A Cibolero (plural: ciboleros) was a Spanish colonial (and later Mexican) buffalo hunter from New Mexico. The Spanish word for buffalo as used in New Mexico is cibolo; [1] hence, the name Cibolero [1] for buffalo hunter.
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A Cibolero (plural: ciboleros) was a Spanish colonial (and later Mexican) buffalo hunter from New Mexico. The Spanish word for buffalo as used in New Mexico is cibolo; [1] hence, the name Cibolero [1] for buffalo hunter.
Ciboleros hunted the American bison or buffalo on the Great Plains of what is now eastern New Mexico and Texas, mostly in the areas of the Llano Estacado and Comancheria. Their domain ranged as far east and north as Nebraska. The Ciboleros typically hunted buffalo in late fall once the summer crops had been harvested. Many Ciboleros from New Mexico lived along or near the Pecos River from the villages of San José, San Miguel del Vado, and Tecolote and south toward La Cuesta (now the town of Villanueva, New Mexico). The Ciboleros were primarily hunters while the contemporaneous comancheros were mostly traders with the Comanche and other Plains Indians although the two activities overlapped.
Josiah Gregg gave this description of a Cibolero he encountered: [2]
As we were proceeding on our march, we observed a horseman approaching, who excited at first considerable curiosity. His picturesque costume, and peculiarity of deportment, however, soon showed him to be a Mexican Cibolero or buffalo-hunter.
John Miller Morris explained the historical significance of the Ciboleros: [3]
Juan de Oñate's colonists and the later settlers had introduced domesticated horses, cattle, pack animals, crops, fruits, goats and sheep into New Mexico, beginning a significant transculturation process for regional food supplies and transportation. The natives of the bison plains, for example, quickly exchanged information with the frontier Hispanos about the sport of buffalo hunting. This process developed one of the most symbolic of the 18th- and 19th-century frontiersman in the Southwest: the thrilling, sportive, distinctive Cibolero of the eastern bison plains. The Llano served as the chief acculturation point for many Ciboleros, a point where ideas, words, goods, and practices flowed between east and west. The Cibolero also facilitated the survival of whole populations, augmenting the ancient flow of bison meat from plain to valley, gradually supplanting and transforming the many hundreds of former native traders.
The Cibolero way of life ended by the late 1870s with the destruction of the American bison. [4] Ciboleros are still remembered in New Mexican folk songs, cultural events, and family oral traditions. [5]
Ciboleros are an integral part of some works of fiction dealing with the Southwest and the American West. For example, José's Buffalo Hunt: A Story from History recounts a cibolero buffalo hunt c. 1866. [6] The novel Cibolero, set against the backdrop of Spanish to Mexican rule, includes descriptions of early 19th century buffalo hunts. [7]
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The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma.
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The Llano Estacado, sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North American continent, the elevation rises from 3,000 feet (900 m) in the southeast to over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) in the northwest, sloping almost uniformly at about 10 feet per mile (2 m/km).
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The Comancheros were a group of 18th- and 19th-century traders based in northern and central New Mexico. They made their living by trading with the nomadic Great Plains Indian tribes in northeastern New Mexico, West Texas, and other parts of the southern plains of North America. The name "Comancheros" comes from the Comanche tribe, in whose territory they traded. They traded manufactured goods, flour, tobacco, and bread for hides, livestock and slaves from the Comanche. As the Comancheros did not have regular access to weapons and gunpowder, there is disagreement about how much they traded these with the Comanche.
Josiah Gregg was an American merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of Commerce of the Prairies, about the American Southwest and parts of northern Mexico. He collected many previously undescribed plants on his merchant trips and during the Mexican–American War, for which he has often been credited in botanical nomenclature. After the war he went to California, where he reportedly died of a fall from his mount due to starvation near Clear Lake on 25 February 1850, following a cross-country expedition which fixed the location of Humboldt Bay.
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Estacado is a ghost town in Crosby and Lubbock Counties in the U.S. state of Texas. Located along Farm to Market Road 1527, it was established in 1879 as a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) colony by Paris Cox and originally named Maryetta after his wife. In 1886, it became the first government seat of Crosby County. In 1936, Recorded Texas Historic Landmark number 4779 was designated to commemorate the founding of Estacado.
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Jose Piedad Tafoya, sometimes called the Prince of the Comancheros, was one of the more notable traders from New Mexico who traveled throughout the Southern Great Plains exchanging goods with the Comanches and their allies the Kiowa for stolen horses, cattle, and sometimes human captives. According to legend, he was seven feet tall. He was born in La Cuesta, New Mexico in 1834 and first visited the Great Plains as early as 1859. In the 1850s, he operated a sheep ranch in San Miguel County, New Mexico. His first wife was Maria de Jesus Perez. They married April 20, 1863 in Anton Chico, New Mexico. In the 1860s, he operated a trading post near what is now Quitaque, Texas. In the 1870s, he began sheep herding in Texas. He also at times acted as a scout for the US Army, possibly unwillingly. According to some sources, he was instrumental in the defeat of the Comanches at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon. He allegedly revealed the location of Comanche camps to Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie after being forced to do so either at the end of a rope or after being tied to a wagon wheel. Some believe that this story is mythical. Mackenzie credited another Comanchero scout named Johnson for finding the camps. Tafoya also participated in the ill-fated Buffalo Soldier tragedy of 1877. In 1879, he accompanied Lt. John L. Bullis on an expedition into southern New Mexico in pursuit of a band of marauding Lipan and Mescalero Apaches. By the 1880s, he had left Texas and was once again ranching sheep in New Mexico. He appeared in the U.S. Court of Claims in 1893 along with three other former Comancheros, where they admitted to having purchased cattle marked with brands belonging to Charles Goodnight and others. He had at least four children and probably died about 1913, when his will was filed, bequeathing his house to his second wife, Teresa Baca de Tafoya.
Lubbock Subpluvial is a discredited paleoclimate theory about a wet period in early Holocene Texas and New Mexico. During this period, part of the Llano Estacado was supposedly covered with pine and spruce forest but later research has found that vegetation there scarcely changed from grasslands through the Quaternary.
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