Some South Dakota Prehistory

In the previous post, I briefly summarized part of the prehistory of the Pawnee, Arikara, and Mandan.  I was already digressing away from the main topic, so I tried to make what I wrote quick and simple—there were details that I chose not to get into for reasons of space—but I'm afraid it just ended up being rushed and unclear.  Also I made a few small errors, of omission and of commission.  So I'm gonna try to cover part of that again, and try to be clearer and more detailed (and accurate) this time around.  As always, remember that I am especially liable to get things wrong when talking about archeology.

The Pawnee and Arikara tribes are closely akin, and seven centuries ago were still one people.  Relatively, at least—the archaeological record perhaps doesn't tell us how unified they were socially or politically, but they presumably still spoke one language.  They lived in sedentary village communities in southern Nebraska and northern Kansas.  As before, I'm using the term "Panaic" to refer to this ancestral population, for the sake of convenience.  The Panaic people are represented by the "Central Plains Village" archaeological tradition.

Meanwhile, South Dakota was inhabited by another group of village-dwelling people, unrelated to the Panaics, represented by the archaeological "Middle Missouri tradition".  There are two areas to the Middle Missouri tradition: the core area along the Missouri River in central South Dakota, roughly between the mouths of the Bad and Cheyenne rivers (henceforth: "the Pierre area"); and the so-called "Eastern Periphery" extending thence across southeastern South Dakota and into northwestern Iowa.

In the previous post, I made two errors regarding the Middle Missouri tradition: 1) I limited it to the Pierre area, not including the Eastern Periphery, and 2) I labeled it "proto-Mandan".  Error #2 might not strictly be wrong per se, but the evidence is ambiguous: the Middle Missouri tradition certainly included the proto-Mandan, yes... but it likely also included the proto-Crow-Hidatsa as well, and possibly other tribes as well.  Specifically who was in the Pierre area, and who in the Eastern Periphery, is not known.  The only hard evidence we have are archaeological remains, and it just so happens that the Mandan and Hidatsa have always been extremely similar in material culture, so it's next to impossible to tell where they were located relative to each other in prehistoric times.

"Mih-Tutta-Hangkusch: A Mandan Village" by Karl Bodmer, 1841.

The Crow, Hidatsa, and Mandan constitute a dialect group known as "Missouri River Siouan".  However, because the Crow and Hidatsa did not become separate from each other until probably the 1700's, and because they and the Mandan are nigh-indistinguishable in the archaeological record, I'm going to employ another term-of-convenience to refer to their collective forebears: "Minnetaric".  Remember: "Panaic" and "Minnetaric" are both names I have invented for convenience's sake—they are not terms used by scholars, or anyone else.  In the 13th century, Minnetarics almost certainly occupied the Pierre area.  The Eastern Periphery was probably Minnetaric as well—perhaps proto-Crow-Hidatsa, perhaps other Minnetaric tribes that got lost to history.

By the middle of the 14th century, the Panaics had migrated from the central Plains and established themselves along the Missouri River, downstream from the Pierre area.  These South Dakota Panaic settlements belong to the archaeological "Coalescent tradition".

In my last post, I surmised that this migration was what split the Panaics into the Arikara and Pawnee:

"The 1350-1400 period is reasonably close to the estimated date of separation for the Pawnee and Arikara languages (Parks 1979), so it seems plausible to me that this was when the "Panaic" tribe(s) fissioned: the ancestors of the Arikara emigrating to South Dakota, and the ancestors of the Pawnee presumably going somewhere else."

This is still possible, I suppose, but most archaeologists prefer to say that a later Panaic migration (in 1550) represents the Pawnee-Arikara split (Logan 1996).  Parks' actual estimate for the Pawnee-Arikara schism was around 1450 A.D., give-or-take—or in other words, right between the 1350 migration and the 1550 migration.  So the linguistic evidence is ambiguous as to when the schism occurred.  However, I have no reason to doubt the archaeologists on this, so let it be said: the early Coalescent tradition in South Dakota represents the Panaic people, not just the proto-Arikara.

South Dakota was already something of a war zone when the Panaics decided to move in—settlements along the Missouri River tended to be much more defensive in nature, compared with the Central Plains villages that the Panaics were accustomed to.  These Missouri River settlements were typically surrounded by a ring (sometimes two) of defensive earthworks, topped with palisade walls, and positioned at strategic locations atop cliffs or on hillsides.  For a century prior to the Panaics' arrival, peoples from the Initial Middle Missouri (IMM) and Extended Middle Missouri (EMM) phases had been fighting each other for possession of the Pierre area (Wood 2001, 192).

Aerial photograph from 1965 of the ruins of a fortified Middle Missouri settlement.  After four centuries of neglect, and years of getting literally plowed over, the walls and "mural tower" sections are still clearly visible in outline. (from Wood 2001)

After the Panaics arrived on the scene, things just got worse, and a war broke out against the Minnetarics over control of South Dakota (one can only assume that the IMM and EMM forgot their quarrel in the face of a common enemy).  This war is famous among archaeologists because of an archaeological site known as Crow Creek—a spectacular testament to human violence.  At some point in the early 1300's, a Minnetaric war party surrounded a Panaic settlement and—after apparently laying siege to it for some time—attacked, killing nearly 500 of its inhabitants:

"This truly was a massacre rather than a battle; most villagers appear to have been clubbed to death while fleeing.  There is not an embedded arrow point in any of the bodies.  Men, women, and children were indiscriminately killed.  Their noses, hands, and feet were sometimes cut off, teeth smashed, and heads and limbs cut from the body.  The victims, from babies to elders, were universally scalped and mutilated.  The scale of the deaths suggests that most of the inhabitants were killed." (Emerson 2007)

Crow Creek might be the bloodiest massacre committed by a non-state civilization known to all of history (Pinker 2011, 49).  Clearly, then, the Minnetarics didn't take this Panaic invasion lying down.  But, however many teeth they smashed and noses they cut off, it evidently wasn't enough, and by mid-century they had abandoned the entire Eastern Periphery and withdrawn to the relatively-constricted Pierre area.  The Iowan portion of their former territory was taken over by the Chiwere (a group that includes the Ioway, Oto, and Missouria tribes... though I don't think the Missouria were involved here); whether there was a theater of war here like that in South Dakota, I honestly have no idea.

Wherever the proto-Mandans had been before, they were certainly in the Pierre area by ≈1350.  If there had ever been other Minnetaric tribes (apart from the proto-Crow-Hidatsa), they were either destroyed or had their tribal identity subsumed under someone else.  As for the proto-Crow-Hidatsa, they're conventionally supposed to have lived in eastern North Dakota prior to ever encountering the Mandans, but it's not impossible that some may have been in South Dakota with the Mandans at this point.

This, by the way, is why I've been reluctant to use the word "Mandan" when referring to the Middle Missouri tradition.  I don't want to say that, e.g. "the Mandans lived in the Pierre-area" in the 14th century, because maybe they didn't—maybe the Mandans were those people living in the Eastern Periphery, and some other tribe lived in the Pierre-area, were swamped by the Mandan refugees, and lost their tribal identity.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  Or maybe they were both Mandans.  Maybe there's something to the oral tradition that says the Hidatsa Awaxawi band was originally south of the Mandans (Wood 1993).  Or maybe there isn't.  Probably no one knows.

