Note 8 — HOW THE BRAZOS RIVER GOT ITS NAME

The following account from Kennedy’s History of Texas8 has been contributed by Mr. E. G. Little John. As I have suggested, it may, after all, be the original of the better known version quoted from Mrs. Davis. The endless confusion among the earlier Spanish regarding the nomenclature of rivers is fully set forth in the extract from Miss Buckley’s article on the Aguayo Expedition already quoted. Thrall makes the matter a little too simple perhaps when he says: “The Spaniards gave the name of Brazos de Dios to the Colorado, and Rio Colorado to the Brazos, but blundering geographers afterwards interchanged their names.”9 A French map dated 1733, in the University of Texas archives, has the Brazos River marked the “Therese” and the San Marcos the “San Markos or Colorado.” Mr. Littlejohn’s “Indian legend” of a flood, which follows this legend, seems largely based on the early Spanish confusion of the Brazos and the Colorado.