The Simono were an

indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

who lived in what is now part of the Mexican state of

Nuevo Leon Nuevo is the Spanish word for "new". It may refer to: * Nuevo, California, a town in the state of California * Nuevo (band), featuring singer and musician Peter Godwin * Nuevo (Bayamón), a settlement in Puerto Rico * "Nuevo", Spanish-language vers ...

and the U.S. state of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

from at least the 16th century in the 18th century. In the late 1580s or maybe slightly earlier the pressure of the Spanish incursion caused the Simoni to migrate north of the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( and ), known in Mexico as the Río Bravo del Norte or simply the Río Bravo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The length of the Rio G ...

and join forces with the

Yojuane The Yojuane were a people who lived in Texas in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. They were closely associated with the Jumano and may have also been related to the Tonkawa. They have no connection to the Yowani in Texas, a Choctaw band. Etymol ...

as part of the greater

Jumano Jumanos were a tribe or several tribes, who inhabited a large area of western Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico, especially near the Junta de los Rios region with its large settled Indigenous population. They lived in the Big Bend area in th ...

league. By 1709 the Simono were living in eastern

along the Rio Brazos in an area known as the Rancheria Grande. In that year a hunting party of Simoni as well as Yojuane and Tusonibi encountered the expedition of

Isidro de Espinosa Isidro Félix de Espinosa (1679–1755) was a Franciscan missionary from New Spain who participated in several expeditionary missions throughout the province of Tejas (modern Texas). He was the president of the missionaries from the College of S ...

and tried unsuccessfully to get him and his associates to come to the Rancheria Grande and meet with the rest of their families. By the 1740s when most of the Yojuane moved to the San Gabriel River missions the Simoni seem to have lost their separate identity and become subsumed within the Yojuane people.

References

* Anderson, Gary Clayton. ''The Indian Southwest''. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. * Barr, Juliana. ''Peace Came in the Form of a Woman''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. {{authority control Native American tribes in Texas Indigenous peoples in Mexico