LIGHT IN THE EAST.
[Sidenote: 1776]
Two hundred and thirty-six years had passed since Coronado's gaily
caparisoned army moved out from Compostela. The bright yellow leggings
and rich green coats of the soldiers, their waving white plumes and
coats of mail, had long since turned to rags and rust, while the bones
of the troopers had crumbled to dust. With the defeat of their
expedition, the curtain of silence descended upon this vast Rocky
Mountain region. The Indian Chiefs whom Coronado fought had long been
wrapped in the mantle of death, and their places had been filled by
the children of their children's children. The buffalo herds and the
Indian bands still roamed the plains together, and the tender calves
grew strong and became the leaders of the herd. It was the endless
procession of life and death, of strength and weakness, of growth and
decay. The wild flowers bloomed, and shed abroad their fragrance; the
trees budded and blossomed, and their leaves withered and fell; the
earth was clothed in its carpet of green, that yellowed with the
autumn's frosts; the period of seed time and harvest came, but there
was no seed time and there was no harvest. The summer rains fell upon
valley and plain, and the rivers ran unceasingly to the sea, as they
had done for centuries, and as they will do until time shall be no
more; rivers, born on the dome of the Great Divide, and nurtured by
the clouds amongst which they nestle. Each season, the stately peaks
stretched their arms aloft towards the heavenly orbs to receive their
snow's feathery drapery that fell like a benediction over them.
Mountains, radiant in their ever-changing hues of yellow and green, of
purple and gold; mountains, whose breath was fragrant with the
delicate perfume from their carpet of a thousand species of wild
flowers; mountains, kissed by pearly rain drops, glowing with morning
sun baths, draped in slumber-robes of silvery moon-beams--glorious,
sunlit, sky-communing mountains, standing in their grandeur, silent,
proud, eternal.
In Macaulay's eloquent and elevated treatment of the thirteenth
century of English history, we find this pleasing sentiment,
applicable to Colorado's rivers and mountains:
"The sources of the noble rivers which spread fertility over
continents, and bear richly ladened fleets to the sea, are to be
sought in the wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down
in maps and rarely explored by travelers."
We find similarity in our own uncharted streams and mountains; in the
unapplied wealth of waters that our rivers bore to the seas; in the
unwritten history of the Jesuit Fathers; in the romance of Spanish
glory and Spanish defeat; in the tragedy of the red men; in the
civilization that perished; in half a century's attainments in good
government, in refining domestic influences, in Christianity, in
intellectual growth, and in riches almost beyond computation.
Again we face the mysterious. Once more the names of Cortez and
Montezuma meet, not as on the battle fields of Mexico that left one a
conqueror and the other a prisoner; not as aliens and rivals, but in
the friendly attitude of mutual interest and mutual trust. Montezuma
led into battle a people whose beginnings can never be known.
Montezuma County, Colorado, with Cortez as its County Seat, sheltered
a pre-historic race, whose beginning and end we can never fathom. At
the southwestern corner of our State, at the only spot in the United
States where four states come squarely together, we find Utah,
Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, equally sharing in this unfathomable
mystery. There, covering a stretch of country equal in extent to about
eighty miles square, had lived a civilized people who followed the
peaceful pursuit of agriculture, who farmed by irrigation and whose
reservoirs were high up near the mountain tops. Their dwellings were
amidst the cliffs along the canons tributary to the San Mancos and San
Juan Rivers, as well as in the rocky and almost inaccessible gorges of
those rivers themselves. The abandoned houses built of hand-dressed
stone, are falling into ruins, but they still show painstaking care in
their construction, and in their well-planned architecture. The
decaying towns, towers and fortresses give every evidence of a state
of preparedness for war. Whether these people were conquered, enslaved
and carried into exile; whether they were warred upon by the marauding
bands, and so weakened that they scattered and became lost; whether
they may have been the very Aztecs, who, becoming more civilized and
more prosperous, moved South, were finally subdued by Cortez and
became the Mexican nation, are conjectures only, for those ancient
foot prints have been forever submerged by the passing years.
A vast area of the country of the Cliff Dwellers has been made into a
National Park and given the name of Mesa Verde. For three years the
restoration of the principal ruins has been carried on by eminent
scientists under direction of the General Government. Spruce Tree
House, one of the restored dwellings, is over two hundred feet long
and it is estimated that when inhabited, it sheltered about four
hundred people.
