PAAC INDIANS. Although the Paac Indians are mentioned in Spanish documents as early as 1675, their encampment locations were not recorded until 1690. Between the years 1690 and 1704 the Paacs shared encampments with other Indian groups along the Nueces River and its western tributaries in areas of present Dimmit, Maverick, and Zavala counties. Sharing encampments gave them better protection from attacks by Apache groups of the Edwards Plateau to the north. A few Paacs entered San Bernardo Mission at the site of modern Guerrero, Coahuila; in a census of 1734 three Paac Indians were counted, and five were counted in a census of 1772. The Paacs do not seem to have entered any of the Texas missions at San Antonio. During the period of record, 1675-1772, the Paac Indians were evidently few in number, possibly decimated by European diseases earlier in the seventeenth century. The Paacs and their encampment associates are said by Damián Massanet^qv to have spoken the language now known as Coahuilteco. Nothing seems to have been recorded about Paac culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. D. Almaráz, Jr., Inventory of the Rio Grande Missions: 1772, San Juan Bautista and San Bernardo (Archaeology and History of the San Juan Bautista Mission Area, Coahuila and Texas, Report No. 2, Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas at San Antonio, 1980). Thomas N. Campbell, Ethnohistoric Notes on Indian Groups Associated with Three Spanish Missions at Guerrero, Coahuila (Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas at San Antonio, 1979). Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (2 vols., Washington: GPO, 1907, 1910; rpt., New York: Pageant, 1959). Robert S. Weddle, San Juan Bautista: Gateway to Spanish Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968).

Thomas N. Campbell