All about the ancient tribes
The Jumano Indians wore garments made from different animal hides, including moccasins. Women often wore skirts, short-sleeve tunics and aprons. Men typically wore pants and capes. Both men and women would wear cloaks to protect their skin from the cold and the wind.
Jumanos along the Rio Grande in west Texas grew beans, corn, squash and gathered mesquite beans, screw beans and prickly pear. They consumed buffalo and cultivated crops after settling on the Brazos River, in addition to eating fish, clams, berries, pecans and prickly pear cactus.
About 30 – 40 lived in each house. Inside the house, the rooms were painted with red, yellow, and white stripes. Although the region was dry, they settled along the Rio Grande and used irrigation to grow corn, squash, beans other vegetables, and possibly ctn order to trade their crops, jewelry or feathers.
European-American scholars have long considered the Jumano extinct as a people. In the 21st century some families in Texas have identified as Apache- Jumano. As of 2013, they have registered 300 members in the United States and seek to be recognized as a tribe.
A recent study has argued that the Jumanos spoke a Tanoan language. If they did, this would link them with the eastern Pueblos of New Mexico and would imply that their ancestral ties lay within or near the Rio Grande valley.
The Karankawa did not need much clothing. Their clothes were made out of deerskin or grass. They painted themselves with bright colors. To keep the insects away they rubbed alligator fat and dirt into their skin.
Specialties Barbecue meats and sausage at a restaurant in Texas. Fried sopapillas pastries. Texan peanut butter pie. Chicken fried steak with cream gravy served at a restaurant in Austin, Texas. Traditional beef tripe stew called menudo.
Facts about the Jumano These Jumanos were nomadic, and wandered along what is known today as the Colorado, the Rio Grande, and the Concho rivers. The Jumanos were good hunters. They hunted wild buffalo. The Jumanos traveled on foot until the 1680’s.
The Jumano were known for their tattooed or painted bodies and as successful bison hunters whose original homelands included areas of the southern Plains and northwestern Edwards Plateau that were frequented by bison herds.
The Karankawas lived in wigwams – circular pole frames covered with mats or hides. The Karankawas were unusually large for Native Americans. The men grew as tall as six feet and were noted for their strength.
According to some sources, the Karankawa practiced ritual cannibalism, in common with other Gulf coastal tribes of present-day Texas and Louisiana. The Karankawa people were shocked at the Spanish cannibalism, which they found to be repugnant.
In fishing tribes, Native American fishermen would either catch fish and hunt marine mammals from their canoes, or else set fish nets and wooden traps for them. The Tlingit and Salish are two examples of Northwest Indian tribes who got most of their meat through fishing.
The Arapaho, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Plains Apache, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwe, Sarsi, Shoshone, Sioux, and Tonkawa. and were all nomadic tribes who followed the buffalo herds and lived in tipis.
The Wichita band of Indians was one of several bands that composed the Wichita confederacy. The Wichita called themselves Kitikiti’sh, meaning “raccoon eyes,” because the designs of tattoos around the men’s eyes resembled the eyes of the raccoon.
The Jicarilla Apache were just one of six southern Athapascan groups that migrated out of Canada sometime around 1300 to 1500 A.D. Moving their way south, they settled in the southwest where their traditional homeland covered more than 50 million acres across north New Mexico, southern Colorado and western Oklahoma.