The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 15, July 1911 - April, 1912 Page: 73

The Jumano Indians, 1650-1771

study will be reserved for a later task, and only enough details will
be given here to show that the Nueces River which Mendoza reached
was clearly one of the upper branches of the Colorado.-
On January 1, 1684, the party, leaving Father Acevedo to min-
ister to the Indians at La Junta (or La Novedad de las Cruces,
as it was now called), set out for the country of the Nueces River.
From La Junta the route was evidently north, or a little east of
north, to the Salado (Pecos), which was reached on the thirteenth,
after going seventy leagues.2 The point was perhaps in Pecos
County, opposite Crane County, Texas, though it may have been
a short distance farther west, in Reeves County.8 Following the
river for nine leagues, they crossed to the village of the Jediondas,
"at the foot of a great rock which serves them as a protection
against the hostile Apaches."4 Here Mendoza stopped seven days.
Leaving the Pecos, he now marched eastward across an unwatered
plain. Forty leagues out he struck the head of an east-flowing
stream, remarkable for its shells (concheria). Mendoza called the
river the Nueces, regarding it as the one he had come to find. It
was perhaps the middle Concho. Following this stream east
twenty-one (or twenty-four?) leagues, and passing by one or two
tributaries, he came to the "Rio de Sefior San Pedro, which is the
principal [river], called de las Perlas, or, by another name, de las
Nueces [nuts], although they all have them, which river is the one
appearing in the order which I bear .. . and which order is
now fulfilled. Said point is about eight leagues further down the
said River than the place where Don Diego de Guadalajara ar-
rived."5 The point where this entry was written was perhaps near
San Angelo, at the junction of the North and Middle Concho
rivers.
Nineteen leagues further on he reached the end of his journey
'Miss Anne Hughes, one of my students in the University of Texas, has
made a careful study of the diary, and hopes some time to complete it for
publication.
2Ibid., entries from January 1 to 14.
'Ibid., entries from January 1 to 14. At the point where the Salado
was reached, "a great Saline" was discovered a league across the river.
4"Derrotero," entry for January 18. No mention is made in the diary
of the presence, of Jumanos in the village. Cf. Escalante, op. cit., p. 311,
and Bancroft, North Mexican States and Texas, I, 386.
e"Derrotero," entry for February 24. The italics are mine.