What is known is that: whoever was present in the Pierre-area in 1350, spent the next two centuries or so being gradually driven northward by the expanding power of the Panaics.  By approximately the 16th century or so, the Panaic advance had driven the Mandans and Hidatsas upriver, into central North Dakota which they inhabited in the historical period.  Meanwhile, the Panaics had expanded southward as well, until their northern and southern borders corresponded more or less with the present north and south borders of South Dakota.

Sometime around 1550 A.D., or 200 years after first moving to the Missouri River, a segment of the Panaics migrated back south into Nebraska and settled along the forks of the Loup River.  Whether they had hung on to fond memories of "the old home" for two centuries, or were motivated by other concerns, I don't know.  As mentioned earlier, this was probably the migration that split the Panaics into two tribes—with those remaining in South Dakota becoming the Arikara, and those living in Nebraska becoming the Pawnee.  The Pawnee later split into two geographical divisions: Skiri and South Band.  It was once thought that this split predated the Arikara schism, and that the latter tribe originated as a sub-band within the Skiri—that is now known not to be the case.

There were probably also developments within the "Chiwere" bloc shown on the map, but I haven't yet looked into that.  For now, just take that portion of the "1550-1600 AD" map with skepticism.

Cited sources:

Thomas E. Emerson, "Cahokia and the Evidence for Late Pre-Colombian War in the North American Midcontinent". In Chacon & Mendoza eds., North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence (2007).

Brad Logan, "The Protohistoric Period on the Great Plains". In Jack L. Hofman ed., Archeology and Paleoecology of the Central Great Plains (1996).

Douglas R. Parks, "The Northern Caddoan Languages: Their Subgroupings and Time Depths" (1979).

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and its Causes (2011).

W. Raymond Wood, "Hidatsa Origins and Relationships" (1993).

— "Plains Village Tradition: Middle Missouri". In Raymond J. DeMallie ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains, Pt 1 (2001).

Uncited sources:

Duane Anderson, "Ioway Ethnohistory: A Review, Part I" (1973).

Dale R. Henning, "The Oneota Tradition". In W. Raymond Wood ed., Archaeology on the Great Plains (1998).

— "Plains Village Tradition: Eastern Periphery and Oneota Tradition". In Raymond J. DeMallie ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains, Pt 1 (2001).

Richard A. Krause, "Plains Village Tradition: Coalescent". In Raymond J. DeMallie ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains, Pt 1 (2001).

Douglas R. Parks & Waldo R. Wedel, "Pawnee Geography: Historical and Sacred" (1985).

W. Raymond Wood & Alan S. Downer, "Notes on the Crow-Hidatsa Schism" (1977).

North of the Jumano

I want to talk about mythical cities for a second.  It's a little peculiar that when the Spanish first landed in America, they did it in the tropics, in Central America.  I don't mean because the humid climate allowed for those epidemics to spread more easily—though that was obviously important in other ways—I mean that they landed practically on the Incas' and Aztecs' doorstep.  That's an exaggeration—the Aztec conquest was 1519, so almost 30 years after Columbus—but it still happened pretty quick, and as a result, the Spanish got strange ideas about what the Americas were like: e.g. that it was full of glorious empires flowing with silver and gold.  And so people like Narváez, Orellana [correction: Gonzalo Pizarro], and De Soto went on conducting expeditions into the continent, hoping to find another Inca Empire to conquer, and when they didn't find any they just made them up instead—fictional kingdoms with names like "Anian" and "Teguayo", apparently lying somewhere off north, waiting to be conquered.  No matter how much of America was explored, the Spanish never really stopped wanting to believe in places like Teguayo, and this went on for centuries—people were still believing this stuff as late as the 1770's (Tyler 1952, Owens 1975).

Everyone knows this.  Anian and Teguayo aren't very well known, but everyone knows El Dorado and the Seven Cities of Gold—some might know the latter more accurately as the "Seven Cities of Cíbola and Quivira".  It's also not widely-known that "El Dorado" (like "Inca") referred originally not to a kingdom, but to its king—a monarch so wealthy that he painted his whole body over with a coat of gold dust.  Every day he would apply a new coat, and every night wash it off by bathing in the royal pond.  After centuries, this pond had developed a thick layer of gold lining its bottom like silt, which shone at midday with reflected sunlight.  But ideas slip over time, so somehow this eventually morphed into an Atlantis-esque legend of a magical kingdom with giant pyramids made entirely from pure gold:

The idea is so slippery that sometimes El Dorado and the Seven Cities are treated like they're just two names for the same thing, despite being distinct legends with distinct sources.  So that, e.g. National Treasure 2 has Ed Harris refer to El Dorado as "Cíbola" like that's its "real name" or something.  Indiana Jones 4 had the same gimmick, except they called El Dorado "Akator"—I have no idea where that name comes from, they might have made it up.

Speaking of ideas slipping: the conquistadors don't have a very good reputation these days.  And, true, it's not very endearing to read about Orellana and De Soto's mad quests for glory, killing and torturing villagers for not relinquishing their nonexistent treasure... (Narváez got lucky: he's mostly just remembered as an incompetent)...  but when it comes to the Spaniards' lack of geographical knowledge, at least, I think we should cut them a little slack.  It's too easy to write off the wannabe-conquistadors as nincompoops for expecting to find kingdoms of gold in Oklahoma or wherever, but really, how could they have known?  America was well-nigh unknown to western Europeans of the time, but so was China.  If you read about some guy in the 1500's who travelled eastward hoping to find Cathay and the kingdom of Prester John, he might sound a little quixotic, but he wouldn't come across as quite the dumbass that Coronado, I think for some people, does.  Cathay was a real place.  Still is.

Cíbola and Quivira were also real places.  This came as a surprise to me when I learned it.  I had heard of the "Seven Cities of Cíbola and Quivira" and had seen National Treasure 2, and so only knew those names in the context of being mythical places that didn't exist, but they were both real.  "Cíbola" comes from Cabeza de Vaca—it referred originally to the Cíbolo Indians (who were probably Jumanos, as I've said), and somehow ended up as a name for the Zuni pueblo of Háwikuh, or for the entire Pueblo region in general.  It wasn't some mythical far-away citadel full of riches: the Spanish knew exactly where Cíbola was, they'd been there, they'd seen it.

Same for Quivira, although it didn't get as many visitors—it was the region occupied by the [various, then-independent divisions of what would later become the] Wichita tribe, especially the area along the Arkansas River in central Kansas.  One of the Quiviran settlements, Etzanoa, had a population of 20,000 people (Wenzl 2017).  Etzanoa was no Tenochtitlán, but Quivira was impressive enough to have a reputation throughout the Plains and the Southwest—if you were an Indian in the 16th century, and some Spaniard came up and asked you about that vast, wealthy kingdom to the north he had heard so much about, you'd probably assume that's what he was referring to.  ("Kingdom" is not inaccurate: the Wichitas of Quivira, like their Caddo brethren, were organized into hereditary chiefdoms—Etzanoa was governed by a ruler called a catarax (Vehik 1992, M. Wedel 1988, 21).)

