Title: The Jumano Indians
Author: Hodge, Frederick Webb
Language: English
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                          THE JUMANO INDIANS

                                  BY

                         FREDERICK WEBB HODGE

    REPRINTED FROM PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
               AT THE SEMI-ANNUAL MEETING, APRIL, 1910.

                      WORCESTER, MASS., U. S. A.
                            THE DAVIS PRESS
                            44 FRONT STREET
                                 1910



                          THE JUMANO INDIANS.


In studying the history and the effect of the contact of the
Southwestern Indians with civilization, the writer was baffled by
what appeared to be the sudden and almost complete disappearance of
a populous tribe which played a rather prominent part in the history
of the early exploration and colonization of the Southwest, which
occupied villages of a more or less permanent character, and among whom
missionaries labored in fruitless endeavor to show them the way to
Christianity. It is not usually difficult to account for the decimation
or even for the extinction of a tribe ravaged by war or by epidemics,
of which there are numerous instances; but of the Jumano Indians, of
whom this paper treats, there is no evidence that they were especially
warlike in character, that they had a greater number of enemies than
the average tribe, or that they had suffered unusually the inroads of
disease.

The Jumano were first visited by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his
three companions of the ill-fated Narvaez expedition, while making
their marvelous journey across Texas and Chihuahua in 1535. The name
of the tribe is not given by them: they are called merely the “Cow
Nation”; but the relation of an expedition nearly half a century
later makes it evident that no other people could have been meant.
The narration of Cabeza de Vaca is so indefinite that from it alone
it would be difficult even to locate the place where the Jumano were
found; but the testimony, meager though it be, tends to indicate that
in 1535, as in 1582, they lived on the Rio Grande about the junction
of the Rio Conchos and northward in the present state of Chihuahua,
Mexico.

The first Jumano seen by Cabeza de Vaca was a woman, a captive among
an unknown tribe, members of which were guiding the forlorn Spaniards
across the desolate and broken country toward the west in southwestern
Texas. Reaching the Rio Grande, Castillo and the negro Estevanico,
who had journeyed ahead, came to a town at which the captive woman’s
father lived, “and these habitations were the first seen, having the
appearance and structure of houses.” The inhabitants subsisted on beans
and squashes, and the Spaniards also had seen maize. Besides food, the
natives gave the white men buffalo-robes—seemingly the first of their
sort mentioned in history. The Indians came in numbers and took the
Spaniards “to the settled habitations of others, who lived upon the
same food.” It may, I think, be assumed that these other habitations
were those of other Jumano, although Cabeza de Vaca mentions that from
the second settlement of houses onward was another usage. “Those who
knew of our approach,” he says, “did not come out to receive us on
the road as the others had done, but we found them in their houses,
and they had made others for our reception. They were all seated with
their faces turned to the wall, their heads down, the hair brought
before their eyes, and their property placed in a heap in the middle
of the house. From this place they began to give us many blankets of
skin; and they had nothing they did not bestow. They have the finest
persons of any people we saw,” he continues, “of the greatest activity
and strength, who best understood us and intelligently answered our
inquiries. We called them the Cow Nation, because most of the cattle
[buffalo] killed are slaughtered in their neighborhood,[1] and along up
that river for more than fifty leagues they destroy great numbers.”

The narrator continues: “They go entirely naked after the manner of
the first we saw.[2] The women are dressed with deer-skin, and some
few men, mostly the aged, who are incapable of fighting. The country
is very populous. We asked how it was they did not plant maize. They
answered it was that they might not lose what they should put in the
ground; that the rains had failed for two years in succession, and the
seasons were so dry the seed had everywhere been taken by the moles,
and they could not venture to plant again until after water had fallen
copiously. They begged us to tell the sky to rain, and to pray for it,
and we said we would do so.”

Seeking information regarding their route westward, the Spaniards were
told that “the path was along up by that river [the Rio Grande] towards
the north, for otherwise in a journey of seventeen days we could find
nothing to eat, except a fruit they call _chacan_, that is ground
between stones, and even then it could with difficulty be eaten for its
dryness and pungency,—which was true. They showed it to us there, and
we could not eat it. They informed us also that, whilst we traveled by
the river upward, we should all the way pass through a people that were
their enemies, who spoke their tongue, and, though they had nothing
to give us to eat, they would receive us with the best good will, and
present us with mantles of cotton, hides, and other articles of their
wealth.... Their method of cooking is so new that for its strangeness
I desire to speak of it; thus it may be seen and remarked how curious
and diversified are the contrivances and ingenuity of the human family.
Not having discovered the use of pipkins, to boil what they would eat,
they fill the half of a large calabash with water, and throw on the
fire many stones of such as are most convenient and readily take the
heat. When hot, they are taken up with tongs of sticks and dropped into
the calabash until the water in it boils from the fervor of the stones.
Then whatever is to be cooked is put in, and until it is done they
continue taking out cooled stones and throwing in hot ones. Thus they
boil their food.”

We dwell thus at length on Cabeza de Vaca’s account, as it is the first
reference to the Jumano in history, and because it affords the earliest
information as to what manner of people they were. There are few Indian
tribes, whose history forms part of that of our own land, that have a
record traceable to the first half of the sixteenth century.[3]

The next Spaniards to pass through the Jumano country were Francisco
Sanchez Chamuscado and his party in company with three missionaries, in
1581; but no new light is thrown on the tribe in question, and indeed
there is no definite evidence in the account of two of the soldiers[4]
who were members of the little party that they were seen at all,
although the Rio Grande was followed northward from its junction with
the Conchos.

