Oñate, 1604, Crosses Arizona to the Colorado—A Remarkable Ancient Ruin
Discovered by Padre Kino, 1694—Padre Garces Sees the Grand Canyon and
Visits Oraibi, 1776—The Great Entrada of Padre Escalante across Green
River to Utah Lake, 1776—Death of Garces Ends the Entrada Period, 1781.
In the historical development of the Basin of the Colorado four, chief
epochs are apparent. The discovery of the river, as already outlined in
previous chapters, is the first; second, the entradas of the padres;
third, the wanderings of the trappers; and fourth, the expeditions of
the explorers. These epochs are replete with interesting and romantic
incidents, new discoveries; starvations; battles; massacres; lonely,
dangerous journeys, etc., which can only be touched upon in a volume of
the present size. Dr. Coues placed the diary of Garces, one of the
chief actors of this great four-act life-drama, in accessible shape,
and had not his lamented death interfered he would have put students
under further obligation to him.
Entrance to Acoma, N.M. Entrance to Acoma, N.M.
The town is on top of a mesa, and was a prominent point on the highway
from the Rio Grande to Zuñi.
Photograph by BEN WITTICK.
Preliminary to the entradas of the padres, Don Antonio de Espejo, in
1583, went from the Rio Grande to Moki and westward to a mountain,
probably one of the San Francisco group, but he did not see the
Colorado. Twenty-one years elapsed before a white man again ventured
into this region. In 1604, Don Juan de Oñate, the wealthy governor of
New Mexico, determined to cross from his headquarters at the village of
San Juan on the Rio Grande, by this route to the South Sea, and,
accompanied by thirty soldiers and two padres, he set forth, passing
west by way of the pueblo of Zuñi, and probably not seeing at that time
the celebrated Inscription Rock,[1] for, though his name is said to be
first of European marks, the date is 1606. From Zuñi he went to the
Moki towns, then five in number, and possibly somewhat south of the
present place. Beyond Moki ten leagues, they crossed a stream flowing
north-westerly, which was called Colorado from the colour of its
water,—the first use of the name so far traced. This was what we now
call the Little Colorado. They understood it to discharge into the
South Sea (Pacific), and probably Oñate took it for the very headwaters
of the Buena Guia which Alarçon had discovered over sixty years before.
As yet no white man had been north of Moki in the Basin of the
Colorado, and the only source of information concerning the far
northern region was the natives, who were not always understood,
however honestly they might try to convey a knowledge of the country.
[1] This is a quadrangular mass of sandstone about a mile long,
thirty-five miles east of Zuñi. On its base at the eastern end are a
number of native and European inscriptions, the oldest, of the
European dates according to Simpson, being 1606, recording a visit by
Oñate. The rock, or, more properly, mesa, is also called the Morro.
Chas. F. Lummis has also written on this subject.
Skirting the southern edge of the beautiful San Francisco Mountain
region, through the superb forest of pine trees, Oñate finally
descended from the Colorado Plateau to the headwaters of the Verde,
where he met a tribe called Cruzados, because they wore little crosses
from the hair of the forehead, a relic, no doubt, of the time when
Alarçon had so freely distributed these emblems among the tribes he
encountered on the Colorado, friends probably of these Cruzados. The
latter reported the sea twenty days distant by way of a small river
running into a greater, which flowed to the salt water. The small river
was Bill Williams Fork, and on striking it Oñate began to see the
remarkable pitahaya adorning the landscape with its tall, stately
columns; and all the strange lowland vegetation followed. The San
Andreas, as he called this stream, later named Santa Maria by Garces,
he followed down to the large river into which it emptied, the
Colorado, which he called the Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza, or River
of Good Hope, evidently deciding that it merited a more distinguished
title than had been awarded it at the supposed headwaters. He appears
to have well understood what river this was, and we wonder why he gave
it a new name when it had already received two. Sometimes in new lands
explorers like to have their own way. They went down the Colorado,
after a party had examined the river a little above the mouth of the
Bill Williams Fork, meeting with various bands of friendly natives,
among whom we recognise the Mohaves and the Cocopas. Not far below
where Oñate reached the Esperanza he entered the Great Colorado Valley
and soon crossed the highest point attained by Alarçon in 1340,
probably near the upper end of the valley. He now doubled Alarçon’s and
presently also Melchior Diaz’s paths, and arrived at the mouth of the
river on the 25th of January, 1605, the first white man in over sixty
years. A large harbour which struck his fancy was named in honour of
the saint’s day, Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo, for the sun
seldom went down without a Spaniard of those days thus propitiating a
saint. We are more prone to honour the devil in these matters. The Gila
they called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name never used again. So it
often happens with names bestowed by explorers. The ones they regard
most highly vanish, while some they apply thoughtlessly adhere forever.
