The Jumano Indians

A scholarly investigation reconstructs the history, culture, and disappearance of a Southwestern indigenous people known from early Spanish accounts. Drawing on explorers' reports and missionary records, the study describes their river-valley villages, agriculture and buffalo hunting, distinctive house forms and body markings, food preparation using heated stones, and patterns of hospitality. It evaluates population estimates, encounters with Europeans, and the puzzling decline that cannot be fully attributed to warfare or epidemic. The work synthesizes ethnographic, linguistic, and historical evidence to propose hypotheses about identity, distribution, and the transformations wrought by contact with colonial society.