Which brings me to the point of this post.  Such a Spaniard looking for such a kingdom was Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.  In 1541, after spending the winter in Cíbola province, he went eastward looking for Quivira.  He found it, but that's for another day—what's important now is that, somewhere out on the high plains between Cíbola and Quivira, he encountered two other groups of people.  The first were nomadic bison-hunters from the "Querecho" tribe.  Beyond them, in some vaguely southeast-ish direction, were another tribe called the "Teyas", who lived much as the Querechos except that they painted their faces.  The Teyas and the Querechos were said to be enemies (Newcomb 1993).

Just like Luxán's "Caguates" and "Tanpachoas", this is another case where the earliest explorers to some area used ideosyncratic names to refer to the local inhabitants, and modern researchers have to try and figure out who they meant.  It's a common problem.  For reasons I won't go into, virtually everybody agrees that the Querechos were a group of Apaches.  The Teyas are more difficult—some people say they were Caddoans, Jumanos, or another Apache group.  My impression is that Teya=Jumano is the most commonly held opinion of the sources I've read, but Teya=Apache is also plausible, as according to Carlisle (2001, 52-3):

"Both the Querechos and Teyas used dog nomadism, which was not attributed to any other group...[A]rguments generally used to dispute an Apache identification for the Teyas can be easily refuted. The enmity between the two tribes could have simply been an intra-tribal dispute and does not necessarily indicate that the two tribes were of different nations. The fact that Teyas painted themselves while Querechos did not is a moot point, since some Apache tribes used paint while others did not. The fact that the Teyas were more sedentary and practiced farming also does not eliminate the possibility that the Teyas were Apaches. The Jicarillas of later times, for example, were sedentary and practiced agriculture." (pp. 52-3)

In 1598, Vicente de Zaldívar passed through the same area as Coronado sixty years earlier; he, too, encountered two tribes of people who were at war with each other and whose description roughly matches that of the Querechos and the Teyas—the first were the "Vaqueros" (another commonly-accepted name for the Apaches), and the second were called the "Xumanas" (Habicht-Mauche 1992).  This is probably the best evidence that the Teyas were Jumanos.

So, in 1541 Coronado passed through the northern border of the Jumanos with the Apaches.  All we need to do is figure out where that was.  Tracking the itineraries of these early Spanish entradas is a difficult business—it's pretty impressive that researchers have been able to reconstruct them to any degree of confidence.  For instance, this is what people used to think Coronado's route from the Pueblos to Quivira was:

(route from Schroeder 1962)

But scholars now think that it was more like this:

(route from W. Wedel 1990)

(While among the Teyas, the expedition made a dramatic course correction once Coronado learned from the Teyas that Quivira lay to the north, not the east, and that his Indian guide had been leading him astray.  Maybe.  See M. Wedel 1988, 38-52.)

Assuming this route means that the Querechos were on the Llano Estacado south of the Canadian River, and that the Teyas were in a region of north Texas called the Caprock Canyonlands—a series of canyons cutting into the Llano Estacado plain on its eastern edge.  This matches the descriptions from the Coronado expedition and of the Teyas and Querechos much better.  Or so they say, at least... I haven't actually read the Castañeda account, nor do I know anything about Texan geology any more than what my sources tell me.

So, in 1541, in between encountering the Querechos and the Teyas, Coronado crossed over the northern border of Jumano territory—I want to locate this border.  Unfortunately, the expedition accounts themselves don't provide enough detail to locate which canyons Coronado found the Teya.  Hickerson (1994, 25), citing the authority of "scholarly consensus", places one of the major Teya encampments in Palo Duro canyon, one of the biggest (the biggest?) canyons in the Caprock region.  I have no intention of going against scholarly consensus—especially since I'm not an expert in any of this, and I want my map project to be a work of synthesizing what other, smarter people have said—however, there is good reason to doubt that the Jumanos were situated that far north.

This involves archeology.  Disclaimer: I am a total and utter noob when it comes to archeology.  I've been trying to educate myself recently on the archeology of North America, but it's not a field that I feel at home with... at all... and I place very little confidence in my ability to understand most of it.  So even more than usual, I'm not saying any of this with any authority, and the probability is rather high that I might unintentionally misrepresent my sources, or come to a faulty conclusion due to not understanding the methodologies or assumptions of the field.

Now that that's out of the way: the Texas Panhandle region, for the protohistoric period, is dominated by two archeological complexes: the Garza complex and the Tierra Blanca complex.  Both complexes began around 1450 or so, and they both lasted until around 1650 (Habicht-Mauche 1992).  Tierra Blanca is known mostly from sites in and around Palo Duro canyon, and Garza is mostly found in various canyons south of and including Blanco Canyon (where the upper Brazos River flows through the Caprock canyonlands).  On the following map, I've outlined the regions where each complex is found—the solid line represents each complex's "core area", and the dotted line includes other regions where artifacts have been found.

(based on Blakeslee et al. 2003)

For comparison, here is the same map, only I've added all of the known Jumano locations as mentioned in contemporary Spanish documents (from Kenmotsu 2001):

(Note, by the way, that south-easternmost six dots—nearest the ocean—are all from the late 1680's, after the Jumanos had been ousted from their lands by the Apaches, so they may represent refugee Jumanos found outside of their historic territory.)

And that is why the Jumanos cannot have inhabited Palo Duro Canyon.  Whoever the inhabitants of Palo Duro canyon were (the Tierra Blanca complex people), they were different from the Garza complex people.  And if either of those two complexes represents the Jumanos, it is certainly the Garza.  As you can see, the Garza area is slightly to the north of the bulk of attested Jumano locations, so there is a slight possibility that the Garzas and/or Teyas were some otherwise-unattested tribe, north of the Jumanos and presumably destroyed along with the Jumanos by the southward Apache advance.  That is possible, but unlikely—in either case, the Jumanos were still not in Palo Duro Canyon.

It is highly likely that the Tierra Blanca complex represents the Apaches (Hughes, in Blakeslee et al. 2003).  It is also generally accepted both that the Teyas were Jumanos and that the Garza complex represents the Teyas.  Not everybody agrees with this (e.g. Donald Blakeslee), but most do—I haven't gone back and done a "poll" of all my sources to see who supports what hypothesis (and I'm not going to, because that sounds tedious), but my distinct impression is that the majority opinion is Garza=Teya=Jumano and Tierra Blanca=Querecho=Apache:

It then remains to locate the border between the Tierra Blanca and Garza complexes, and we will have found the northern border of the Jumanos.  This will be accurate to 1541 A.D. if the Teya=Jumano hypothesis is correct; if that hypothesis is not correct, it will still be accurate to the general period of ≈1450 to ≈1650 spanned by the two complexes.  As you can guess from the map, this border is located between the upper reaches of the Brazos and Red rivers.