Much more definite information, however, is afforded by the next
Spaniards to traverse their territory, led by Antonio de Espejo,
who, in November, 1582, set out from San Bartolomé, in Chihuahua,
and followed the bank of the Rio Grande northward from the mouth of
the Conchos. From about the junction onward for twelve days’ journey
Espejo was among these people, who, he says, occupied five villages
with an aggregate population of ten thousand—perhaps four-fold the
actual number, as Espejo’s estimates are always greatly exaggerated.
The Jumano did not at first receive the strangers with the same
friendliness as was shown Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, although
it might be said that the latter met with a reception, owing to the
magic power that they were supposed to possess and the awe inspired
by it, such as perhaps has never been experienced by white men since
their time. Espejo gives a rather definite account of the Indians under
discussion, who, it will be observed, occupied the valley of the Rio
Grande from the Conchos northward almost to the boundary of the present
New Mexico. He says they were called Jumanos, and by the Spaniards
Patarabueyes. Some of their houses were terraced, while others were
of straw. The faces of the Indians were striated, evidently meaning
tattooed, as the sequel will show. They cultivated maize, calabashes,
and beans; hunted animals and birds, and especially the buffalo, and
caught fish of many kinds in the two streams that united within their
territory. They had lakes within their domain, from which they obtained
salt during certain seasons as good as that from the sea. Of special
importance in the identification of the people met by Cabeza de Vaca,
Espejo states that three Christians and a negro had passed through the
Jumano country years before, in whom he naturally recognized “Alvaro
Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, y Dorantes, y Castillo Maldonado, y un negro,”
who, as is well known, finally reached Culiacan and the City of Mexico
after trials and suffering almost beyond belief.[5]

Juan de Oñate, colonizer of New Mexico and founder of Santa Fé, passed
over Espejo’s route for a part of his journey through Chihuahua to the
new province, but instead of traversing the Conchos to its junction
with the Rio Grande, he made a more northerly course to the crossing
of the latter stream at the present El Paso, consequently leaving the
country of the Jumano on his right.

Whether the Jumano had entirely shifted their habitat between 1582 and
1598 is not definitely known, but it seems probable that they had not.
Espejo had returned to Mexico by way of the Rio Pecos, leaving it for
the Conchos some 120 leagues below Pecos pueblo, hence missing the
Jumano territory of eastern New Mexico which later became known. And,
as we have seen, Oñate did not follow a course in the journey northward
with his colonists that would have enabled him to see the Jumano of the
Conchos-Rio Grande junction.

But we have definite knowledge that the Jumano lived in the present
New Mexico at least as early as the time of Oñate, i. e. in 1598, for
on October 6 of that year he departed with the father commissary “to
the salinas of the Pecos, which are of many leagues of indefinite
salt, very beautiful and white; and to the pueblos of the Xumases or
Rayados, which are three: one very large, and they saw the others.”[6]

There were in reality four instead of three important villages of the
Jumano in New Mexico at the close of the sixteenth century, their
names, according to Oñate, being Atripuy, Genobey, Quelotetrey, and
Pataotrey.[7] These, with many villages of the Pueblo Indians from
Pecos southward through the country known as the Salinas, were placed
under the ministration of Fray Francisco de San Miguel; but there is no
evidence that the friar visited all of them, and it is quite certain
that no churches were built in this immediate region at so early a
date.[8]

The _Salinas_ referred to are situated in the central portion of that
part of Valencia county, New Mexico, lying east of the Rio Grande.
Bounding the salt lagoon area on the south is the Mesa de los Jumanos,
or, as it is termed on present-day if not altogether “modern” maps,
“Mesa Jumanes.” This land-mark of course derived its name from the
tribe which formerly occupied the vicinity, a fact illustrating the
persistency with which aboriginal names are sometimes retained in the
Southwest, even where good excuse may exist for forgetting them.

The Salinas country, although known far and wide for its generally
inhospitable and forbidding character, was inhabited at the opening
of the seventeenth century and for twenty-five years later, by the
eastern divisions of the Tigua and Piro (the latter sometimes being
known as Tompiro), as well as by the Jumano. The former two groups
belong to the Tanoan linguistic family and inhabited several pueblos
similar to those of their Rio Grande congeners. When, in 1626, Fray
Alonso Benavides, the Father Custodian of the missions of New Mexico,
appealed for additional missionaries, he had particularly in mind the
conversion of the tribes of the Salinas region, especially the Jumano,
among whom Fray Juan de Salas had already been. Says Benavides, writing
in 1630, “I kept putting off the Xumanas who were asking for him
[Salas], until God should send more laborers.”

