There were in reality four instead of three important villages of the Jumano in New Mexico at the close of the sixteenth century, their names, according to Oñate, being Atripuy, Genobey, Quelotetrey, and Pataotrey.[7] These, with many villages of the Pueblo Indians from Pecos southward through the country known as the Salinas, were placed under the ministration of Fray Francisco de San Miguel; but there is no evidence that the friar visited all of them, and it is quite certain that no churches were built in this immediate region at so early a date.[8]
The Salinas referred to are situated in the central portion of that part of Valencia county, New Mexico, lying east of the Rio Grande. Bounding the salt lagoon area on the south is the Mesa de los Jumanos, or, as it is termed on present-day if not altogether “modern” maps, “Mesa Jumanes.” This land-mark of course derived its name from the tribe which formerly occupied the vicinity, a fact illustrating the persistency with which aboriginal names are sometimes retained in the Southwest, even where good excuse may exist for forgetting them.
The Salinas country, although known far and wide for its generally inhospitable and forbidding character, was inhabited at the opening of the seventeenth century and for twenty-five years later, by the eastern divisions of the Tigua and Piro (the latter sometimes being known as Tompiro), as well as by the Jumano. The former two groups belong to the Tanoan linguistic family and inhabited several pueblos similar to those of their Rio Grande congeners. When, in 1626, Fray Alonso Benavides, the Father Custodian of the missions of New Mexico, appealed for additional missionaries, he had particularly in mind the conversion of the tribes of the Salinas region, especially the Jumano, among whom Fray Juan de Salas had already been. Says Benavides, writing in 1630, “I kept putting off the Xumanas who were asking for him [Salas], until God should send more laborers.”
Through their affection for Salas, the founder of the mission of Isleta, the Jumano went year after year for some six years prior to 1629 to visit him at that Rio Grande mission station in the hope, they asserted, that he might come to live among them. Finally, on July 22, 1629,[9] a delegation of some fifty Jumano visited the pueblo of San Antonio de Isleta, where the custodian (probably Estevan de Perea) was then staying, for the purpose of again asking for friars; and “being questioned as to what induced them to make this demand, they said that a woman wearing the habit had urged them to come; and being shown a picture of Mother Luisa de Carrion, they rejoiced, and speaking to each other said that the lady who had sent them resembled the picture, except that she was younger and more beautiful.” Fray Juan de Salas and Fray Diego Lopez volunteered to go, accompanied by an escort of three soldiers. They found the Jumano this time more than 112 leagues (about 300 miles) to the eastward from Santa Fé, or possibly in the western part of the present Kansas in the vicinity of what later became known as El Quartelejo. The cause of this shifting may have been due to the hostility among the tribes of the Salinas about this time, of which Benavides speaks, for subsequent history seems to indicate that the Jumano were never an aggressive people. Not to enter into detail regarding the miracles which Salas and his companion are said to have performed among the Jumano on the plains, some 30 or 40 leagues west of the “Quiviras” (who are identified with the Wichita tribe of Kansas), it may be said that the missionaries found 2,000 of these Indians, who, with many others from neighboring tribes (Benavides says there were 10,000 in all), clamored loudly for baptism, while two hundred lame, blind, and halt rose up well “when the sign of the cross was made and the words of the Gospel pronounced over them.” Indeed, they were inspired “with so great devotion to the cross that they fell on their knees before every cross and adored it, and in their houses,[10] over their doors, they put crosses.”
After remaining some days, the fathers departed for the valley of the Rio Grande; and it would seem that the Jumano soon followed, for, according to Vetancurt, “owing to the continual invasions, and wars with their enemies the Apaches, this conversion could not lead to a permanent result in that place, and hence they removed to the Christians near Quarac,” whence they were ministered.
