A Journey To The Desert's Edge, Part Five

Note: this is the fifth in a series of occasionally appearing entries focusing on deserts in general and the drylands of West Texas in particular

 

Six or seven hours after leaving Houston in the rearview, headed west on I-10, we've left the Hill Country and San Antonio behind.  Now we've reached the outer edges of the Concho Valley, provided we remembered to dog-leg northwestward at Junction.  The watershed of the valley's namesake river and its tributaries is remote country but not particularly large by Texas standards.  Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and a tiny chunk of Connecticut occupy about the same amount of space...

Texas, on the other hand, is a large state and Texans prefer others not forget the fact...

This humorous vintage postcard fosters two misconceptions
about Texas: in reality, giant saguaro cacti are not native to
the western part of the state and the jackrabbits are, in fact,
much larger than this specimen which appears to be of a stunted
New Mexico species

Until Alaska came along to add a 49th star to the American flag, Texas occupied more land area in the United States than any other state-- some 268, 620 square miles of the 3, 119, 884. 69 square miles of earth and water comprising the lower 48.  From north to south, a traveler might cover 801 miles, according to the Texas Almanac.  The distance from east to west is considerably shorter, a mere 773 miles...

Such great spaces led Texans to subdivide the state into vaguely defined areas such as East Texas and West Texas for conversational convenience.  Where West Texas lies is a matter of individual definition.  Not entirely tongue in cheek, we say it is the part of the erstwhile Lone Star Republic made up of Panhandle and Desert (or Panhandle, Desert, and Serious Desert)... 

Far Eastern Texas: a cypress swamp in the Big Thicket National Preserve

Boundaries for these two (or three) places are tied to both climate and the economic usefulness of the land.  The Panhandle, a Texan might say, is good country to farm or ranch except for that 75% of the year when it is too hot, cold or dry.  The Desert stays hostile towards man and beast for 10 or 11 months annually.  Its residents will say the land is hot, dry, and windy but do not like to admit to themselves that these traits are character marks of a desert.  Serious Desert country is universally acknowledged to be worthless ground but any true Texan knows it can be tamed by gruff, two-fisted empire builders of the sort John Wayne played in movies...

 

Vast distances (plus the fact easternmost Texas can see over 50" of rain yearly while westernmost Texas may see under 10" during that same time) make for a plethora of geological regions and ecoregions...

Far Western Texas: the Rio Grande river bed in the Big Bend

An online chart from Texas Parks and Wildlife says there are 18 ecoregions in the state.  The chart is based on Robert G Bailey's lengthy analysis of a 1976 map published by the Ogden, Utah, branch office of the U S Forestry Service where the geographer once worked.  His tome has basically guided the agency's efforts to scientifically manage our ecosystems since the mid-1990s...

As a person who has traveled throughout most of Texas, I can say what grows along the Oklahoma border by the Red River does not necessarily thrive on the northeast bank of the Pecos.  Average annual differences of 16 or more inches of precipitation between the two locations practically guarantees this. 

Robert G Bailey, Geographer

Yet both locations belong to the Rolling Plains ecoregion according to Bailey who used an algorithmic approach to determine its boundaries .  In practical terms, this means he divided the United States into very large regions based on climate and subdivided each region step by step, considering the plant life that could theoretically occur naturally in an area, geological surface features, and soil characteristics...

Other ecologists approach the subject a bit differently.  Among them is James Omernik who began his career in the 1960s at the Defense Intelligence Agency.  Shifting bureaucratic loyalties in 1972, he spent three decades analyzing the nation's ecology for the Environmental Protection Agency.  Omernik seems a bit of a workaholic.  Officially retired, he still consults part time for the US Geological Survey...

Bailey's Ecoregions of Texas

The EPA-Omernik collaboration produced a four-tier analysis of US ecoregions based on "biotic and abiotic" factors, simply meaning it considers both living and non-living characteristics when determining ecoregion boundaries.  These factors include geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology. According to an EPA description of Mr Omernik's holistic approach, "the relative importance of each characteristic varies from one ecological region to another"...

For an amateur naturalist such as myself, the EPA analysis is particularly useful since my interest in the subject of ecoregions grew out of my interest in learning more about the plant and animal life of the western Concho Valley and Trans-Pecos regions of Texas...