Through their affection for Salas, the founder of the mission of
Isleta, the Jumano went year after year for some six years prior to
1629 to visit him at that Rio Grande mission station in the hope, they
asserted, that he might come to live among them. Finally, on July 22,
1629,[9] a delegation of some fifty Jumano visited the pueblo of San
Antonio de Isleta, where the custodian (probably Estevan de Perea) was
then staying, for the purpose of again asking for friars; and “being
questioned as to what induced them to make this demand, they said that
a woman wearing the habit had urged them to come; and being shown a
picture of Mother Luisa de Carrion, they rejoiced, and speaking to
each other said that the lady who had sent them resembled the picture,
except that she was younger and more beautiful.” Fray Juan de Salas
and Fray Diego Lopez volunteered to go, accompanied by an escort of
three soldiers. They found the Jumano this time more than 112 leagues
(about 300 miles) to the eastward from Santa Fé, or possibly in the
western part of the present Kansas in the vicinity of what later became
known as El Quartelejo. The cause of this shifting may have been due
to the hostility among the tribes of the Salinas about this time, of
which Benavides speaks, for subsequent history seems to indicate that
the Jumano were never an aggressive people. Not to enter into detail
regarding the miracles which Salas and his companion are said to have
performed among the Jumano on the plains, some 30 or 40 leagues west of
the “Quiviras” (who are identified with the Wichita tribe of Kansas),
it may be said that the missionaries found 2,000 of these Indians,
who, with many others from neighboring tribes (Benavides says there
were 10,000 in all), clamored loudly for baptism, while two hundred
lame, blind, and halt rose up well “when the sign of the cross was made
and the words of the Gospel pronounced over them.” Indeed, they were
inspired “with so great devotion to the cross that they fell on their
knees before every cross and adored it, and in their houses,[10] over
their doors, they put crosses.”

After remaining some days, the fathers departed for the valley of
the Rio Grande; and it would seem that the Jumano soon followed,
for, according to Vetancurt, “owing to the continual invasions, and
wars with their enemies the Apaches, this conversion could not lead
to a permanent result in that place, and hence they removed to the
Christians near Quarac,” whence they were ministered.

There has been much discussion regarding the location of the “pueblo”
occupied by the Jumano that was dedicated to “the glorious Isidoro.” We
may assume that it was not until after the visit of Salas to the Jumano
on the plains in July–August, 1629, that this mission was founded,
since the new friars did not arrive from Mexico until Easter of that
year, and prior to that time no permanent missionaries were available
even had the Jumano not been three hundred miles away on the prairies.
We learn from the _Relacion_ of Fray Estevan Perea,[11] the successor
of Benavides as custodian of the missions of New Mexico, and under
whose guidance the new missionaries came in the spring of 1629, that
there were sent to the pueblos of the Salinas—“in the great pueblo of
the Xumanas, and in those called Pyros and Tompiras”—six priests and
two lay religious, one of whom, Francisco de Letrado, is known to have
been assigned to the Jumano alone. It does not seem necessary to look
for the “great pueblo of the Xumanos” of which Benavides speaks, among
the ruins of eastern New Mexico, from amongst the débris of which the
massive walls of former Spanish churches and monasteries still rise,
for it is scarcely likely that the Jumano occupied a village other than
their own, or that the settlement was anything but an aggregation of
dwellings of the more or less temporary kind which they were found to
occupy when visited by Cabeza de Vaca and by Espejo on the lower Rio
Grande.[12]

That active missionary work was conducted by Letrado among the Jumano
is certain. We have seen that this friar was assigned to the tribe soon
after his arrival in New Mexico as a member of Perea’s band in the
spring of 1629; but three years later we find him at Zuñi on his way to
convert the savage and little-known “Cipias,” although he was murdered
by the Zuñi before he reached them, on February 22, 1632—a century to
the day before the birth of Washington.

Why missionary work among the Jumano was thus apparently abandoned,
there is no definite knowledge, but it would seem to have been due
to another shifting of the tribe from New Mexico to the plains, and
another change from their erstwhile sedentary life to that of buffalo
hunters. There is a suggestion of this, indeed, in an account written
by Fray Alonso de Posadas,[13] who states that Fray Juan de Salas and
Fray Juan (Diego?) de Ortega, with an escort, visited the Jumano on a
stream which they called Rio Nueces, and Ortega remained among them for
six months. From this account the Rio Nueces might have been almost
anywhere in the country of the plains, and not necessarily the present
Rio Nueces of Texas.[14] The important point, however, is the fact
that Letrado had abandoned his station among the Jumano in eastern New
Mexico in 1632, and that in the same year Salas went forth again on the
plains apparently for the purpose of bringing them back.

The history of New Mexico between Benavides’ time and the great Pueblo
rebellion of 1680 is meager indeed, consequently of the shiftings of
the Jumano, if any there were during that period, little is known.
In 1650 they were evidently still on the plains, for, according to
Posadas, Captain Hernan Martin and Diego de Castillo in that year went
with some soldiers and Christian Indians 200 leagues from Santa Fé to
the “Rio Nueces” where the Jumano were again found. They remained in
the region more than six months, going southeastward down the river
for 50 leagues, visiting the Cuitoas, Escanjaques, and Aijaos, and
finally the Tejas. During their journey the party traversed, from north
to south, a distance of 250 leagues, or, according to Posadas, from
the latitude of Santa Fé in 37° to that of the Tejas in 28°. It should
here be noted that the Escanjaques have always been identified with
the Kansas or Kaw Indians, and such may be the case. The Cuitoas, the
Tejas (Texas or Hasinai), and the Aijaos, however, were Texan tribes,
and indeed the last, as later will be seen, are identifiable with
no other than the Tawehash, the name of the southern branch of the
Wichita, sometimes applied to the entire Wichita group, as well as to
the Wichita proper. This point should be borne in mind, as the Jumano
and the Aijaos are here mentioned as if two distinct tribes.

In 1654 another journey was made to the Jumano on the Rio Nueces by
Lieutenant-Colonel Diego de Guadalajara, with 30 soldiers and 200
Christian Indians. The Cuitoas, Escanjaques, and Aijaos were this
time at war. Captain Andres Lopez, of the party, with twelve soldiers,
together with some of the Christian Indians and Jumano, were sent
forward, finding a rancheria of Cuitoas, 30 leagues eastward, whom they
severely defeated.

