Xumani

The Xumani, better known in Spanish records as the Jumanos, were the people of La Junta, where the Río Conchos meets the Río Bravo. Cabeza de Vaca may have met them near La Junta in 1535, and Antonio de Espejo first used the name Jumano in 1582 for its farming villagers, while related bands hunted bison on the Pecos River.

They traded in hides, meat and salt. In the seventeenth century drought and advancing Lipan and Mescalero Apache drove them to seek Spanish missions and alliances, and the chief Juan Sabeata built trade and Christian ties in the 1680s.

Their language is unrecorded, with Uto-Aztecan, Tanoan and Athabascan all proposed. By 1729 the Spanish spoke of Apache Jumanos, and by 1750 the nation had dissolved, its remnants absorbed by Apache, Caddo and Wichita bands after epidemics, slaving raids and war.