The Jumanos are a tribe or a combination of several tribes. They include the Tomiro-speaking Pueblo Indians of Salinas, who inhabit a large area west of Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico, especially near the Junta de Los Rios area, with a settled Indian population living in the area. Big. Spanish explorers first recorded an encounter with Jumano in 1581;
later expeditions recorded them over a large area of the Southwest and Great Plains. The last historical reference is in the oral history of the 19th century, but their population had declined by the early 18th century.
See: Other Native American Tribe in the United States
Scholars have generally argued that the Jumanos disappeared as a distinct people by 1750 due to infectious disease, the slave trade, and war, with the remnants being absorbed by the Apache or Comanche.
Variant spellings of names attested in Spanish documents include Jumana, Xumana, Humana, Umana, Xoman, and Sumana.
Jumano's riddles
Spanish records from the 16th to the 18th centuries often refer to the Jumano Indians, and the French also say they existed in areas of east Texas. During the last decades of the 17th century, they were noted as merchants and political leaders in the Southwest. Contemporary scholars are unsure whether Jumano was a single person organized into distinct groups or whether the Spaniards used Jumano as a general term to refer to several different groups because the references spanned people over a wide geographic area.
See also: Caddo Tribe - Native American, Oklahoma Tribe Crossword
However, scholars cannot determine what language the historic Jumano used, Uto-Aztecan, Tanoan, and Athabascan, have suggested. Jumano has been identified in historical records and by scholars as farmers using pottery living in La Junta de Los Rios, buffalo hunting Lowland Indians who frequented La Junta for trade, and or farmers and buffalo hunters.
In his book Southwest India: 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Rediscovery (1999), Gary Anderson proposed that Jumano was a people of various ethnic groups from different parts of present-day Texas. They join forces and become new people in the process of ethnogenesis, formed from refugees fleeing the effects of a disease, the Spanish mission, and the attacks of Spanish slavery south of the Rio Grande.
Cabeza de Vaca may have discovered Jumano in 1535 near La Junta, the junction of the Conchos River and the Rio Grande in Presidio, Texas. He described his visit to "people of the cows" in one of the towns, but these may have been the settled La Junta Indians. They are the people "with the best bodies we've seen and the most excited". He explains their cooking method, where they drop hot stones into a pumpkin that has been prepared to cook their meal instead of using the pottery made.
This cooking method was common among Great Plains nomads, for whom the pottery was too heavy to carry and overused. For this reason, scholars think he may have described Jumano as seminomadic.
The Spanish explorer Antonio de Espejo first used the term Jumano in 1582 to refer to the agricultural people who lived in La Junta. This area was a trade crossroads and appeared to have attracted many Indians from various tribes, of which Jumano is a group.
Spain uses other names for the Indian group near La Junta: Cabris, Julimes, Passaguates, Patarabueyes, Amotomancos, Otomacos, Cholomes, Abriaches, and Caguates. A member of the Espejo expedition identified Jumano as a buffalo hunter they encountered on the Pecos River near Pecos, Texas.
The hunters are known to have close ties to the Indians in La Junta, but whether they work full-time bull-hunting nomads or live part-yearly in La Junta is uncertain. Charles Kelley suggested that the sedentary people living in La Junta were Patarabueye and the bison hunter Jumano.
In this scenario, Jumano's wanderer files maintain close—and possibly speak the same language—relationships with the people who live in La Junta but differ from them. From their acclaimed homeland between the Pecos and Concho Rivers in Texas, Jumano made extensive voyages to trade meat and skins to Patarabueye and other Indians in exchange for agricultural products.
The Spaniards, identified as Humanas or Ximenas people, are related to the Tomiro pueblo village of salinas, an area about 50 miles east of the Rio Grande on the border of the Great Plains. The pueblo was then called Gran Quivira, the largest of the Jumano cities.
This location allowed trade with Indians who hunted buffalo in the Great Plains. The Jumano also mined the extensive salt deposits, which the Spaniards named the region salinas. They trade salt for agricultural products.
People living in the Tomiro pueblos have been identified as speaking the Tanoan language. Historian Dan Flores believes that Jumano, associated with the village of Pueblo, is the ancestor of the Kiowa tribe, who are speakers of the Tanoan language. The towns of Tomiro were abandoned in 1672, possibly due to deaths from the European plague-borne disease, Apache raids, and onerous Spanish food and labour taxes.
Experts suggest that the fourth group of people in Texas may have been Jumano. In 1541, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado met a group of people whom he called Teyas in the upper reaches of the Brazos River. Scholars have since identified Teyas as Apache, Wichita, or Jumano. Riley points out that they are nomadic relatives of the villagers of Pueblo Gran Quivira and Salt. Over the next two centuries, the people who came to be known as Wichita were often referred to as Jumano in historical records.
Scholars agree that, at a minimum, the Jumanos consisted of nomadic bison hunter people in the Pecos and Concho River valleys in Texas. Since, as nomads and traders, they were often found far from their homeland, the Spaniards may have referred to various Indians from different cultures and locations as Jumano.
History of Jumanos
In the 16th century, when the Spanish came to Tomiro Pueblos in New Mexico, Tompiro traded extensively with Jumano. Historical records show Franciscan missionaries, including Juan de Salas, were surprised to find Jumanos approaching them to ask for baptism. The Jumanos claim that they received instructions from "a woman in blue", believed to be Sister Mary Jesus of Agreda.
Scholars estimate that in 1580, the population of the Native Americans, partially or completely Jumano, living along the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers was between 20,000 and 30,000. Others who lived further east in present-day Texas may have identified as part of the Jumano people or at least closely related to them.
Other groups closely related to Jumano and sometimes identified as Jumano are the Julimes, Tobosos, and Conchos living farther south along the Conchos River from its junction with the Rio Grande.
Jumano, in the late 17th century, sought an alliance with Spain. They were under pressure from the Centipede Apache and Mescalero Apache advancing from the north, and the drought severely impacted agricultural and buffalo production in their area. Jumano asked for a Christian mission to be established in their area; they tried to mediate between the Spanish and the other tribes.
The Spaniards visited them in their homeland on the Concho River in 1629, 1650, and 1654. In 1654, the Spanish of the Diego de Guadalajara Expedition assisted Jumano in his battle against Cuitaos (possibly Wichita files) and obtained a rich crop of bison skins. In the 1680s, Jumano chief Juan Sabeata was prominent in establishing trade and religious relations with Spain.
See also: Karankawa Tribe - One of the Extinct Native Americans.
In the latter part of the 17th century, the colonists seem to have lost interest in Jumano, shifting their priority to Caddo from east Texas. Caddo cared more and more for the Spaniards as the French tried to establish a trading foothold between them.
In the early 18th century, Jumano tried to ally with their historic enemy, the Apache. In 1729, the Spaniards referred to the two tribes as Apache Jumanos. By 1750, Jumano had almost disappeared from the annals as a distinct person; they seem to have been absorbed by the musical groups' Centipede and Mescalero Apache, Caddo, and Wichita; they died of infectious disease or became detribalized while living on the Spanish mission in Central Texas. If Flore's speculations are correct, they may have migrated to the northern Black Hills region and emerged in the southern Plains around 1800 as the Kiowa.
See: Other Native American Tribe in the United States
Descendants of Jumanos
European-American scholars have long considered Jumano as extinct as a person. In the 21st century, several families in Texas have been identified as Apache-Jumano. As of 2013, they have registered 300 members in the United States and are seeking to be recognized as a tribe. The tribal chief, Gabriel Carrasco, said he believed there could be 3,000 more people who would qualify.
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