The EPA Level-IV analysis of Tom Green County, sees it as a meeting place for the Red Prairie, Limestone Plains, Edwards Plateau Woodland, and Semi-Arid Edward Plateau ecoregions...

Epa Level IV Ecoregions for the area enclosed by a rectangle
in the illustration of Bailey's ecoregions.  30d designates the
Semi-Arid Edwards Plateau with its vegetation dominated by
mesquite and redberry juniper

This last ecoregion lies west of the 100th meridian where the strong winds and lack of precipitation do much to shape the landscape.  Rounded hills, not rare in central Texas, turn into mesas and buttes at the city limits of San Angelo.  Streams flow sporadically.  Arid land shrubs are common.  Here we find mesquite, lotebush, desert sumac, agarita, javelina bush, white brush, catclaw acacia, mimosa, pencil cactus, prickly pear, ephedra, sotol, agave, yucca (giant and otherwise)...

Consider the above mentioned mesquite shrub...

Archeological evidence in the form of excavated Native American campsites establishes the presence of mesquite in the Semi-Arid Edwards Plateau region long before the first Spanish explorers came to the land of three rivers in Tom Green County.  When, in the late spring of 1849, Army Lieutenant Frances T Bryan, surveyed the Lipan Flats area to the east of the future city of San Angelo, he chanced upon scattered mesquites which were not young shrubs...

Then men introduced cattle to the outer edge of the desert in the years following the Civil War.  Cows are particularly fond of mesquite beans.  And bovines moving from place to place spread mesquite beans from place to place...

Rangeland, Tom Green County, 1901

Rangeland, particularly after it has been fenced and heavily grazed for several decades, tends to become less capable of supporting either native or invasive plants and animals.  Damage is not immediately apparent and, in fact, may not become obvious for dozens of years... 

By 1880, after over a decade of overgrazing, the desert grasslands of the Semi-Arid Edwards Plateau appeared slightly sparser but otherwise no worse for the wear.  Twenty years or so later, the number of mesquite shrubs seemed to be increasing.  But there weren't that many of them, not enough to cause alarm...

Rangeland, Tom Green County, 2010, in a photograph taken by
the author in the same area depicted in the 1901 illustration 

Mesquite root systems can branch out laterally (as far as fifty feet away from the shrub itself) to capture any available surface moisture.  This characteristic allows them to be quite aggressive if not checked by the occasional wildfire.  Other native plants decline and gradually decrease in numbers as mesquites spread by wandering cows prosper...

Around 1960, it seemed a hundred mesquites sprouted up overnight on the Semi-Arid Western Plateau for every one that had been growing the night before... 

West Texas versus East Texas

Note: All images located through Google Images without source information except as follows: EPA Level Ecoregions of Texas from United States Environmental Protection Agency; Bailey Ecoregions of Texas, Vegetation Types of Texas from Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife; Tom Green County Rangeland 1901 from National Archives, Washington DC; Robert G Bailey from USDA Forest Service, Washington DC; Tom Green County Rangeland 2010 by Louis R Nugent

Rambling Around Town...

No deadly international spies or society astrologers for us today.  We shall stroll about town and chat...

It's a bit of drive to the city from my house hidden on a backroad way off a main highway in one of the drier parts of an arid county... about half an hour's worth of travel time.  So allow me to recommend some reading that you can do on your mobile device if you don't want to listen to my tirade about damn fools who try to farm deserts and pray for rain when it stays dry...

A while back, several friends urged me to write.  I liked the idea.  My fictions are dark tales and I have yet to convince myself they should be read.  But urges to share words with an audience do not go away.  How to scratch such an itch is the question... 

A bit of serendipity came my way when I discovered the world of web logs.  I had heard about blogs but, being old and slightly technophobic, I assumed they were the province of wet-behind-the-ears video gamers...

The first blog I came across is a delightful collection of photographs and comments put out by Anitra Ford.  In case her name sounds familiar, it is because it should be.  She was one of the original models showcasing prizes on TV's Price Is Right game show...

These days, she shares sights and scenes from her beloved Santa Barbara with those of us lucky enough to have discovered her blog.   The writing is gentle, wise, and hints at a deliciously sly sense of humor.  Anitra is a master of color and the only thing to say about her photography is that you've cheated yourself if you don't treat yourself to a visit to  http://anitrafordspersonalblog.blogspot.com/

Ms Ford's blog caused me to realize I could actually combine my love of photography with my love of jotting down words...

