The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771

"Professor Bolton in a measure clears up the obscurity of Jumano history after the middle of the seventeenth century." -The American Historical Review, 1912
"'The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771,' was written by Dr. Bolton...the Jumanos were a tribe of Indians which...left Texas about the year 1650." -Austin American-Statesman, July 23, 1911

The Jumanos, first seen by Cabeza de Vaca in 1535 on the Rio Grande, were a prominent indigenous tribe, which inhabited a large area of western Texas, adjacent New Mexico, and northern Mexico, which seemed to disappear from recorded history after the middle of the 17th century.

Scholars had generally argued that the Jumanos disappeared as a distinct people by 1750 due to infectious disease, the slave trade, and warfare, with remnants absorbed by the Apache or Comanche.

Bandelier, writing in 1890, was constrained to say: "The Jumanos were lost sight of after the great convulsions of 1680 and succeeding years, and their ultimate fate is as unknown as their original numbers." Similarly, Hodge, in a 1910 study, states that until shortly before his writing he had been "baffled by what appeared to be the sudden and almost complete disappearance of this once populous tribe."

In 1912 Professor Herbert E. Bolton published the 20-page article "The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771," which in a measure cleared up, from his recently discovered materials from the archives of Mexico, the obscurity of Jumano history after the middle of the seventeenth century.

From his study of historical sources, including original documents from the archives of Mexico, Bolton concludes that

"enough has been said to show that the Jumano were by no means a lost tribe in the eighteenth century; that from 1650 they were frequently encountered in west-central and southern Texas; and that unless there were distinct divisions whose separate histories have not been traced, they more than once changed their relations with the Apache, whose enemies they have usually if not always been regarded."

About the author:

Herbert Eugene Bolton (1870 1953) was an American historian at the University of Texas who pioneered the study of the Spanish-American borderlands and was a prominent authority on Spanish American history. He originated what became known as the Bolton Theory of the history of the Americas which holds that it is impossible to study the history of the United States in isolation from the histories of other American nations, and wrote or co-authored 94 works.

Other books by Bolton include:

The Colonization of North America: 1492-1783
Spanish Exploration in Texas
The Jumano Indians in Texas, 1650-1771
Coronado; Knight of Pueblos and Plains
New Light on Manuel Lisa and the Spanish Fur Trade
The Spanish Borderlands

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