The last best word on the name Navasota, Nave soto, I MEAN NABASOTO!

We’ve considered several possible translations of the word Navasota. Native American, French, Castilian, and blends of each, with amazingly applicable meanings. My favorite is the idea that the word goes back to ancient times before the Yuman culture migrated into Mexico from south Texas and became the Aztecs. Their word for prickly pear was NAVA. Prickly pears were one of the main sources for food and dyes for Indians of the southwest. Later it was the Yoeme speaking peoples who gave the name to the tribe we know as the "Navajos," meaning “Prickly Pear village” in Yoeme. To the Jumano Indians, who ranges over much of south and southwest Texas, and who made pottery called sote to keep their foodstuffs in, Nava sote was cactus pots. Sort of a native way to say “horn of plenty.” It was more than that. It was the very essence of their existence.

We have discovered that as different groups passed through, it is possible that they heard a similar word to their own language and adapted it. The Castilian speaking nobles who led the Conquistadors would have heard “Navas Otro” meaning other valley (as in the other arm of the Brazos). La Salle and his men might have heard, and this is probably a stretch, Novas Ote, which would combine Algonquin with French to make “new path.” We have seen that the French observed a tribe called the Nabedache, or “Nabe dechet,” trashy wastrels, to them, a reflection that this tribe was seemingly more impoverished and primitive than other Caddoan tribes. But this name was probably a perversion of Na Bedias, the local tribe whose name meant something like People of Brushwood.

And then there is plain old Spanish, and there is a reason why I have saved it for last. It is simple, but could create such a story that I hesitate. Yet it too could make perfect sense, and adds to the amazing series of similar sounding words that all relate to our history, but mean different things.

The Spanish version would been Nave Soto; (naba soto) and this is getting near the spelling you see on some old references to Navasota, when it was written by anglos as “Navisoto”.. meaning Ship Grove or Ship [made of] Brush. We’re getting warm.

Related to Latin, the word Nave has everything to do with Navigation. That certainly fits. Soto means grove, or more precisely a thicket of small trees, shrubs or bushes. That too perfectly fits the banks of the Navasota river. In the same way that “wood” can mean forest, or the material we make lumber out of. At first glance, no one would understand the relationship between ships, or shipping and a grove. Unless, once again you look at the local flora. If you were someone like, say Cabeza de Vaca, and you were traversing the Texas plains, and you saw a valuable resource, like the most favorite wood used to build ships. Live Oaks. Many groves of them, at the confluence of the Brazos with the NAVE SOTO. You would make note of that, beyond the coast, and present day Brazoria County, the closest large stand of mammoth live oaks to Galveston Island, and the southeast Texas coast, since later on you or someone might need to know that. Right there on your handmade map that you made for the Spanish governor, you would write, Nave Soto, Ships [out of these] Groves, just float the logs down the river to the shipyards… never thinking that they might name the river the same thing...

An even more interesting and credible possibility is at this Navasota fork of the Brazos River is where the “Nabedache” or Bedias Indians of Grimes County had canoes or dugouts stashed, which they used to traverse the rivers in their trade network. Canoes might have been found hidden in a grove of shrubs, or brushwood. Naves sotos; ships [in the ] bushes. Now here is where Spanish speakers will get into the fray. If this is true, correctly constructed it should be Soto del naviero, grove of shipping, or Soto del naves, grove of ships. The noun always comes first. But if we see it as a place to hide a vessel, it works: Nave Soto, Ship [in the] Brush. SHIP GROVED. It’s a shaky stretch, and yet this is a very appropriate idea and more importantly, the word SOTO, grove or brush in Spanish, seems to be a translation with the meaning of the Bedias name: Brushwood.

When the Spanish met them, and tried to ascertain their name, the Bedias said “Na Bedias,” meaning people [of] brushwood. Perhaps the Spanish, having seen their small ships, stored by the natives in trees in case of flooding, thought instantly of them and remembered them as “Nave Soto,” ships groved or “treed.” It is also possible that the Na Bedias made their boats out of some kind of woven material that floated, like cane. If asked their name, they might have pointed to these crafts and said Na Bedias! Brushwood! There like those boats! If so, the Spanish would have called them something like brush boats, or in Spanish, reversed as Naves Sotos. Anyway, when we get to two totally unrelated cultures, calling the same thing by words that sound alike and have similar meaning, we are getting into actual cognates and the loan word category which is very promising as a solution. Not understanding this Caddoan name, Na Bedias, the Spaniards heard Nabe dias, but since this made absolutely no sense to them, they fixed it into something that did.

Nave Soto.