Later, I lucked into discovering Merilee Mitchell and her Tangled Web.  Like me, she is a devout desert lover.  Her work focuses primarily on the Mojave and its reign over the dry land of Southern California and Lower Nevada.  She occasionally takes her readers on excursions into Los Angeles or allows us to see Manhattan through her eyes...

Ms Mitchell's preferred medium as a photographer is black and white and she is among the very finest contemporary practitioners of an exceedingly difficult genre.  Her essays are smart, honest, informative.  They are fine journalism.  My only problem with them is that it's difficult for me to read them because I keep looking back at the mesmerizing pictures that accompany them.  Do right by yourself.  Visit  http://thetangledweb.me/

Today's pictures are some scenes from around San Angelo...

The city, according to the paper, has just entered Drought Level 2 which means there is less than an 18 month supply of water left in the three huge man-made reservoirs that were meant to keep the city safe from lack of rain.  This new stage means water rates will go up in town to encourage conservation.  Yet it will mean nothing.  Thousands of folks around here will continue to water lawns covered with grasses and plants that are neither native to this area nor adapted to ongoing dryness...

I blame this denial of the desert around us on several things.  First and foremost is the fact that San Angelo, while justifiably proud of its rich history, does not want to admit that our sainted and heroic pioneers may have misjudged the character and capacity of the land when they started plowing caliche-ridden fields and grazing cattle and sheep on ranges dotted with sparse grasses and yuccas...

The other thing that contributes to this denial is a matter of semantics.  Due to the odd geography of Texas, one can correctly refer to this area as Southwest Texas or West Central Texas.  I prefer Southwest Texas.  This appears to have been the preferred designation for the region for much of its history.  About fifteen years ago, people began seeing themselves as West Central Texans.  It is a good way to pretend that you are not far from populated areas.  And it is a better way to deny the aridity of the landscape since everyone knows that Central Texas is moister than Southwest Texas...

Note: All photographs copyright Louis R Nugent

The Affair Of The Lethal Ornithologist

"He touched her for the last time and then they turned away from each other and walked off into their different lives."-- Moonraker, Ian Fleming, 1955

The name of the character was a private joke, bestowed by the author in good humor but with the sincere hope his readers would consider it the dullest possible name a sophisticated and ruthless killer could have been given by unimaginative parents...

Lancaster had the sort of problem which occasionally pops up in the better classes.  His lawyer grandfather entered the banking business in 1873, by way of the Scottish American Investment Trust.  Other financial deals followed; new firms were created.  The old chap would die the third richest man in the United Kingdom.  Not that this was of any real use to Lancaster: the prankster's mother now controlled most of the fortune and was of a mind not to overindulge a playboy son with too much cash before she left this world to join her late father-in-law...

Ian Fleming in a publicity photo used by Signet Books

Ian Lancaster Fleming: an heir without available millions...

He was also an avid bird watcher with a home on Jamaica.  Another island resident was an American-born ornithologist, James Bond, a mild-mannered fellow who had penned Birds of the West Indies, a guidebook Fleming knew well.  Like the future novelist, Bond briefly tried his hand at banking.  But once a man has seen the Orinoco River basin and pursued its feathered denizens, there is no place for gray pinstripe suits...

A Spy Is Born

Fleming contacted Mr Bond and asked permission to use his name for the protagonist of Casino Royale, a novel about international skullduggery.  The birdwatcher replied, "Fine with it."  Bond's agreement solved one of Fleming's immediate problems... 

Another problem, he later claimed, was the reason he decided to write a book.  He had the jitters.  He was engaged to Anne Charteris, widow of the third Baron O'Neill and recently divorced from Viscount Rothermere.  Fleming and Charteris had been mad about one another since meeting in the 1930s.  On the unfortunate occasion of her first husband's death, Anne expected Ian to propose.  His feet ran cold and she married another.  This second spouse preferred his wife not become pregnant by another man but Anne was not a girl bound by antiquated conventions...

Anne Charteris, Viscountess Rothermere 

Educated at Eton and on the continent at universities in Munich and Geneva, Fleming's greatest accomplishment (other than finally wedding Anne Charteris in a ceremony witnessed by friend and neighbor Noel Coward) may have been his wartime service to the United Kingdom... 

