Pastia people

The Pastia people (also Pastias, Paxti; Spanish: "chamuscados") were a historical hunter-gatherer tribe of Coahuiltecan people. The Pastias lived south of San Antonio, Texas, mainly between the Medina and San Antonio Rivers and the southward bend of the Nueces River running through present-day La Salle and McMullen counties. They first encountered Spanish explorers in the early 18th century, and were extinct as an ethnic group by the middle of the following century.

Early Spanish explorers encountered several ethnically distinct bands of Indigenous peoples near the Medina River who spoke a common Coahuiltecan dialect. The largest of these groups was the Payaya, known to the Spanish since 1690 and considered quite friendly. The area under their influence was centered along the lower Frio River's confluence with the Nueces (in an area later called Nueva Extremadura in New Spain). The Pastia lands overlapped largely with the Pampopa tribal lands. Their homeland was well removed from the usual northern Spanish trade routes and trails leading into Tejas. For that reason, the Pastia and Spanish had no contact until the early 18th century. When the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition—Spain's initial excursion to explore the area of the San Antonio River valley—crossed the Medina on April 24, 1709, they encountered the Pastia tribe for the first time.

The name, Pastias, is equivalent to "chamuscados" in Spanish, translated as the "scorched," "seared," or "singed" peoples. A 1707 document noted that name and meaning, but other contemporaneous records do not mention skin alterations.

The Pastia survived by harvesting and storing the area's abundance of pecans and other nuts and seeds. also contributed a large part to their diet. The Pastia, as well as the other tribes of the southeastern Texas tidal plain, reportedly subsisted in the lean months on roots; raw insects, lizards, and worms; and the undigested nuts picked from deer dung.