This book brings together for the first time the search for a southern overland route to California by Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans.
The earliest European perception of California was of a wonderful land of mystery and plenty, a Terrestrial Paradise. California would become a magnet for generations of people seeking the good life.The first foreign settlements in California were planted by Spaniards in the late eighteenth century. Padres and soldiers on Mexicos frontier searched for and opened an overland passage, though a dangerous one, to Spains new province. Following Mexicos successful revolution against Spain in 1821, the new republic tried to strengthen the trail from Mexico to California. At the same time, Mexicans, American trappers, and finally American soldiers, discovered and secured trails to California from New Mexico. For the first time, Road to California brings together the story of the search for an overland route to California by Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans. The book also tells about the response of Native Americans to the invasion of their lands. Some fought the intruders, but for three centuries most Indians welcomed, provisioned, and assisted the intruders. The story ends in 1848 when discovery of gold in Californias Sierra Nevada assured that the trails would be worn deep by the argonauts en route to the golden land.
Excerpt
The Southwest was the first "known" region of what is now the United States, and the southwestern trails certainly were older than the other western trails, at least from the viewpoint of use by white people.1 It would be meaningless to say that the trails to California that ran through northern Mexico and the southwestern part of the present United States were unique. Most phenomena are unique in some way or another. Perhaps it would be saFér to say simply that the southwestern trails were difFérent from the other trails to the far reaches of the American West. The climate and terrain of the arid Southwest2 presented hardships to a degree not experienced by most travelers of the northern trails. On the other hand, while Indians along northern trails were largely hostile or indifFérent to white travelers, Indians of the Southwest, with some notable exceptions, welcomed whites.
The land was and is one of contrasts. The elevation ranges from sea level at the mouth of the Colorado River and nearby deserts to highlands in the north of 8,000 Féet, with many peaks in the central and northern parts of the region rising above 10,000 Féet. The face of the land varies from the arid and semi-arid country that dominates the landscape to forested mountains in the north. The climate runs the gamut from blistering desert sun to the chilling snows of the high mountains.
Though the contrasts are quite visible, aridity is the dominant characteristic.3 It is in this land of little rain that the story of the search for a southern route to California largely takes place. The average annual precipitation of the southwestern region is around twelve inches, with six to eight inches in the deserts. Yuma receives less than five inches. Throughout most of the area, there is too little rain to support the growing of crops without irrigation, but usually enough to support grazing. The threat of drought, however, is ever-present, and more than once cattle and sheep have sufFéred when the rains have failed to come. At other times, the scanty annual rainfall has come all at once, causing the often-destructive flash floods common to the region. In spite of the extremes, precipitation over the years has been sufficient to prevent the land from becoming a sterile desert of shifting sands, but not so much that its predominantly tropical nature has been altered.
Life in the arid country has shown an amazing capability for adaptation. Plant life has come to terms with the desert by becoming drought-resistant and water-storing or by developing a cycle of life keyed to the infrequent, short rains. As if jolted to life by the moisture, desert plants experience a rapid growth, mature quickly, produce seeds, then die. Also adapting to the peculiar demands of the land and climate of the Southwest were the various animal species, not the least of which was man himself.
Man is known to have inhabited the American Southwest for 15,000 years and perhaps 20,000 years. These nomadic ice-age hunters eventually gave way to settled communities that set the pattern for aboriginal liFé in the region. The introduction of corn probably made the difference.4 By the first century A.D., it was being grown in southeastern Arizona by the already long-established Cochise people and a short time later by the Anasazi, or Basketmakers, in the four- corners country where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet.
The Hohokam, descendants of the Cochise people, were farmers in the area of the confluence of the Salt and Gila rivers. A peace-loving, democratic society, the Hohokam practiced extensive irrigation. By 700 A.D., their water works included hundreds of miles of intricate canal systems. Some of the waterways were as wide as twenty-five feet and as deep as fifteen feet. A single complex paralleling the Salt River contained 150 miles of canals. The accomplishments of these contemporaries of Mayas were not limited to agriculture. The Hohokam, for example, developed an etching process around the year 1000 A.D., hundreds of years before chemical etching was first known in Europe.
