The Jumano Indians

In studying the history and the effect of the contact of the Southwestern Indians with civilization, the writer was baffled by what appeared to be the sudden and almost complete disappearance of a populous tribe which played a rather prominent part in the history of the early exploration and colonization of the Southwest, which occupied villages of a more or less permanent character, and among whom missionaries labored in fruitless endeavor to show them the way to Christianity. It is not usually difficult to account for the decimation or even for the extinction of a tribe ravaged by war or by epidemics, of which there are numerous instances; but of the Jumano Indians, of whom this paper treats, there is no evidence that they were especially warlike in character, that they had a greater number of enemies than the average tribe, or that they had suffered unusually the inroads of disease.