Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

The Blue Nun of the Concho River
October 23, 2002

In 1631 Jumano Indians from the Concho River valley arrived at the Spanish Mission at the Jumano Pueblo at Gran Quivari, southeast of Albuquerque. They told the priests about witnessing an apparition. A woman wearing a crucifix and dressed in blue robes had appeared a number of times and had communicated by gestures. As a result their life had improved. They wished to learn more. The priests were happy to give them religious instruction, and the following year Fray Juan de Salas accompanied them home. On his return he reported to his superiors about the people living in the Concho River valley, the natural attributes of the area and, of course, about the pearls in the mussels of the rivers. Sometime after his return Fray de Salas learned of a nun in Spain who would go into trances of several days’ duration, and upon awaking, would tell of ministering to hundreds of people who fit the descriptions of the Jumanos.

The Spanish settlers of northern New Mexico and the Jumanos developed a trading network for the next 50 years. Official expeditions led by army officers visited the Concho River valley a number of times, but civilians returned annually from 1654-1680.

Nicolas Lopez and Juan Dominguez de Mendoza visited in 1684 and recommended that a permanent mission and presidio be built at the site. According to some stories, an adobe structure had been built in the intervening years for use only during visits. Lopez and de Mendoza’s advice was never acted upon, for the Spanish authorities learned of La Salle’s expedition along the Texas coast and responded by instead developing the missions closer to the coast.

There seemed to be two different trails between the Spanish settlements of northern New Mexico and the Concho River valley. One went due east from New Mexico, going past present day Fort Sumner, then coming down Blackwater Draw through Yellowhouse Canyon, angling south along the Colorado River and finally crossing into the Concho River drainage. Another trail followed the Pecos River south to somewhere near the present day town of Roswell, to Monument Spring near Hobbs, and then along the Mustang Draw drainage until crossing to the Concho River drainage southwest of the modern town of Big Spring.

I love finding out about such tidbits of history. As a result, our regional landscape becomes populated with more ghosts. The next time I visit any of the drainages mentioned above I can sit in the scant shade of a mesquite and imagine how it was for “the people that came before.” The southern trail may have been used to avoid meeting the Apaches, and may have become the favored route as the Apaches grew stronger when they adapted their lifestyle to the use of the horse. Apaches were in the region after 1500, but mostly stayed in the area from Palo Duro Canyon to present day Wichita Falls. Coronado and others had met them further north in eastern Colorado and western Kansas. It is exciting to learn of human interaction with our landscape before the Comanches took dominion in the 1720’s.

Deborah and I recently visited the San Angelo and Christoval area on a Sunday drive. I wanted to show her the wonderful little town of Christoval. While in the area we visited Fort Concho and the Historic District of downtown. We agreed that we need to return in the future and stay at a local bed and breakfast, visit the museums, the Cactus Bookstore with its incredible array of Texana, the antique shops, the Chicken Farm Art Center and other attractions. There are countless vibrant stories of the area’s history to be learned, beyond what we already know of the Fort and its 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, the town of Ben Ficklin and early day “San Angela.”

Learning about the Spanish visits to the Concho River has sent me on a “dream search.” Where might the apparitions of the Blue Nun have appeared? Admittedly, the search is of a mystical nature, so the effort must wander into realms not deemed appropriate by western rationalist traditions.

One possible theory is that the apparitions appeared deep within a mesquite bosque. When Cabeza de Vaca came to the area (as some historian believe) his story tells of meeting native Americans that lived in dense mesquite thickets. These thickets were pruned and trained so that an impenetrable fence created a maze that must be navigated before the village at the heart of the thicket could be accessed. The villages that de Vaca saw were well protected from the early incursions of the Apaches.

The essays in the West Texas Historical Society annuals that mention the Spanish visitations, however, do not mention such fortifications for the villages. They mention non-fortified wattle and daub housing not far from the banks of the river. It is possible that early Apaches had quit raiding the area by the time of the Spanish visitations. One paper mentions that during the time of the Spanish visits some Caddoan people (Hasanai) had constructed their massive grass longhouses downstream, past where the Concho joins the Colorado River. The Hasanai and Jumanos might have joined forces in driving back the Apaches.

Cogitating on these fragments of history led me to consider another possibility – that the apparitions appeared on a hillside. The southern and middle forks of the Concho come together at Twin Buttes. A few miles downstream, the North Concho joins in and early Anglo settlers considered the “joining of the waters” auspicious enough to begin building a town at the confluence. Native Americans would also have responded to the “perfect place to live” aspect of the site, and would also have created spiritual connections as a result of their totemistic world view.

The Twin Buttes which overlook the area could quite feasibly attain a reputation as a place to go when seeking prayerful answers to personal or societal problems. Medicine Bluff in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma is a similar holy place for members of both the Comanche and Kiowa peoples to this day. Cultures from all over the world have mythologies that signify mountains as places of spiritual seeking.

The next step in this “dream search” is for Deborah and me to seek out stories about Twin Buttes. Possible sources could include county histories, oral histories, collections of tall tales, stories of searches for lost treasure, rock art records, archaeological papers about the region, and more. We might even ask the present landowners, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, if they have any collections of local folklore about the Buttes. It is not likely that we will actually find anything that can even remotely bolster with physical proof our intuition that the Twin Buttes might be the location of the appearance of the apparition. But so what? Each time we visit San Angelo, we can look over at the Buttes and imagine “the ghosts of spirits,” and maybe in a dream some night see a giant glowing Blue Nun.