Our Catholic Heritage, Volume I

iv/aria de Agreda, the lm11a110, and t/1e Tejas

203

fervor seems to have found an answer, for it is recorded that the sick were healed. 16 It seems that when Fathers Salas and Lopez and the three soldiers finally started back, some of the Jumanos followed them, as did also the messengers from Quivira and the Aijados. Upon their return to old Isleta, a temporary mission was founded for them, named St. Isidore, near one of the Piro Pueblos, "probably Tabira.," says Hodge, but this was of very short duration, for by 1632, all the Jumanos had evidently returned to their country as shown by the new expedition undertaken this year by Father Salas. Father Salas' second expedition to tlze ]ttmanos, 1632. The details of the second visit to the J umano country are meager indeed. Moved probably by the desertion of these Indians from the temporarily estab- lished Mission of San Isidoro, or perhaps desirous of establishing a permanent mission in their lands to redeem his promise given in 1629, Father Salas set out from New Mexico with Father Juan de Ortega and a few soldiers in 1632 in quest of his Jumano friends. The exact location of this nation now appears to have been a river located some two hundred leagues southeast of Santa Fe, which the Spaniards called the Noeces, on whose banks there was an abundance of nuts. Bolton has correctly shown that this stream was clearly one of the branches of the Colorado River, perhaps the Concho. 17 Thus by 1632 the Jumanos were establ ished in the vicinity of present San Angelo, along the Concho and its tribu- taries, in the State of _Texas. This is to be kept in mind as a fixed point in the nebulous geography of the State in this early period in order to determine the location of Quivira, the Aijados, and the Tejas, whose relative positions to this locality are first given in connection with this and the subsequent visits to the Jumanos during the next twenty-two years. Father Salas and his companions directed their steps to the Rio de las. Noeces "and finding there the Indians of the Jumano nation friendly and inclined to become Christians," says Posadas, "the Spaniards returned 16 The number of those healed is not given in the Mm,orial of 1630, but it is found in Vetancourt's account (Chronica, 96) and in the Memorial of 1634. The summary of this expedition given in the preceding pages is based on the two Jlfemorials of Bena- vides of 1630 and 1634 and Vetancourt, Chr611ica, 96, which are the only three sources. Use of the excellent notes of Hodge to the Ayer Memorial and of his and Bolton's monographic studies of the Jumanos, previously cited, has been made. liDolton, "The Jumanos in Texas," T/,e Quarterly, 9-11.

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