Canyon
The Spanish Conquistadores. Few romances are more fascinating than the
history of the early exploitations of this continent by the Spanish
conquistadores. Cortes, Pizarro, Guzman, Narvaez, Coronado are names to
conjure with. The wonderful successes of Cortes naturally excited the
jealous envy and cupidity of his compeers. In his earlier experiences,
Cortes had aroused the anger of Velasquez, Governor of Cuba. Cortes, in one
of his many acts of gallantry, had betrayed the sister of Velasquez's
mistress. When Velasquez learned the facts, to peremptorily commanded
Cortes, who was his subordinate, to marry the unhappy girl. Refusals and
imprisonments, threats and anger were the natural consequences, and, while
Cortes did ultimately marry her, the enmity thus engendered bore bitter
fruit for the husband.
Breach between Cortes and Velasquez. When Cortes made his effective
conquests on the mainland and sought to supplant Velasquez, the breach
between the two men considerably widened. Both sought, with embassies, the
ear of the King of Spain, Charles V, and while the future conqueror made a
deep impression with his reports of conquests to come and treasures already
in hand, the Governor's friends were not slow to act. Meanwhile, Cortes had
hit upon the bold plan of destroying his ships, and thus compelling his men
to march to the subjugation of Mexico. Velasquez was about to dispatch
Panfilo de Narvaez with a commission as captain-general to arrest him, and
send him in chains to Cuba. The king, however, would not permit this, and
Narvaez was sent forth charged to be friendly to Cortes. But this was not
to be. Events prevented, and Narvaez finally decided to place Cortes and
his whole army under arrest. This was a great undertaking, and required
skilful generalship, as well as boldness and skill in execution. Though a
gallant warrior, Narvaez was not equal to the task he had set himself, and
Cortes, having learned what was before him, turned the tables upon Narvaez
and his force by becoming the arrestor instead of the arrested. It requires
no great knowledge of human nature to picture the fierce anger of Narvaez
and his men. When Cortes eventually released them, it was on condition that
he be left alone, and that Narvaez return to Spain. The defeated man, with
anger burning his jealous heart to a white heat, did return, and
immediately demanded of the king some mission that should allow him to
remove the disgrace from his name. To get rid of him, the king sent him to
the conquest of what is now Florida.
Expedition to Florida. It was a brave expedition that set forth on a bright
day in June, 1527. Five ships and six hundred men made quite a showing, yet
the Atlantic Ocean, aided by storms and winds, flouted and routed them, so
that it was April of the following year before the main part of the
expedition landed at Tampa Bay. Of the total destruction of the party, save
Cabeza de Vaca and three or four others, all readers are fairly familiar,
as they are likewise of De Vaca's wonderful eight years' journey across the
continent.
Arrival at San Miguel. I have thus rapidly traced these events in the early
history of the exploration of this continent, for it was the wanderings of
Cabeza de Vaca and his final arrival at San Miguel in New Galicia that
brought the Ensign Tovar into Arizona, and led to the discovery of the
Grand Canyon.
Preliminary Reconnaissance. The Viceroy of New Spain at that time was
Antonio de Mendoza, a wise, loyal and farseeing man. He was anxious to
checkmate Cortes, and to show that others besides the great, though
treacherous conqueror, could make discoveries of new lands, where gold was
abundant, and where colonies could be established. Yet he would not be
rash. Before sending out a large expedition to conquer the cities and
fertile land Cabeza de Vaca had described, it would be wise and cautious to
send a cool-headed man, one who was prepared for any hardship, one who had
no lust for gold in his own soul, yet who could be relied upon to bring
back a straight and true story to the viceroy as to whatever he might
discover concerning De Vaca's stories. He should be accompanied by Stephen,
the negro, who was one of De Vaca's companions; and thus he would be
accurately guided to the places that had been described. The man chosen for
this important reconnaissance was a devoted Franciscan, Fray Marcos, to
whom I have devoted the next chapter of this book. Marcos went, saw,
returned and reported, and upon his report the expedition of Coronado was
equipped and fitted out.
