diff --git a/coremltools/converters/xgboost/_tree_ensemble.py b/coremltools/converters/xgboost/_tree_ensemble.py
index c29b22e6d..801f5b594 100644
--- a/coremltools/converters/xgboost/_tree_ensemble.py
+++ b/coremltools/converters/xgboost/_tree_ensemble.py
@@ -39,7 +39,10 @@ def recurse_json(
     if "leaf" not in xgb_tree_json:
         branch_mode = "BranchOnValueLessThan"
         split_name = xgb_tree_json["split"]
-        feature_index = split_name if not feature_map else feature_map[split_name]
+        if split_name in feature_map:
+            feature_index = feature_map[split_name]
+        else:
+            feature_index = int(split_name)
 
         # xgboost internally uses float32, but the parsing from json pulls it out
         # as a 64bit double.  To trigger the internal float32 detection in the
@@ -157,7 +160,6 @@ def convert_tree_ensemble(
     import json
     import os
 
-    feature_map = None
     if isinstance(
         model, (_xgboost.core.Booster, _xgboost.XGBRegressor, _xgboost.XGBClassifier)
     ):
@@ -202,15 +204,13 @@ def convert_tree_ensemble(
             raise ValueError(
                 "The XGBoost model does not have feature names. They must be provided in convert method."
             )
-            feature_names = model.feature_names
+        # Use user given feature names if they exist
         if feature_names is None:
             feature_names = model.feature_names
-
+        feature_map = {f: i for i, f in enumerate(feature_names)}
+        
         xgb_model_str = model.get_dump(with_stats=True, dump_format="json")
 
-        if model.feature_names:
-            feature_map = {f: i for i, f in enumerate(model.feature_names)}
-
     # Path on the file system where the XGboost model exists.
     elif isinstance(model, str):
         if not os.path.exists(model):
diff --git a/coremltools/test/xgboost_tests/test_boosted_trees_regression.py b/coremltools/test/xgboost_tests/test_boosted_trees_regression.py
index 7e6c7c620..6c4498a05 100644
--- a/coremltools/test/xgboost_tests/test_boosted_trees_regression.py
+++ b/coremltools/test/xgboost_tests/test_boosted_trees_regression.py
@@ -208,3 +208,18 @@ def test_conversion_bad_inputs(self):
         with self.assertRaises(TypeError):
             model = OneHotEncoder()
             spec = xgb_converter.convert(model, "data", "out")
+
+    def test_conversion_model_without_feature_names(self):
+        # Train model without feature names
+        dtrain = xgboost.DMatrix(
+            self.scikit_data.data,
+            label=self.scikit_data.target
+        )
+        model = xgboost.train({}, dtrain, 1)
+
+        spec = xgb_converter.convert(model, feature_names=self.feature_names)
+
+        self.assertEqual(
+            sorted(self.feature_names),
+            sorted(map(lambda x: x.name, spec.description.input))
+        )