These facts are mentioned for the purpose of showing that the Jumano,
at least, although friendly toward the Spaniards, had apparently not
occupied eastern New Mexico for some twenty-two years prior to 1654,
but that they were living on the plains and leading their customary
semi-sedentary life.

As previously stated, Fray Juan de Salas, earlier in the century,
found the Jumano on the prairies about 112 leagues eastward from the
Rio Grande. But distances given by the early Spanish travelers must be
regarded as only approximate, and there is no reason for believing that
the tribe had moved farther away simply because Captains Martin and
Castillo, in 1650, are said to have found the Jumano on the Nueces 200
leagues from Santa Fé. They may have been in practically the same spot
during this quarter century.

There is ground for strong suspicion that the village or villages of
the Jumano on the plains at this time were in proximity to if not
actually at the Quartelejo, or Cuartelejo, mentioned frequently by
writers of the 18th century. The distance of the Jumano from Santa Fé,
according to two writers above cited, varied from 112 to 200 leagues
(300 to 530 miles); while El Quartelejo, according to the record,
was from 130 to 160 leagues (350 to 425 miles) from the New Mexican
capital.[15] This Indian outpost was situated in the valley of Beaver
creek, in northern Scott county, Kansas, as has been shown by Williston
and Martin.[16]

El Quartelejo first appears in history about the middle of the
seventeenth century, when “some families of Christian Indians of the
pueblo and tribe of Taos uprose, withdrew to the plains of Cibola
[i. e. the buffalo plains], and fortified themselves in a place
which afterward was for this reason called the Cuartelejo. And they
were in it until Don Juan de Archuleta [in 1652?], by order of the
Governor, went with 20 soldiers and a party of auxiliary Indians and
brought them back to their pueblo. He found in the possession of these
revolted Taos, casques and other pieces of copper and tin; and when
he asked them whence they had acquired these, they replied ‘from the
Quivira pueblos,’ to which they had journeyed from the Cuartelejo....
From Cuartelejo in that direction one goes to the Pananas [Pawnees];
and to-day it is seen with certainty that there are no other pueblos
besides the said [Panana] ones, with which the French were by then
already trading. Besides this in all the pueblos which the English and
French have discovered, from the Jumano to the north or northeast, we
do not know any to have been found of the advancement and riches which
used to be imagined of the Gran Quivira.”[17]

It has been seen that the Jumano were still on the plains in 1654, and
that their former settlement in the Salinas of New Mexico had evidently
long been abandoned. It is said that, in 1670, “many Indians from the
Pueblo of the Jumanos were at El Paso, but the roads to the [former]
Jumano country [the Salinas] were closed by the Apaches,”[18] whose
depredations soon became so serious that between the years 1669 and
1675 every settlement of the Piro and Tigua east of the Rio Grande had
been permanently abandoned on their account. I find no evidence that
any Jumano inhabited that part of New Mexico at this time, however,[19]
nor is there any indication that they were in New Mexico at the
outbreak of the Pueblo rebellion of 1680 or that they participated in
that bloody revolt during the succeeding twelve years.

During this period the government of New Mexico was administered from
El Paso, the provincial capital (Santa Fé) having been completely
abandoned in 1680. On October 20, 1683, more than 200 Jumano visited
El Paso for the purpose of asking for missionaries, “stating that
thirty-two tribes were waiting for baptism, because, being on the point
of fighting a great battle, and anxious because they were few while
the enemy were more than 30,000 in number, they invoked the aid of the
holy cross, of which they had heard from their forefathers, and at
once there descended through the air a cross wrought in red, with a
pedestal two yards in breadth ... and that when this cross was put on
their banner, they had conquered their enemies without losing a man,
and gaining much spoils of war.” Having acknowledged the miracle, they
came to ask for baptism. Three friars went to them and found “a great
multitude of Xumanas and Tejas; they decided to return with better
preparation and a greater number of ministers.... Some friars returned
with the intention of going among the Xumanas and Tejas, to Caracoles
river, where it is said that pearls are fished, in order that they
might ascertain the truth.... The apparition of the cross turned out to
be uncertain, because it was a ruse devised by an Indian of the Tejas
in order that the Spaniards might help them to cross the Conchas river
to their land, which passage the Apaches were trying to prevent; and
such chimeras are often tried by the Indians, because they know how
easily the Spaniards can be made to believe them.”[20]

This statement is generally too indefinite to be of much value beyond
the fact that the Jumano—or at least some of them—again ventured across
the plains as far as El Paso, with another miracle to unfold. We may
not assume from the foregoing statement that the Jumano at this time
were dwelling in the neighborhood of the Conchos-Rio Grande junction,
where they were first met, as there is definite evidence that their old
home had become occupied by the Conchos, Julimes, and Chocolomos,[21]
who, so far as is known, were unrelated.

