Читать книгу The History of Texas - Robert A. Calvert - Страница 18

Another group inhabiting Texas in the final years of the fifteenth century was the Jumanos, who inhabited the Trans‐Pecos area (Figure 1.3). Ethnographers and other scholars still disagree over the distinct features of Jumano culture. Opinions also differ as to what specific peoples (or tribes) made up the Jumanos, what linguistic groups they derived from, and the precise regions they occupied. Some studies note that the term Jumano, as used by the first European observers, delineate those descendants of the Tanoan‐speakers, a linguistic group from New Mexico, or those tribes that made their living as traders and traveled as far east as the South Plains of Texas. To some anthropologists, the word Jumano identifies people of a shared cultural background, and not necessarily a general grouping of people with a common language or a specific livelihood.

Recent research presents the Jumanos as descending from the Jornada line of the Mogollón, a people indigenous to modern‐day Arizona, New Mexico, and neighboring regions. Sometime in the mid‐fifteenth century, part of the Jornada tribe began migrating eastward toward the Trans‐Pecos, ultimately establishing permanent settlements in the West Texas river valleys such as El Paso, but more specifically in the region that the Spaniards later referred to as La Junta de los Ríos (the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos). Quite plausibly, the whole of western Texas became the domain of the Jumanos–more militant tribes such as the Apaches and Comanches would not enter the region until sometime in the seventeenth century–for what were most certainly Jumano settlements (many of them temporary) have been found beyond the fertile river valleys. In any case, the Jumano civilization stretched from eastern New Mexico and perhaps into Oklahoma, and south to northern Chihuahua in Mexico, with its easternmost appendage extending into the South Plains. In these hinterlands, they made a living by farming and hunting.

Figure 1.3 This famous panther is an outstanding example of the prehistoric art of the Lower Pecos people.

Credit: Amistad National Recreation Area.

At La Junta de los Ríos and other permanent settlements, the Jumanos worked irrigated produce gardens, cultivating traditional farm crops such as maize, beans, and squash. The Rio Conchos and the Rio Grande provided them with a variety of fish. Jumano communities resembled those used by their kinspeople in New Mexico–clustered single‐family dwellings constructed of reeds and grass formed a village, over which a chief ruled. Such farm hamlets were indicative of the branch of the Jumanos that had opted for a sedentary life, though certain village members left on seasonal hunting expeditions.

Hunting nearly full time became the unique trait of the nomadic Jumanos of the West Texas plains. Living in transient camps, this branch of the Jumano people roamed the vast grasslands throughout the spring and fall in pursuit of a variety of game: from snakes, fish, and birds, to deer, antelope, rabbits, armadillos, and, naturally, the indispensable buffalo, which furnished them with meat for food and hides for shelter and clothing. During winter, the hunters relocated near the more permanent villages of their farming relatives, launching the hunting cycle anew in the spring.

Both the sedentary and nomadic Jumanos earned reputations among the Spaniards (who entered the world of the Jumanos in the seventeenth century) as accomplished merchants–as noted previously, some Europeans used the word Jumano synonymously with trader. La Junta de los Ríos served as a distribution hub for provisions, trade items, and intelligence coming in from northern Mexico, the Indian villages of the upper Rio Grande, the world of the Coahuiltecans, or from the exchange marts of the Caddos. The nomadic Jumanos appear to have made commerce as much a part of their way of life as was hunting, and establishing trading villages on the plains as centers of exchange. In these posts, they bartered products manufactured or acquired by the tribespeople–bows and arrows, pearls, and animal furs and hides. But they also traveled widely to exchange horses (stolen from local ranches in northern New Spain), buffalo products, and foodstuffs for vegetables and fruits raised by local tribes, woolen textiles or pottery produced in New Mexico, or wares and foods available through the Caddos’ own commercial network.