TAMIQUE INDIANS. These Coahuiltecan Indians were always closely associated with the Aranama Indians, who in the early eighteenth century lived along the Guadalupe River in the vicinity of present Victoria. In 1726 Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission was moved from Matagorda Bay to the lower Guadalupe River for the purpose of Christianizing the Aranama and Tamique Indians. In 1749, when the mission was again moved, this time to the San Antonio River in the vicinity of present Goliad, the Aranamas and Tamiques moved with it. Unlike the Aranamas, the Tamiques do not seem to have run away from the mission very often. In 1794 when the Tamique Indians are last mentioned, about twenty-four individuals were still living at Espíritu Santo Mission. In this late missionary report the Tamiques are listed as a subdivision of the Aranama Indians, but this is probably the result of Spanish administrative practice. Some writers have suggested that the Tamiques and the Tacames were the same people; little evidence can be found to support this identification. Some Tamique Indians entered the San Antonio de Valero Mission when it was founded at San Antonio in 1718.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970). Jack Autrey Dabbs, trans., The Texas Missions in 1785 (Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 3.6 [January 1940]). Peter P. Forrestal, trans., The Solís Diary of 1767, ed. Paul J. Foik (Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 1.6 [March 1931]). Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (2 vols., Washington: GPO, 1907, 1910; rpt., New York: Pageant, 1959).

Thomas N. Campbell