The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 4, July 1900 - April, 1901 Page: 13

                                
Route of Cabeza de Vaca.

as the early Spaniards wrote it, enough to afford a nucleus for the
history of the origin of the name Texas, by following the idea of his
being ,a Texo to its connection with the Tejo tribe of the Tejo-
Coahuilteca family which extended from     near Red river to. where
Monclova is now in Coahuila, and whose family tongue has been
referred to above. But this is not sufficiently connected with the
subject of this paper to justify its examination here.
Finally, as the Seven Cities of Sibola are placed not far east of
the Colorado -of the West, -and far north of Rio Gila, they do not
correspond with the direction given by 'Tejo, which required a north-
ern route from the crossing of the river coming from Toluca to, a
point even with these cities land thence toward the Gulf of Mexico,
or la Mar del Norte, to reach them, thereby placing them east of
such northern course, about which the dissatisfaction occurred in
Guzman's camp as to pursuing such route.
But Tejo will here be left to be followed by some one writing upon
the 'Tejo tribe, or the Tejas, whose indelible foot prints -are eternized
by their name in the plural, 'Texas, or Tejas, being fixed upon the
territory over which they once roamed.
The existence of la family tongue from Texas to Michoacan, wher-
ever the Nahoas went, is another reason to believe that Cabeza de
Vaca traveled within its limits from -the Bravo, to where he met
Alcaraz.   And this great natural and even historical fact and
Cabeza de Vaea's reference thereto constitute a proof of such being
the limits through which he passed, which rises above his inventive
genius, and defies the attempts of the most skillful schemers to
change it.
Declining to enter the nebula of prehistoric times, it is rational
to hold, with Sefior Chavero, that there were three great groups oc-
cupying the country, to wit: Mayaquich6 at the south, the Otomies
at the centre, and the Niahoas at the north, and this especially be-
tween the great central table lands and the Mexican Gulf. The
indelible recollections preserved as to the three will never allow
doubts as to their existence; and in attempting to go back of them,
the historian enters the field of hypothesis, where it is easy to make
such blunders tas might wound common sense; while the intelligent
reader cares not whether these three great families sprang from
Asiatic races, ,or were autochthons, or, under the Darwinian theory,