Notes

There are many opinions and much conflicting information out there about the Jumano. Because of this any article on the Jumano should pay attention source material used. Here is why. Although many of the older sources are pretty good, many of the OLDER sources contain erroneous and outdated material. These older sources were doing the best they could with the information they had to work with and much of what is in them is still valuable. The only comprehensive up to date source on the Jumano I know of is the book, "The Jumanos", by Nancy Hickerson, University of Texas Press. Hickerson does a good job of putting the older information in a new perspective and sorting out and eliminating conflicting data. Serious students would do better to read Hickerson first, then read the older sources with Hickerson’s new material in mind.

The Jumanos themselves are another source of confusion. There were at least three distinct groups of Jumanos each living in a different region. One core area was along the Rio Grande and Rio Concho rivers in West Texas, in Old Mexico and in New Mexico. Another core region was on the Southern Plains. The third area is less know and was between these Rio Grande and the plains. All three of these groups seemed to travel around a lot and cover long distances. The Spanish would find visiting west Texas Jumanos in central Texas and write about them as though they lived in central Texas. Lastly, the Jumano wore tattoos. So any tattooed Indians the Spanish came across might be called a Jumano, even if they were not Jumanos. Many other Texas Indian tribes tattooed themselves. Trying to sort out who was where, doing what and when from old Spanish records is hard.

The only eye witness sources of information on the Jumano we have comes from old Spanish accounts. Many of these accounts are incomplete. Others have only just recently been discovered and used. Many of the older translations had flaws in them. It has taken several generations of scholars studying these materials to finally reconstruct the history of the Jumanos we have now. But there is still a great deal that needs to be done so expect more changes as more scholars do more work on this subject.