Coronado's Army. The fervor with which the Spanish gallants joined
Coronado's army of exploration is realized when one remembers that three
hundred Spaniards as well as eight hundred Indians were gathered together
in a few days. Coronado was a Spanish grandee, traveling at the time of De
Vaca's arrival as a royal official visitor. In the words of Castaneda he
was "a gentleman from Salamanca, who had married a lady in the City of
Mexico, the daughter of Alonso de Estrada, the treasurer and at one time
governor of Mexico, and the son (most people said) of his Catholic Majesty
Don Ferdinand, and many state it as certain." And the same historian later
on continues, in his simple and naive way, to tell us about Tovar and many
others: "When the Viceroy, Don Antonio de Mendoza, saw what a noble company
had come together, and the spirit and good will with which they had all
presented themselves, knowing the worth of these men, he would have liked
very well to make every one of them captain of an army; but as the whole
number was small he could not do as he would have liked, and so he
appointed the captains and officers because it seemed to him that if they
were appointed by him, as he was so well obeyed and beloved, nobody, would
find fault with his arrangements. After everybody had heard who the general
was (Coronado), he made Don Pedro de Tovar ensign general, a young
gentleman who was the son of Don Fernando de Tovar, the guardian and high
steward of the Queen Dona Juana, our demented mistress--may she be in
glory."
A Brilliant and Gallant Company. After the naming of their officers,
Castaneda regrets that he has "forgotten the names of many good fellows.
It would be well if I could name some of them, so that it might be clearly
seen what cause I had for saying that they had on this expedition the most
brilliant company ever collected in the Indies to go in search of new
lands. But they were unfortunate in having a captain who left in New Spain
estates and a pretty wife, a noble and excellent lady, which were not the
least causes for what was to happen."
First Disappointment. Poor Coronado! The reader is thus prepared to throw
upon him the blame because similar treasures to those found by Cortes in
the land of Montezuma were not found in Arizona and New Mexico. In spite of
his having so many fine gentlemen in his official family, Coronado's
disappointments and disillusionments began early. As he reached the region
where the wilderness began--just past the Pima country--he felt
downhearted, "for, although the reports were very fine about what was
ahead, there was nobody who had seen it except the Indians who went with
the negro, and these had already been caught in some lies."
Meeting with Indians. When the expedition first came in contact with the
Indians of the desert region, the gallant members of the party must have
been a little scared, for, according to Castaneda: "Some Indians... during
the night... in a safe place yelled so that, although the men were ready
for anything, some were so excited that they put their saddles on hind-side
before; but these were the new fellows. When the veterans had mounted and
ridden round the camp, the Indians had fled."
Coronado Reaches Zuni. Coronado finally reached Cibola--the mythical--now
known to be Zuni, in New Mexico. Here he was not only disappointed because
he did not find the great treasure so long anticipated, but he was wounded.
Getting into converse with him, the Indians told him of the people who
lived round about, and among others, of those who dwelt in the province of
Tusayan. And here is what Castaneda tells us about the discovery by
Europeans of those whom we now know as the Hopi.
Castaneda's Account of their Experiences in the Canyon. "The General had
sent Don Pedro de Tovar to these villages with seventeen horsemen, and
three or four foot soldiers..Juan de Padilla, a Franciscan friar, who had
been a fighting man in his youth, went with them. When they reached the
region, they entered the country so quietly that nobody observed them,
because there were no settlements or farms between one village and another
and the people do not leave the villages except to go to their farms,
especially at this time, when they had heard that Cibola had been captured
by very fierce people, who traveled on animals who ate people. This
information was generally believed by those who had never seen horses,
although it was so strange as to cause much wonder. Our men arrived after
nightfall and were able to conceal themselves under the edge of the
village, where they heard the natives talking in their houses. But in the
morning they were discovered, and drew up in regular order, while the
natives went out to meet them, with bows and shields, and wooden clubs,
drawn up in lines without any confusion. The interpreter was given a chance
to speak to them and to give them one warning, for they were very
intelligent people, but nevertheless they drew lines and insisted that our
men should not go across these lines toward their village. While they were
talking some men acted as if they would cross the lines, and one of the
natives lost control of himself and struck a horse a blow on the check of
the bridle with his club. Friar Juan, fretted by the time that was being
wasted in talking with them, said to the captain, 'To tell the truth, I do
not know why we came here.' When the men heard this, they gave the Santiago
(The Battle Cry of Spain), so suddenly that they ran down many Indians and
the others fled to the town in confusion. Some indeed did not have a chance
to do this, so quickly did the people in the villages come out with
presents, asking for peace. The captain ordered his force to collect, and,
as the natives did not do any more harm, he and those who were with him
found a place to establish new headquarters near the village. They had
dismounted here when the natives came peacefully, saying that they had come
to give in the submission of the whole province and that they wanted him to
be friends with them and to accept the presents which they gave him. This
was some cotton cloth, although not much, because they do not make it in
that district. They also gave him some dressed skins and some corn meal,
and pine nuts, and corn and birds of the country. Afterward they presented
some turquoises, but not many. The people of the whole district came
together that day and submitted themselves, and they allowed him to enter
their villages freely to visit, buy, sell, and barter with them.
