Frontier Crossroads: Fort Davis and the West

Chapter One: CROSSROADS OF EMPIRE

chapter one CROSSROADS OF EMPIRE On October 20, 1682, seven American Indians appeared at El Paso del Norte (present-day Juárez, Mexico), where Franciscan friars, representing the Spanish empire as well as the Catholic Church, had established a mission two decades earlier. The tiny station had recently taken on increased importance, as a massive Pueblo Indian revolt two years earlier had forced many of the residents of Spanish New Mexico to find succor farther south. Leading the Indian delegation was the magnetic Juan Sabeata, blessed with a flair for diplomacy. As a Jumano Indian, Sabeata belonged to one of the most important—and enigmatic—peoples of the American Southwest. Jumano traders had long disseminated material goods, cultural mores, and information across the vast southwestern plains. But the first waves of a larger and more militaristic people, the Apaches, had recently begun to challenge the lucrative Jumano connections, and for defense the Jumanos needed help.1 Sabeata’s application to Spanish officials was extraordinarily perceptive . He wanted the Europeans to help his people fend off the Apaches but was careful to couch his request in terms that his potential allies might find appealing. Having grasped the interconnected triad of Spanish interests in the New World—spreading Christianity, increasing wealth, and keeping other Europeans out—Sabeata touched all bases. His Jumano kin, based at the junction of the Rios Concho and Grande (La Junta), desired a mission . “There must be more than 10,000 souls who are asking for baptism,” he explained. Not only that, the Jumanos enjoyed alliances with thirty-six other nations that extended far into the eastern plains, including “the great kingdom of the Texas [Tejas]” and “the great kingdom of Quivira,” the legendary Plains site reputed to be rich in gold and silver. As if to ensure that Spain would accept his invitation, he allowed, almost as an afterthought, that other Europeans were entering the region from the east “by water in wooden houses.”2 Sabeata’s proposal must have been irresistibly tempting to his hosts. Formal relations with the Jumanos promised not only the temporal rewards of spreading God’s word but also the worldly benefits flowing from expanded mercantile opportunities with the friendly Tejas Indians and exploitation of what was believed to be the fabulously wealthy “Gran Quivira.” Since rumors of European intruders were a matter of Spanish national security, Capt. Juan Dominguez de Mendoza and twenty soldiers were assigned the job of following up on the Sabeata visit. Three barefoot Franciscan friars, eager to establish a Catholic mission at La Junta, a strategic communications center at the intersection of trails and rivers linking the Great Plains, New Mexico, and Mexico, set forth shortly thereafter. Thus lay the roots of the first longterm Spanish presence within easy striking range of the Davis Mountains, scene of what eventually became one of the most intriguing crossroads of the American West.3 The Davis Mountains, whose crisp, clean air; temperate environment; and heights just high enough to be fairly called mountains yet low enough to be scaled by all but the faintest of heart, have long attracted human inhabitants . Sixty-three prehistoric sites have been identified in Jeff Davis County alone. Several spectacular pictograph displays are found near Mount Livermore, 15 miles west of present-day Fort Davis. Another site to the northwest , dated shortly after 600 a.d., depicts men using bows and arrows to kill game. Evidence of Paleo-Indian activity near Van Horn, in the Guadalupe Mountains, and near Langtry (approximately 50, 75, and 125 miles from Fort Davis, respectively) has also been unearthed.4 Unfortunately, these sites offer only tantalizing hints about the lives of peoples who would be overwhelmed by the expansion of the Jumanos. Multiethnic in origin, the Jumanos had pushed southward from New Mexico down the Rio Grande in the eleventh century. They probably spoke a Tanoan language, one of a family of dialects used widely in what is now the central and southwestern United States. Numbering between twenty thousand and thirty thousand persons at the apex of their power, the Jumanos had by the 1580s established five large villages around La Junta. Dominating the trade network that originally featured exchanges of turquoise, pottery, bows and arrows, food, and animal skins, they later incorporated horses and mules into their market economy. Farther into the plains, their cousins relied heavily on the buffalo and lived in movable grass huts. At La Junta proper, however, Jumanos mixed the buffalo cultures...