In the East the light is breaking. A ray here and a ray there, at
first, just the faintest touch of the awakening before the glorious
bursting of the dawn. A voyager crossed the trackless seas, following
Columbus; then another and another, all carrying the advance lights
that were finally to illuminate the darkness and unfold the mysteries
of a New World. It took one hundred years for nine voyagers on tours
of discovery, scattered through the entire century, to sow the seeds
of colonization along the Coast, which, when planted, failed to grow,
withered and died. Much of the time of these navigators was spent in
sailing up and down the eastern coast, seeking a channel through our
Continent in search of the unknown, lying beyond.
Came John Cabot, an Italian Mariner, bearing the English Flag,
authorized to take possession of any lands he found. Four of his ships
went to the bottom and the son continued the discoveries started by
his father. Came Cortereal from Portugal in 1501, who left signs of
his visit along our Coast at various points between the Bay of Fundy
and the coast of Labrador, and then his vessels and all on board
plunged to the bottom. The following year a brother came with a
searching party and they all found graves beneath the waves that for
four hundred years have been sweeping over them. Another brother about
to start to seek the others, was prevented by command of the King.
Came Ponce de Leon from Spain in 1512, having been with Columbus on
his second voyage in 1493. He bore a patent from the King to what was
supposed to be the marvellous Island of Bimini, which he renamed
Florida, from "Pascua Florida," meaning in Spanish "Easter Sunday."
Instead of finding a spring that the Indians claimed to possess great
curative properties and supposed to be a fountain of perpetual youth,
he found his death in an arrow wound from the Indians. Here he passed
over the site of St. Augustine, which later became the oldest
community in the United States, having been located in 1565.
Came Pineda from Spain in 1519, entering the Gulf of Mexico, sailing
all along the Florida Coast, by Louisiana, past Texas, searching for
the "Western Passage." Here he met Cortez, the Governor-General of New
Spain. Came Narvaez in 1520, the Spanish slave gatherer, who lost his
life on the trip, lost it in a bad cause. And then in 1524 came
Verrazano, the Spanish Pirate and outcast. One hundred years later,
when Spain sought to establish her claim to the country he had visited
which might inure to her through his discovery, she said he was a very
honorable gentleman, that her colors were flying at his prow, instead
of the black flag of the Freebooter. Oh, Spain! Spain! The more I
study you, the less I admire you! Then came Gomez in 1525 from
Portugal commissioned to sail all the way along our coast from
Newfoundland to Florida, in search of a channel through the American
Continent to the Western Sea.
He was followed sixty years later by Greenville, a cousin of Sir
Walter Raleigh, flying the English Flag. Raleigh's eyes were filled
with visions of a golden future--a man of whom we would say in these
days, that he always had an eye to the "main chance." "Whosoever
commands the sea," he said, "commands the trade; whosoever commands
the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and
consequently the world itself." For a little practical expression of
that philosophy, he threw his cloak down in the mud one day for his
proud Queen to step upon. Even he little realized the wealth-product
beneath its soiled folds, for from that little incident came the
introduction of the potato into England. Raleigh became a great
favorite of the Queen, and what he asked she granted. He asked of her
a royal charter for his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, and funds for
an expedition to the New World. It resulted in those ships taking back
to England the potato and tobacco. Forty-three years before, we sent
them their Christmas dinner in the delectable wild turkey; we now gave
them as an accompaniment, the mealy and nutritious potato. Came Davis
in this same year of 1585, who discovered the Straits named for him,
and also Falkland Islands, which he found in 1592.
And the century closed, with the lights going out all along the
Atlantic Coast, for the attempts at colonization were failing. The
roots of home-making would not take hold, with the buccaneers stirring
up the savages to fight the colonists on one side, and the loneliness
of the impassable sea terrifying them on the other.
The next century found Champlain in 1603, making his voyage to Canada,
starting the French settlement at Quebec, in 1608, and sailing up the
St. Lawrence and around the lakes, hunting for locations for
settlements, and for a way to China. There was Lord de la Warr, coming
over in 1607, and finding a little English settlement on the mainland
at Jamestown in Virginia. The same year came the capable Captain
Smith, a soldier of fortune, who killed his Turkish task master, and
whose life was saved by a Senorita, to be saved again by Pocahontas.