Across the House Tops of Zuñi. Across the House Tops of Zuñi.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS.
All the tribes of this region, being familiar with the Californian
coast, described it in a way that caused Oñate to believe that the gulf
was the South Sea, extending indefinitely beyond the mouth of the
Colorado northwards, and thus the persistent error that Lower
California was an island received further confirmation. Without going
across to the sea beyond the mountains, which would have dispelled the
error, Oñate returned to the Rio Grande by the outward route, suffering
so greatly for food that the party were forced to eat some of their
horses, a source of relief often resorted to in future days in this
arid country. A few years after Oñate’s expedition Zalvidar (1618),
with Padre Jiminez and forty-seven soldiers, went out to Moki, and from
there fifteen leagues to the Rio de Buena Esperanza, but they evidently
encountered Marble Canyon, and soon returned.
Ruin called Casa Grande, Arizona. Ruin called Casa Grande, Arizona.
From a photograph by COSMOS MINDELEFF, U.S. Bu. Eth.
Another name closely linked with the early history of the Colorado is
that of Padre Eusibio Francisco Kino,[2] an Austrian by birth and a
member of the Jesuit order. This indefatigable enthusiast travelled
back and forth, time and again, over the whole of northern Sonora and
the southern half of Arizona, then comprised in Pimeria Alta, the upper
land of the Pimas, and Papagueria, the land of the Papagos. His base of
operations was a mission he established in Sonora; the mission of
Dolores, founded in 1687. For some thirty years Kino laboured in this
field with tireless energy, flinching before no danger or difficulty.
He was the first white man to see the extraordinary ruin called Casa
Grande, near the present town of Florence, and on the occasion of his
first visit he took advantage of the structure to say mass within its
thick adobe walls. This is probably the most remarkable ancient
building within the limits of the United States, For a long time it was
called the House of Montezuma, though, of course, Montezuma never heard
of it. A similar ruin, called Casas Grandes, exists in Sonora. The
construction is what is called cajon, that is, adobe clay rammed into a
box or frame, which is lifted for each successive course as the work
advances. In the dry air of that region such walls become extremely
hard, and will endure for ages if the foundations are not sapped.[3]
Kino paid a second visit to the ruin of Casa Grande in 1697, this time
accompanied by Captain Juan Mateo Mange, an officer detailed with his
command to escort the padres on their perilous journeys.
[2] The name is written Kühn, Kühne, Quino, and in several other ways.
Humboldt used Kühn, and either this or Kühne is probably the correct
form, but long usage gives preference to Kino.
[3] See _The North Americans of Yesterday_, by F. S. Dellenbaugh, p.
234; and for complete details see papers by Cosmos Mindeleff,
_Thirteenth An. Rep, Bu. Eth._ and _Fifteenth An. Rep. Bu, Eth.;_ also
Font’s description in Coues’s _Garces_, p. 93.
Padre Kino’s Map of 1701. Padre Kino’s Map of 1701.
The first map giving the head of the Gulf correctly.
From BANCROFT’S _History of Arizona and New Mexico_.
