[1] In 1541 the Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his army journeyed east from the Rio Grande Valley in search of a rich land called Quivira.
[1] Coronado and his army found a Querecho settlement of about 200 houses on the Llano Estacado, of Staked Plains, of the Texas Panhandle and adjacent New Mexico.
According to members of Coronado’s expedition: [The Querechos lived] in tents made of the tanned skins of the cows (bison).
They travel like the Arabs, with their tents and troops of dogs loaded with poles... these people eat raw flesh and drink blood.
[2]In 1565, Francisco de Ibarra met a bison-hunting people he called Querechos near Casas Grandes, Mexico, hundreds of miles from where Coronado had visited them.
The Indians told the Spaniards that the bison herds were two days to the east and were "as numerous as grass in the fields.
"[4] In 1583, the explorer Antonio de Espejo met Querechos in the mountains near Acoma who traded salt, game, and deerskins to the townspeople in exchange for cotton blankets.
By the time of Coronado, it appears that the Apache settled across a wide area of the Great Plains extending north from the Llano Estacado to Nebraska.