Descended from the Hohokam are the Papagos who live in the deserts of southern Arizona and the Pimas who live farther north, notably along the Gila River where generations of Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans found them. The word, "Hohokam," in fact, is a Pima word meaning "Those who have gone." Also probably descended from the Hohokam are the Yumas and related tribes who live principally on the Colorado River.
The culture of the previously-mentioned Anasazi was marked by skills in basket making and architecture. They built huge multi-storied pueblos of stone in villages of several thousand inhabitants. The largest of these great structures, Pueblo Bonito in northwestern New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, was five stories high and had over 800 rooms. It could have housed well over 1000 people. Pueblo Bonito was the largest multiple-family dwelling in the United States until 1882 when a larger one was built in New York City. The Indians completed their apartment building about 900 years earlier.
The Anasazi, or Pueblos as they might more properly be called by the thirteenth century, gradually moved southward from their homes in the four corners country. Doubtless, they were driven by years of drought, but perhaps also by incursions from the north by marauding Apaches and Navajos. One Pueblo group migrated southwestward to live peacefully among the Hohokam, later to drift eastward. Other groups settled in the northeastern corner of Arizona and in the Rio Grande country in northern New Mexico.
Navajos and Apaches also found lives in the Southwest. Though the Navajos did not give up their pillaging completely, they gradually assumed a more settled existence with herds of cattle and sheep. The Apaches, originally hunters, turned parasitic, living on the spoils of their raids against the Pueblos.
It was the descendants of these same Pueblos whom Spaniards would visit later at Zuñi, Santa Fé and Oraibe. And it was these same Apaches and Navajos, who came first to the Southwest as invaders, that would provide the strongest resistance to the successive waves of white-skinned conquistadores.5
White people, even the earliest Spaniards, opened few new trails as they moved into and through the Southwest. There is ample evidence to show that trails in the region were extensive and well-traveled long before the appearance of Europeans. There seems to have been a regular trade among Indians of the interior, even as far east as New Mexico and beyond, and California coastal tribes. Probably the most sought-after commodity by the inland tribes was sea shells from the Pacific coast and Gulf of California. The desire for the treasured shells, indeed, appears to have been the prime factor in the development of the intertribal trade. Shells have been found at archaeological sites throughout the region, as far removed from the coast as Utah and New Mexico. Pacific coastal and mountain Indians contributed other products to the commerce: steatite, asphaltum, acorns and deerskins. From the interior of Mexico came live macaw birds and from southern Arizona, pottery. Indians of New Mexico offered blankets, a trade good that was still valued by Californians as late as the second quarter of the nineteenth century.6 Spaniards who later ventured into this "unknown" land benefited immeasurably from the knowledge of these native merchants who were hired to guide the explorers over the well-known trade routes.