A Lateral Canyon of Escalante River. A Lateral Canyon of Escalante
River.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
The method of the authorities was to establish a military post, called
a presidio, at some convenient point, from which protection would be
extended to several missions. The soldiers in the field wore a sort of
buckskin armour, with a double-visored helmet and a leathern buckler on
the left arm. Kino was as often without as with the guardianship of
these warriors, and seems to have had very little trouble with the
natives. The Apaches, then and always, were the worst of all, In his
numerous entradas he explored the region of his labours pretty
thoroughly, reaching, in 1698, a hill from which he saw how the gulf
ended at the mouth of the Colorado; and the following year he was again
down the Gila, which he called Rio de los Apostoles, to the Colorado,
now blessed with a fourth name, the Rio de los Martires. “Buena Guia”
“del Tizon,” “Esperanza,” and “los Martires,” all in about a century
and a half, and still the great Dragon of Waters was not only untamed
hut unknown. Kino kept up his endeavours to inaugurate somewhere a
religious centre, but without success. The San Dionisio marked on his
map at the mouth of the Gila was only the name he gave a Yuma village
at that point, and was never anything more. On November 21, 1701, Kino
reached a point only one day’s journey above the sea, where he crossed
the river on a raft, but he made no attempt to go to the mouth. At
last, however, on March 7, 1702, he actually set foot on the barren
sands where the waters, gathered from a hundred mountain peaks of the
far interior, are hurled against the sea-tide, the first white visitor
since Oñate, ninety-eight years before. Visits of Europeans to this
region were then counted by centuries and half-centuries, yet on the
far Atlantic shore of the continent they were swarming in the cradle of
the giant that should ultimately rule from sea to sea, annihilating the
desert. But even the desert has its charms. One seems to inhale fresh
vitality from its unpeopled immensity. I never could understand why a
desert is not generally considered beautiful; the kind, at least, we
have in the South-west, with all the cacti, the yucca, and the other
flowering plants unfamiliar to European or Eastern eyes, and the lines
of coloured cliffs and the deep canyons. There is far more beauty and
variety of colour than in the summer meadow-stretches and hills of the
Atlantic States. So the good Padre Kino, after all, was perhaps to be
congratulated on having those thirty years, interesting years, before
the wilds could be made commonplace.
The Moki Town of Wolpi, Arizona. The Moki Town of Wolpi, Arizona.
700 feet above the valley.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
Arizona did not seem to yield kindly to the civilisers; indeed, it was
like the Colorado River, repellent and unbreakable. The padres crossed
it and recrossed it on the southwestern corner, but they made no
impression. After Kino’s death in 1711 there was a lull in the entradas
to the Colorado, though Ugarte, coming up along the eastern coast of
Lower California, sailed to the mouth of the river in July, 1721.
Twenty-four years later (1744) Padre Jacobo Sedelmair went down the
Gila from Casa Grande to the great bend, and from there cut across to
the Colorado at about the mouth of Bill Williams Fork, but his journey
was no more fruitful than those of his predecessors in the last two
centuries. It seems extraordinary in these days that men could traverse
a country, even so infrequently, during two whole centuries and yet
know almost nothing about it. Two years after Sedelmair touched the
Colorado, Fernando Consag, looking for mission sites, came up the gulf
to its mouth, and when he had sailed away there was another long
interval before the river was again visited by Europeans. This time it
was over a quarter of a century, but the activity then begun was far
greater than ever before, and the two padres who now became the
foremost characters in the drama that so slowly moved upon the mighty
and diversified stage of the South-west, were quite the equals in
tireless energy of the Jesuit Kino. These two padres were Garces and
Escalante, more closely associated with the history of the Basin of the
Colorado than any one who had gone before. Francisco Garces, as well as
Escalante, was of the Franciscan order, and this order, superseding the
Jesuit, was making settlements, 1769-70, at San Diego and Monterey, as
well as taking a prominent part in those already long established on
the Rio Grande. There was no overland connection between the California
missions and those of Sonora and the Rio Grande, and the desire to
explore routes for such communication was one of the incentives of both
Garces and Escalante, in their long entradas. But it seemed to be the
habit of those days, either never to seek information as to what had
previously been accomplished, or to forget it, for the expedition of
Oñate might as well never have been made so far as its effect on
succeeding travels was concerned. He had crossed Arizona by the very
best route, yet Escalante, 172 years afterward, goes searching for one
by way of Utah Lake! Coming from the west, the Moki Towns were ever the
objective point, for they were well known and offered a refuge in the
midst of the general desolation. Garces had his headquarters at the
mission of San Xavier del Bac, or Bac, as it was commonly called, nine
miles south of the present town of Tucson. Here Kino had begun a church
in 1699, and at a later period another better one was started near by.
This was finished in 1797 and to-day stands the finest monument in the
South-west of the epoch of the padres. It is a really beautiful
specimen of the Mexico-Spanish church architecture of that time. No
better testimony could there be of the indefatigable spiritual energy
of the padres than this artistic structure standing now amidst a few
adobe houses, and once completely abandoned to the elements. Such a
building should never be permitted to perish, and it well merits
government protection. Its striking contrast to Casa Grande, the
massive relic of an unknown time, standing but a few leagues distant,
will always render this region of exceptional interest to the artist,
the archaeologist, and the general traveller.
