Wichita Girl, Kansas, United States

In 1541 Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado journeyed east from the Rio Grande Valley in search of a rich land called Quivira. In Texas, probably in the Blanco River Canyon near Lubbock he met a people he called Teyas who might have been related to the Wichita and the earlier Plains villagers. The Teyas, if in fact they were Wichita, were probably the ancestors of the Iscani and Waco, although they might also have been the Kichai, who spoke a different language but later joined the Wichita tribe. Turning north, he found Quivira and the people later known as the Wichita near the town of Lyons, Kansas. He was disappointed in his search for gold as the Quivirans appear to have been prosperous farmers and good hunters but had no gold or silver. There were about 25 villages of up to 200 houses each in Quivira. Coronado said: “They were large people of very good build” and he was impressed with the land which was “fat and black.”
"They eat meat raw like the Querechos (the Apache) and Teyas. They are enemies of one another...These people of Quivira have the advantage over the others in their houses and in growing of maize".
The Quivirans apparently called their land Tancoa (which bears a resemblance to the later sub-tribe called Tawakoni) and a neighboring province on the Smoky Hill River was called Tabas (which bears a resemblance to the sub tribe of Taovayas).
Sixty years after Coronado’s expedition the founder of New Mexico Juan de Onate visited a large village of Wichita. Onate journeyed east from New Mexico, crossing the Great Plains and encountering two large settlements of people he called Escanjaques (possibly Wichita) and Rayados, certainly Wichita. The Rayado village was probably on the Walnut River near Arkansas City, Kansas. Onate described the village of containing “more than twelve hundred houses” which would indicate a population of about 12,000. His description of the village was similar to that of Coronado. The homesteads were dispersed; the houses round, thatched with grass and surrounded by large granaries to store the corn, beans, and squash they grew in their fields. Onate’s Rayados were certainly Wichita, probably the sub-tribe later known as the Guichitas.