[3] The first significant contact of the Quechan with Europeans was with the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and his party in the winter of 1774.

[4] On Anza's return from his second trip to Alta California in 1776, the chief of the tribe and three of his men journeyed to Mexico City to petition the Viceroy of New Spain for the establishment of a mission.

Alongside the promise, de Anza gave Palma’s people horses, steel weapons, clothes, and iron as a token of allegiance.

When the Spanish’s first gifts arrived in 1780, they would be more of a bad omen than a sign of friendship as the livestock being herded to them would go and trample most of if not all the Quechan’s crops.

That year there was severe lack of rain thus forcing the Quechan to raid another nearby tribe known as the Maricopa.

[6] The following year, two high members of the tribe were arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate a high-ranking officer.

[6] Spanish settlement among the Quechan did not go smoothly; the tribe rebelled from July 17–19, 1781 and killed four priests and thirty soldiers.

[7] After 1840, the Quechan people near La Frontera returned to their original ways of religious practice as soon as the mission priests left and no one replaced them.

Explorers would follow herds of Bighorn Sheep up the mountain or by chance would find small patches of vegetation pointing toward a hidden water source.

This guide includes sections about their alphabet along with the different words for actions, animals, the body, colors, directions, family and friends, house, money, nature and the environment, numbers, place names, plants, time, and shapes.