Church of San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson. Church of San Xavier del
Bac, near Tucson.
Drawing by F.S. DELLENBAUGH, after a photograph.
From Bac, under the protection of the presidio of Tubac, some thirty
miles farther south, later transferred (1776) to the present Tucson,
Garces carried on his work. He made five great entradas from the time
of his arrival in June, 1768. The first was in that same year, the
second in 1770, but in these he did not reach the Colorado, and we will
pass them by. In the third, 1771, he went down the Gila to the Colorado
and descended the latter stream along its banks perhaps to the mouth.
On the fourth, 1774, he went with Captain Anza to the Colorado and
farther on to the mission of San Gabriel in California, near Los
Angeles, and in his fifth, and most important one, 1775-76, he again
accompanied Captain Anza, who was bound for the present site of San
Francisco, there to establish a mission. Padre Font was Anza’s
chaplain, and with Garces’s aid later made a map of the country.[4] At
Yuma Garces left the Anza party, went down to the mouth of the
Colorado, and then up along the river to Mohave, and after another trip
out to San Gabriel, he started on the most important part of all his
journeys, from Mohave to the Moki Towns, the objective point of all
entradas eastward from the Colorado. The importance attached at that
time to the towns of the Moki probably seems absurd to the reader, but
it must not be forgotten that the Moki were cultivators of the soil and
always held a store of food-stuffs in reserve. They were also builders
of very comfortable houses, as I can testify from personal experience.
Thus they assumed a prominence, amidst the desolation of the early
centuries, of which the railway in the nineteenth speedily robbed them.
[4] Font says of Garces: “He seems just like an Indian himself... and
though the food of the Indians is as nasty and disgusting as their
dirty selves the padre eats it with great gusto.” Dr. Coues had
planned to publish a translation of Font’s important diary. See
_Garces_, by Elliot Coues, p. 172, Font meant his remark as praise.
Cocopa Woman Grinding Corn. Cocopa Woman Grinding Corn.
Photograph by DELANCY GILL.
Garces, like most of his kind, was an enthusiast on the subject of
saving the souls of the natives. “It made him sick at heart,” says
Coues, “to see so many of them going to hell for lack of the three
drops of water he would sprinkle over them if only they would let him
do it.” With this idea ever in mind he toiled up and down the lower
Colorado, and received assistance from a Yuma chief called Captain
Palma. Once when he came up the river to Yuma, where he had left Padre
Eisarc, the report the latter gave was so encouraging that Garces
exclaims: “I gave a thousand thanks to God to hear them sing psalms
divine that the padre had taught them.” He further declared that
Captain Palma would put to the blush for observing the forms of piety,
“many veteran Christians, by the reverence and humility with which he
assisted at the holy sacrifice.” But alas for the padre’s fond hopes!
The Yumas called the Colorado Javill or Hahweel according to Garces;
and he also says the name Colorado was given because, as the whole
country is coloured, its waters are tinged in the month of April, when
the snows are melting, but that they are not always red, which is
exactly the case. The name is also said to be a translation of the
Piman title “buqui aquimuti.”
Leaving Mohave June 4, 1776, Garces struck eastward across Arizona,
guided by some Wallapais, but with no white companion. These people had
told him about the distance to Moki and the nature of the intervening
region. Heading Diamond Creek[5] on his mule, Garces made for the
romantic retreat of the Havasupais in the canyon of Cataract Creek, a
tributary from the south of the Grand Canyon. He was the first white
man, so far as known, to visit this place, and in reaching it he passed
near the rim of the great gorge, though he did not then see it. This
was the region of the Aubrey cliffs and the place in all probability
where Cardenas approached the Grand Canyon, 236 years before. Garces
arrived among the Havasupai or Jabesua, as he called them, by following
a trail down their canyon that made his head swim, and was impassable
to his mule, which was taken in by another route. At one place a ladder
was even necessary to complete the 2000 feet of descent to the
settlement, where a clear creek suddenly breaks from the rocks, and,
rapid and blue, sweeps away down 2000 or more feet to the Colorado,
falling in its course at one point over a precipice in three cataracts
aggregating 250 feet, from which it takes its name. Here are about 400
acres of arable land along the creek, on which the natives raise corn,
beans, squashes, peaches, apricots, sunflowers, etc. There are now
about 200 of these people, and they are of Yuman stock. Garces was well
treated and rested here five days.
