Jumano

The Jumanos hunted with bow and arrow. In war, they used clubs, or cudgels, of hardwood. Jumano traders supplied arrows, and perhaps bows as well, from La Junta to the Indians of central and eastern Texas. Jumanos supplied corn, dried squashes, beans, and other produce from the farming villages, in exchange for pelts (fur, meat, and other buffalo products, and foods such as piñon nuts, mesquite beans, and cactus fruits. Other trade goods included textiles, turquoise, exotic feathers, mineral pigments, shells, salt, and possibly hallucinogens (including peyote, which was available at La Junta).

Much of what has seemed mysterious or problematical in reference to the Jumanos becomes less so when they are seen in the larger context of intergroup relations in the greater Southwest. On the western edge of the plains, bands of Jumano hunter-gatherers had long-established dealings with related farming villages in the Rio Grande valley, maintained through reciprocal exchange of food and other products. These relations were initially disrupted when the eastern Apaches, relative newcomers to the Southwest, began to extend their range into the South Plains. There, they competed with the Jumanos for hunting territories and for control of trade with the village tribes. But the trade in New Mexico was only a segment of an extended network, in which the Jumanos were also trading partners and allies of the distant Caddos and Wichitas, as well as numerous small groups of central and southern Texas. Their war with the Apaches was, in part, a defense of territory but was also a struggle to control trade routes and to preserve the integrity of this regional system. The Apache invasion of the South Plains was already under way in the sixteenth century, when Spanish entradas into the region began. Over the course of the following century, Apache dominance increased and the Jumanos were forced to retreat into west Texas and the American southwest.