The History of Texas. Robert A. Calvert
could also influence individuals’ economic, political, and social standing as they related to the broader group. Finally, it was women who classified others vis‐à‐vis the clan–as, for instance, friend or foe. In such a kin‐based civilization, Caddo women gave advice on matters of intertribal trade and relations, including terms of war and peace. Ordinarily, women’s presence among visiting Indian delegations symbolized peace; their absence from such teams conveyed hostility.
Although they primarily relied on farming for their sustenance, the Caddos supplemented their diet through other means. In addition to gathering roots, nuts, and fruits, another task assigned to women, Caddo men hunted the native game of eastern Texas: turkeys, rabbits, or quail in the summer; deer and bear (useful for lard, clothing, and shelter) in the fall and winter; and buffalo (present on the western rim of the Caddo confederacy) when the supply of other foods grew scarce during the colder months. Comfortable in their stability and self‐reliance, the Caddos also engaged in extensive trade. Eventually the Caddo world served as a hub for those bringing goods from as far away as New Mexico, northern Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The Caddos welcomed many trading partners, bartering their baskets, tools, decorative art, and weapons for certain types of vegetables, furs, and other luxury items not otherwise available to them in East Texas.
The Jumano Indians
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.
The Plains Indians
Strikingly different from the aforementioned Native American tribes were the Apaches, Comanches, Wichitas, and Tonkawas. None of these Indian peoples–all of whom would play important parts in Texas history during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries–lived in Texas in pre‐Columbian times. Their origins may be traced to the northern Rocky Mountain region of the present‐day United States. The Apaches, for instance, were related linguistically to tribes in Canada and Alaska, while the Comanches had originally made their homes in the valleys of the upper Yellowstone and Platte rivers. No one knows when exactly these tribes commenced their pedestrian migration into the Great Plains (the geographical expanse immediately east of the Rocky Mountains) and the Southwest in the pursuit of buffalo. Historians do know that these Plains Indians found new power in the horse (acquired in the seventeenth century from raids upon fledgling Spanish settlements or by capturing wild herds), for they learned to ride horseback with great skill while hunting buffalo, conducting warfare, or relocating to newer locales.
A number of forces ultimately led the Plains Indians toward Texas. Mounted warfare produced winners and losers; the Comanches–the most successful because of their high mobility and unmatched riding skills–became such a terror on the Plains that the Apaches (namely the groups known as the Lipans and the Mescaleros) by the late seventeenth century began heading south to take refuge in Texas. So did the Wichitas from Oklahoma and Central Kansas, though they sought haven from their enemies attacking them from the upper Mississippi Valley. The Comanches, meanwhile, continued expanding their nomadic hunting grounds southward, pursuing buffalo on horseback, fighting the hated Apaches, and bolstering their pony herds by rounding up wild horses. For their part, the Apaches in their retreat southward threw so many lesser Texas tribal units into disarray that in Central Texas there formed a disparate group of refugees that collectively came to be known as the Tonkawas. As with the Apaches, the Tonkawas were no match for the Comanches, who by the early 1700s had arrived in Texas to become the dominant force in the northern, central, and western regions of the province.
In Texas, the Apaches, Comanches, Wichitas, and Tonkawas depended on the buffalo for almost all their essential items, including food, shelter, clothing, weapons, and tools. Using bows and arrows, the Plains Indians effectively hunted not only buffalo but also deer, antelope, turkeys, and other wild game. Small garden plots, however, provided a secondary source of food, and some of these bands raised maize and other vegetables including squash and beans. They also gathered berries and other domestic fauna such