The Spanish Southwest: The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition of 1776; On the Banks of Tewayo
This is part three of the four part series on the Dominguez & Escalante Expedition of 1776. If you haven’t given the previous two a listen, you ought to or you may be as lost as our scrappy group who have found themselves in a tough spot with canyons, rocks, and dry hot mesas on the Uncompaghre Plateau. But thankfully for them, they just met a Ute man who has agreed to be their guide! Let’s catch back up with the crew.
To get things started off right with this new guide, the team probably asked him his name, to which he responded with some unpronounceable Ute name. To which, the crew, said, oh that’ll never do, your name is now Atanasio! The same as Dominguez. Lucky him! Roberts, in his Escalante Dream, which he wrote and of which I have quoted from quite a bit, well in it, Roberts calls Atanasio the new team’s mascot! Which, I suppose he kinda is with a name like that.
And then, to no doubt further confound their newly named guide friend, they asked him a series of questions. Now, wether they expected the man to actually respond or if they were just asking him these questions to put him at ease on account of they didn’t want to seem like dangerous intruders… it is unknown. The modern reader is only left to guess at why they grilled the new Atanasio this way, but Roberts wrote out a very Danieli Bolelli exchange in his book when the crew are talking to the new Atanasio which goes like this, quote:
Escalante: "We're worried about Brother Garcés. Have you seen him hereabouts? Or heard any word about what he's up to?"
Atanasio: "No, my friend. Not a word. But we'll keep an eye out."
Escalante: "The last we heard from him he was hanging out with the Cosninas. And as you know, they are a very dangerous bunch."
Atanasio (to himself): In the name of Sinauf and all the other gods, who are these Cosninas? I think this fellow wearing his blue blanket is a little crazy.
(Out loud): "Yes, very dangerous. That's why we have nothing to do with them. And now, should we get on our way?” End quote.
It is true that finding Garces and the Cosninas or Havasupai, were secondary goals but certainly they had to have known they were way too off course to be asking after him and them so they may have been putting their new guide at ease and it seems to have worked. After the questioning and the story time, the Ute man seemed more cool and then he apologized about the state of the Spaniards friend who was lost out in the dangerous wilderness.
And then, they were off.
When I read Roberts book he could not explain why on earth they hadn’t met a single Indian until this day, 28 days after the start. But the more I learned of Rivera and the more I learned of the expedition and the more I thought about it. I believe it was definitely a deliberate tactic but one that was slated to fail eventually when this team continued their march ever northward, further into their territory. But now they were headed directly towards a supposed chief and their encampment. And one friendly to the Spanish at that! Maybe, the Ute thought, it was now time to employ the rotating guide trick?
Or as Walter Briggs in his Without Noise of Arms wrote, it could have been a play on the part of the man and his family who had quote, delayed the expedition to skim choice trade goods before other Utes got their pick? End quote. It could be a combination of all these factors and then some we don’t even know about. Whatever the case, the padres and the crew probably felt a sense of relief, even ole M&P. Or Don Bernardo Miera Y Pacheco.
After the exchange and the questioning, the man’s family set off for their home with the goods that the men promised not to trade with but had just done that very thing, again, at least it wasn’t for personal gain. But it was now just this new guide, Atanasio and our ten men plus two that made up the D&E crew and they were about to set off through their own dangerous wilderness towards an Indian tribe.
They passed stately trees of aspen, spruce, ponderosa pine, and Douglas fir, but the not so attentive to nature Escalante only mentioned a tree that was translated as cottonwood. They were passing through a land carved deeply and violently by the glaciers of the Pleistocene I talked in depth about so many episodes ago when I covered the Ice Age in the New World. He does mention the animals that he saw in the area, of which there were plenty. Stags, deer, and some fowls with quote unquote savory flesh. And these would probably have been grouse, which are fast tricky little birds who upon being forced to fly only go about 4 feet into the air before coming down and hiding some 30 feet away, which makes them tricky to shoot with a shotgun. I would know, I go hunting for them for a weekend every October in northern Wisconsin. I have emptied many a barrel of my double barreled shotgun into the foliage and trees of those Northwoods. Briggs points out that shotguns weren’t even invented yet so hunting them must have been quite the challenge… maybe they trapped ‘em?
Around this time in these valleys was one of the highest point they’d come across. Before dinner that evening they were soaked to the bone by a storm so no fire and even in August they were probably shivering cold.
