Raya Band of Chichimacah Nomenclature

Since time beyond imagination, human beings have occupied the earth in groups. Whether we stay in place all year long, constantly roam the land, or some combination of the two, one thing is for certain– we do it together. 

When Europeans made their first expeditions through our lands and witnessed our peoples, they noted every gradient on the sedentary/nomadic spectrum. Beset by the need to discriminate, they employed various terms in an effort to describe what they were seeing when they looked at us. Some of these terms have stuck, and we use them to this day despite what our ancestors may have called themselves. 

Tribe, clan, band and nation are some of the titles that we now describe ourselves with. Confusingly, they don’t seem to have consistent usages– they vary, sometimes greatly, depending on the people using them. However, there are some general themes that these terms seem to follow.

We will start with the most widely known term– “tribe”. In general parlance, a tribe is a large conglomeration of clans or bands sharing cultural traits such as language. These people may or may not have strongly identified themselves with one another prior to European contact. A nation, another popular term, is often a highly political one, describing a tribe or group of tribes’ government and legal territory. 

Within these broader classifications, there are various smaller ones– namely “band” and “clan”. They seem to be used in similar ways, but with a slight difference. For instance, within a nation, you might have many tribes, and within a tribe you might have many clans and/or bands. Both denominations refer to a family or otherwise associated group which is smaller than the greater tribe it belongs to. However, the word clan applies more often to sedentary groups, while band is used to describe nomadic or semi-nomadic groups.

If we apply these european words to Mexican native groups in the pre-hispanic context, In Excan Tlatoyolan (Triple alliance)  could be considered a nation, the altepetl (city-state) of tenochtitlan might be considered a tribe, and the calpollis (barrios) therein might be considered clans. 

Certain merchant classes of Mexicas might fit into the band category, but the chichimacah of the northern badlands, our ancestors, were known famously throughout the region and beyond as traveling hunters and therefore were bands. We were many many known and forgotten bands and tribes of people marked by our movement across the deserts that we belong to. 

So this is where we derive our name. Los rayados are what Spaniards called us for our tattooed and painted bodies, and the word “raya” is our way of honoring our ancestors' traditions of body art. We chose the word band due to the fact that we all hail from slightly different peoples who all spoke similar languages across the region of Aridoamerica and traveled it extensively with the seasons– just like they had banded together before, we band together now. We use the word Chichimacah to honor and emphasize the interrelatedness of the entire Aridoamerica region (and beyond) and the vastness of our cultures prior to European contact.