"It is governed like Cibola, by an assembly of the oldest men. They have
their governors and generals. This was where they obtained the information
about a large river, and that several days down the river there were some
people with very large bodies.
"As Don Pedro de Tovar was not commissioned to go farther, he returned from
there, and gave this information to the general, who dispatched Don Garcia
Lopez de Cardenas with about twelve companions to go to see this river. He
was well received when he reached Tusayan and was well entertained by the
natives, who gave him guides for his journey. They started from here loaded
with provisions, for they had to go through a desert country before
reaching the inhabited region, which the Indians said was more than twenty
days journey. After they had gone twenty days, they came to the banks of
the river, which seemed to be more than three or four leagues above the
stream which flowed between them. This country was elevated and full of
low, twisted pines, very cold, and lying open toward the north, so that,
this being the warm season, no one could live there on account of the cold.
They spent three days on this bank looking for a passage down to the river,
which looked from above as if the water was six feet across, although the
Indians said that it was half a league wide. It was impossible to descend,
for after these three days Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras and another
companion, who were the three lightest and most agile men, made an attempt
to go down at the least difficult place, and went down until those who were
above were unable to keep sight of them. They returned about four o'clock
in the afternoon, not having succeeded in reaching the bottom on account of
the great difficulties which they found, because what seemed to be easy
from above was not so, but instead very hard and difficult. They said that
they had been down about a third of the way and that the river seemed very
large from the place that they reached, and that from what they saw the
Indians had given the width correctly. Those who stayed above had estimated
that some huge rocks on the side of the cliffs seemed to be about as tall
as a man, but those who went down swore that when they reached these rocks
they were bigger than the great tower of Seville. They did not go farther
up the river because they could not get water. Before this they had to go a
league or two inland every day late in the evening in order to find water,
and the guides said that if they should go four days farther, it would not
be possible to go on, because there was no water within three or four days,
for when they travel across this region themselves they take with them
women loaded with water in gourds, and bury the gourds of water along the
way to use when they return, and besides this, they travel in one day
what it takes us two days to accomplish.
"This was the Tison (Firebrand) river, much nearer its source than where
Melchior Diaz and his company crossed it. These were the same kind of
Indians, judging from what was afterward learned. They came back from this
point and the expedition did not have any other result. On the way they saw
some water falling on a rock and learned from the guides that some bunches
of crystals which were hanging there were salt. They went and gathered a
quantity of this and brought it back to Cibola, dividing it among those who
were there. They gave the general a written account of what they had seen,
because one Pedro de Sotomayor had gone with Don Garcia Lopez as chronicler
for the army. The villages of that province remained peaceful, since they
were never visited again, nor was any attempt made to find other peoples in
that direction."
Place Described by Cardenas Unknown. There has been some attempt on the
part of students who are familiar with the country to locate the spot where
Cardenas and his men gazed down into the depths of the Canyon of the
Colorado River. The long distance travelled, according to Castaneda's
narrative, was totally unnecessary to bring the Spaniards to the banks of
the river. Twenty days' journey, through a desert region, away from Tusayan
in the direction of the Colorado River, would have brought them as far down
as Yuma or Mohave. But at these points there is no canyon. It is well known
that the Canyon system terminates near the Great Bend, some miles beyond
the Grand Wash, hence this could not have been the objective point of the
guides of Cardenas.
Dellenbaugh's Opinion. Dellenbaugh, in his "Romance of the Colorado River,"
argues that the Tusayan of Castaneda could not have been the land of the
Hopis, for, as he truthfully remarks, "an able-bodied man can easily walk
to the brink of the Marble Canyon from there in three or four days." He
also says that it has usually been stated, without definite reason, that
Cardenas reached the Grand Canyon about opposite Bright Angel River, or
near the spot where El Tovar Hotel now stands. I have never heard this
statement made by any one who has any knowledge either of Castaneda's
narrative, or of the relative locations of the Hopi towns and the Grand
Canyon.