[5] This name, by the way, has no connection with the notorious
“Arizona” diamond swindle of more recent years. It bore this name in
Ives’s time and the swindle was much later—1872. The alleged diamond
field also was not in Arizona at all, but in north-western Colorado.
The Grand Canyon from Bright Angel Trail. The Grand Canyon from Bright
Angel Trail.
Painting by THOMAS MORAN.
Soon after leaving this retreat he “halted at the sight of the most
profound canones which ever onward continue, and within these flows the
Rio Colorado.”
“There is seen [he continues] a very great Sierra which in the distance
looks blue, and there runs from the southeast to the north-west a pass
open to the very base, as if the sierra were cut artificially to give
entrance to the Rio Colorado into these lands. I named this singular
pass Puerto de Bucareli,[6] and though to all appearances would not
seem to be great the difficulty of reaching thereunto, I considered
this to be impossible in consequence of the difficult canones which
intervened. From this position said pass bore east northeast.”
[6] After the viceroy.
The padre is standing in admiration before the long line of the Kaibab
seen as a great sierra from this position on the south-east, and as the
land on the south rises toward the rim it probably appeared to him as
if the sierra were really a continuation of the San Francisco Mountains
on his right, and was cut in twain by the great gorge of the river.
From his standpoint he looked up Marble Canyon, and all the directions
he mentions are exactly correct. They saw smokes on the north, which
his guides said were made by the Payuches (Pai Utes) living on the
other side. The Kaivavitz band of Pai Utes in summer occupy their lands
on the summit of the Kaibab, hunting deer and camping in the lovely
open glades surrounded by splendid forest. This same day his guides
pointed out some tracks of Yabipai Tejua, who go this way to see and
trade with their friends, “those who live, as already said, on the
other side of the Rio Colorado.” It was one of the intertribal
highways. Just where it crossed the canyon is hard to say. There were
several old trails, and one came down from the north, reaching the
river a few miles below the Little Colorado, but where it came out on
the south side I do not know. There was once another trail which came
from the north down the canyon of Kanab Creek and found a way across to
the Coconinos or Havasupai; at least Jacob Hamblin[7] told me he was so
informed by the Pai Utes. The “Hance” trail, I believe, was built on
the line of an old native one, and probably this was the one the
Yabipais were heading for.
[7] Jacob Hamblin, whom I knew very well, was the “Leather-stocking”
of Utah—a man who knew the Amerinds of Utah and northern Arizona
better than any one who ever lived.
The Moki Town of Mishongnuvi, Arizona. The Moki Town of Mishongnuvi,
Arizona.
The hill surmounted by the town lies itself on top of a mesa.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN.
Garces had a good understanding of the topography, for he says when he
reached the Rio Jaquesila de San Pedro, as he called the Little
Colorado, that it joined the main stream just above his Puerto de
Bucareli. Coues thought it probable that Cardenas on his way to the
Grand Canyon, followed from Moki the same trail Garces is now taking to
reach that place, and that therefore the first view Cardenas had of the
canyon was from near the same place as that of Garces—that is, he saw
the Puerto de Bucareli. This is hardly probable, as Garces was only
five days reaching Moki from here, and Cardenas travelled twenty from
Tusayan to the canyon. As I pointed out on a previous page, so far as
the data go, Cardenas reached the Grand Canyon opposite the east side
of the Shewits plateau.
Of the Little Colorado Garces said: “The bed of this river as far as
the confluence is a trough of solid rock, very profound, and wide about
a stone’s throw.” That this was an accurate statement the view on page
95 amply proves. Indeed, the accuracy of most of these early Spaniards,
as to topography, direction, etc., is extraordinary. As a rule where
they are apparently wrong it is ourselves who are mistaken, and if we
fully understand their meaning we find them to be correct. Garces found
his way down to the Little Colorado by means of a side canyon and got
out again on the other side in the same way. Finally, on July 2nd, he
arrived at the pueblo of Oraibi, his objective point, and when he and
his tired mule had climbed up on the mesa which bears the town, the
women and children lined the housetops to get a glimpse of the singular
stranger.