In December, 1683, according to Escalante, “there arrived at El Paso,
Juan Sabeata,[22] an Indian of the Jumano nation, saying that all his
people wished to be reclaimed to the Faith, and asked for ministers;
and that not very far from their country were the Tejas, of whom he
related so many things that he caused it to be believed that that
province was one of the most advanced, fertile, and rich in this
America. For which reason Fray Nicholas Lopez, then vice-custodian,
desirous of propagating the Gospel, determined to go apostolically,
without escort or defense, to this exploration with Fray Juan de
Zavaleta and Fray Antonio de Acevedo.” The governor, however, thought
it unsafe for the fathers to go alone, so he formed an expedition of
volunteers under command of Juan Domingo (Dominguez) de Mendoza, who
accompanied the friars to the junction of the Conchos and Rio Grande,
where the docile Conchos, Julimes, and Chocolomos now resided. Father
Acevedo remained with them while the expedition set out for the Rio
Pecos, and after many days “arrived at a rancheria of Indians who then
were called Hediondos [“Stinkers”]. Among them were some Jumanes; and
of the latter [tribe] was Juan Sabeata.”[23] The party later returned
to El Paso.

Henceforward historical references to the Jumano are fewer and farther
between. Bandelier even asserts that they “were lost sight of after the
great convulsions of 1680 and succeeding years, and their ultimate fate
is as unknown as their original numbers.”[24] This is largely true, yet
there are a few allusions to this erratic people, under the name by
which they were known to the Spaniards, reference to which will prove
of interest.

In 1700, according to contemporary documents,[25] the Jicarilla Apache
brought word to Taos, the northernmost of the New Mexican pueblos,
that the French had destroyed a village of the Jumano on the eastern
plains; and in 1702 a campaign was made by the Spaniards in that
direction which resulted only in loss of life at the hands of the
Apache. It would seem from the circumstance of the destruction of the
Jumano settlement, and from the facts that the Jicarilla Apache at
this time were at the Quartelejo[26] and the French had penetrated as
far westward as Nebraska or Kansas,[27] as well as into Texas, that
the Jumano village was in the north.[28] There is distinct evidence,
however, aside from that already presented, that a part of the tribe
had been in Texas for several years, since they are mentioned in French
documents of this period. Early in January, 1687, for example, La
Salle heard of the Choumans, or Choumenes as they were called by the
Teao (Tohaha) Indians among whom he then was, a short distance east
of the Colorado river of Texas. These people, he was informed, were
friends of the Spaniards, from whom they got horses; “that most of
the said nation had flat heads, that they had Indian corn, which gave
M. de la Salle ground to believe that those people were some of the
same he had seen upon his first discovery.”[29] Again, in 1691, we
are informed, a few rancherias of the Jumano were visited by Governor
Terán de los Rios, Father Massanet, and others, on the Rio Guadalupe of
Texas.[30]

The cause of the disruption between the French and the northern Jumano
in 1700 does not appear, but the breach seems to have been healed
by 1719, in which year Governor Antonio Valverde y Cossio led an
expedition northward and northeastward from Santa Fé against the Ute
and Comanche. On a stream called Rio Napestle (probably the present
main Arkansas river), the Governor met the Apache of Quartelejo (i. e.
the Jicarillas), and found men with gunshot wounds “received from the
French and their allies, the Pananas [Pawnees] and Jumanas.” Here[31]
again we have definite evidence that a branch of the Jumano was still
in the north during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. It
should be noted also that the Jumano here mentioned were allies of the
Pawnee.

No definite reference to the northern Jumano between 1719 and 1750
has yet been found. The members of the ill-fated Villazur expedition
from Santa Fé to the northeastern plains, and probably as far as the
Missouri river, in 1720, saw nothing of them, so far as the meager
account of the expedition[32] shows, although other tribes are
mentioned.

In 1750, however, definite and important testimony was offered by one
Pedro Latren, a Frenchman at Santa Fé, who spoke of a tribe, evidently
the Tawehash (Taovayas), called by the French “Panipiques (Panipiquets)
alias Jumanes.” Latren referred to these Indians as “parciales de
los Franceses con los Cumanches.” He also called them Piniques and
said they were four or five days from the French fort “Canes” or
Arkansas.[33] Here we have more definite information regarding the
affiliation of the Jumano than has yet appeared, and accounts to a
greater or less extent for the persistent references to the existence
of a Jumano band in the north during a period of many years, as well
as explains the mention of the Jumano and the Aijaos together in 1650.
Now, the Paniques, Panipiquets, etc., as they were designated by
the French, were the Wichita, the tribe which, in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, was known to the Spaniards as “Quiviras.” The
French designation, of course, had allusion to their common practice of
tattooing the face, and indicates also relationship with the Pawnees;
that is, they were “pricked, or tattooed, Pawnee,” a designation
recalling the Jumanos or “Rayados” of Oñate in 1598, and the alliance
between the Jumano and the Pawnee mentioned by Valverde y Cossio in
1719. The name Jumano, it will also be seen, was applied to both the
Wichita and their immediate relatives the Tawehash, or Taguayazes, as
they were called by the Spaniards, a southern or Texas branch of the
tribe, long before the Wichita drifted southward from Kansas to the
vicinity of the mountains in Oklahoma that still bear their name.

Another important item in the historical testimony dates from 1778,
on June 15 of which year a _junta de guerra_ was held in Chihuahua,
at which were present most of the military authorities of the
province. The report of the _junta_ says: “The Taguayazes [Tawehash]
... are known in New Mexico by the name of ‘Jumanes’ also.”[34] The
“Taguayazes” were then on upper Red river, hence not far from the
region of the Wichita mountains, their subsequent and present home.