The earliest explorations northward from settlements in New Spain were motivated by a search for a water route through the American land mass and a continuing thirst for riches. Columbus's failure to find a water passage and the subsequent failure to locate the link in the region of New Spain did not diminish the expectation of finding it. Indeed, the existence of the rumored Strait of Anian gradually became generally accepted as fact rather than speculation. As interest in the north grew, all sorts of rumors about that mysterious country were rife in the Spanish settlements. When one begins to appreciate the Spaniards' total ignorance of the geography of the north, coupled with the hope of discovering rich cities and the fabled strait, it becomes easier to understand how explorers could believe the fantastic tales they heard of that country.7
Chief among the rumor-mongers was Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. The only known survivors of Pánfilo de Narvaez's disastrous expedition to Florida in 1528, Nuñez and his three companions arrived in Culiacan in 1536 after wandering for eight years along the Caribbean coast and in northern Mexico. Whether their route led them into present New Mexico and Arizona is still a matter of debate. Some observers place their wanderings south of today's international boundary; others credit the castaways with being the first non-Indians to see the United States Southwest.8 Nuñez's own account of the Spaniards' ordeal throws little light on the route they followed. His narrative is at best puzzling, and at worst virtually incoherent.9
One interesting, indisputable fact emerges from this otherwise confusing journal. Nuñez and his party did not wander aimlessly in a wilderness. Nuñez was no pathfinder. The trails were already there. In his narrative, Nuñez directly mentions trails or roads seventeen times and implies travel over a defined path in many other passages. The little party probably had Indian guides and escorts throughout. Furthermore, the trails must have been well known to the Indians. Only once in his narrative does Nuñez mention that water was carried along. And he adds that their Indian companions on that occasion objected strenuously to taking that particular trail. This could only mean that potable water was found daily on all other occasions.10 In the dry season, only certain trails would satisfy this requirement; therefore, the Indians must have known enough trails to discriminate among those that had water and those that did not.
The significance of the castaways' wanderings lies not in their route, but in their stories of rich cities and unknown lands beyond the northern frontier. Nuñez and his companions volunteered that they had never actually seen the cities, but had received all their information secondhand from Indians. That fine point was of no importance to the eager conquistadores who had been looking in all directions for new sources of treasure and adventure since the subjugation of the Aztec empire.
Among those who were intrigued by Nuñez's tales was Don Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain. The enthusiastic Mendoza shortly sent out a small expedition to confirm the stories. The party was led by Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan who had served God and King with Pizarro in Peru and in Nicaragua before coming to Mexico. Marcos was accompanied by the black slave, Estevanico, who had been with Nuñez during his wanderings. Traveling northward in the spring of 1539, Marcos and his companions found the Indians friendly and eager to tell the strangers about far-off peoples who lived in magnificent cities. Estevanico was sent ahead to scout the way and apparently was welcomed everywhere he went. Word eventually reached Marcos, however, that the black man had been killed upon reaching the fabulous, rich city of Cibola. Féaring to enter the town lest he not survive to tell what he had seen, the padre viewed Cibola from a distant hilltop. Satisfying himself from this vantage point that everything he had heard about the richness of the land was true, Marcos formally took possession of the country, which he named El Nueva Reyno de San Francisco, and departed. Thus Marcos described his journey.
Controversy continues to swirl about the pretensions of Fray Marcos, as it did during his own time. The debate centers not so much on his route as on the northernmost extent of his penetration and whether he really saw what he said he saw. As in Nuñez's case, the controversy eventually comes around to the question of whether Fray Marcos and Estevanico should be credited with the discovery11 of New Mexico and Arizona, a question which has been amply argued elsewhere.12 The evidence indicates that Marcos believed the wonderful tales Indians told him and that he had verified them to his satisfaction from his hilltop viewpoint. If this were not so, he would not have been so imprudent to accompany the subsequent Coronado expedition as its guide, thereby risking the wrath of a whole army. Patently, he expected Coronado to confirm his reports.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Viceroy Mendoza was satisfied and directed the governor of Nueva Galicia, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, to prepare a major expedition to exploit Marcos’s findings. Believing Cibola to be near the sea, the viceroy fitted out a fleet to co-operate with the land force, with orders to touch the gulf coast as often as possible to provision the army.13 Commanded by Hernando de Alarcón, the fleet eventually did reach the mouth of the Colorado River, which Alarcón named the Buena Guia.
Boats sent up the Colorado in late summer 1539 might have reached the confluence with the Gila, though this has not been confirmed. Hearing no word of the army's advance, the commander left letters at the head of the gulf and de-parted. The letters actually were found later by a party sent out by Coronado.14 Alarcón's ships never did make direct contact with the land column, therefore figure no more in the story of Coronado's expedition.
