Pame - Orientation

As speakers of a language in the Otopamean Family, the Pame are linguistically related to the Otomí and the Mazahua. Present-day Pame are the descendants of the nomadic Chichimec, who lived to the north of the Aztec Empire, in central Mexico. The Pame Indians are divided into the Northern Pame and the Southern Pame. They live in the Mexican states of San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, and Hidalgo. The heart of the Pame region is the Sierra Gorda in San Luis Potosí. The terrain in this region is semiarid to temperate and ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 meters in elevation.

Assessing the total number of Pame is difficult because of varying Mexican government policies, which led to attempts, at differing times, both to maximize and minimize census counts of indigenous groups. The 1980 census recorded 5,649 Pame speakers; of these, 4,670 lived in San Luis Potosí. There are two dialects of the Pame language. The 1990 census listed 5,732 speakers of Pame, of which 5,669 lived in San Luis Potosí.