Na Bedias > Fr. Nabedache & Sp. Nave Soto> Tx. Navisoto = Navasota.
People of Brushwood, brushwoodboats, home name, with no meaning

So take your pick! Put a fork in this, I think we are done.

Part II Nava de Soto? NABASOTO!

First of all, we have to ditch the “De Soto” theories. You see, we Anglos have forced an improper name structure on many of the European men in our history. A Spanish man with the name Jose Sanchez de Teruel would not refer to himself as “De Teruel. This is merely the name of his hometown. When we remember “La Salle,” we make the same mistake. If “De Soto” had crossed the Navasota and wanted to put his brand on it, it would be called Hernando, or according to the theory, something like Navi Hernando. The same kinds of misguided assumptions have been made trying to interpret other town names, like Sarasota. But ironically, explorers like Rene Robert Cavalier (Sieur de La Salle) may have had a great deal to do with the name of the place we call home. As it turned out, men we know as “de Leon” and “de La Salle” did cross the Navasota, and their story is worth recounting, as somewhere in their saga I believe, may be the origin of the name.


In 1685 Rene Robert Cavalier Sieur de La Salle stumbled into a deadly mutiny described in an earlier blog. Over seventy years ago historians suggested that according to the accounts of his survivors, La Salle must have been killed somewhere in the southern end of the Navasota Valley. The Daughters of the American Revolution commissioned and erected a bronze statue of La Salle in Navasota during the Texas Centennial in 1936. Since then, Navasota has been associated with the ill-fated Frenchman. Others have since insisted that the event took place somewhere else.

But the French government is satisfied with our claim, and in much the same spirit as giving the Statue of Liberty, they sent a bust of La Salle to us as a token of their esteem. Nana- nana, poo- poo. That’s probably Cherokee for “we have it and you don’t.” If, in some great historic travesty, we were not the final resting place of Robert Cavalier, we are certainly the only place in the world with two statues depicting this world famous explorer. So there.

Part I Navasota? Pretty Sounding Name... NABASOTO? but what does it mean?

Dear Blogreader: This is a lengthy and somewhat untested string of semi-academic wild goose chases that research many possible ways to translate the word Navasota in about five languages. If you are determined to read all of the study, and I encourage you to, search the word BEDIAS at the top right corner of the blog and it will bring up all FIVE, or is it six? of the articles about this elusive word.

Navasota is the name of a significant river in central Texas, and also the frontier town built at its convergence with the mighty Brazos. Navasota, Texas as we know it was actually born in 1854 when the railroad began to deliver the mail instead of the river steamboats, and established a United States Post Office, removing the original Post Office on the east side of the Navasota River inland to a site near the crossing of the new tracks and the La Bahia trail, where it converged with an old Indian trail known to locals as the Coushatti Trace. Formerly known as the tiny crossroads village of Nolanville, after a Judge Nolan who presided here, in much the same fashion as the legendary Judge Roy bean, the new townsite was laid out by the Railroad and named Navasota, after the nearby river, and the river front post office there, soon to be relocated. This was only after the nearby town of Washington on the Brazos had turned down the option of embracing the railroad and the progress it might bring. But that is another story. It might be worthy of note however that it was the short-sighted vision of others that helped Navasota become one of the most important shipping and warehousing locations in early Texas, as its steamboat dependent neighbor across the river became a footnote in Texas history. But even before there was a town by that name, there had been a Navasota County, a label which was abandoned when Brazos County was formed. Strange that today we know so little about the meaning of this ancient Texas name.

Navasota. It has a poetic sound to it. In earlier times it might be written variously as Navasota, Navisot, Navisota or Navisoto. I always assumed it was some sort of Spanish name which we could not decipher. I was disappointed when a Mexican relative assured me it meant nothing particular in her language. I had read claims by various historians that it was an Indian word, or perhaps the conjunction of Navidad with De Soto, suggesting that the explorer by that name had crossed this river on Christmas, or his birthday, or something like that. You may have read the silly legends about the name arising from chickens that “never sat,” or the illiterate Texican seeking his missing bride, who “nevah sawed her.” One of my first inclinations that one might eventually figure this riddle out was when, years ago I discovered a Cherokee cognate, “navi - sudi,” which means local fishing. This was intriguing but problematic. The Cherokees did not migrate into Texas until the nineteenth century, and there were no known language groups known here similar to theirs.

So none of this was very satisfactory. In the years I have lived here in the Navasota area, I have matched the word with hundreds of possible translations in dozens of languages, determined to crack this mystery. I have found some interesting leads, many of which still point to Native American languages. But there are even more fascinating translations possible. So now you might find my discoveries useful as you lie awake at night pondering the imponderable.

Part II tomorrow!