A few years later, in 1789, M. Louis Blanc, commandant at Natchitoches,
Louisiana, wrote General Ugarte urging the opening of trade between New
Mexico and Louisiana by establishing a presidio among the Jumano;[35]
and in 1812, or thereabouts, it was said (probably an inspiration
due to the exploit of Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike in 1806–7) that the
Americans had established “gun factories” among the Jumano and Caigues
(Kiowa), and that muskets and powder from this source were obtained
for New Mexico.[36] The item is interesting as being probably the
first reference to the association of the Wichita-Tawehash and Kiowa,
who from 1866 occupied the same reservation in Indian Territory and
Oklahoma until a large part was allotted and the remainder sold in 1901.

Reference has been made to the settlement of the Wichita in the
country of the Wichita mountains in the present Oklahoma, after having
occupied the so-called Quivira country of Kansas in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Further evidence of the connection of the
Wichita-Tawehash people with the Jumano is afforded as late as 1844 by
Josiah Gregg, who was engaged in the Santa Fé trade and was personally
familiar with the plains and their aboriginal occupants. Gregg says
that the northern portion of the Wichita mountains was known to Mexican
ciboleros and comancheros as Sierra Jumanes,[37] which recalls the name
still applied to the mesa in the Salinas region of New Mexico. In the
same connection Gregg makes the interesting statement that the range of
hills known as the Wichita mountains are also sometimes called Towyash
by hunters, “perhaps from Toyavist, the Comanche word for mountain.”
Gregg evidently was unaware that Tawehash, or Towyash as he calls it,
was the name of a Wichita division, evidently for the reason that by
his time the entire group had become generally known to the whites
as Wichita, while at the same time Indians of other branches of the
Caddoan stock, to which the Wichita belong, designated, as they still
designate, the entire Wichita group as the Tawehash.[38]

The name Jumano, as applied to the tribe, had disappeared by this time,
so far as the written record goes; but a trace of the name, dating from
the middle of the century, lingered in the memory of an informant of
Bandelier about 1890.[39] Of these people he says: “I have found ...
a trace dating as late as 1855. They were then living in Texas, not
far from the Comanches, and the characteristic disfiguration of the
face through incisions which they afterward painted, was noticed by my
informant who visited them about thirty-three years ago.” The facial
decoration was plainly tattoo, and their proximity to the Comanche
accords with information previously given.

       *       *       *       *       *

We may now summarize the testimony as follows:

In 1535 and again in 1582 the Spaniards found a semi-agricultural tribe
living in more or less permanent houses, some of them built of grass,
on the Rio Grande at the junction of the Conchos in Chihuahua and along
the former stream northward for a number of leagues. They subsisted
partly by hunting the buffalo, and raised beans, calabashes, and corn.
At the date last mentioned they were called Jumano, and the Spaniards
named them also Patarabueyes. A distinguishing feature of the tribe
was its tattooing, for which reason, when found east of the Rio Grande
in New Mexico in 1598, they were called “Rayados” by the Spaniards.
They were erratic in their movements. The Franciscans established a
mission among them in New Mexico in 1629, but it does not seem to have
been successful, for the Indians appear to have been here to-day but
elsewhere tomorrow. In the seventeenth century they were found on the
plains of Texas, and again living on the prairies to the northward,
evidently in Kansas, the name seemingly being applied to each of two
divisions of the same tribe or confederacy. Their custom of tattooing,
the character of their houses, and their semi-agricultural mode of life
during the century they were first known, suggest relationship, if not
identification, with the Wichita people. References in unpublished
Spanish documents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries indicate
that the Jumano of the Spaniards of New Mexico were the Tawehash of
Texas; and it is known that Tawehash, the name of a division of the
Wichita, was also the term by which other Caddoan tribes knew the
Wichita tribe proper. There is direct information from the beginning
of the nineteenth century that the Wichita mountains, which received
their name because the Wichita tribe dwelt thereabouts, were also
called “Jumanes mountains” and “Tawehash mountains,” thus further
substantiating the testimony that the Jumano and the Tawehash were
one people. The Tawehash have been absorbed by the Wichita proper,
and their divisional name is now practically lost. Likewise the
term Jumano, which, originating in Chihuahua and New Mexico, passed
into Texas, but seems to have been gradually replaced by the name
“Tawehash,” which in turn was superseded by “Wichita.”

Thus is accounted for the disappearance of a tribe that has long been
an enigma to ethnologists and historians.


 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY,
   Smithsonian Institution,
     Washington, D. C.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] The neighborhood here referred to was not the immediate vicinity,
and the stream alluded to was much more likely to have been the Pecos
than the Rio Grande, up which they were now journeying, the former
river having been named “Rio de las Vacas” by Espejo in 1583.

[2] The rude Indians of the eastern coast of Texas.

[3] See _Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca_, translated by
Buckingham Smith, New York, 1871; _The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de
Vaca_, translated by Fanny Bandelier, New York, 1905; _The Narrative
of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca_, edited by F. W. Hodge, in _Original
Narratives of Early American History_, New York, 1907.

[4] See the _Relacion_ of Barrundo and Escalante, and other documents
bearing on the journey, in _Coleccion de Documentos Ineditos del
Archivo de Indias_, XV, pp. 80–150, Madrid, 1871.

[5] For the Espejo expedition, see _Coleccion de Documentos Ineditos
del Archivo de Indias_, XV, 101 et seq., 1871.

[6] Discurso de las Jornadas, _Documentos Ineditos del Archivo de
Indias_, XVI, 266–267, Madrid, 1871.

