The first written account of the Manso is from the expedition of
Spanish explorer
Antonio de Espejo in January 1583. Traveling up the
Rio Grande in search of the
Pueblo Indians, Espejo encountered a people he called
Tampachoas below El Paso. "We found a great number of people living near some lagoons through the midst of which the Rio del Norte [Rio Grande] flows. These people, who must have numbered more than a thousand men and women, and who were settled in their rancherias and grass hunts, came out to receive us… Each one brought us his present of mesquite bean…fish of many kinds, which are very plentiful in these lagoons, and other kinds of food…During the three days and nights we were there they continually performed …dances in their fashion, as well as after the manner of the Mexicans." When
the Chamuscado and Rodriguez Expedition passed by the same lagoons in July 1581, they found them uninhabited. Historians believe that the Manso were likely 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 lived along the Rio Grande from present-day El Paso northward to
Las Cruces, New Mexico and in the nearby mountains. They may have shared their range with the Suma, whose history is quite similar. The people whom Espejo called the Tampachoa were probably the same people encountered by
Juan de Oñate in the same area in May 1598; he called the natives the Manso. Onate and his large expedition forded the Rio Grande near
Socorro, Texas assisted by 40 "manxo" Indians. Manso meant “gentle" or "docile" in Spanish. Their name for themselves is unknown. . During the 1660s, hundreds of Manso converted to Christianity. In 1682, the Governor in El Paso reported that the Manso and the Suma had revolted and attacked the Janos people. On March 14, 1684, friendly Tiwa and Piro told the Governor
Domingo Jironza Petriz de Cruzate of a Manso plot to kill all the Spaniards in El Paso. The Manso were said to be “tired of everything having to do with God and with the church, which is why they wanted to do what the Indians of New Mexico had done.” The Spanish took the ringleaders of the plot as prisoners. They included an
Apache and a
Quivira (probably a
Wichita). Ten of these Natives were executed. In November, the Spanish garrison of 60 men, plus friendly warriors, attacked a gathering of hostile Indians whom they suspected of planning their own revolt. Following the revolt, the Manso increasingly assimilated into the de-tribalized atmosphere of El Paso. Disease and Apache raids decimated their numbers, although many may have joined the Apache. By 1765, El Paso had 2,469 Spanish inhabitants and only 249 Indians, tribes unspecified. Descendants of the Manso have survived as members of the combined Piro-Manso-Tiwa (PMT) tribe and as members of
Tortugas Pueblo, an unincorporated village in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Splitting off the from main body, Manso helped found the Guadalupe Pueblo near Las Cruces in 1910 with the name of the people of the new pueblo becoming Los Indigenes de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, a tribal entity that the Piro-Manso-Tiwa tribe was once a part of before the faction occurred. Two groups claiming descent and historical continuity from the Mission Indians of Paso del Norte have applied for federal recognition as an Indian Tribe: the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Tribe of San Juan de Guadalupe and the Piro/Manso/Tiwa Tribe of Guadalupe. In 2000, there were 206 members of the PMT tribe of San Juan de Guadalupe. == Language ==