The Coronado Expedition: From the Distance of 460 Years

10: Bison Hunters of the Llano in 1541: A Panel Discussion

TEN Bison Hunters of the Llano in : A Panel Discussion DONALD J. BLAKESLEE, DOUGLAS K. BOYD, RICHARD FLINT, JUDITH HABICHT-MAUCHE, NANCY P. HICKERSON, JACK T. HUGHES, AND CARROLL L. RILEY EARLY IN THE SUMMER OF  the Coronado expedition met several encampments of bison-hunting nomadic or seminomadic people as the expedition moved generally eastward from Cicuique–Cicuye–Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico. After some thirteen or fourteen days of travel from Pecos, the expedition came upon a tent settlement of people they understood were called Querechos by the Pueblos. According to what Vázquez de Coronado and Pedro de Castañeda, one of the members of the expedition, wrote, the Querechos subsisted almost entirely by hunting bison. After perhaps only twelve hours the Querechos broke camp and parted company with the expedition, using large numbers of dogs to transport their belongings. Two days later the expedition saw other Querechos, who reported large native settlementsfarthertotheeast.Thistookplaceonverylevellandonwhichtheexpedition traveled for some eight more days until it found a settlement of other tentdwelling Indians in a barranca, or canyon. Reconnaissance parties sent out from there ran across other settlements of people known at Teyas. The territory where their camps were was known as Cona and could be traversed in three days. Again according to Castañeda, with corroboration by Juan de Jaramillo, another expedition member, the Teyas lived off the bison and were all but indistinguishable from the Querechos, with whom, the captain general wrote, they were enemies. During a panel session held as part of the conference in  from which this book arose, moderator Richard Flint submitted a series of questions to each of six distinguished panel members. The questions dealt with the distinction between the archeological Garza and Tierra Blanca complexes, whether that distinction has cultural significance, and whether it is appropriate to equate the distinction with  that between the Querechos and Teyas of the Coronado documents. The panel included Donald J. Blakeslee, Douglas K. Boyd, Judith Habicht-Mauche, Nancy P. Hickerson, Jack T. Hughes, and Carroll L. Riley. The main issues were, Who were the Querechos and Teyas, and what evidence can archeology and ethnohistory bring to bear on the question? Specifically, correspondence between the distinctions Garza–Tierra Blanca and TeyaQuerecho (or lack of such correspondence) is extremely important for investigating and understanding the Jimmy Owens Site in Blanco Canyon, Floyd County, Texas, and the route of the Coronado expedition in Texas more generally. The Discussion The discussion opened with a couple of questions of a theoretical nature, regarding the legitimacy of linking archeological “complexes” with cultural groups. Q: What are the difficulties involved in equating any archeological complex with specific groups such as tribes, biological populations, ethnic groups, or speech communities? Blakeslee: The Coronado documents give us essentially three names. Two names are applied apparently by a Puebloan or Quiviran guide to local groups of people , Querechos and Teyas. The third name is different; Cona is evidently a name the Teyas said applied to a geographical entity within which they lived,. So we have here names of two ethnic groups and a name of a territory. Speaking just in terms of the cultural present of ethnography, one can’t jump from a name applied by outsiders to the assumption that it refers to a single biological population (within which people find their marriage partners and not outside it). You can’t leap to the conclusion that those people all spoke the same language. And you can’t leap to the conclusion that they had a political system that defined them. And you can’t assume that they had a single political organization, either. We in the modern world live in societies that tend to create correlations between political units, biological populations, and language communities. The societies that Coronado encountered on the Plains were not organized in that fashion. Many Plains Indians lived in multilingual societies. The Kiowa tribe included Apache speakers, the Cheyenne tribe included Siouan speakers, and the northern Shoshone included Paiute speakers. These groups did not have strong, centralized political authorities that might have enforced some sort of uniformity ; in fact, it is a misnomer to speak of an Apache tribe as opposed to many completely independent Apache bands.  DONALD J. BLAKESLEE, DOUGLAS K. BOYD, RICHARD FLINT, ET. AL. Habicht-Mauche: Since ethnogenesis is primarily a discursive process, this process is not obviously or necessarily manifested materially, either in the archeological record or in modern...