That gives the Jumanos' northern border in Texas like so:

The New Mexican portion of the border, adjacent the Pueblo region, remains to be defined.  This is more difficult, as it involves the Athabaskan arrival in the Southwest, which is a vast and contentious topic that deserves more attention in the future.  For now, this is the condensed version, as best as I can manage:

The Apacheans (Apaches and Navajos), for the majority of the historic period, inhabited the Southwest; being Athabaskans, though, their origins lie to the north—in Alaska and subarctic Canada.  Some centuries ago, the ancestors of the Apacheans expanded or migrated south from their old home and, eventually, ended up in the New Mexico area—however, the precise route that they took is not known.  Historians posit three main possibilities: an intermontane route, a High Plains route, and a Plains-border route near the mountains (Wilcox 1981, Carlisle 2001).  The Rocky Mountains are presumably difficult to cross, so the Pueblo area constitutes one of the "gates" in the North American axial mountain chain—consequently both plains-route theories dictate that the Athabaskans would have had to traverse the entire north-south length of the Great Plains before swinging westward into the Southwest.

Intermontane, Plains-border, and High Plains migration routes.

(from Gilmore & Larmore 2008)

More archeology: around 750 years ago, the Great Plains were inhabited by a number of semisedentary, village-dwelling civilizations.  In South Dakota it was the Initial Middle Missouri tradition (proto-Mandans, probably), which ranged as far west as the Black Hills.  In Nebraska and Kansas it was the Central Plains Village tradition (proto-Pawnee-Arikara... what do I call that group, "Panaic"?), which ranged westward to Wyoming and Colorado, within sight of the Rockies.  In southeast Colorado was the Apishapa phase (proto-Who-The-Hell-Knows), and in the Texas panhandle the Antelope Creek focus (ditto).

Great Plains, ca. 1250 A.D. (not comprehensive)

(from Wood 2001, Drass 1998, Gilmore & Larmore 2008)

By the early 14th century, the Initial Middle Missouri folk had contracted to living along the Missouri River, and the Central Plains Village had abandoned their western reaches on the High Plains:

Great Plains, ca. 1300 A.D. (not comprehensive)

Then by ≈1350, the Proto-Pawnee-Arikara had completely abandoned the central plains in Nebraska and northern Kansas, with at least some of them removing north to the Missouri River in South Dakota and establishing the archeological Coalescent tradition.  The 1350-1400 period is reasonably close to the estimated date of separation for the Pawnee and Arikara languages (Parks 1979), so it seems plausible to me that this was when the "Panaic" tribe(s) fissioned: the ancestors of the Arikara emigrating to South Dakota, and the ancestors of the Pawnee presumably going somewhere else.

By ≈1400, the Apishapa phase disappeared, and by ≈1450 the Antelope Creek focus was supplanted by the Tierra Blanca complex i.e. the Apaches.  So, from 1250 to 1450 there was a large-scale civilizational collapse on the Plains, that progressed gradually from north to south and from west to east—it's been suggested by some (e.g. Hughes, in Blakeslee et al.) that these people were being conquered or driven out by the Athabaskans on their migration south—a good old-fashioned barbarian invasion, Vandal-style.  This is probably what happened to the Apishapa phase, and certainly what happened to the Antelope Creek focus... but as for the Caddoans and Siouans, most researchers think rather that their retreat was due to drought conditions on the Plains.

So: this is the context in which to view the 17th century Apache invasion of Texas, which eventually divested the Jumanos of their whole territory.  It was the most recent episode of an Athabaskan völkerwanderung that began possibly a thousand years earlier, up in Canada.

Getting back on track: this is what Nancy Hickerson speculates might have been the Jumanos' territory at its maximum extent:

"It encompassed the South Plains of western Texas and eastern New Mexico, and may have extended to adjacent regions of Oklahoma, Colorado, and northern Chihuahua." (p. xxiv)

Glancing at the map, giving them any part of Colorado seems a bit excessive.  In a later article (1996), she constructs the following chronology for the northwestern Jumano frontier:

≈1600: Apaches trading at Taos and Picuris and "battling their enemies, the Jumano farther south, near Pecos Pueblo"

≈1630: Apaches trading at Pecos; Jumanos "withdrawn over 100 leagues to the east"

1660's: Apaches cut off access to Tompiro province

This puts the Jumano-Apache border between Picuris and Pecos (Picuris is just barely south of Taos) in 1600, in between Tompiro and Pecos in 1630, and southeast of Tompiro by 1670... moving south and east.  It seems neat and tidy, except it doesn't quite work.  The archeological evidence shows that by ≈1550 and probably earlier,  somebody was spending time at Pecos Pueblo who had access to a particular kind of agatized dolomite that is only found in the Texas Panhandle near the Canadian River (Wilcox 1981).  These somebodies must have been the people of the Tierra Blanca complex, i.e. the Apaches; according to Wilcox, these Apaches spent their winters near the Pueblos for trading purposes, returning to the plains to hunt in the spring.

So, allowing that maybe Wilcox and Hickerson might both be a little right, I'm going to place the border directly adjacent to Pecos Pueblo.  This, then, is my hopeful attempt at rendering the northern border of the Jumanos circa 1540:

Those shapes seem really visually unpleasant for some reason... oh well, it can't be helped.  And, to reiterate, that map assumes that the borders of the Mansos, Sumas, and Conchos were more-or-less the same in 1540 as they were in the 1580's.  I have no way of knowing that, but I just have to hope and assume they were.  In the next post I will talk about the southeastern Jumano border.

[Note on archeological dates: It's hard finding authoritative dates for various archeological complexes and traditions—different sources I consulted sometimes differed by literally centuries.  My general references have been: various chapters in the Handbook of North American Indians, various chapters in Archeology on the Great Plains (1998), various chapters in From Clovis to Comanchero: Archeological Overview of the Southern Great Plains (1989), and Boyd (1997).]

References

Donald J. Blakeslee et al., "Bison Hunters of the Llano in 1541: A Panel Discussion" (2003).

Douglas K. Boyd, Caprock Canyonlands Archeology: A Synthesis of the Late Prehistory and History of Lake Alan Henry and the Texas Panhandle-Plains: Volume II (1997).

Jeffrey D. Carlisle, Spanish Relations with the Apache Nations East of the Rio Grande (2001).

Raymond J. DeMallie (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains (2001).

Richard R. Drass, "The Southern Plains Villagers" (1998). In Archaeology on the Great Plains.

Kevin P. Gilmore and Sean Larmore, "Migration Models and the Athapaskan Diaspora as Viewed from the Colorado High Country" (2008).

Judith A. Habicht-Mauche, "Coronado's Querechos and Teyas in the Archaeological Record of the Texas Panhandle" (1992).

Nancy Parrott Hickerson, The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains (1994).

— "Ethnogenesis in the South Plains: Jumano to Kiowa?" (1996).

Jack L. Hofman et al., From Clovis to Comanchero: Archeological Overview of the Southern Great Plains (1989).

Nancy Adele Kenmotsu, "Seeking Friends, Avoiding Enemies: The Jumano Response to Spanish Colonization, A.D. 1580-1750" (2001).

William W. Newcomb, Jr., "Historic Indians of Central Texas" (1993).

Douglas R. Parks, "The Northern Caddoan Languages: Their Subgroupings and Time Depths" (1979).

Robert R. Owens, "The Myth of Anian" (1975).

Albert H. Schroeder, "A Re-analysis of the Routes of Coronado and Oñate into the Plains in 1541 and 1601" (1962).

