Bibliography Records

This paper is partly a summary of and partly a series of selections from a longer study on the subject of the inspection of military posts in New Spain by Pedro de Rivera in the third decade of the eighteenth century. The facts selected from the longer study, for the main parts of this paper, relate to his travels in Texas and in three other provinces of New Spain which were nearest to Texas: namely, New Mexico, Coahuila, and Nuevo León. Preceding these facts is an introductory explanation of the origin and the general nature of his entire journey of inspection. The explanation is derived from official papers written in Madrid and in the City of Mexico. The description of the selected portions of his journey is based upon, and quoted from, his own diary of that event. This paper was read at the meeting of the Texas State Historical Association in Austin, Texas, on April 24, 1937.

Edict Concerning a Council of War and Petition for Horses and Provisions for a Campaign against the Apaches

Documents Concerning Provisions and Livestock Given by the Conventos for an Expedition against the Apaches

On the basis of his justly famed work, The Distribution of Aboriginal Tribes and Languages in Northwestern Mexico (1934), Carl Sauer is often credited with having assigned the little-known Concho and Suma of Chihuahua and the Jumano of West Texas to the Uto-Aztecan family. In fact, of the Concho he says (1983:59) that “Kroeber has determined their linguistic affinity with Cahita and Opata” and merely provides some additional documentary commentary and tribal names possibly bearing on the question. Concerning the Suma and Jumano, he only states rather obliquely (1983:65), “In the following records a discussion is presented relating these people to the south and probably to Uto-Aztecan peoples.” He cites four words obtained by Spanish explorers in 1581 but does not discuss them.

Vicente de Zaldívar was an officer during the Spoanish conquest and colonization, under the command of his maternal uncle, Juan de Oñate. This statement of servicios rendered to the Crown provides biographical information on both Zaldívar and his father, and recounts historical events from Nueva Galicia to New Mexico. Of special interest is the account of Zaldívar’s 1601 punitive campaign against the Jumanos, a significant but hitherto obscure event in New Mexican colonial history.

In the early part of the seventeenth century the Piro, who have been classed as belonging to the Tanoan linguistic family, consisted of two divisions, one inhabiting the Rio Grande valley from the present town of San Marcial in Socorro county, New Mexico, northward to within about fifty miles of Albuquerque, where the Tigua settlements began; the other division, sometimes called Tom-piros and Salineros, occupying the desert stretch east of the river in the vicinity of the salt lagoons, or salinas, where it bordered the eastern group of Tigua settlements on the south. The western or Rio Grande branch of the Piro was visited in 1540 by members of Coronado’s expedition, in 1580 by Chamuscado, in 1583 by Espejo (who found them occupying ten villages along the river and in others near by), in 1598 by Ofiate, and in 1621-1630 by Fray Alonso Benavides who relates that they were settled in fourteen pueblos along the river.

Many late Pleistocene fossil localities contain the remains of multiple mammoths. Some of these sites have been interepreted as representing the massd death of an entire herd, or family group, of mammoths. These assemblages have been cited as evidence of intense human predation and used to reconstrcut mammoth population dynamics. However, these interpretations remain controversial because the taphonomic settings of many sites are still debated. To reconstrtuct the taphonomic setting of each site and the movement patterns of mammoths among sites, I used anyses of carbon, oxygen, and strontium isotope ratios in mammoth tooth enamel. The carbon isotopes of fossils vary with diet and local vegetation, oxygen isotopes vary with local climate, and strontium isotopes vary with local soil chemistry. if Pleistocene mammoths traveled together in small family groups, then mammoths from sites that represent family groups should have lower isotopic variability than mammoths from sites containing unrelated individuals. I tested this conjecture by comparing the isotopic variability among mammoths from two sites – one that represents the mass death of a single herd (Waco, Texas) – and then used these analyses to examine mammoths from three Clovis sites: Blackwater Draw, New Mexico; Dent, Colorado; and Miami, Texas. Low levels of carbon isotope variability were found to be the mostt diagnostic signal of her/family group association. Although the variability of oxygen and strontium isotope ratios proved less useful for identifying family group assemblages, these signals did provide information about the movement patterns of individuals among different sites. High levels of variability in each of the isotope systems at Clovis sites suggest that all of the sites examined represent time-averaged accumulations of unrelated individuals, rather than the mass deaths of family groups. In addition, analyses of the mean isotope values of Clovis mammoths show that although most mammoths from Blackwater and Miami had similar values, the values of Dent mammoths were significantly different. This demonstrates that the Dent mammoths belonged to a separate population and suggests that Clovis mammoths did not routinely undertake long distance (>=600 km) migrations.

Jumano is a frequent designation in Spanish and French historical sources dealing with the aboriginal inhabitants of northern Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, between the late sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries. There is little agreement about the identity of the Jumano; among the several linguistic affiliations proposed are Uto-Aztecan (Sauer 1934) and Athapaskan (Forbes 1959). One widely accepted position (Scholes and Mera 1940) maintains that the term was simply a general designation for Indians who were rayados – i.e. who practiced facial painting or tattooing. Thise paper reviews the historical division of the Tiwan subfamily of Tanoan, probably most closely affiliated with Piro. The ubiquity of references to the Jumano is explained by the active involvement of segment of this population in interareal trade.

Historians who have studied the Indian tribes of Texas and northern Mexico have long been bedviled by a simple question – what happened to the Lipan Apaches? Where did they go? How could one of the largest Indian tribes in Texas – with a population estimataed in 1762 at 3,000-5,000 people and possibly as many as 8,000 – be reduced by 1904 to 225 persons officially identified as Lipan Apaches living on a reservations in New Mexico and Oklahoma?

This article critically examines recent anthropological theorizing about indigenous tribalism using ethnographic and historical data on the Piro-Manso-Tiwa Indian tribe of New Mexico. Debates about constructionism, neo-tribal capitalism, and propirietary approaches to culture provide valuable insights into recent indigenous cultural claims and political struggles, but also have serious limitations. The approach taken in the article, ‘tribal synthesis,’ emphasizes process, agency, interdependence, and changing political and cultural repertoires of native peoples who seek survival amidst political domination and internal conflict. Such an approach can apply the best of recent critical theory in an advocacy anthropology that suppoort indigenous struggles.