Meanwhile, the land expedition got underway. A scouting party of fifteen men under Melchoir Diaz and Juan de Zaldívar late in 1539 probably reached the valley of the Gila River before turning back. Coronado himself set out in April 1540 with a small advance force of seventy-five horsemen, twenty-five foot soldiers and some Indians.15 The ponderous main body of approximately 300 Spaniards and 1,300 Indian allies was ordered to follow at a more leisurely pace.16
The advance force, guided by Fray Marcos, soon learned the truth of Cibola. Exhausted and near starvation by the time they reached the Gila River, the Spaniards turned eastward and found Cibola, probably the village called Hawikuh, located a few miles southwest of the present-day Zuñi pueblo. Within a few days, the soldiers subdued Cibola and other nearby pueblos.
Surveying the heralded Seven Cities, of which they were now the masters, the Spaniards were stunned. There were no riches to be seen. They found instead a collection of small villages inhabited by poor farmers. The disappointed soldiers fell on Fray Marcos whom they felt was responsible for all their sufFéring. The disgraced padre soon left the expedition and returned to Mexico.
From Cibola, Coronado dispatched exploring parties to try to locate the rich cities that he still believed existed somewhere in the vicinity of the pueblos. Don Pedro de Tovar was sent to the Hopi villages in northeastern Arizona. Soon after, Lopez de Cárdenas was ordered westward to locate a great river that the Hopis had described to Tovar. Cardenas and his twelve companions became the first Europeans to see the awesome Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. Neither Tovar nor Cárdenas found any treasure, but their journeys can be seen as unconscious probes in the later search for a trail from New Mexico to California.
Coronado sent another party eastward under Hernando de Alvarado to investigate the tales he had heard about a region called Cicuye. En route, the Spaniards visited the mesa-top pueblo of Acoma, which Alvarado called one of the strongest pueblos he had ever seen. Arriving at the Rio Grande, the Spanish found a broad valley dotted with towns. The inhabitants were friendly, and Alvarado sent word back to Coronado at Cibola, recommending the valley, called Tiguex, as the site for their winter quarters. The region was pleasant indeed and eventually would become the center of Spanish settlement in New Mexico.
Completing his journey to Cicuye, probably located in northeastern New Mexico at the edge of the plains, Alvarado saw great herds of buffalo. He was more intrigued with the stories told him about an even more distant country called Quivira where there were rich cities and great stores of gold and silver. With this promising report, Alvarado's party returned to Tiguex where Coronado, following Alvarado's suggestion, had set up winter quarters for the expedition.
The Spaniards spent two unhappy, unproductive winters in Tiguex. The Indians at first welcomed the strangers to their villages, but the soldiers soon became overbearing. The Spaniards made unreasonable demands of their hosts, requisitioning lodgings, blankets, food and clothing that the poor Indians could not spare. The exasperated natives finally rebelled, for which they were brutally chastised by the soldiers. From that time, the Indians became virtual captives in their own towns and the pattern of encroachment on the rights and lands of Indians by Europeans began to take shape in New Mexico.
The Spaniards were no more successful in their search for treasure. A full-scale expedition to Quivira found only the populous, but poor, province of the Wichita Indians, probably in present-day Kansas. The whole story, in fact, had been a hoax. On behalf of the people of Cicuye, the expedition's guide, an Indian the soldiers called "the Turk," was to have led the Spaniards astray on the plains where they would exhaust themselves and their supplies and thus fall easy prey to the pueblo Indians on their return. The Turk was promptly put to death, and the disillusioned army turned back.
