The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva: The 1540-1542 Route across the Southwest

20. The Teya Indians of the Southwestern Plains

rancisco Vázquez de Coronado marched eastward from the Rio Grande Valley in April 1541, to discover what he believed to be the wealthy civilization of Quivira. This supposed land of gold, actually the Wichita region of central Kansas, was described in glowing detail by his chief guide, a man called “Turk” by the Spaniards (Riley 1971: 304–306). Turk was probably a Pawnee Indian and his traveling companion, Isopete, was most likely a Wichita Indian (see Riley 1995: 169, 196). On this expedition, shortly after entering the Plains, the Spaniards encountered two major groups of Native Americans in what is now extreme eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. Both of these peoples were nomadic, hunting the bison and other animals. Both lived, at least part of the time, in tents and used the dog travois. The first of these major groups the Spaniards gave the name Querecho; the second, more easterly and southerly, they called the Teya. The Querecho lived in the drainage of the Canadian River and extended into the upper part of the Llano Estacado while the Teya were mainly in the central and southern regions of the Llano Estacado. If their later identification with the Jumano is correct, they also extended to the east and south in the valley of the Pecos River and in the Rio Grande drainage along Toyah Creek and at La Junta de los Rios, the junction of the Rio Grande and the Conchos Rivers C H A P T E R 2 0 CARROLL L. RILEY The Teya Indians of the Southwestern Plains 267 CARROLL L. RILEY 268 (Map 17). The identity of the Querecho has never been in any real doubt as the groups continued into later historical times. They were, clearly, Apachean speakers , ancestors of modern Apache and Navajo Indians. The name, itself, according to Frederick Hodge (Hodge, Hammond, and Rey 1945: 303), was from Tágukerésh, a Pecos Pueblo generic term for Apache. In 1582 an expedition led by Antonio de Espejo contacted these Indians, spelling their name “Cuerecho,” as far west as the Hopi and Acoma areas of Arizona and New Mexico (Hammond and Rey 1966: 182, 189, 200–201). About a year earlier the expedition of Francisco Sánchez Chamuscado ran across Querechos in the Canadian River drainage of New Mexico and Texas (Hammond and Rey 1966: 89), roughly where Coronado had found them forty years before. Hernán Gallegos, chronicler for the Rodríguez/ Chamuscado expedition of 1581–1582, mentions nomadic settlements in this area without naming the group, but the account of Baltasar de Obregón, who interviewed one or Map 17. Peoples of the Southwest and High Plains, 1540. THE TEYA INDIANS OF THE SOUTHWESTERN PLAINS 269 more members of the Rodríguez/Chamuscado party, uses the term “vaqueros” (Cuevas 1924: 271). The outlaw Leyva de Bonilla and Gutiérrez Humaña expedition, which began in 1593, was wiped out on the Plains with only one survivor, a servant of Humaña named Jusepe. The latter man was captured by the Vaquero Indians but escaped to the Pueblo area (Hammond and Rey 1966: 323). Juan de Oñate, colonizer of New Mexico, who interviewed Jusepe at San Juan Bautista (San Juan Pueblo) in February 1599, says that Jusepe had lived for a year as captive to the “Apache and Vaquero Indians” (Hammond and Rey 1953: I: 417). If these were actually Jusepe’s words, it would seem that he first heard the term “Apache” several years before Oñate’s arrival in New Mexico. Oñate, himself, had utilized the term a few months earlier —in September 1598 at San Juan Bautista (Hammond and Rey 1953: I: 345). The origin of the term “Apache” is still much disputed. Morris Opler (1983a: 385) believes that it was from the Zuni word “apachu,” the plural form of the Zuni word for Navajo. However, Albert H. Schroeder (1983: 163–164) suggested that “Apache” may have derived from one of the Rio Grande pueblos, since at the time Oñate first used the term he had not encountered any Zuni Indians. This situation would also be true of Jusepe whose travels in the mid-1590s had, as far as we know, not reached west of the Rio Grande Valley. In 1598, Juan de Oñate used the word “Apache” for the area reaching “from the Sierra Nevada toward the north and east, and...