[7] Bandelier (_Final Report_, pt. I, p. 167, 1890) suggests that the
pueblos of Cuelóce Xenopué and Patasce, mentioned in the Obediencia y
Vasallaje a Su Magested por los Indios del Pueblo del Cuéloce (_Doc.
Ined. de Indias_, XVI, 123–124) are identifiable with Quelotetrey,
Genobey, and Pataotrey, respectively. Indeed, it seems practically
certain that such is the case. The Obediencia says: ... “el Pueblo
de Cuelóce que llaman de los rayados.... Yolhá, Capitan que dicen
sér del Pueblo y gente deste Pueblo de Cuelóce; Pocastaquí, Capitan
del Pueblo de Xenopué; Haye, Capitan del Pueblo de Patasce y Chilí
[pueblo of Chililí by error?], Capitan del Pueblo de Abo.” These names
are transcribed in the hope that eventually they may prove of some
linguistic service.

[8] “Al Padre Fray Francisco de Sant Miguel, la provincia de los Pecos
con los siete Pueblos de la Ciénega que le cae al Oriente, y todas los
baqueros de aquella cordillera y comarca hasta la Sierra Nevada, y los
Pueblos de la Gran Salina, ... i asi mismo los tres Pueblos grandes
de Xumanas ó rrayados, llamados en su lengua, _atripuy_, _genobey_,
_quelotetrey_, _pataotrey_ con sus subgetos.”——Obediencia y vasallaje a
Su Magestad por los Indios del Pueblo de San Juan Baptista, _Doc. Ined.
de Indias_, op. cit., XVI, 113–114.

[9] Benavides, _Memorial_, 1630, in _Land of Sunshine_, Los Angeles,
California, vol. XIV, p. 46, 1901. Vetancurt, _Cronica_, pp. 302–305,
Mexico, reprint 1871.

[10] According to Vetancurt, op. cit., Benavides says: “They each one
placed it [a cross] on the front of his tent,” indicating that they
were living in temporary abodes while hunting the buffalo on the plains.

[11] Translated in the _Land of Sunshine_, XV, nos. 5 and 6, Nov. and
Dec., 1901.

[12] Compare Bandelier, _Gilded Man_, p. 255, 1893, and _Final
Report_, pt. I, 131, 132, 168, and pt. II, p. 267; also _Fifth Annual
Report of the Executive Committee of the Archæological Institute of
America_, pp. 37, 85, 1884. We must assume that the four “pueblos”
occupied by the tribe in Oñate’s time (1598) had all been abandoned
and that the “great pueblo of the Xumanos” mentioned by Benavides
had been established after the Jumano had been induced by Salas to
return from the plains. Bandelier suggests that the Piro pueblo
of Tabirá was probably the village of the Jumano, but I find no
evidence that the Piro and the Jumano occupied a settlement together
(Bandelier, _Final Report_, pt., I, pp. 131, 132). Escalante (op.
cit., _Land of Sunshine_, March, 1900, p. 248) states that on account
of Apache hostilities the pueblos of Chililí, Tafique (Tajique), and
Quarac of the Tehua (Tigua) Indians; and Abó, Jumancas, and Tabirá
of the Tompiros, were abandoned. That “Jumancas” and the “Pueblo de
los Jumanos” were one and the same there appears to be no doubt,
consequently if Jumancas and Tabirá had been the same village they
would hardly have been mentioned as distinct. Escalante, who wrote in
1778, gathered his information from the official archives at Santa Fé.

[13] “Informe a S. M. sobre las tierras de Nuevo Mejico, Quivira y
Teguayo,” in Fernandez Duro, _Don Diego de Penalosa_, Madrid, 1882, p.
59. Posadas was custodian of the missions of New Mexico in 1661–64,
during the governorship of the notorious Don Diego de Peñalosa y
Briceño, and was a missionary there for ten years previously. His
_Informe_ was written after 1678.

[14] Compare Bandelier, _Final Report_, pt. I, 167, note, 1890;
Bancroft, _North Mexican States and Texas_, I, 386, 1886.

[15] Bandelier in _Arch. Inst. Papers_, Am. Series, v, 182, 183, 1890;
Bancroft, _Hist. Arizona and New Mexico_, 237, 1889.

[16] “Some Pueblo Ruins in Scott County, Kansas,” in _Kansas Historical
Collections_, vol. 6, p. 124, Topeka, 1900. See also a comment on the
article by the present writer in _American Anthropologist_, vol. 2,
1900, p. 778. For the location of Quivira, which, as we have seen, was
beyond the Jumano settlements on the plains, see Hodge, “Coronado’s
March to Quivira,” in Brower, _Harahey (Memoirs of Explorations in the
Basin of the Mississippi)_, St. Paul, 1899.

[17] Letter of Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, April 2, 1778,
translated in _Land of Sunshine_, Los Angeles, Cala., vol. XII, p. 314,
1900. The citation tends also to show the proximity of El Quartelejo
and the “Quivira” or Wichita settlements.

[18] _Libro Primero de Casamientos de el Paso del Norte_, fol. 12,
cited by Bandelier, _Final Report_, pt. II, p. 267.