Spaniards were something of a novelty, though by no means unheard of,
just as even I was something of a novelty when I visited Oraibi one
hundred years after the Padre Garces, because the Oraibis never
encouraged white visitors.[8] The first missions were established among
the Moki in 1629, when Benavides was custodian of the Rio Grande
district, and included Zuñi and Moki in his field. Three padres were
then installed at Awatuwi, one of the towns, on the mesa east of what
is now called the “East” Mesa. Four were at work amongst the various
towns at the time of the Pueblo uprising in 1680, and as one began his
labours at Oraibi as early as 1650, a priest was not an unknown object
to the older people. All the missionaries having been killed in 1680,
and Awatuwi, where a fresh installation was made, having been
annihilated in 1700 by the Moki, for three-quarters of a century they
had seen few if any Spaniards. Therefore the women and children were
full of curiosity. Padre Escalante had been here from Zuñi the year
before, looking over the situation with a view to bringing all the Moki
once more within the fold. At that time Escalante also tried to go on
to what he called the Rio de los Cosninos, the Colorado, but he was
unable to accomplish his purpose. Had he once had a view of the Grand
Canyon it would undoubtedly have saved him a good many miles of weary
travel in his northern entrada of this same year that Garces reached
Oraibi.
[8] A year or two after my visit, James Stevenson, of the Bureau of
Ethnology, was driven away from Oraibi. Thomas Keam and he then went
there with a force of Navajos and compelled the surrender of the
chiefs who had been most obnoxious. They took them to Ream’s Canyon
and confined them on bread and water till they apologised.
The Canyon of the Little Colorado. The Canyon of the Little Colorado.
Photograph by C. BARTHELMESS.
Garces was not permitted to enter the house where his Yabipai guide
intended to stop, and he therefore made his way to a corner formed by a
jutting wall, and there unsaddled his faithful mule, which the Yabipai
took to a sheep corral. The padre remained in his corner, gathering a
few scattered corn-stalks from the street, with which he made a fire
and cooked a little atole. All day long the people came in succession
to stare at him. I can testify to the sullen unfriendliness of the
Oraibi, and I have seen few places I have left with greater pleasure
than that I felt when, in 1885, I rode away from this town. Garces was
not able to make a favourable impression, and after, considering the
feasibility of going on to Zuñi, and deciding against it, he thought he
would visit the other towns with a hope of being better received, but a
few yells from some herders sent him back to his Yabipai guide and
several friendly Zuñis at Oraibi, where he occupied his corner again.
In the morning he perceived a multitude approaching, some bedecked with
paint and feathers, and when four of these came forward and ordered him
to leave he held up his crucifix and assured them of his desire to do
good to them. They made wry faces and cried “No, no,” so that he called
for his mule and departed, smiling upon them as he went. He returned by
the same route. It was the 4th of July when Garces was expelled by the
Oraibis, a declaration of independence on their part which they have
maintained down to the present day. That other Declaration of
Independence was made on this same day on the far Atlantic coast. The
Colonies were engaged in their battle for freedom, but no sound of that
strife then reached New Mexico, yet its portent was great for that
region where, three-quarters of a century later, the flag of the Great
Republic should float triumphant over all, Garces reached the Colorado
once more on July 25th, his arduous journey absolutely fruitless so far
as missionary work was concerned. He arrived at his mission of Bac
September 17, 1776.
A Court in Wolpi, Arizona. A Court in Wolpi, Arizona.
Drawing by F.S. DELLENBAUGH.
On July 29, 1776, another even greater entrada was begun at Santa Fé by
the Fray Padre Francisco Silvestre Velez Escalante,[9] in his search
for a route to Monterey, unaware that Garces had just traversed, next
to that of Oñate, the most practicable short route to be found. Garces
had written to Escalante, ministro doctrinero of Zuñi, a letter from
Oraibi, but as the ministro had already departed for Santa Fé, leaving
Fray Mariano Rosate in charge at Zuñi, the letter probably did not
reach him till his return. The northern country, notwithstanding
several small entradas and the considerable one of Juan Maria Ribera in
1761, who went as far as Gunnison River, was still a terra incognita,
and the distance to the Pacific was also an uncertain quantity.
