Essays
Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado
Did Jumano Apaches exist?
November 10, 2004
A county road leads north out of Mentone, eventually meeting the highway from Orla to Jal, New Mexico. On past that junction a side road leads to the east side of Red Bluff Lake. It is empty country – oil wells are sprinkled about, so a pumper or a workover rig might be met, or someone looking after what few cattle roam the area. Somewhere nearby, is an old “dugout well.” Colonel Shafter was the first Anglo to find it. I do not know if anybody today knows its location. I have read of several such “Indian” wells found by the first soldiers and Texas Rangers to visit the region from Big Lake to Tatum – the southwestern quarter of the Llano Estacado. Sometimes the wells were hidden by dirt-covered hides spread over the small holes.
I am an incurable romantic – if I hear such a story, I have to go roaming the countryside, trying to see if I can guess, imagine, or fantasize about such a place. This time, my imagination had been primed by other information that helped inflate the story into something “mythical,” something that has no proof that it ever existed. I had learned of the supposed existence of “Jumano Apaches” that might have hidden in that region at times in the mid 1800s.
In the 1870s Herman Lehmann was captured by Carnoviste, an Apache he said lived along the southwestern Llano Estacado and Pecos River, with occasional jaunts as far as the Pecos River headwaters, Palo Duro canyon, the Guadalupe and Davis Mountains. Author Eve Ball records that a generation before Carnoviste, Natzili had led a group of Apaches that utilized the northwestern reaches of the Llano Estacado until finally defeated by Comanches. Natzili’s band then joined the Mescaleros west of the Pecos on the slopes of Sierra Blanca. The old shaman Magoosh met the Comanche Mow-way in the sanddunes a few days before Colonel Shafter’s visit in 1871. I keep finding such tantalizing references of Apache use of the western Llano Estacado over and over.
The Jumano Apaches, also mentioned as Sanddune Apaches, and in one reference as the Llanero Apaches, are shadows in history, mentioned briefly in passing, and mentioned as poor “diggers” that lived on packrats, prairie dogs, roots and nuts. Pronghorn antelope would have been utilized as well, when they visited the western Llano Estacado. As I dig around in Llano Estacado history before 1855, shadowy understandings form to fill in the gaps of what little recorded history exists. “I wonder if this is how it could have been?” I ask that question every time I read something new and try to connect it to other knowledge.
According to one theorist, Sabeata,) moved north in the 1690s, all the way to the Black Hills, where his band became the Kiowas in the 1700s before moving to Oklahoma in the 1800s. Most Jumanos did not go with him when he moved north, if he and a group did go. They continued to try to evade the Apaches and the Spaniards, but without Sabeata’s political acumen, the Jumanos “disappeared” during the 1700s.
Some Jumanos married into the mestizo culture developing around the presidios along the northern border of Spanish settlement. Many Jumanos were captured and forced to work as slaves in the silver mines of Chihuahua. Others – mainly women and children, were captured by Apaches, and became Apaches. A person might have had a Spanish grandfather and Jumano grandmother, whose son could have married an Apache-Jumano woman.
It is feasible that a group of people in the 1700s, with relatives of three cultures, but predominately of Jumano heritage, would have loosely joined together. Humans being humans, they would have suffered some degree of discrimination from the “pure bloods”. The various families would have lived in small bands in the “ecotone” between the parent groups. Over time, through marriage with Apaches, who would have become their main trading partners, they would have culturally become more Apache.
This ecotone, the land available for settlement for such a belittled and despised people, is hardscrabble country, consisting of the Pecos River in Texas, the sanddunes, and the far western reaches of the Llano Estacado. In times of peace they could have farmed along the dozen or more smaller springs south and west of the Pecos River, but in times of persecution by the Spanish or the Comanche, the group could easily disappear into the sanddunes or the Stockton Plateau’s canyons. They could have safely roamed from the northern end of that mesa and canyon region, and on up along the river to the north, at least as far as Carlsbad or Artesia. The group might have been able to develop and grow in relative peace during most of the 1700s, ignored by the Spanish, trading with Apaches, and unbothered by Comanches.
During most of the 1700s the Comanches rarely raided Mexico on the Horsehead Crossing, Comanche Springs, and Boquillas Crossing “Comanche War Trail.” Northern Mexico of the 1700s was very thinly settled, so there were few targets. The bulk of the Comanche population was still on the Canadian, Arkansas and Red Rivers in the summer and along the Brazos and Colorado Rivers in the winter. At times they would raid the Spanish settlements in Texas, and often fought with the Spanish in northern New Mexico until the 1770s. The New Mexican Spanish defeated the Comanche chieftan Cuerno Verde in the 1770s and after that the Comanches and New Mexican Hispanos became vigorous trading partners.
O.W. Williams relates a story about “El Cibolero,” a resident of the Ojinaga area in the very late 1700s, who often traveled to the Llano Estacado to hunt buffalo. He “ran afoul” of the Spanish authorities and killed an officer. He “joined the Indians” and a number of raids against the Spanish soldiers in the following years were blamed on him. Williams’ tale does not say what group of Indians he joined, but as an enthusiastic amateur historian, I have wondered if he did not join the Comanches in the buffalo ranges along the east side of the Llano, and later partly instigated the raids on the soon to be famous “Comanche War Trail.” As a former citizen of the Spanish controlled lands in northern Mexico, he would have known the weaknesses of their defenses and the location of horses and valuable manufactured goods such as iron cookware, cloth, blankets, and metal for arrow points.
The Comanches, as far as I can determine, usually only traveled past the Pecos on the September-October raids into Mexico, and always returned to the eastern side of the Llano Estacado for their winter camps. The little groups of “Jumano Apaches,” if they really existed, would have been virtually unnoticed by those passing Comanches. Only when both groups utilized the same hunting grounds would there be reason for conflict. In the wetter years, when the buffalo grazed to the western edges of the Llano Estacado, Comanches and Jumano Apaches would have met.
Wandering those back roads I became convinced of the possibility that a group of Apache Jumanos could have survived. Was there really such a group? Nobody will ever know, for sure! The region between the Llano Estacado and the Pecos River is still empty country, with its secrets hidden yet among the shinoak covered dunes, and among the flatlands covered with mesquite, catclaw and creosote bushes.