S. Lyman Tyler, "The Myth of the Lake of Copala and Land of Teguayo" (1952).

Susan C. Vehik, "Wichita Culture History" (1992).

Mildred Mott Wedel, The Wichita Indians 1541-1750: Ethnohistorical Essays (1988).

Waldo R. Wedel, "Coronado, Quivira, and Kansas: An Archeologist's View" (1990).

Roy Wenzl, "Lost city found: Etzanoa of the great Wichita Nation" (2017). In The Wichita Eagle.

David R. Wilcox, "The Entry of Athapaskans into the American Southwest: The Problem Today" (1981).

W. Raymond Wood, Archaeology on the Great Plains (1988).

— "Plains Village Tradition: Middle Missouri" (2001). In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol 13: Plains.

More on the Cacaxtles

I said in the last post that the only Indian group I can find associated with the far northern Coahuila region was the Cacastes, as shown on William B. Griffen's map.  I had recognized the name, and knew that they're also known as "Cacaxtles", but nothing more—I tried to find some more information (either corroborating or discorroborating) on the Cacastes, but couldn't find anything.

I guess I didn't look as hard as I could have, however, because it turns out there is a very detailed article out there: "The Cacaxtle Indians of Northeastern Mexico and Southern Texas" by the inimitable Thomas Nolan Campbell.  "Very detailed" is a relative term, since the Cacaxtles [I'm gonna use his spelling] are all but unknown to the historical record except for two Spanish punitive expeditions from the 1660's.  Their presumed territory, according to Campbell:

"[D]uring the period 1663-1693 the Cacaxtle were associated with the large lowland area to the north and east of the mountain front that passes diagonally across the Mexican states of Nuevo León and Coahuila.  This lowland area extends from the mountain front northward across the Rio Grande to the southern margin of the Edwards Plateau of Texas.  Within this large lowland area the Cacaxtle can best be linked with a more restricted area on both sides of the Rio Grande in which today one finds the communities of Guerrero, Coahuila, and Eagle Pass, Texas."

Or, the shaded region labeled "A" on this map:

The name "Cacaxtle" is from Nahuatl, and Campbell says that they may be identical to another group known to history under another name.  He doesn't speculate who this other group might be, but I don't suppose there'd any point: Campbell has elsewhere written that the exact same area associated with the Cacaxtle—the north and south banks of the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass to Guerrero—was occupied by at least four separate Coahuiltecan groups: the Terocodame, the Ocana, the Yorica, and the Hape (Campbell 1979).  Maybe these four were bands of a single tribe, maybe they weren't, maybe they were the Cacaxtle, maybe not, who knows?

Eagle Pass and Guerrero are far from the northern Coahuila locality where Griffen put the "Cacastes" on his map.  Campbell says that people first started putting the Cacaxtle there in the 1940's, due to a misinterpretation of the primary account of the 1660's punitive expeditions.  After then, scholars spent several decades just copying each others' errors... as it goes.  Campbell also says that the Cacaxtle were never numerous or important, and that people have inflated their importance over time—unless one is making a high-resolution map of the Coahuiltecan area, there's really no reason to include them on a map at all.

On account of this, I've removed the "Cacastes" from my map:

That sets me back a bit, since I once again don't know who lived in northern Coahuila.  I suspect, however, that the answer is nobody: the region is extremely barren.  Nearly the entire population of the administrative municipality, Acuña, is stuffed into one city located at the far eastern edge, on the Rio Grande, and aside from that the region has a population density of 0.5.  Hunter-gatherer folk can be mighty resourceful, but for the time being I'm going to assume that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, far northern Coahuila was more-or-less uninhabited.

References

T. N. Campbell, Ethnohistoric Notes on Indian Groups Associated With Three Spanish Missions at Guerrero, Coahuila (1979).

— "The Cacaxtle Indians of Northeastern Mexico and Southern Texas." In La Tierra: Journal of the Southern Texas Archaeological Association Vol. 11 No. 1 (1984).

The Jumanos' Western Border, ca. 1580

In the previous post, I made a very very rough sketch of the boundaries of Jumano territory, meant mostly just to establish the general vicinity where the Jumanos lived.  In this post, I will attempt to define more precisely the western border of that territory—from the Pueblo region in New Mexico down to La Junta, and thence to the mouth of the Pecos River along the Rio Grande.  Or, more or less, the strip of land along the arrows shown on this map:

This is a difficult area to study, for a couple of reasons.  One is that the region was populated by a confusing menagerie of tribes about whom very little is known—in most cases, the corpus of texts that survive from their languages is either extremely small (e.g. 3 words in Amotomanco) or nonexistent—and who go by multiple names.  This means that their linguistic and ethnic affiliation is difficult or impossible to determine, making it hard for people like me to figure out what the major "political units" were.  Secondly, I still feel like I know next to nothing about northern Mexico.  Consequently, I'm very uncertain about my conclusions here, and wouldn't be surprised if I got many, many things wrong owing simply to my ignorance of the region.  For some reason, it is also much more difficult to find information on the eastern portion (east of La Junta) of this corridor than the western portion, so I'm going to discuss them separately.

First, the western portion (El Paso to La Junta): Cabeza de Vaca passed through this area briefly in the 1530's, but as with Texas his account is not very useful for determining the locations of tribes.  Coronado completely bypassed this area, taking a more westerly route through Arizona, so there are no accounts from the 1540's either.  It's not until the 1580's that we get useful data—this comes from two expeditions: the Rodriguez-Chamuscado expedition of 1581-2 (also known as the Rodriguez-Sánchez expedition—henceforth just "Rodriguez expedition") and the Antonio de Espejo expedition of 1582-3.  Both expeditions had multiple accounts written, but the most useful are that of Hernán Gallegos for the Rodriguez expedition and that of Pérez de Luxán for the Espejo.  Both expeditions followed a nearly-identical itinerary: starting from Santa Bárbara (too far south to be shown on the map), they followed the San Gregorio river (ditto), Rio Florido river, and Rio Conchos river to La Junta.  Thence, up the Rio Grande to the southern Pueblos... at which point their itineraries diverged, but that's of no concern to me because it takes us beyond the purview of this post.

The relevant events from the Rodriguez expedition were¹:

• Entered the Rio Conchos at the Rio Florido confluence.
• Sailed up the Conchos, encountering Conchos Indians for "over fifty leagues".  After the Conchos they met a tribe called the "Rayas"—these may have been a northerly band of the Conchos since they "inhabit the same land and use the same language."  I do not know whether the 50 leagues figure includes the Rayas or only the Conchos proper.  While among the Rayas, the expedition measured their latitude as 29 degrees.
• Encountered the "Cabris" further down the Rio Conchos.
• Encountered the "Amotomancos" further down the Rio Conchos, near La Junta.
• Went due north through Amotomanco territory, bypassing La Junta, and hit the Rio Grande.  Encountered more Amotomancos up the Rio Grande.
• Farther up the Rio Grande, encountered an unnamed tribe at war with the Amotomancos.
• Wandered despondently for 2 weeks.  Then, encountered people of a mountain tribe who fled from their approach.  My sources don't name these people (Mecham implies that they weren't Tanpachoas), but I've noticed some authors like to always associate "mountain tribe" with "Apache", so these may have been Mescaleros.
• Entered Pueblo region.