Escalante believed a better road existed to Monterey by way of the
north than by the middle route, and a further incentive to journey that
way was probably the rumours of large towns in that direction, the same
will-o’-the-wisp the Spaniards for nearly three centuries had been
vainly pursuing. The authorities had urged two expeditions to Alta
California, to establish communication; Garces and Captain Anza had
carried out one, and now Escalante was to execute the other.
[9] H. H. Bancroft gives a map of the route as he understands it,
_History of the Pacific States_, p. 35, vol. xxv., also a condensation
of the diary. Philip Harry gives a condensation in Simpson’s _Report_,
Appendix R., p. 489. Some river names have been shifted since Harry
wrote. What we call the Grand, upper part, was then the Blue.
A Zuñi Home. A Zuñi Home.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
The Governors of Zuñi. The Governors of Zuñi.
Shows well the genreal type of the Puebloans of the Basin of the
Colorado.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS.
Upper Waters of Rio Virgin. Upper Waters of Rio Virgin.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
Besides the ministro Escalante, there were in the party eight persons,
Padre Francisco Dominguez, Juan Pedro Cisneros, alcalde of Zuñi,
Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, capitain miliciano of Sante Fé, Don Juan
Lain, and four other soldiers. Lain had been with Ribera and was
therefore official guide. They went from Sante Fé by way of Abiquiu and
the Chama River to the San Juan about where it first meets the north
line of New Mexico, and thence across the several tributaries to the
head of the Dolores River, which they descended for eleven days. I am
at a loss to exactly follow the route, not having been able to consult
either the copy or the original of Escalante’s diary. The party made
its way across Grand River, the Book Plateau, White River, and finally
to the Green, called the San Buenaventura, which was forded, apparently
near the foot of Split-Mountain Canyon. Here they killed one of the
bisons which were numerous in the valley. Following the course of the
river down some ten leagues, they went up the Uinta and finally crossed
the Wasatch, coming down the western side evidently by way of what is
now known as Spanish Fork, to Utah Lake, then called by the natives
Timpanogos. Here they heard of a greater lake to the north, but instead
of seeking it they turned their course south-westerly in what they
considered the direction of Monterey through the Sevier River Valley,
the Sevier being called the Santa Isabel, and kept down along the
western edge of the High Plateaus. It being by this time the 7th of
October, Escalante concludes that it will be impossible to reach
Monterey before winter sets in and persuades his companions that the
best thing to do is to strike for the Moki towns. They cast lots to
determine this, and the decision is for Moki. Evidently he thought this
would be an easy road. When he was at Moki the year before, had he not
failed to go to the Colorado he would have better understood the nature
of the undertaking he now set for his expedition.
Pai Ute Girls, Southern Utah, Carrying Water. Pai Ute Girls, Southern
Utah, Carrying Water.
The jugs are wicker made tight with pitch.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Going on southward past what is now Parowan, they came to the
headwaters of a branch of the Virgen, in Cedar Valley, and this they
followed down to the main stream which they left flowing
south-westerly. The place where they turned from it was probably about
at Toquerville.[10] They were now trying to make their general course
south-east. Could I but see the original I certainly could identify the
route from here on, having been over the region so often. As Escalante
was obtaining what information he could from the natives, it seems to
me that his first course “south-east” was to Pipe Spring along the foot
of the Vermilion Cliffs, then his “north-east” was up toward Kanab and
through Nine-Mile Valley to the head of the Kaibab, where a trail led
him over to House Rock Valley, on his “south-east” tack, skirting the
Vermilion Cliffs again. But they lost it and struck the river at Marble
Canyon, through a misunderstanding of the course of the trail, which
bore easterly and then northerly around the base of the cliffs to what
is now Lee’s Ferry, where there was an ancient crossing. Another trail
goes (or did go) across the north end of the Paria Plateau and divides,
one branch coming down the high cliffs about three miles up the Paria
from the mouth, by a dizzy and zig-zag path, and the other keeping on
to the south-east and striking the river at the very point for which
Escalante was evidently now searching. Perhaps the Pai Utes had told
him of this trail as well as the one he tried to follow, which would
have taken him to the Lee’s Ferry crossing about thirty-five miles
below. He seems to have reached the brink of Marble Canyon, perhaps
half-way between the Paria and the Little Colorado,[11] and followed
up-stream first north and then (beyond Paria) north-east, hunting for a
ford. Twice he succeeded in descending to the water, but both times was
unable to cross. They had now become so reduced in food that they were
obliged to eat some of their horses. With great difficulty they climbed
over the cliffs, and at the end of twelve days from their first arrival
at the river they found the ford, which ever since has been called El
Vado de los Padres. This was the 8th of November, 1776. The entrance to
the river from the west, the side of their approach, is through a small
canyon in the homogeneous sandstone, no more than ten feet wide. The
course is then about half a mile down the middle of the river over a
long bar or shoal to the opposite side, where the exit is made upon a
rocky slope. It is a most difficult ford. The trail through the water
at the low stage, when, only, fording is possible, is marked by piles
of large stones. There is no ford at the Lee’s Ferry crossing.