In the spring of 1542, all the tales of riches having proven false, Coronado terminated the expedition and the army departed Tiguex for New Spain. At the Gila River, the Spaniards met reinforcements and a supply train. This prompted a number of gentlemen adventurers to petition the commander for a return to the northern explorations, but the great body of the army would listen to no suggestions for arresting their speedy journey to the south. By this time, Coronado had almost lost control of the force and would have been powerless to reverse the retreat even if he had wished to do so. Reaching Culiacan in June 1542, the once proud army melted away gradually until the remnants, about 100 men, arrived in Mexico with Coronado in midsummer.17
It is understandable that fame did not come immediately to Coronado. The expedition had set out in search of treasure; it found none. Therefore, it was a disappointment, and the general was severely criticized for his conduct of the enterprise. Viceroy Mendoza remained his friend, however, and never failed to defend him.18 The immediate result of the expedition was that it laid to rest, for a time at least, the widely-held belief and hope that there were riches to be found in the northern lands. The expedition gained instead valuable knowledge of the geography and inhabitants of the country, treasure that was put to no use.
For the next half century, Spanish penetration into the upper frontier regions was sporadic and, with the exception of the expedition led by Don Antonio Espejo, of little consequence in the development of trails to California. A small party of friars and soldiers under Fray Augustin Rodriguez and Sanchez Chamuscado probably reached the pueblos of Tiguex in 1581 in a search for a reported superior Indian civilization. Soon after the soldiers left the padres to return to New Spain, rumors circulated in the settlements that they had been killed.19
To investigate the fate of their brothers, Franciscan authorities dispatched an expedition of about fourteen soldiers and some Indian servants under the leadership of Padre Bernardino Beltran and Espejo, an adventurous, rich citizen who had offered to finance the undertaking and to serve as the military leader.20
Reaching Tiguex in the fall of 1582, the nature of the expedition soon changed. During the course of explorations and visits to pueblos, Espejo learned that the padres indeed had been killed. He also was told about Coronado's visits and, in fact, found at Zuñi three Christian Indians who had accompanied the Coronado expedition and had remained when the army departed. The Indians told Espejo about a great lake to the west whose bank was well-populated by people who had great amounts of gold. Though Father Beltran objected that their mission was not to seek treasure, Espejo with nine soldiers, the Christian Indians and 150 local Indians set out to locate the great lake. The padres remained, determined to return to Nueva Vizcaya.21
Espejo's party met with mixed success. Led eventually by Hopi guides, through whose land the early-day argonauts passed, the Spaniards actually found mines in the mountainous region north of present Prescott, Arizona. Here they also heard of a great river to the west, undoubtedly the Colorado, but they did not visit it. Espejo returned to Zuñi just before Father Beltran and his companions set out for the south. Espejo stayed to explore further in northern New Mexico.
As the explorations progressed, the Indians' resistance, or the Spaniards' brutality, or both, hardened. The Indians increasingly refused the Spaniards' demands for food. The soldiers responded by "punishing" the Indians. Homes and maize fields were burned, but the Indians remained uncowed. On one occasion, angry Indians attacked the Spaniards so vigorously that a member of the expedition begged God to "preserve us for His holy service and keep us under His protection, for we are really in distress."
The Spaniards decided that they would have to set an example. The next time they were refused food, they shot and garroted sixteen Indians and burned alive others who had hidden themselves in a building.22 When hostility continued to grow, Espejo returned to Mexico in late summer, 1583.
Interest in the conquest and settlement of the northern frontier country increased. The reports of Espejo and Father Beltran encouraged those who saw great prospects for mineral wealth and colonizing ventures there. The mysterious and rich settlements to be found on the great lake and river in the west had to be investigated. The expectations of locating Quivira and the Strait of Anian were undiminished. To the faithful, the real challenge of the northern country was still the multitude of lost souls to be saved.