The relevant events from the Espejo expedition were²:

• Entered the Rio Conchos at the Rio Florido confluence.
• Sailed down the Rio Conchos, encountering Conchos Indians for "150 miles" (according to Mecham).
• Further down the Rio Conchos, encountered the "Pazaguates" for 30-40 miles (Mecham).  Scholars believe these to have been the same as the Cabris.
• Further down the Rio Conchos, encountered the "Otomoacos".  This is clearly another attempt to render the same name as rendered by "Amotomancos".
• Entered La Junta.  "Abriaches" inhabited the junction settlement, as well as other settlements down the Rio Grande.
• Went north up the Rio Grande, encountering more Otomoacos.
• "Forty-five leagues" up from La Junta, encountered the "Caguates".  Scholars identify these as the unnamed tribe at war with the Amotomancos encountered by the Rodriguez expedition.
• Traversed Caguate territory for "fourteen leagues", then encountered the "Tanpachoas" at "some distance below El Paso" (Mecham).
• Continued on to the Pueblo region.  The total distance travelled was said to be 121 leagues.

... I'd like to make a short digression and give a couple reasons why figures such as "14 leagues along the Rio Grande" aren't as useful as you might think.

Firstly, there were two kinds of "league" used by the Spanish Empire (Chardon 1980).  The first was known as the legua común, equaling 20,000 Castilian feet (or ~3.5 miles).  The second was called the legua legal and equaled 15,000 Castilian feet (or ~2.6 miles).  The legua legal was adopted in the 13th century and later abolished in 1587 when the Spaniards realized that having two different widespread definitions of "league" might just might be a teensie bit confusing.  After 1587, the Spain was supposed to go back to just using the legua común, but since the legua legal had been the "official" league during the heyday of the Spanish conquest, her colonies in the New World continued to use both leagues not only in the 1500's but on into the 1600's.  In other words, whenever a summary of the Rodriguez-Chamuscado or Espejo or Coronado or Oñate [etc.] expedition mentions "leagues", I have no idea which league they're using. And yes, you'd be correct if you said that nobody ever bothers to specify.

Secondly, how far "up" or "down" a river a person can travel is not immediately obvious.  Rivers have this trait called sinuosity, which refers to how winding and meandering they are—literally, a river's "sinuosity" is an expression of its true length divided by the distance, as the crow flies, from its head to its mouth.  So, a river with sinuosity = 1 would be perfectly straight, and the more meandering the river is, the higher its sinuosity.  A while ago, some mathematician arguing from first principles said that the average river should have a sinuosity value equal to pi—i.e., to find the length of a river, measure the distance from point A to point B and multiply by 3.141592653...  Then some people on the internet decided to test it empirically, and built a massive database of river lengths.  They found that the average sinuosity of real-world rivers actually tends around 1.94.  (You can read about it in this article by James Grime a.k.a. "that skinny guy from Numberphile".)

This poses a problem because, firstly, one cannot always know how sinuous a river is (1.94 may be the average, but some rivers' sinuosity is as low as 1.24 or as high as 5.88), and secondly, when a contemporary observer says "we traveled x leagues down the river," I don't know whether they are reporting the actual distance they traveled or are doing their best to approximate the would-be linear distance.  This, combined with the fact that I don't even know what a "league" is, means that taking these primary accounts at their word is problematic.

... So.  The Gallegos and Luxán accounts can be synthesized thusly (I have marked out 29 degrees, where the Rodriguez expedition encountered the Rayas, as well as half-a-degree north and south to allow for instrumental error):

Except for the Conchos (who may have already been known to the Spaniards and thus had their name standardized), none of these labels are known—so far as I know—to later history.  However, the territories align reasonably well with tribes known to have later inhabited the Conchos-Rio Grande system—Forbes (1959) identifies them as the following:

• Caguates = the Sumas
• Tanpachoas = the Mansos
• Abriaches = the Julimes
• Amotomancos/Otomoacos = the Cholomes

The first three of these are seemingly accepted by everybody.  The fourth—identifying the Otomoacos as the later Cholomes—not so much, but I can work with it.  The only source I could find that made an attempt to identify the Cabris/Pazaguates is Carl Sauer's The Distribution of Aboriginal Tribes and Languages in Northwestern Mexico (1934)... considered something of a seminal work, as I understand... which states off-hand that they were a "branch of Jumano".  That might be a relic of an earlier time when writers were more liberal in applying the term "Jumano" to the Indians of west Texas and the El Paso-La Junta corridor... or, there might be more to it (see below).  Antonio de Espejo, in his personal account of his expedition (universally considered less reliable than the Luxán account), calls them all Jumanos.

Assuming Forbes' tribal identifications (for now), the previous map can be relabeled thusly:

Determining exactly where the borders were between these peoples is a bit more difficult than just the order that Rodriguez and Espejo encountered them.  As explained above, the primary documents' statements regarding distances traveled are not as reliable—or easy to interpret—as one would hope.  However, after examining the aforementioned accounts with Rudolph Troike's (1988) analysis—as  well as [warning: original research] [warning: boring minutiae sure to be of interest to absolutely no one] carefully studying the area on Google Earth³—I've come to the following conclusions:

• The border of the Conchos-Rayas with the Cabris/Pazaguates:  Either the mountain pass at the El Granero Dam, or in the valley northeast near Monclovio-Herrera.  In favor of the mountain pass: it accords better with Gallego's reported distance travelled of 50 leagues (the actual distance is 143 miles, or 55 leguas legales, from the Rio Florido junction), and forms a more natural geological boundary.  In favor of the valley: it leaves a little more room for the Rayas, as the El Granero Dam itself is almost exactly at 29° north latitude, and it agrees better with Troike's statement that the Cabris/Pazaguates were first encountered "about fifty miles" from La Junta.  It hardly matters, though, since you can barely tell the difference on the scale my maps use.
• The border of the Cabris/Pazaguates with the Cholomes:  This one is more difficult to find.  Gallegos writes that the expedition first encountered the "Amotomancos" after crossing a difficult sierra.  Carl Sauer and Randolph Troike both identify this as the sierra due west of El Mezquite.  However, Jack Forbes (1959) states that in later decades the Cholomes inhabited the locales of Coyame and Cuchillo Parado, in the valley above [west] of this sierra.  If the Amotomancos were Cholomes, as Forbes claims, this would imply that Gallegos' difficult crossing was the mountain pass northeast of La Paz de México, which puts the Pazaguate-Cholome border west of where Sauer and Troike claim.  The discrepancy (about 12 miles) is almost indiscernible on my map, so I guess it doesn't matter, but I still feel like pointing it out.
• The border of the Cholomes with the Sumas:  Forbes (1959) states that in the 1700's⁴ the northernmost band of the Cholomes had their northern limit at Eagle Peak.  Assuming, as Gallegos says, that the end of Cholome territory occurs at the entrance to a valley (going north), that would mean not the part of the river directly beneath Eagle Peak, but rather the pass leading into the valley, slightly to the south, near the inflection point of the Texas-Mexico border.  This (145 miles = 55½ leguas legales along the Rio Grande) would have taken the expeditions somewhat farther upstream than the 45 leagues Espejo records if the expedition followed the Rio Grande directly.  However the Rio Grande is very sinuous and its meanders are tight, especially in this area, so it is possible that they bypassed some of them rather than obsessively following the riverside.  Combined with human error, and the possibility of the river changing course over the past four centuries, this places the Eagle Peak valley entrance well within the plausible range.
• The border of the Sumas with the Mansos:  I honestly don't know.  Luxán says they first encountered Tanpachoas 14 leagues past the previous border, in the midst of a marsh.  This is much further south than I've seen anyone place the Mansos in later decades, and it leaves very little room along the Rio Grande for the Sumas—despite the fact that the Sumas are often presented as the most conspicuous tribe living in the Rio Grande valley zone.  Hickerson (p. 38) says that Oñate saw them in the same area later in 1598, but either she or I must be mistaken about the location of the marsh, because she apparently thinks that they were near El Paso at this point.  Since I can't determine where Espejo's "Tanpachoas" were, I'm going to have to rely on what authors have said regarding the location of the Manso in later periods, and hope they didn't move around much [I doubt they did].  Beckett & Corbett (1992) place the Mansos' northern edge at Hatch, New Mexico (Hickerson puts it at Las Cruces, south of Hatch), and their southern edge "south of El Paso, Texas"—the accompanying map shows that "south of El Paso" means roughly the local maximum on the border just southeast of Juarez.

