XARAME INDIANS. The Xarame (Charame, Chaulama, Jarame, Shiarame, Zarame) Indians are not to be confused with Xaraname (Aranama) Indians of the coastal region, although both groups are considered to have spoken Coahuiltecan languages. The aboriginal range of the Xarames seems not to have been the area around San Antonio, as some historians have asserted. Such evidence as exists suggests that the Xarame Indians originally ranged south of the Edwards Plateau^qv in a strip of territory that extended from the Nueces and Frio rivers southwestward across the Rio Grande into northeastern Coahuila. They were one of the four Coahuiltecan bands for which the original San Juan Bautista Mission was established in 1699 on the Río Sabinas of Coahuila. Shortly afterward, when this mission was moved to the Rio Grande near the site of present Eagle Pass, these Xarames moved with it. Other Xarame Indians entered the nearby San Francisco Solano Mission when it was founded in 1700. In 1716 still other Xarames were represented at Ranchería Grande,^qv where groups of Coahuiltecan and Tonkawa refugees had assembled near the Brazos River to escape both Apache and Spanish domination. In 1718, when San Francisco Solano Mission was moved from the Rio Grande to San Antonio and became known as the San Antonio de Valero Mission, some of the Xarame Indians went with it, forming a nucleus of mission-trained Indians who helped give instruction to other Coahuiltecan bands gathered there. Xarame Indians are mentioned in the records of San Antonio de Valero as late as 1776. Marriage records of Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña Mission in San Antonio contain the names of Xarame Indians who entered this mission in 1733 and later. J. R. Swanton listed Harame and Xarame Indians as separate Coahuiltecan bands, but he did not explain why he made this judgment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (2 vols., Washington: GPO, 1907, 1910; rpt., New York: Pageant, 1959). John R. Swanton, The Indian Tribes of North America (Gross Pointe, Michigan: Scholarly Press, 1968).

Thomas N. Campbell