The heightened interest in the north resulted in a rush to secure a commission to reduce the area of New Mexico to Spanish dominion. When bureaucracy and hostile officials stymied all applicants, not excluding Espejo himself, some decided to forego the applications. Gaspar Castaño de Sosa, the lieutenant-governor of Nueva Leon, in 1590 dispatched an expedition of over 170 persons which eventually established a settlement in the vicinity of the Pecos pueblo. The venture ended abruptly in 1592 when Captain Juan Morlete with a force of fifty men arrested Castaño for exploring without official permission. Another illegal penetration of New Mexico was made around 1595 by one Captain Francisco Leiva Bonilla. Little is known of his journey since no written record was kept by any of the participants.23
The story of the development of the southern route to California comes into focus again with the journeys of Juan de Oñate. A leading citizen of Nueva Galicia, it was Oñate who eventually received the appointment to lead the conquest of the north. The Oñate name was well-known in New Spain. His family had played a prominent part in the original conquest, and his father had participated in the subjugation of Nueva Galicia. Oñate's wife was a granddaughter of the Aztec chief, Montezuma.24 Added to these qualifications of family lineage, Oñate was wealthy and would bear the major burden of financing the expedition.
Oñate’s March Into the New Mexican Country
By Charles M. Russell. Courtesy Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, Texas
The force that left Santa Barbara in January 1598 under Oñate consisted of at least 100 soldiers with their families who intended to settle in New Mexico. The total count of expeditionary members has been estimated as high as 400 or more. A group of eight or ten Franciscan fathers under Padre Alonso Martinez joined the column shortly after its departure. In the train were eighty-three wagons and 7,000 head of cattle.25
The conquest of the north country proceeded as planned. Striking the Rio Grande near the site of present-day El Paso, Oñate formally took possession of New Mexico for God, the King of Spain—and himself. The Spaniards marched north along the Rio Grande, in July reaching the San Juan pueblo at the junction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Chama. Here Oñate established his headquarters. During the following months, the Spaniards explored in the Rio Grande valley in northern and central New Mexico, probably venturing as far east as the Texas panhandle. In the course of explorations, many pueblos were visited and homage received from the inhabitants.
In October 1598, Oñate determined to lead an expedition to the South Sea. The Spaniards were still after riches, pearls this time. Marching westward, they visited Acoma, pausing long enough to receive that pueblo's submission, Zuñi and finally reached the Hopi towns which also submitted peacefully to the soldiers. Deciding to remain there for a time, Oñate sent a small party under Captain Marcos Farfán to look for mines in the same region previously visited by Espejo. Minerals were found on the Bill Williams Fork, and Farfán hurried back to report to his commander.
Before Farfán's discovery could be investigated, Oñate was forced to abandon the western expedition. He received word that a party under Juan Zaldívar had been attacked by Acomans and most of the Spaniards, including their leader, had been killed. The soldiers had been bound for Hopi country to reinforce the expedition for the intended march to the South Sea. Oñate returned to San Juan to make new plans.
A force under Vicente de Zaldívar, brother of the deceased Juan, was sent to subdue the Acomans, now branded rebels. The Spaniards accomplished their purpose. The diary of the punitive expedition reads simply: "Most of . . . [the Acomans] . . . were killed and punished by fire and bloodshed, and the pueblo was completely laid waste and burned."26 From a population estimated between 3,000 and 6,000, a remnant of 600 survived the slaughter and were permitted to surrender and settle on the plain.27
It was 1604 before Oñate could revive his ambition to reach the South Sea. During the years since his previous abortive attempt, a party of twenty-five under Vicente de Zaldívar had reached a point on a westward trek which was, they were told by Indians, but three days' march from the sea. Oñate's latest South Sea expedition included thirty soldiers and Father Francisco de Escobar who kept a detailed journal of the journey.
Departing in October, the Spaniards passed peacefully through the Zuñi and Hopi regions. Traveling southwestward from the Hopi towns, they crossed the Little Colorado River and probably the two branches of the Verde River north of modern Prescott. Escobar noted that in this area Spaniards had taken copper ores from mines discovered originally by Espejo.28 Ascending the Verde to its source, Oñate then struck westward until they came to another river, the Santa María or Bill Williams Fork.
Moving down the Bill Williams, the expedition arrived at the junction with the Colorado River, which the Spaniards named the Rio de Buena Esperanza, because "we reached it on the day of the expectation or hope of the most happy parturition of the Virgin Mary, our Lady."29 Oñate knew he was near his destination and set out down the River of Good Hope.