Evidently a Hopi Stratagem. The Hopis of to-day, with whom I have talked,
insist upon it that Cardenas was taken to the barren and desolate point
near the junction of Marble Canyon, the Little Colorado Canyon and the
Grand Canyon. Here, the river may be said to come from the northeast and
turn toward the south-southwest, and the conditions are not at all like
those described by the historian. But if one accepts this modern statement
of the Hopis, he is met with the questions: Why make Cardenas travel fifty
leagues to see an inaccessible river that could be reached in three or four
days? Did Cardenas really travel fifty leagues? I do not know, but I hazard
the conjecture that the Hopis gave Cardenas as much wandering about as they
could, took him to this terribly bleak and barren spot where even to-day
one can scarcely prevail upon a Hopi or Navaho to guide him, in order that
he might be discouraged from making further explorations in the
neighborhood. The Hopis had no use for explorers or strangers. They had
suffered too much from foes, for too many decades, to welcome any one who
seemed eager to possess anything of theirs, and, in my judgment, their
treatment of Cardenas was a deliberate ruse to get rid of him. They had a
trail over which they habitually traveled, that brought them to
Huetha-wa-li, the White Rock Mountain,--opposite Bass Camp,--and on to the
Havasupai villages. Several times a year they went to and fro over this
trail. It crosses the Little Colorado where it would have been easy to show
the Spaniards the Salt Spring, to which Castaneda later refers. There is
another point on the river, some miles beyond Bass Camp, where the Hopis
used to visit the Havasupais, and that is just beyond the Great Curve,
where the river may be said to flow from the northeast to the
southsouthwest. But both at Bass Camp and at this point, the Havasupais had
made trails down to the river, of the existence of which the Hopis may, or
may not, have known. So I freely confess that, as yet, I have not settled
in my own mind at what point Cardenas and the Spaniards gazed into the
depths of the Great Canyon.
Alarcon's Discovery of Colorado River. While the main portion of Coronado's
army had been advancing eastward, a sea force sent out to cooperate with
Coronado, under Alarcon, had sailed up the Gulf of California, and had
entered the Colorado River, thus solving the problem of its exit into the
Gulf. To Alarcon, belongs the discovery of the Colorado River, which he
named the Buena Guia. He went up the river twice in boats, the second time
ascending possibly as high as a hundred miles above the mouth of the Gila.
Finally he entered "between certain very high mountains, through which this
river passeth with a straight channel, and the boats went up against the
stream very hardly for want of men to draw the same." He claims to have
passed above this place undoubtedly one of the lesser canyons of the
Colorado found below the Needles, where the Santa Fe Railway crosses the
river--and here magicians tried to destroy him and his party by setting
magic reeds in the water on both sides. Of course this failed, but Alarcon
decided to go no further. Here he erected a very high cross, on which was
carved a statement to the effect that he had reached this spot, so that if
Coronado's men should find it, they would know he had ascended the river
thus far.
Town of San Hieronimo is Established. In the mean time, a small force of
seventy or eighty of the weakest and least reliable of the men of
Coronado's army was left in September, 1540, at a town which Cabeza de Vaca
had named Corazones, or hearts, because the people there fed him on the
hearts of animals. Coronado's plan was to establish a town here, which he
or his lieutenant in charge of this portion of the army called San
Hieronimo de los Corazones. These men and the care of the new settlement
were left to Melchior Diaz, with orders to protect the road between Cibola
and New Spain, and also to attempt to find some means of communicating with
the vessels under Alarcon. Diaz, with twenty-five selected men, started for
the seacoast, went to the Gulf, across to the coast, back again up the
river, where he found Alarcon's cross, and eventually returned to San
Hieronimo, there to meet with death by an accident. Owing to the habit of
the Indians at the lower portion of the river of warming themselves in
cold weather with a burning stick, Diaz called the river El Rio del Tizon
--the River of the Firebrand.
Disaster Comes to the Spaniards. Disappointed at what he had found at
Cibola and Tiguex, Coronado now decided to go with his whole army to a
place which had been described to him in most glowing terms by an Indian.
He told of a place of fabulous wealth named Quivera, and, says the ancient
historian: "He gave such a clear account of what he told, as if it was
true and he had seen it, that it seemed plain afterward that the devil was
speaking in him." Carried away by these glowing visions of wealth, Coronado
sent Tovar back to San Hieronimo. Melchior Diaz was dead, and the little
settlement was in an excitement, because one of the soldiers had just been
killed by a poisoned arrow, shot by one of the natives. In trying to punish
this offence, owing to the folly of the officer sent by Tovar in charge of
the primitive force, seventeen more soldiers were killed by poisoned
arrows, so that the ensign hastily abandoned the place, and moved with his
sadly reduced force forty leagues toward Cibola, into a valley called Suya.
From this point, he ultimately collected the best of his men, and marched
on to Tiguex, to find Coronado already gone on his heartbreaking expedition
to Quivera.
Coronado Returns to New Spain. After long and fruitless search, Coronado
returned to New Spain, a disappointed man, disgraced and discarded. Tovar
returned with him, but doubtless later found congenial work in other
fields.