THE NAME CAPACHEQUI

The name Capachequi comes to modern readers mainly through the Spanish accounts of the expedition.

The chroniclers recorded Native places using Spanish spellings of names they heard.

That creates a problem for modern archaeologists.

A sixteenth-century Spanish writer was recording an Indigenous name through another language, another alphabet, and another understanding of geography.

The spelling could vary.

The pronunciation could be distorted.

And a Native political community could change its location or political importance over time.