There was the distinguished Sir Henry Hudson in 1607, trying to find
another Cape Horn above Greenland; failing, he sailed south, entered
New York harbor, thence up the Hudson River seeking China. Up past the
monument of Grant, past the beautiful Palisades, by West Point and
Poughkeepsie, beyond Albany, and all the time the water becoming more
shallow and the banks narrower, until he had gone one hundred and
fifty miles, sailing north instead of southwest to Southern
California, which would put him opposite the country he was seeking.
Turn back! Sir Henry, turn back! Your prow will soon be fast in the
mud, your vessel's sides will scrape the river's banks, your boat will
dam up the waters of the Hudson, and all the surrounding country will
be inundated! It is not yet the day of the airship, so that you can
sail over the Rocky Mountains, nor is it the time of tunnels, so that
you can find a passage beneath them! Just north of you, at that very
moment, sixty miles away, Champlain has turned back, and neither of
you know it. This country is not for you, nor for him. There are no
great waterways along which you both may sail, touching the shores,
planting the flags of your countries, and claiming this Continent for
your Kings. Go back! Sir Henry, and when Champlain has colonized
Canada, and established Quebec, sail in and take it away from him!
Which was the very thing that was done twenty-one years later. Where
might seemed right then, so sometimes it seems right now, after all
these years of Christianization.
The settlements are coming fast now. All up and down the Coast, the
people are gathering; the Plymouth Fathers have come; the Scotch are
at Nova Scotia; the Swedes and Dutch are at Delaware and New Jersey;
the French are in Virginia and Louisiana; the English are in New
England; the Spanish have killed all the Huguenots and are in Florida.
Then there is the conscientious William Penn, Quakerlike, out among
the Indians buying their lands, and we are saying to him "why buy,
when you can take all without asking?" And there is Daniel Boone, the
native-born American explorer, hero of every boy and girl, who has
made his way through the wilderness and with an axe blazed his way, as
later he marked his path by rocks and mounds of earth, all the way to
the Mississippi River.
The echoes of Liberty Bell, ringing out our independence and ringing
in the Continental Congress, had not ceased their reverberations, when
the curtain that Coronado's defeat had rung down more than two
centuries before, was again lifted, and we behold a new stage with a
new setting, that had been prepared by the Church of Rome. Padre
Junthero Serra who, as President of the California Missions, had for
so long urged upon the Church the importance of laying out a route
from the settlement of Santa Fe to the West, finally prevailed. Friar
Francisco Andasio Dominquez, and Friar Sylvester Velez de Escalante,
were selected for this undertaking, and on July 29, 1776, started from
Santa Fe with eight soldiers and guides. Their route took them out of
New Mexico, into Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. They were gone
one summer, passed through the present site of Salt Lake City and laid
out a route that could be followed. Otherwise their trip was wholly
unproductive of any beneficial or permanent results. There are
stations adjoining each other on the Rio Grande Railroad between Delta
and Grand Junction named "Dominquez" and "Escalante" for these two
explorers. If the laurels of Coronado's discovery are ever
successfully removed from his crown, his mantle will fall upon the
shoulders of these two Friars.
So we come to the close of the century with the glorious dawn breaking
all along the East, glowing in the heavens, shining over the people,
over the farms and the mills, over the towns and the country, bringing
prosperity and contentment to thousands. Its beams are resting on our
own Declaration of Independence; on our own Continental Congress; on
the benign countenance of the revered Washington, as he bids the
people an affectionate adieu in the stirring words of his great
farewell address, from which we quote this noble sentiment--and may it
abide with us forever:
"Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to the
grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may
continue to use the choicest token of its beneficence--that your Union
and brotherly affection may be perpetual, that the free constitution
which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained, that its
administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and
virtue, that in fine the happiness of the people of these states under
the auspices of liberty may be made complete by so careful a
preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to
them the glory of recommending it to the applause, affection and
adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it."
How rapidly we have passed over these three hundred years, from the
days of the great Queen Isabella, to the time of the immortal
Washington! How lightly we have moved along, flitting here and there,
as the bee gathers honey for the comb, picking out events that seemed
essential in the preparation of the frame work for our picture;
passing by the great events of history, past the smiling and the
weeping, past the feasting and the hungering, past the living and the
dying--of all those who smiled and wept, who feasted and hungered, who
lived and died, in that crowded three hundred years of human endeavor!
And now for our picture: A simple picture of simple events, simply
painted, with touches of human nature colorings, of the everyday joys
and sorrows, of the hopes and disappointments that came to us out of
the great West beyond the Mississippi River--in that portion of the
marvellous century just closed, the most wonderful century of this
most wonderful world!