There has been much discussion regarding the location of the “pueblo” occupied by the Jumano that was dedicated to “the glorious Isidoro.” We may assume that it was not until after the visit of Salas to the Jumano on the plains in July–August, 1629, that this mission was founded, since the new friars did not arrive from Mexico until Easter of that year, and prior to that time no permanent missionaries were available even had the Jumano not been three hundred miles away on the prairies. We learn from the Relacion of Fray Estevan Perea,[11] the successor of Benavides as custodian of the missions of New Mexico, and under whose guidance the new missionaries came in the spring of 1629, that there were sent to the pueblos of the Salinas—“in the great pueblo of the Xumanas, and in those called Pyros and Tompiras”—six priests and two lay religious, one of whom, Francisco de Letrado, is known to have been assigned to the Jumano alone. It does not seem necessary to look for the “great pueblo of the Xumanos” of which Benavides speaks, among the ruins of eastern New Mexico, from amongst the débris of which the massive walls of former Spanish churches and monasteries still rise, for it is scarcely likely that the Jumano occupied a village other than their own, or that the settlement was anything but an aggregation of dwellings of the more or less temporary kind which they were found to occupy when visited by Cabeza de Vaca and by Espejo on the lower Rio Grande.[12]
That active missionary work was conducted by Letrado among the Jumano is certain. We have seen that this friar was assigned to the tribe soon after his arrival in New Mexico as a member of Perea’s band in the spring of 1629; but three years later we find him at Zuñi on his way to convert the savage and little-known “Cipias,” although he was murdered by the Zuñi before he reached them, on February 22, 1632—a century to the day before the birth of Washington.
Why missionary work among the Jumano was thus apparently abandoned, there is no definite knowledge, but it would seem to have been due to another shifting of the tribe from New Mexico to the plains, and another change from their erstwhile sedentary life to that of buffalo hunters. There is a suggestion of this, indeed, in an account written by Fray Alonso de Posadas,[13] who states that Fray Juan de Salas and Fray Juan (Diego?) de Ortega, with an escort, visited the Jumano on a stream which they called Rio Nueces, and Ortega remained among them for six months. From this account the Rio Nueces might have been almost anywhere in the country of the plains, and not necessarily the present Rio Nueces of Texas.[14] The important point, however, is the fact that Letrado had abandoned his station among the Jumano in eastern New Mexico in 1632, and that in the same year Salas went forth again on the plains apparently for the purpose of bringing them back.
The history of New Mexico between Benavides’ time and the great Pueblo rebellion of 1680 is meager indeed, consequently of the shiftings of the Jumano, if any there were during that period, little is known. In 1650 they were evidently still on the plains, for, according to Posadas, Captain Hernan Martin and Diego de Castillo in that year went with some soldiers and Christian Indians 200 leagues from Santa Fé to the “Rio Nueces” where the Jumano were again found. They remained in the region more than six months, going southeastward down the river for 50 leagues, visiting the Cuitoas, Escanjaques, and Aijaos, and finally the Tejas. During their journey the party traversed, from north to south, a distance of 250 leagues, or, according to Posadas, from the latitude of Santa Fé in 37° to that of the Tejas in 28°. It should here be noted that the Escanjaques have always been identified with the Kansas or Kaw Indians, and such may be the case. The Cuitoas, the Tejas (Texas or Hasinai), and the Aijaos, however, were Texan tribes, and indeed the last, as later will be seen, are identifiable with no other than the Tawehash, the name of the southern branch of the Wichita, sometimes applied to the entire Wichita group, as well as to the Wichita proper. This point should be borne in mind, as the Jumano and the Aijaos are here mentioned as if two distinct tribes.
In 1654 another journey was made to the Jumano on the Rio Nueces by Lieutenant-Colonel Diego de Guadalajara, with 30 soldiers and 200 Christian Indians. The Cuitoas, Escanjaques, and Aijaos were this time at war. Captain Andres Lopez, of the party, with twelve soldiers, together with some of the Christian Indians and Jumano, were sent forward, finding a rancheria of Cuitoas, 30 leagues eastward, whom they severely defeated.