by Jerry Kitten www.JerryAtTheLake.com
The Caddoan Indians
The Brazos River is the longest river in Texas which is 840 miles and the one with the greatest discharge. The Brazos is probably the river that the Caddoan linguistic group called TOKONOHONO ! This name is preserved in the narratives of the expedition led by Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and the Brazos is widely identified as the river that La Salle named the Maligne. The name Brazos was probably first applied to the Colorado River, and there is considerable evidence that several early explorers (Austin) confused the names for their benefit ! In 1716 Isidro Felix de Espinosa and Domingo Ramon pro
bably called the Brazos “la Trinidad”, but the present names were established well before the end of the Spanish period.
The full name of the river, often used in Spanish accounts, is Los Brazos De Dios, “the arms of God.” Many legends have grown up explaining the name. Probably the earliest is that of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and his men were wandering up the Llano Estacado were about to perish from lack of water when the Indians guided them to a small stream, which the men then named Brazos de Dios.
Another account tells of a Spanish ship tossed about by a storm in the Gulf of Mexico that had exhausted its supply of drinking water. The sailors were parched with thirst, lost, and unable to determine which direction they should go to find land, when one of the crew noticed a muddy streak in the waters. The ship followed the streak’s current to the mouth of a wide river on a great rise. The ship sailed up the river, and the sailors drank fresh water and were saved. In gratitude they christened the unknown stream Brazos de Dios.