The Spaniards found both banks of the river heavily populated all the way to its mouth.30 The Indians generally were friendly and furnished the expedition with food from their often meager stores. Indeed, the Spaniards perhaps at times regretted the cordiality of the Indians. On some days, more than 300 of the curious natives followed the Spanish party.31 Escobar's description of the Colorado River Indians, the first detailed account we have, is worth noting:
The people of . . . this river are very fine looking and of good disposition, tall in stature, and well made. The custom among all the people who live along this river in regard to clothing is to wear none, but to go naked from the sole of the foot to the top of the head, the women merely covering their loins with two handfuls of grass or with twists of grass ready to hand, without taking the trouble to cover any other part of the body. All wear their hair loose, and reaching only to the shoulders. This shelterless costume is possible because the country is not cold, for we did not Féel cold during the whole time we were there, which was during the heart of winter. The language appeared to me easy, with no difficulties of pronunciation.32
Indeed the language was easy, for Escobar at least. In the course of the journey, the padre learned no less than ten different Indian languages! On the return trip to New Mexico, he was able to converse with these same tribes.33
Continuing down the Colorado, the expedition arrived at the confluence with another river, smaller than the Colorado, which the Spaniards named the Nombre de Jesus. This was the Gila River which from this moment figures heavily in the story of the search for a route to California. Eventually reaching the mouth of the Colorado and viewing at last the spectacle of the Gulf of California, some seamen in the party proclaimed it the finest bay they had ever seen. The port, for it was assumed that it would be so one day, was duly named the Port of the Conversion since it was first seen on the day of the Conversion of the Glorious Apostle St. Paul. Turning from the gulf, Oñate led his party on the path homeward to New Mexico.
Oñate, like his predecessors, Nuñez, Coronado, Espejo and others, however brave and resourceful, pioneered few trails through virgin country during his explorations. For the most part, the paths he followed were well-worn and well-known by the Indians who generally either guided the Spaniards or advised them which trails to take. Oñate did show, nevertheless, that Spaniards could travel from New Mexico to the Colorado River and without undue hardship. He lost not a single man on his journey to the South Sea.
The expeditions of Oñate are of undeniable significance in the opening of the Southwest and as a step toward California. By 1605, he and his lieutenants had explored again almost all the ground covered by Coronado and Espejo and had traveled trails not seen by them. Oñate's western expedition was particuliarly important in stimulating interest in the Colorado River area. He explored a considerable stretch of the river and reached the mouth where it was expected a great port would be established. The Colorado was assumed to be navigable, thereby opening up the interior to exploration. New interest was kindled in the question of whether California was an island, now that Indians had convinced some of the expedition's members that the head of the gulf curled westward from the mouth of the Colorado, then toward the north. Indeed, the Spaniards had not been able to locate anyone who knew where the head of the gulf lay. Indians on the Colorado had told of large pearls from the gulf and metals, assumed to be gold, silver and perhaps tin and copper, that came from mines to the west. The Spaniards also heard tales about wonderful and monstrous nations that lay just a short trek away. All the mysteries of this fruitful march would have to be solved, and this indicated further exploration.
Yet, the knowledge gained by Oñate's expedition was not used. It had been the same with those who had explored the northern country before him. Accounts of journeys, often recorded in minute detail by members of expeditions, typically were ignored or temporarily lost, to be recovered from dusty archives in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Following the safe return of Oñate to New Mexico from his journey to the Gulf of California, the region below the Gila River was not visited by Spaniards for almost 100 years. It would be almost two centuries before central Arizona would be seen again by the Spanish.
325 letters my father wrote to my mother during his time in World War II.
Woven together in a timeline of events of three of his brothers, 5 brothers-in-law, and one cousin, all 10 of them were in WWII at the same time.
This is a Hypertext Book Release of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic This Side of Paradise on Black April 23, 2016 which is William Shakespeare,s 400th birthday.
