Cayas

Cayas was the name of an Indigenous chiefdom encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in the Arkansas River country. Its people lived along a river that the Spaniards called the River of Cayas, amid a landscape of wooded uplands and fertile bottomlands. The expedition passed through the region in 1541 while looking for food and a route through the interior. Farther downstream it spent the following winter at Autiamque.