Iriirakiicuhat

Iriirakiicuhat is the name recorded for the Cimarron River, a tributary of the Arkansas that crosses the southern Great Plains. The river rises on Johnson Mesa in northeastern New Mexico, crosses the corner of southeastern Colorado into Kansas, and returns to Oklahoma before joining the Arkansas west of Tulsa. Through the dry western plains of Kansas its course ran through an area travellers called the Cimarron Desert.

The Osage claimed most of the land west of the river's confluence with the Arkansas. Coronado's Spanish expedition is apparently the first to have seen the river, in 1541. After Mexico won independence in 1821, William Becknell opened the Santa Fe Trail, and its Cimarron Cutoff followed the river through the desert; Lower Cimarron Spring on the bank became an important watering and camping place. In 1831 Comanches killed the trapper Jedediah Smith on the trail near the river.