BAGUAM INDIANS. In 1675 the Baguam Indians were identified in a Coahuila document as a hunting and gathering people who lived in the Sierra de Dacate some seventy-five miles north of the Eagle Pass section of the Rio Grande. The sierra referred to must have been a part of the eroded southern margin of the Edwards Plateau. This would place the Baguam in or near the site of modern Kinney County. The name of these Indians is sometimes given as Bagnam, a misreading of Baguam. The Baguams are evidently the Indians recorded as Pagaiam by Juan DomÃnguez de Mendoza in 1684, when he was encamped for six weeks in the western part of the Edwards Plateau. Some writers have speculated that the Baguam language was either Coahuilteco or Tonkawa, but this assumes that no other languages were spoken in their area. The primary documents do not contain enough information to permit linguistic classification. Since the Baguams are not mentioned in documents written after 1684, their ethnic identity was probably lost before 1700.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Vito Alessio Robles, Coahuila y Texas en la época colonial (Mexico City: Editorial Cultura, 1938; 2d ed., Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1978). Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706 (New York: Scribner, 1908; rpt., New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959).