The fact he excelled at the business of war came as a surprise for those who knew him best.  True enough, his mother and grandfather thought he would make a dashing officer as had his deceased father, a Member of Parliament who improved his family's already considerable social standing by being killed in action during the First World War.  Unfortunately, Ian's appointment to the Military Academy at Sandhurst resulted not in an Army commission but rather expulsion for contracting a social disease...

Mortified, Mum sent her son to a boarding school in Austria where it became apparent he had a knack for learning languages.  He did not lose his talent for displeasing his mother simply by going to the Continent.  In Geneva, he became engaged  to Monique de Bottomes.  Evelyn St Croix Rose Fleming instructed her son to break off the affair, hinting at dire financial consequences if he failed to do this.  The lovely French-Swiss bachelorette remained a mademoiselle as 1931 became 1932...

Adolfo Celi as Emilio Largo, SPECTRE Number 2

Grandfather Robert and his daughter-in-law refused to give up hope.  Ian entered the banking world by gaining employment with the firm of Cull and Company in 1933.  He honed highly-developed skills as a heavy drinker, chain smoker, and womanizer but learned little about investments.  This was a few months after he returned to London from Moscow where he covered show trials of Joseph Stalin's political opponents for British newspapers.  Evelyn Fleming had personally twisted the arm of Sir Roderick Jones, family friend and head of the Reuter's news agency, to give her son a chance.  Before taking a stab at journalism, Ian thought he might have a go at Foreign Service.  Government bureaucrats unfortunately required he pass the written exam when simply taking it should have sufficed...

Artwork for "Thunderball"

Banking was not Fleming's forte.  Within two years, he moved on to Rowe and Pitman and four years of mediocre performance as a stockbroker.  Then he had lunch in May 1939 with another well-heeled family acquaintance.  Rear Admiral John Godfrey needed a personal assistant desperately...

No one, including Godfrey or Fleming, expected what followed when the spectacularly unqualified Fleming accepted Godfrey's job offer...

Admiral Godfrey was a blunt man who did not mind ruffling feathers.  This trait made it difficult for him to play well with others.  He felt Fleming would make an excellent liaison to the many offices (the Secret Intelligence Service, the Political Warfare Executive, the Special Operations Executive, the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Prime Minister, etc) where Godfrey had long since worn out his welcome.  Fleming succeeded admirably in convincing egomaniacs to work together...

Admiral John Godfrey

Fleming also realized war with Germany would happen within months.  He went to work devising plans to disrupt Axis operations and lure German surface ships and U-Boats toward British mines.  Less than thirty days prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Fleming and Godfrey provided the Navy with 29 suggestions designed to hamper the Nazi fleet.  One later formed the basis of Operation Mincemeat, a 1943 deception that allowed the Allies to invade Italy from North Africa...

The former banker-stockbroker-journalist noticed other deficiencies in British military planning.  Most glaring was a lack of readily available country studies for areas where the Armed Forces would likely engage in combat.  Godfrey and Fleming contacted Kenneth Mason, an Oxford University geographer, early in 1940 to solve the problem...

A James Bond Thriller

Later in the war, Fleming was given an assignment to work with "Wild Bill" Donovan, President Roosevelt's envoy to the British Intelligence community.  He traveled to Washington and helped Donovan draft a blueprint for the Office of the Coordinator of Information.  This bureaucracy later became the Office for Strategic Services (OSS) which ultimately morphed into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)...

Working with the Yanks led to Fleming's attendance at an Anglo-American Intelligence Summit on Jamaica in 1942.  He'd found his earthly paradise.  Keeping a promise to himself to return, he built a house he called Goldeneye on the island shortly after the Axis Powers surrendered.  Navy service made Ian Fleming a valuable commodity in the post-war economy.  After the Kemsley newspaper group agreed to an annual three month holiday as part of his employment contract, he accepted the firm's offer to oversee its overseas operations as Foreign Manager.  Time to be spent with Anne at Goldeneye...

Ian Fleming was a sophisticated man who craved action, nightlife, exotic casinos, and restaurants... 

