Some Jumanos, if not all, were originally people of the eastern focus of the Jornada-Mogollon pithouse dwellers. Relatives of the Jornada-Mogollon created the great city of Paquime (Casas Grandes) in Mexico, and the Mimbres phase, which includes the cliff dwellings in the Gila Wilderness. Part farmers and part hunters, the Jornada-Mogollon peoples spread out across northern Mexico and New Mexico and pushed onto the Llano Estacado a few times.
Pithouses are found along the Mescalero Escarpment just east of the sanddunes between the Pecos River and the Llano Estacado, with a few found on the Llano itself. The Jornada-Mogollon were thought to have adopted Meso-American myths and created the beginnings of the kachina religion, now associated with the Pueblos of Northern New Mexico. During the 1200s and 1300s, it appears that religious wars were fought between the new kachina religion, and the old religion of the Anasazi, which is symbolized by the figure Kokopelli, among others.
By the 1500s it appears that the Jumanos had formed several centers of population. One was at modern day Presidio, where with other pueblo dwelling folks, they farmed along the river and lived in aboveground one-story pueblos. Another center of population was at Gran Quivira, N.M., near modern day Mountainair. Yet another center of population was at where the three headwater streams of the Concho River joined (modern San Angelo.) There appears to be two groups of Jumanos that traveled extensively: 1) the buffalo hunters, who visited the Llano Estacado, and then hauled the dried meat to the other locations via travois drug by dogs; and 2) the traders, who would walk from what are now the towns of Presidio, to Mountainair, to Palo Duro, sometimes to Austin, and then back to Presidio, each year.
Between 1500 and 1700, the Jumanos were in between two stronger powers; the Spanish and the Apache. The Spanish often raided pueblos for slaves, and when expeditions came through they requisitioned supplies at the point of a gun or crossbow. The Apaches were coming down from the north, continually seeking new territory, raiding for food supplies and captive women. To attract Spanish help, the Jumanos of the Concho River in 1623 reported being helped by a ghostly woman dressed in blue robes with a cross, the famous Blue Nun. After 1680 the Jumanos became rich in horses, due to the Pueblo revolt.
In 1684, the most famous Jumano leader, Sabeata (Don Juan Sabeata in Spanish documents) had made treaties with the Spanish in Parral and El Paso, where the Spanish refugees from northern New Mexico had retreated after the Pueblo Indians revolted. Sabeata, one of the traders, reported to the Spanish about La Salle on the Texas coast and did his best to try to play up the Spanish fears of French incursion. After reporting a burning cross on the mountains at Presidio, Sabeata erected simple churches and asked the Spanish for priests (knowing soldiers would come along). He also took Capt. Juan Mendoza on an expedition to the Concho River supposedly on a hunting expedition, but really to fight Apaches.
By 1690, Sabeata disappeared from the scene. Some historians believe he went north, trading horses as he went, and was the major early distributor of horses to the plains Indians. By 1800 the Kiowa came from the north to Texas, and some historians believe the Kiowas had Jumano ancestors. The Jumanos disappeared from Spanish records by the 1740s, having been absorbed by Apaches, other pueblo tribes, and by the Spanish themselves. 80 percent of the Hispanic people in the valley around Presidio have Indian ancestors, and in recent years, folks in the region have begun claiming Jumano ancestry and trying to gain federal recognition as an official tribe.