Customer Reviews

The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South Plains

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I doubt that even the doting author thought this book would make the best seller lists. The Jumanos, for the 99.9 percent of readers who have never heard of them, were a tribe of Texas Indians who lived on the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers. By 1700 they had pretty much disappeared. So shadowy are they that some authors have even doubted their existence as a tribe. I got interested in the southwestern Indians and kept running into references to the Jumanos, so I read this book -- the only one that's every been written on the Jumanos, I would guess. If you -- like me -- enjoy truly obscure Americana -- especially southwestern Americana -- you might like reading this. The writing is professorial, but the author constructs the history of a vanished people and their contacts with early Spanish and French explorers. She makes a persuasive case that the Jumanos were a Tanoan people, related to many of the Pueblo Indians. Previous writers had considered the Jumanos as Uto-Aztecan, Caddoan, or Athabaskan. If you comprehend those last two sentences, you might like this book.

THis is an outstanding and detailed book about the Jumanos, a Texas tribe with almost prehsitoric history that disappeared in the 1800's. The author gives a detailed synopsis about the Jumanos trading with other tribes, encounters with Spanish explorers and their mysterious way of life. A very detailed scholoarly accounting, this book is not for the casual reader. The reader makes the conclusion that the Jumanos are probably the forebearers of the Kiowa Tribe and possibly other tribes of the Southwest and South Plain Indans. It is a scholarly book that is well written and interesting. Highly recommended for those readers who want an interesting synopsis about this "extinct" tribe that lived in Texas and Oklahoma.