Supermodel Maud Adams as Octopussy in a film very very
loosely based on a Fleming novella of the same name

He, perhaps surprisingly, also loved to read and devoured "useful books" with the same passion he sipped fine wines.  The bibliophile in Fleming led to a personal collection of over 1000 carefully chosen titles.  Such affection for the written word may have been a reason he despised "Casino Royale," the first novel he described as clumsy and oafish.  It didn't help matters a friend read it and suggested he submit it to publishers under a pseudonym since it was not the sort of material one would associate with a gentleman's name...

Critics agreed with Fleming's friend.  Many people, especially in the more conservative parts of America, saw filmed versions of the Bond stories as a British import on a par with the Beatles as proof of a decline in moral values.  They saw nothing but sex and violence and sadism.  Disdain for Bond and his adventures continues today with those who see the character as no more than a cavalier anti-feminist interested in bedroom conquests...

My first personal experience with James Bond came on a sunny April afternoon in 1965 when I picked up a shiny copy of Thunderball, guaranteed complete and unabridged by Signet Books.  The novel had been re-released to coincide with its film version.  A new cover emphasized Claudine Auger's sexy swimsuit for the movie version of the story.  Auger, Miss France in 1958, played the role of Domino, mistress to sinister SPECTRE operative Emilio Largo.  I read the paperback quickly.  And I knew I would have to read more Fleming books... 

Miss France 1958 with actor Sean Connery
on the set of "Thunderball"

Largo had killed Domino's brother. He tortures her when he suspects her infidelity, tying her hands and feet to the corners of a bed in the yacht, Disco Volante.  Placing a bucket of ice cubes at his side, he puffs a cigar until the tip glows red.  Next, he bends over the nude body of this stunningly beautiful woman in a scene the author leaves largely to the reader's imagination... 

Domino will take her slow and grisly revenge on Largo in the placid azure waters of the Bahamas, using a spear gun and an octopus, in a scene the author does not leave to the reader's imagination, as she and her lover, James Bond, foil SPECTRE's  scheme to detonate a hijacked hydrogen bomb in Miami...

Tarot deck used in film version of "Live and Let Die"

Bond and Domino will eventually part ways.  I suspect it was her choice.  Fleming rarely speaks of those goodbyes between Agent 007, licensed to kill, and the many women the English spy loved.  He does so in Moonraker.  The excerpt quoted at the start of this essay is Bond's farewell to policewoman Gala Brand.  She and James have destroyed a maniacal Nazi madman who assumed the identity of English country squire Sir Hugo Drax.  The fiend intended to incinerate London with a homemade atomic bomb.  The plot begins to unravel when Bond's boss suspects Drax of cheating at cards at the club where both hold memberships.  A man who cheats at cards, M tells the agent he loves like a son, is capable of unspeakable evil...

Drax is dead.  England is safe.  Her savior's heart leaps for joy as he meets his date for a lazy lunch.  But what does that heart feel when a beautiful woman says "Do you see that young man over there, James?  I intend to marry him tomorrow afternoon..."

"The name's Bond.  James Bond."

Note: All photographs and artwork located through Google Images without additional source or ownership information.

A Journey to the Desert's Edge, Part Four

Note: this is the fourth in a series of occasionally appearing entries focusing on deserts in general and the drylands of West Texas in particular

West Texas desert grasslands and their counterparts in New Mexico provide the setting for one of the stranger incidents during Spain's colonial experience in North America.  Leaving aside the question of whether we should use the dominant buffalo grasses and blue grama of our nation's shortgrass prairies to separate them from desert grasslands where courser tobosa grass flourishes for a later day, we briefly note a tale touching on a kinship possibly existing between mystical experience and drylands...

Pueblo Jumanos watch the arrival of
Spanish conquistores

  

In 1629, a group of Jumano Indians traveled to the friary at Ysleta, south of present day Albuquerque.  They came to this remote religious outpost desiring to tell its residents, they said, about a mysterious white woman dressed in blue who periodically appeared at their encampments.  She came to them from thin air.  In their language,  she spoke of the Spaniards' faith, advising them to seek out the friars of Ysleta to receive further instruction...  

Fray Alonso de Benevides, custodian of the Franciscan order in New Mexico, returned home to Spain to inform his superiors of this unusual visit.  There he learned of Sister Maria de Agreda... 

