TACAME INDIANS. The Tacame (Cacame, Tacamane, Tacone, Tecamene) Indians were Coahuiltecans who in the early eighteenth century ranged over an area near the Gulf Coast between the San Antonio and Nueces rivers. This area apparently included parts of what are now known as Bee, Goliad, Refugio, and San Patricio counties. The Arcahomo Indians of this area seem to have formed one subdivision of the Tacames. The Tacames entered three missions at San Antonio, first San Francisco de la Espada and then San Antonio de Valero and Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña. In 1737 200 Tacame Indians at San Francisco de la Espada deserted the mission. Some of these were persuaded to return, but shortly thereafter they left San Francisco de la Espada and took up residence at the other missions. Most of these went to Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña Mission, where they were reported to be living as late as 1793. The Tacame Indians have been confused with the Thecamons, who, according to records of the La Salle expedition,^qv lived somewhere north or northeast of Matagorda Bay. There is no proof that these names refer to the same people.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970). Charles W. Hackett, ed., Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits of Louisiana and Texas (4 vols., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1931-46). 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