On the 26th, they came to the modern day Uncompaghre River but a river they called the San Francisco. Although, Escalante said the guide called the river, quote, Ancapagari, which according to the interpreter, means Laguna Colorado, because near its source there is a spring of red water, hot and tasting bad. End quote. They camped in a swamp that evening near the river and near the modern town of Montrose.
They crossed the river the following day before running into another Ute Indian! This man’s name was El Zurdo, the left-handed and it is somewhat implied that he was known amongst some in the crew. Who knew him? That wasn’t recorded, of course. But the powwow wasn’t all that informative in the end and Escalante wrote, quote, we tarried a good while with him, and after a lengthy conversation drew forth nothing more useful than that we had suffered from the heat, which was indeed very fiery. End quote.
Briggs chastises the padre for his quip at learning northing useful in the chat when he wrote quote, Nothing useful? In his diary tomorrow Escalante would note that, yesterday we learned of Sabuagana Rancherias nearby and that in them were some of the Timpanogotzi or Laguna Indians. And two days hence he would write that, quote, the Utes told us that the Lagunas lived in pueblos like those of new Mexico. End quote. This intelligence, coming in dribbles, was portentous. End all quotes.
So a band of Utes that live on a lake and in Pueblos… like… the lake of Copala… were these Timpanogotzi or Laguna Utes living on the banks… of tewayo?!
Who exactly are the Ute Indians I keep mentioning? We’ve talked a lot about the Puebloans, the Hopis, a little about the Navajos and Apaches, but I’ve never really talked about the Utes in any previous episode prior to this series. Let’s learn a little about their past and how they fit into the wider world of the American Southwest.
The Ute belong to the language family of… the Uto-Aztecan, so the same language family as the Aztecs. And the same language family as their sometime enemies, the Peaceful Ones, or the Hopi. Although, the two languages aren’t mutually intelligible. The Utes speak the Shoshone branch of Uto Aztecan. They’re originally from the California Nevada border area of Death Valley. By about AD1000, the ancestral Utes had left their homelands of the Great Basin region and were fanning out into more eastern Utah and Western Colorado. The Comanches would break off from these Shoshone speaking Uto Aztecan and continue down the front range. By 1300, the southern Utes were firmly established hunter-gatherers inhabiting the lands recently abandoned by the Ancestral Puebloans & the Chaco-Aztecan Anasazi in Southern Colorado and Utah. A little to the north, they would have inhabited the lands that the Fremont, or northern Anasazi, had established as their own. The Fremont are still somewhat of a mystery to me and one of these days I will indeed do an episode over them. Probably right after my addendum to the Anasazi episode.
The Utes would go as far east as Oklahoma and Texas to hunt for Bison and to trade with their cousins and neighbors. It seems most Indians of the region consider the area around Pike’s Peak towards the southern end of the front range to be their domain and the Utes named that massive mountain, Tavakiev, which meant sun mountain. And not far from there, close to the border of New Mexico, just east of the Sangre de Christo Mountains sits two of my favorite mountains in the American Southwest. They’re known as Spanish Peaks today… but the Utes named them, Breasts of the Earth. For… reasons that become fantastically clear upon their viewing. Just make sure you keep your eyes in your sockets.
Over in Utah, in Arches National Park, there are petroglyphs at the start of the trail up to the famous Delicate Arch that is worth of the short detour. The Utes carved men hunting on horseback which sat next to even older Anasazi and Fremont petroglyphs. It’s a cool spot that not many people take the time to jaunt over to because they’re so blinded by that license plate staple.
So, despite Escalante’s comments about not learning much from El Zurdo, they did indeed learn about the Laguna Utes who live on their lake. Obviously, we will be returning to them shortly.
On the 28th of august they reached the Gunnison river which they called the San Javier and which the Utes called Tomichi. I have not been to this portion of the Gunnison River which they are about to cross but I have been to the portion upstream known as The Black Canyon of the Gunnison and let me tell you… it is impressive and absolutely gorgeous. I went in July some years ago with my Basque friend and it was incredibly beautiful and deep. I can’t imagine what the padres would have thought if they’d come to the edge of that deep dark gorge in the mountains instead of downstream. At it’s highest, the cliff plunges 2,722 feet down to the River.
