Part 2
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.