the Mariame's diet. In the fall they collected pecans from the Guadelupe River, which were ground and mixed with seeds from other plants, and in the summer they harvested large quantities of cactus fruits, some of which were pressed and made into fruit juice. Roots of certain plants were the main source of food in winter, but they were scarce and difficult to find and were collected by women within 8 to 12 kilometers of the camp. These roots were roasted in a kind of oven for about two days.

The Indians used bows and arrows as an offensive weapon and had small shields covered with bison skin. Cabeza de Vaca describes the fight between two men for one woman. They only used their fists and sticks, and after the fight everyone destroyed their home and left the camp. No man in the Mariames had two or more wives. Divorce was allowed, but no cause other than sexual dissatisfaction was recognized.

The Mariame practiced female infanticide and sometimes killed male children as well when bad dreams demanded. This meant that Mariame men sometimes had to find their wives in other groups. When a woman was pregnant, her husband would stay away from her at the first sign and would not have sex again until the child was two years old. The women nursed their children until they were 12 years old.

The Mariame has long been identified with the Muruam , of whom there are reports from the San Antonio de Valero Mission in the 18th century . These are said to have lived in 1707 in the area of ​​today's Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande , but the distance from the lower Nueces River to Eagle Pass is more than 300 km inland, so this assumption is doubtful. A second group, the Mahuame , are also associated with the Mariame, but they lived in north-eastern Coahuila in 1674.

literature

Web links

See also