It was on the banks of this river that it was decided they were going to take a small quote unquote detour. Instead of continuing on towards Monterey, they needed to, according to the eager padres, but they needed to go check in on these Sabuaganas. Despite the fact that it would quote, consume many supplies. End quote. I wonder how Maria y Pacheco felt about this detour. I imagine his main and only goal was reaching California and creating his map. This and further detours were probably felt as unnecessary and foolish. We can’t know his reaction though, because Escalante didn’t record it.
To save some time, D&E sent Andres Muñiz with Atanasio the Ute on ahead to see if any of the Sabs, or the Lagunas, or really just any Ute would mind being paid to show them the rest of the way. They still really needed a guide. And maybe Atanasio was feeling homesick for his family by now. The main crew camped at the banks of the Gunnison.
Then the next morning the camp is quite surprised when five Indians show up on some high hill nearby screaming their lungs out. After changing their pants probably, the padres regain some peace and coax these five down from the hills. At first they assumed they were the ones that were sent for by Andres and Atanasio but they soon realize that no, these are just some five other Utes who were in the area… might they have been sent to deter them?
After offering the proverbial peace pipe in the form of tobacco, which again, usually works. Remember when he did this same move in Hopi with his Havasu friend? But after offering the Tobacco, they then… somehow talk with these five? How on earth they communicated with them is a mystery. Maybe sign language? Maybe one of the stowaways, Felipe or Juan Domingo?
What then did they learn in this communication? Well, according to Escalante, not much. Except that they’d had a lot of trouble with their Comanche cousins this past summer. Escalante wasn’t buyin’ it though. No doubt, he had a copy of Rivera’s journal in his pack and he’d read how they threw him off the trail with constant fear of Comanche and Indian attacks. It seems the Utes were forging ahead with that same campaign against D&E. From Escalante:
We could not draw out of them anything useful for our plan, because theirs was to fill us with fear by exaggerating the danger to which we were exposing ourselves of being killed by the Comanches if we continued on our course. We refuted the validity of these pretenses, by which they were trying to stop us from going ahead, by telling them that our God, who is everyone's, would defend us if we should happen to run into these foes. End quote.
His armor of faith…and his armor of historical knowledge, they were both protecting him from being turned around. The padres were going to win this round.
It is curious though that they were using the Comanches as the scare tactic because Comanches in northwestern Colorado? Maybe the Utes knew that the Comanches were the enemies of the Spanish. Or maybe the Utes ran into them while hunting in the Buffalo Kingdom. By now, in the 1770s the Comanches and their empire of the summer moon was powerful and lethal and the puebloans and the Spanish lived in near constant fear of their attacks. I talked about in the opening episode how M&P had fought in a campaign against them. And you’ll hear in the final episode how he would fight in another campaign later in life. That later campaign would finally see the beginning of the end for the Mighty Comanche, The enemy of everyone, as that Comanche card player says in the movie Hell or High Water. In reality, the word Comanche itself may be a Ute word that means enemy. Or stranger. It seems in the Southwest, many tribal names are the name their enemies have bestowed upon them. Some American Indians wear it proudly. Others are more sensitive. Me personally? I would wear it proudly.
The actual story goes though, that in July of 1706, a Spanish sergeant major named Juan de Ulibarri witness the Utes and the Comanches preparing to attack Taos Pueblo. This was the first time they had ever been recorded in history. S C Gwynn sums up this event, quote:
He later heard of actual Comanche attacks (he being Juan de Ulibarri). He later heard of actual Comanche attacks. This was the first the Spanish or any white men had heard of these Indians who had many names. One name in particular, given to them by the Utes, was Koh-mats, sometimes given as Komantcia, and meant “anyone who is against me all the time.” The authorities in New Mexico translated this various ways but eventually as Comanche. End quote. More on the Comanche in a bit.
The following day, the 30th of August, Andres Muñiz and Atanasio return with five more Sabs and one Laguna Ute. They offered these new arrivals plenty of food and obviously, some Tobacco. And then asked for a guide to the Laguna Pueblo. But that Laguna who had come with them said that while he was indeed a Laguna, he was in fact, not THOSE Lagunas and actually, he didn’t know the way to his homeland anyways.
The conversation went something like…
I am a Laguna Indian.
Oh that’s great! Can you take us to your homeland?
Well, you see, while I am a Laguna, I’m not THAT Laguna. And besides, I don’t remember. And there are Comanches over this hill and we should turn back from here.
