Pame people

The Pame are an Indigenous people of central Mexico primarily living in the state of San Luis Potosí. The northern Pame refer to themselves as the Xi'iuy (alternate spelling: Xi'úi, Xi'ui, Xi'oi, or Xiyui), while the southern Pame (in Hidalgo) call themselves Ñáhu or Nyaxu, and the Pame of Querétaro call themselves Re Nuye Eyyä. When Spanish colonists arrived and conquered their traditional territory in the sixteenth century, which "extended from the modern state of Tamaulipas in the north to Hidalgo and the area around Mexico City in the south along the Sierra Madre," they renamed "the area Pamería, and applied the name Pame to all of the peoples there."

Estimates for population of the Pames at the time of contact with Spanish colonists in 1519 range between 40,000 and 70,000. In 1794, the population was estimated at 25,000. Recent figures for the Pame have estimated the population to be approximately 10,000 people. The Pames, along with the Chichimeca-Jonaz of the Sierra Gorda in eastern Guanajuato, are the only two intact cultural groups "of all the peoples known collectively as Chichimecas" who have survived colonization.