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.