Mission at Ysleta, circa 1900

This good woman wore a blue cloak as did other nuns of the Conceptionist order.  But, unlike them, she'd experienced bizarre episodes, first related to her confessor .  She told an awe-struck Benevides of going into a trance from time to time.  When this happened, Maria de Agreda found herself in a primitive land where three rivers met to become a single pecan-lined stream.  An audience of tattooed people with flattened heads listened to her speak of God and salvation... 

Maria de Agreda: Uncorrupted By Death

Benevides knew just such a location and people much like those in her story.  He and friar Diego Lopez traveled with three soldiers and those Jumanos who came to Ysleta when the tribesmen returned home--  across five hundred miles of despoblados, empty and unpopulated places, to an oasis-like valley in the midst of burning desolation, a place where three pecan-lined streams joined to form a one river... 

The two missionaries reported to church authorities in Spain that a thousand tribesmen greeted them, demonstrating the greatest reverence and humility.  Many carried crude crosses.  They fell to their knees upon seeing a picture of the infant Jesus.  All became converts to Catholicism near present day Bell Street in San Angelo.  If subsequent historians are correct in their record keepings and analysis, these Jumanos were the first Native Americans to do so in the future state of Texas... 

Concho River passing through downtown San Angelo

Fray Benevides knew the risks Sister Maria took in relating these odd experiences to either him or the priest who took her confessions.  Seventeenth century Spain was a dangerous place to be suspected of witchcraft or demonic possession.  It would not matter to those tasked to discover heresy that King Philip IV himself considered her a trusted confidant and had exchanged over 600 letters with her, soliciting her advice on both political and spiritual matters...

[Maria de Agreda's visions, incidentally, are embraced today by many of the faithful.  They have become the focus of an annual celebration in the dusty town where the wandering Jumano bands once camped.  However, they proved problematic to the Roman Church.  In 1681, her account of experiences, The Mystical City of God, landed (briefly) on the Index of Prohibited Books.  The hint of sinful thought immediately stalled the process of her beatification.  Sister Maria remains neither beatified nor canonized, despite a reported incorruptibility of her body.]   

Maria de Agreda's Mystical City

Skeptics have another version of the tale told at Ysleta mission by the Naked Indians.  Recognizing the power of the Spaniards and the likelihood of their continued presence in the area, the Jumano wisely allied themselves with a superior military force against enemy tribes by cleverly concocting a pious story taken from bits and pieces of the newcomers' religion...

Whatever the motives of the Jumanos, there is little actual doubt Sister Maria described people like them and a place akin to the junction of the Rios Conchos long before she met Alonso de Benevides.  The reasons for her visions remain as unknown as the truth behind the Jumanos' request for instruction in the Spaniards' faith.  Coincidence or delusions cobbled together from stories she'd overheard about the New World or mystical forces unknown to modern science-- the answer depends on the one preferred by the questioner...

As for the Naked Indians, they earned this sobriquet from a tendency of some bands to go nude during the warmer months.  They were, apparently, blissfully unaware their bare breasts and uncovered genitals were infinitely more sinful in God's eyes than the European lust for gold.  Jumano clothing tended to be practical-- moccasins, cloaks to protect against wind and cold, aprons and tunics when it was more sensible to be clothed than not.  Spanish accounts say they marked their faces with horizontal stripes...

"Naked Indian" in non-naked state

The native people who traveled to Ysleta Mission in New Mexico belonged to one of several groups collectively referred to as Jumanos by the Spanish between the years 1500 and 1700 BCE.  Our band likely hunted buffalo, lived in skin tipis, and were among the first to acquire horses after the conquistadores introduced them to the region.  Their territory, centered between the Colorado River and upper Pecos River of Texas, permitted them to act as middlemen transferring goods from tribes in the more fertile east to people living in the arid western country.  We know little else of Jumano social structure or folkways... 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Jumano fade from the historical record and other Native American tribes move in to occupy their territory.  First come Apaches.  In turn, they are forced westward by Comanches who remain until an influx of white settlers after the Civil War overwhelms them...

Jumano Territory in Concho Valley and Upper Pecos Valley

Note: All images located through Google Images without source information except as follows: Maria de Agreda and frontispiece to "Mystica ciudad de Dios" from Wikipedia; Jumano Brave, Jumanos watching conquistadores, and map of Jumano territory from texasbeyondhistory.net; Ysleta Mission from "Abandoned" by Ronald Boutelle; Concho River by Louis R Nugent