[177] An assertion quite contrary to the popular belief in "Indian gifts."
[178] The Indians were evidently endeavoring to compel the Spaniards to remain among them as long as possible.
[179] The river was the Rio Grande, to which they had now returned. The description of the topography is in accordance with the facts.
[180] The substantial character of the houses was noted also by Antonio de Espejo, toward the close of 1582, on his journey northward to New Mexico. Espejo speaks of these Indians, the Jumanos, or Patarabueyes, as occupying five villages from about the junction of the Conchos northward up the Rio Grande for twelve days' journey, and as numbering ten thousand souls—but Espejo's estimates of population are always greatly exaggerated. More important is his statement that the Jumanos knew something of Christianity which they had gleaned years before from three Christians and a negro, whom he naturally believed to have been "Alvaro Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, y Dorantes, y Castillo Maldonado, y un negro," who had made their escape from Narvaez's fleet. This is one of the few definite points of the narrative that can be established without question. See Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos relativos ... de América y Oceanía, XV. 107 (1871).
[181] Melones in the edition of 1542. Bandelier has no doubt that a species of squash is meant.
[182] ... "beans and many squashes to eat, gourds to carry water in" (ed. of 1542, Bandelier translation).
[183] That is, the Jumanos and probably the Tobosos respectively. The captive woman evidently belonged to the latter tribe.
[184] Apparently other settlements of the Jumanos, as mentioned in the above note. The Spaniards were now going up the Rio Grande.
[185] Although they resided in permanent habitations at this time, the Jumanos lived east of the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, a century later and practised the habits of the buffalo-hunting plains tribes rather than those of sedentary Indians. The "neighborhood" was evidently not the immediate vicinity, and the stream alluded to seems much more likely to have been the Pecos than the Rio Grande, the former having been named Rio de las Vacas by Espejo in 1583. On this point see the opening paragraph of the following chapter.
[186] The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are here referred to. Later Spanish explorers found cotton garments in abundance in their country. The statement here that the Jumanos spoke the same tongue as some of the Pueblos is significant, and accounts in a measure for the affiliation of the Jumanos with the Piros when missions were established by the Franciscans among these two tribes east of the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, in 1629.