Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/123

112 112 14 COUNTIES HAVE INDIAN NAMES. which bear Indian names. Since you are within the borders of Quivira, it becomes necessary to introduce you to tiie tribes which were there located. One peculiarity about the contemporaneous accounts of the expedition is that few, if any, of the Indian names are given as we know them now. All the men who gave accounts of their experiences frequently refer to the "Teyas" Indians, whom they met through Texas and Indian Territory; and yet it cannot be authoritatively stated, that the largest state in the Union is named after this tribe, because nothing extant bears this out. But, to say the least, is it not a remarkable incident that the only difference is changing the "y" to an "x" so that it reads now as "Texas"? The Spanish pronunciation for this is "Ta-has," hence there needs very little stretch of the imagination to realize from whence came the name. Again, all along the route after reaching the plains, another tribe is very prominent, "Querechos." Coronado in a letter written to the King of Spain, dated October 20, 1541, telling of his first meeting with these people, said: "After nine days' march from Cicuye (Pecos, New Mexico), I reached the plains, and in seventeen days' march I came to a settlement of Indians who are called 'Querechos'." Taking fifteen mUes as an average day's march for the army, 145 mUes from Pecos, a lit- tle south of Las Vegas, would bring the expedition to some place in Oldham County, Texas, and here it was that the immense herds of buffaloes were first met. Again, if we take another eight days ' march from here, we will have reached about the jpoint where our ezplor-