The borders were thus:

(I will later be lumping several of these tribes together, anyway, so it doesn't matter that much.)

I'm not going to worry about what the western borders of the Mansos, Sumas, etc. were, because that is exactly the kind of leap-frogging that causes me to drift my attention from one region to another.  Only their eastern borders will concern me now, since they form the western border of Jumano territory—which is what I'm supposed to be finding.  However, for curiosity's sake and to plant a lede for me to pick up later on, there are a few statements I can make:

The Mansos possibly formed a political unit with their neighbors to the west, the Janos and Jocomes—the Mansos' extended west to the Florida Mountains, and the proposed Manso-Jano-Jocome unit extended farther west and southwest, to Janos, Mexico and the Chiricahua Mountains (Beckett & Corbett 1992—their source for MJJ unity is Forbes (1959), who is usually too lumpy, but here I think he may have been right).  The Jano-Jocomes deserve further attention in the future, since Forbes (1957) alludes to territorial changes involving them and the other tribes of north-central Chihuahua in the very early colonial period.

The Sumas in 1565 extended westward to the Casas Grandes valley (Forbes 1959).  Regarding the Otomoacos, Kelley (1953) suggests that they were identical with another tribe, the Tecolotes, whom he distinguishes from the Cholomes.  Investigating the Cholomes ≟ Otomoacos ≟ Tecolotes problem might provide an answer to who the Cabris/Pazaguates were, but that's a project for another day.  Also worth noting: in Espejo's personal account, he mentions encountering Tobosos after the Conchos.  Mecham (1926) thinks that this is one of the (several) instances where Espejo was mistaken.

Regarding the eastern borders, Beckett & Corbett state that the Mansos' territory included the Franklin and Organ Mountains of the trans-Pecos, (I assume these must have been seized by the Apaches at some later point).  Whether the Caballo Mountains to their north were Manso or Apache owned is unknown.  As for the Sumas, the best I can do is go according to the following map (from Lockhart 1997) showing Manso territory more-or-less as described above, and the Sumas in a khukuri knife-shaped swathe running east-to-west, with their eastern portion jutting some distance into Texas.

This makes the eastern Manso and Suma borders like so:

As you can see, I smoothed out the overlap between the Mansos and Sumas—I'm gonna mostly be doing this for the sake of legibility, although there will be some instances where I won't be able to ignore instances of overlapping territories, e.g. the Assiniboines and Plains Cree, whose territories massively overlapped.  Much of the map will by necessity be approximations anyway.

(Forget about the Cholomes for just a minute.)

Moving on, to the eastern portion: the Chisos Mountain area in the Big Bend region of Texas, just north of the river, was inhabited by a tribe called the Chizos (as you'd expect).  North of them lived the Cíbolos, who may have been Jumanos.  I haven't yet been able to find anything on who lived further east, south of the Rio Grande in northern Coahuila, directly across from the Pecos River, except for this one map in Griffen (1969) that puts the Cacastes there:

(A confusing menagerie, like I said...)

This makes the eastern part of the Jumano western border like so:

So, then, who exactly are all these people?  Because I want my map to be somewhat useful, where justifiable I want to merge smaller groups into larger political units—so that my map is more legible (rather than an endlessly confusing mess with a thousand names on it), and so that the labels are more recognizable (e.g. most folks probably haven't heard of the Kotsoteka, Yamparika, Saulteaux, and Odawa, but they have heard of the Comanche and Ojibwe).  It is impossible for me to be entirely consistent with this: most of the larger tribes were never unified under a single governing body, nobody can in general agree on what defines a """People""", etc. etc.  But I have to try.

Almost everyone agrees that the Mansos were their own thing.  The exception is Jack Forbes (1959), who argues that the Jumanos, Sumas, Cholomes, Mansos, Janos, Jocomes, and Apache(!) all spoke the same language and were the same people, but later scholars reject the majority of his hypothesis.  The Julimes are universally considered separate at least from their neighbors to the north.  There is slightly more disagreement about the Cíbolos: most consider them a division of the Jumanos, but Nancy Kenmotsu's somewhat critical review of Hickerson's book states that they were not:

"Although sometimes found in the company of the Jumanos, they, like the Jumanos, were always cited as a distinct ethnic group and they continued to exist long after the Jumanos had ceased to be.  If the Jumanos are to be recognized as a distinct group, should not the same courtesy be afforded other groups, especially those that were equally prominent in the documents and managed to survive European colonization for a longer period?"

Maria Wade (2003) and the Handbook (when in doubt, go to the Handbook!), however, both consider them Jumanos.  This is Wade (p. 250):

"Judging from the research completed, it is very likely that the Jumano, in a broad sense, represented a series of groups that included (at least) the Jumano proper, the Cibolo, the Gediondo, the Machome, and Those Who Make Bows..."

As for the Sumas, Hickerson considers them a western branch of the Jumanos (their name was sometimes written like "Sumanas" and is certainly a rendering of the same word).  This was also the opinion of earlier scholars (Sauer, Swanton, etc.), but most people nowadays think the Sumas distinct enough at least to be treated as a separate people.  Lockhart goes further, and says that the Jumanos of the Tompiro region were also a separate people: he builds his argument on archeological continuity in Tompiro, and on the fact that whereas the Plains Jumanos were called "Jumanos", the inhabitants of Tompiro were called "Xumanas", with an X.  Since the two consonants were and are pronounced identically in Spanish, however, I'm not sure how strong this evidence is.⁵  Hickerson considers them to be the same.  There's no way to be sure, and I lack the credentials to make any judgement, but... frankly, if I don't want my map to just be the words "It Is Disputed" over and over again, I'm going to have to make arbitrary decisions now and then, and one of them is this: the Tompiros were Jumanos.