[10] From here to the California mission of San Gabriel would hardly
have been as difficult as the route taken, excepting perhaps the
matter of water, and little if any further than the distance to Santa
Fé, but the Pai Utes could give him no information of the distance to
the sea.
[11] There was an old crossing near there, also.
Ashtishkel, a Navajo Chief. Ashtishkel, a Navajo Chief.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
From this Crossing-of-the-Fathers, just above where the river enters
Arizona, to the Moki Towns Escalante had a plain trail, and a much
simpler topography, and had no difficulty in arriving there. The
remainder of his road, from Moki to Zuñi and around to Santa Fé, was
one he had travelled before, and the party soon completed the circuit
of more than 1500 miles mainly through unknown country, one of the most
remarkable explorations ever carried out in the West. It is sometimes
stated that Escalante crossed the Grand Canyon, but, as is perfectly
plain from the data, he did not; in fact, he could not have done it
with horses.
Garces was not yet finished with his labours on the lower Colorado, and
we will return to him. The authorities had decided to establish there
two nondescript settlements, a sort of cross between mission, pueblo,
and presidio. Captain Palma, the Yuma chief, whose devotions and piety
had so delighted the good Father, was eager to have missions started,
and constantly importuned the government to grant them. Garces,
therefore, went to Yuma again in 1779 to prepare the way, and in 1780
two of the hybrid affairs were inaugurated, one at what is now Fort
Yuma, called Puerto de la Purisima Concepcion, after the little canyon
hard by, so named by Garces previously, a canyon fifty feet deep and a
thousand feet long; the other, about eight miles down, called San Pedro
y San Pablo de Bicuner. There were four padres; Garces and Barraneche
at the upper station, and Diaz and Moreno at the lower. Each place had
eight or ten soldiers, a few colonists, and a few labourers. The
Spaniards were obliged to appropriate some of the best lands to till
for the support of the missions, and this, together with the general
poverty of the establishments when he had expected something fine,
disgusted Palma and exasperated him and the other Yumas. In June, 1781,
Captain Moncada, lieutenant-governor of Lower California, arrived with
soldiers and recruits en route for California settlements, and encamped
opposite Yuma. After some of these people had been sent forward or back
as the plans demanded, Moncada remained at the camp with a few of his
soldiers. No one suspected the tornado which was brewing. All the life
of the camp, of the missions, and of the Yumas went on with the same
apparent smoothness, but it was only a delusion suddenly and horribly
dispelled on the fateful 17th of July. Without a sign preliminary to
the execution of their wrath, Captain Palma and all his band threw
piety to the winds, and annihilated with clubs Moncada’s camp and most
of the men in the two missions. Garces and his assistant, Barraneche,
were at first spared. Even the conscience of Talma hesitated to murder
the good and amiable Garces, who had never been to him and his people
anything but a kind and generous friend, but the rabble declared these
two were the worst of all, and under this pressure Palma yielded. It
was the last terrible scene of this act in the life-drama we are
following. The lights were out, the curtain down. Military expeditions
were sent to avenge the massacre, but they might as well have chased
the stars. The missions on the Colorado were ended. Never again was an
attempt made to found one. The desert relapsed into its former complete
subjection to the native tribes, and the indifferent Colorado swept on
to the conflict with the sea-waves as if neither white man nor Amerind
had ever touched its waters. Nearly half a century passed before the
face of a white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all
the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely
wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a
broom.