Description
The Manso Indians were an indigenous people who lived along the Rio Grande, from the 16th to the 17th century. Present-day Las Cruces, New Mexico developed in this area. The Manso were one of the indigenous groups to be resettled at the Guadalupe Mission in what is now Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Some of their descendants remain in the area to this day. The first account of the Mansos is from the expedition of Spanish explorer Antonio de Espejo in 1583. Traveling up the Rio Grande River in search of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, Espejo encountered a people he called Tampachoas below El Paso.
Language
Linguists have speculated about their language: alternatives have been Uto-Aztecan, Tanoan, or Athabaskan (Apache) language.
Culture
The Mansos were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers who practiced little if any agriculture. Farming Indians lived both upstream and downstream from them. They had a life style similar to the Suma and the Concho, who lived nearby. It is a theory that the Manso were nomadic, living only part of the year along the Rio Grande and passing the remainder of the year hunting and gathering food in the surrounding deserts and mountains. They seemed to have ranged westwards from the Rio Grande to Casas Grandes and Janos Mexico.