The Rayas are very easily placed as a division of the Conchos.  Sauer (1934) also assigns the Chizos and the Julimes to the Conchos group, citing a document from 1684:

"The other nations lately in rebellion have different names such as Chisos, Julimes, and others which it is impossible to remember, and are included under the appellation of Conchos, which is the more general name."

William Griffen, in the Handbook, agrees with Sauer re the Chizos—he doesn't seem to take a position on the Julimes, but let's say that they were Conchos as well.

The Otomoaco/Amotomanco/Cholomes and Cabris/Pazaguates/??? are groups that authors seem not to opine on as much as I would like, so I am having to grasp at straws regarding their affiliation.  Carl Sauer speculatively calls the Cholomes a "Jumano remnant," referring to the theory that the Jumanos had their original home on the Rio Grande, as well as placing other(?) Jumanos on the river above La Junta.  The Handbook also places Jumanos on the Rio Grande above La Junta, separate from the Suma, but doesn't mention the Cholomes:

"In the lower Conchos River valley, north of Concho territory, on the Rio Grande at La Junta, was a group of people who were definitely sedentary and who lived in pueblo-like towns.  These peoples were given several different names during the colonial period, but most probably belonged to a sedentary branch of the Jumanos, some of whom at one time or another were reported farther north on the Plains hunting buffalo.  These town-dwelling Jumano in and around the mouth of the Rio Conchos were probably related to the much less sedentary Suma, who lived westward upriver in northeastern Chihuahua."

(map from the Handbook)

It may be that the Cholomes were Jumanos; it may also be that the Otomoaco/Amotomanco were Jumanos and not Cholomes—either way, the label "Cholomes" on the map can be replaced with a western extension of the Jumanos.

Assuming the Cholomes to be Jumanos, this means I have a gap in the western Jumano border which needs to be filled: the western edge of the Cholomes.  The best I can do here is quote Forbes (1959):

"The Cholomes are a little known body of Indians who lived in an arc from the Rio Grande Valley south to Coyame and thence to the Conchos Valley at Cuchillo Parado."

I don't know whether his "arc" was concave or convex with respect to the Rio Grande-Conchos valleys.  Coyame is just a dozen or so miles west of Cuchillo Parado, so that doesn't help.  Griffen (1983) says that the Rio Grande Jumanos were "definitely sedentary," and people in general describe the Rio Grande Jumanos and/or Sumas as sticking close to the river... so I'm assuming the Cholome "arc" is open to the west.

As for the Cabris/Pazaguates, I have no idea.  As stated earlier, Sauer (1934) says that they were Jumanos, but one needs to be skeptical of claims of Jumano affiliation coming from earlier sources.  Griffen, in the Handbook, doesn't mention them, but his map (if one can draw such high-resolution conclusions by looking closely at it) clearly puts the Concho-Jumano border along the Rio Conchos in the place where Gallegos and Luxán say the Cabris/Pazaguate – Amotomanco/Otomoaco border was located.  For now, I am going with the Griffen theory: the Cabris/Pazaguates were Conchos.

I neither know nor (for the moment) care who the Cacastes were—however, it is plausible that their border with the Jumanos on the north followed the course of the Rio Grande, since the river is relatively impassable in this region, (from Hickerson, p. xxv):

"Below La Junta the Rio Grande has cut a series of deep rocky canyons as it passes through the mountainous Big Bend region... the lower course of the Pecos also has deeply eroded canyons.  The canyons of the Rio Grande system mark a natural limit to the South Plains as an aboriginal culture area, since they would have discouraged travel, especially in the years prior to the introduction of horses."

Thus, the western border of the Jumanos in the sixteenth century (quod erat demonstrandum), is like so:

The changes that occurred later on this area were the following:  the Apaches (both east and west of the Mescalero territory shown) expand southward into Mexico, seizing all of the Plains Jumano and the western majority of the Manso and Suma territories.  The Mansos and Sumas were missionized by the Spanish in the seventeenth century, which may be shown on the map as being within Spanish territory.  Carl Sauer also mentions a Concho advance up the Rio Conchos and into Texas, seizing former-Jumano territory, however that may have also been after the region was under Spanish dominion—I don't know.

As I said in the beginning of this post, we lack data for this region from the 1540's, which for reasons that will become clear in a future post is the decade I've decided as the starting point for the Jumano sketch.  However, it is probably unlikely that the situation either here or out on the plains changed very noticeably between 1541 and 1581-3.  So, I think I can safely graft the above map with the map given in the previous post:

The southeastern and northern borders of Jumano territory, ca. 1540-1580 or so, still need to be investigated before I can map their conquest by the Apaches.  That will be the subject of future posts.

Footnotes:

¹ — My main source for the Rodriguez expedition is the translation and commentary of the Gallegos account in Hammond & Rey (1927).

² — My main source for the Espejo expedition is the summary and commentary of the Luxán account in Mecham (1926).

³ — Using the Path tool to trace the length of the lower Rio Conchos (from its junction with the Rio Florido), I measured a sinuosity value of 1.90, so it's a fairly well-behaved river.

⁴ — I don't know whether he means the seventeen-aughts or the eighteenth century.

⁵ — The merger of /ʃ/ (written <x>) and /ʒ/ (written <j>) in Spanish occurred in the sixteenth century, according to Pharies (2003, p. 153).

References:

Patrick H. Beckett & Terry L. Corbett, The Manso Indians (1992).

Roland Chardon, "The Linear League in North America" (1980).

Jack D. Forbes, "The Janos, Jocomes, Mansos and Sumas Indians" (1957).

― "Unknown Athapaskans: The Identification of the Jano, Jocome, Jumano, Manso, Suma, and Other Indian Tribes of the Southwest" (1959).

William B. Griffen, Culture Change and Shifting Populations in Central Northern Mexico (1969).

― "Southern Periphery: East". In The Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 10: Southwest, ed. Alfonso Ortiz (1983).

James Grime, "A meandering tale: the truth about pi and rivers" (2015), via The Guardian.

George P. Hammond & Agapito Rey, "The Rodriguez Expedition to New Mexico, 1581-1582" (1927).

Nancy Parrott Hickerson, The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains (1994).

J. Charles Kelley, "The Historic Indian Pueblos of La Junta de los Rios" (1953).

Nancy Kenmotsu, review of Hickerson The Jumanos, in Plains Anthropologist Vol 40 No 152 (1995).

Bill Lockhart, "Protohistoric Confusion: A Cultural Comparison of the Manso, Suma, and Jumano Indians of the Paso del Norte Region" (1997).

J. Lloyd Mecham, "Antonio de Espejo and His Journey to New Mexico" (1926).

David A. Pharies, A Brief History of the Spanish Language (2006).

Carl Sauer, The Distribution of Aboriginal Tribes and Languages in Northwestern Mexico (1934).

Rudolph C. Troike, "Amotomanco (Otomoaco) and Tanpachoa as Uto-Aztecan Languages, and the Jumano Problem Once More" (1988).

Maria F. Wade, The Native Americans of the Texas Edwards Plateau, 1582-1799 (2003).