[19] See Vetancurt (_Cronica_, p. 325, reprint 1871), who says: “San
Gabriel Abbo [Abó] tiene su sitio en el Valle de las Salinas.... Tiene
dos pueblos pequeños, Tenabo y Tabira, con ochocientas personas que
administraba un religioso: hasta aqui llega la administracion hácia
el Oriente, aunque quince leguas de allí hay algunos xumanas, que
eran de Quarac [Quarrá or Cuaraí] administrados.” This would indicate
that these Christian Jumano were settled a number of miles east of
their old villages or rancherias at the Mesa de los Jumanos, which is
only 10 or 15 miles in a straight course east of the ruins of Abó.
Vetancurt, however, who wrote in 1692, lost sight of the fact that all
the pueblos of the Salinas country had been abandoned on account of
Apache depredations prior to the revolt of 1680, hence there is little
likelihood that the Jumano neophytes remained.

[20] Vetancurt, _Cronica_, pp. 302–305.

[21] See Escalante, op. cit., p. 311, and compare Bandelier, _Final
Report_, pt. I, pp. 80–81, 85, 167, 246. I do not find any substantial
evidence that the Julimes and the Jumanos were identical, or that the
various small tribes mentioned in Spanish documents of the period were
in any way related to the latter. Of the languages of the myriad small
tribes mentioned in the annals of Texas, practically nothing is known.
Fray Nicolas Lopez recorded a vocabulary of the Jumano language in
1684, but it has disappeared.

[22] Born in the Jumano pueblo of New Mexico, according to Confessiones
y Declaraciones, etc., 1683, cited by Bandelier, _Final Report_, pt. I,
p. 132.

[23] Escalante’s Letter (1778) translated in _Land of Sunshine_, Los
Angeles, vol. XII, no. 5, April, 1900, p. 309. Confirmatory of this
account is the mention of the same Juan Sabeata, of the Jumana tribe
living on the Rio Nueces, three days’ journey eastward from the mouth
of the Conchos, by Cruzati, evidently Governor Cruzat or Cruzate of New
Mexico, who assumed the office in 1683. Sabeata refers to thirty-six
tribes that lived on the Rio Nueces in 1683 (Cruzati in Mendoza,
Viage, manuscript in Archivo General of Mexico, kindly communicated by
Professor H. E. Bolton, now of Leland Stanford Junior University).

[24] _Final Report_, pt. I, pp. 168, 169. Bandelier quotes an early
document to the effect that “as late as 1697 a Jumano Indian, a female
described as ‘a striated one of the Jumano nation,’ was sold at Santa
Fé for a house of three rooms and a small tract of land besides. This
woman had been sold to the Spaniards by other Indians, who had captured
her.”

[25] Quoted by Bandelier, _Contributions to the History of the
Southwestern Portion of the United States_, p. 181, 1890; also _Final
Report_, pt. I, p. 168, 1890. See also Bancroft, _Arizona and New
Mexico_, 222, 1889.

[26] Bandelier, Contributions, _Arch. Inst. Papers, Am. Ser._, V,
183–184, 1890; Bancroft, _Arizona and New Mexico_, 222, 236, 237, 1889.
The Quartelejo is here reported to have been 130 leagues from Santa Fé.

[27] Bancroft, _History of Arizona and New Mexico_, states, on the
authority of Padre Niel, that about the year 1700 two little French
girls had been ransomed from the Navaho, and that in 1698 “the French
had almost annihilated a Navaho force of 4,000 men.” The latter
statement is probably an error, while in regard to the former the
Navaho probably obtained the French girls from some other tribe,
perhaps their kindred, the Apache.

[28] I fear that Bandelier (_Final Report_, pt. I, 168) has not
sufficient ground for his assertion that the Jumano village of 1700
could not have been beyond the confines of New Mexico. The nearest
Jicarilla settlement was 40 leagues (100 miles) northeast of Taos,
while the main body—those of the Quartelejo—were 130 leagues (350
miles) northeast of Santa Fé, i. e. in Scott county, Kansas. See page
13, note 16.

[29] Joutel’s Journal in French, _Historical Collections of Louisiana_,
pt. I, p. 139, 1846.

[30] Terán and others cited by Bancroft, _History of the North Mexican
States and Texas_, I, 416, 1886.

[31] Bancroft, _Arizona and New Mexico_, 236, 1889; Bandelier,
_Contributions_, 182–183, 1890.

[32] See Bandelier, _Contributions_, p. 179 et seq.; also “Some
Unpublished History—A New Mexican Episode in 1748,” _Land of Sunshine_,
VIII, February, 1898, p. 129.

[33] Declaration, recorded in Spanish, of Pedro Latren, March 5, 1750,
manuscript in Archivo General de Mexico, Provincias Internas, tomo 37.
Information kindly communicated by Professor Herbert E. Bolton.

[34] Cabello, _Informe_, 1784, folio 20, manuscript. Information kindly
communicated by Professor Herbert E. Bolton.

[35] Manuscript cited by Bancroft, _Arizona and New Mexico_, 276, note,
1889.

[36] Pino, _Exposicion Sucinto_, Cadiz, 1812, and _Noticias
Historicas_, Mexico, 1849, cited by Bancroft, _Arizona and New Mexico_,
286, note.

[37] Gregg, _Commerce of the Prairies_, II, 147, 1844. _Ciboleros_ were
buffalo hunters, and _comancheros_ were New Mexican Indian traders.

[38] One of the latest references, from personal knowledge, to the
Tawehash and the Wichita as distinct divisions, is that given by Isaac
McCoy in _The Annual Register of Indian Affairs_, Washington, 1838, p.
27.

[39] Bandelier, _Final Report_, pt. I, 246, 1890.


                         Transcriber’s Notes:

  - Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
  - Blank pages have been removed.
  - Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.



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