Here’s what Escalante wrote, with a hint of frustration, of this exchange:
They replied that to go to the place we were trying to reach there was no other trail than the one passing through the midst of the Comanches and that these would impede our passage and even deprive us of our lives and finally that none of them knew the country between here and the Lagunas. This they repeated many times, insisting that we had to turn back from here. We tried to convince them, first by arguing and then by cajoling, so as not to displease them. Then we showed the Laguna a woolen blanket, a big all-purpose knife, and white glass beads, telling him this is what we were giving him so that he would accompany us and serve us as a guide all the way to his country.
He agreed, and the things mentioned were turned over to him.
When the Sabuaganas saw this, they quit posing difficulties and now acknowledged that some of them knew the way. End quote.
Sweet knife… Oh yeah, I suddenly remember the way now! But would you want to come over to our house first?
D&E apparently knew the ruse of inviting them over to their Rancheria and how it was used to quote detain us and longer enjoy the kindnesses we were doing them, for to as many as came there, and today they were plenty, we gave them to eat and to smoke. End quote. But seeing as how they didn’t want to be rude and they didn’t want to lose this invaluable guide, they agreed to head on over to his house.
From this camp, they’d cross the Gunnison River, head through some terrain of prickly pear, lava rocks, and hills, and camp for the evening with their new Sabuagana and the Laguna friends.
The next day, after crossing two rivers, they began to eat a lunch, or maybe dinner but, one of the Sab friends got a little too excited and quote, ate with such brutish savagery that we thought he was going to die from overstuffing. On finding himself so sick, he claimed that the Spaniards had done him harm. This stupid notion caused us a great deal of worry, for we already knew that these, pardon his language, barbarians, when they happen to get sick after having eaten what someone else gives them, even if he be from among their own, believe that he damaged them and try to avenge an injury which they never received. End quote.
So this poor guy ate so much of the Spaniards food that he was sick with a food baby. Briggs writes of this notion of injury from ingestion, and how 76 years later, something somewhat similar happened with the US Army and the Utes. He writes, quote:
Escalate knew something of what he was talking about. Seventy-six years later a U.S. Indian agent in Santa Fe would report the following incident:
A Ute war captain had a beautiful wife who took sick. A medicine man was called in. "Either the disease or the medicine was the death of the woman." The war captain "paid off the doctor bill by putting a bullet through" the medicine man, "leaving another vacancy in the medical department among the Eutaws.” End all quotes.
Thankfully, for the D&E crew, quote, God willed that he recovered, after he vomited some of the great mass he could not digest. End quote. I can’t help but hear the sarcasm pouring from the words of the journal.
At this point, they stop heading east and would not do so again until crossing into Arizona from Utah in a few months. They were though, getting precariously far from their target of Monterey. I believe some in the group were beginning to sense it. Especially M&P. Or Maria y Pacheco.
This current Ute guide though, just like they’d renamed the previous guide, they also renamed this one, no doubt on account of his name again being somewhat difficult to pronounce for the Spanish, who were notoriously unwilling to learn local languages. They named him, Silvestre! After Escalante himself. So they now had two Silvestres and two Atanasios. Although… I don’t think we hear from the second Atanasio again. He kinda just… disappears from the journal.
They travelled for two more days after the vomiting incident through more forests of aspen and spruce and through large grassy parks flattened by those glaciers. They were yet again at one of their highest elevations amongst the beautiful streams. They were at around 8,600 feet. And it was here, that they ran into an army of around eighty Utes on horseback… Escalante writes of the tense situation, quote, they told us, that they were going out to hunt, but we figured that they came together, like this, either to show off their strength in numbers or to find out if any other Spanish people were coming behind us or if we came alone. End quote.
I have no doubt that Escalante’s guess about them trying to discover what the Spanish numbers and intentions were, was correct. And I have no doubt that for a moment, each member of the team may have felt like this was their last moment on God’s green earth. Maybe M&P went for the rifle but was held back. God will protect us, Dominguez or Escalante may have muttered.
Escalante also guessed that they were all from the village they were heading towards, which is why every available warrior man rode out to see what was up. Eventually the men on horseback leave and they continue to follow Silvestre the Laguna for three more miles.
Almost as if to avoid the drama the overwhelming warriors must have caused the crew, Escalante records after the incident that so far, in the 35 days they’d been out, they had traveled 199 leagues, or, 523 miles. Quite impressive, if you ask me. It was by now, September 1st.
At this point, they were at the grand encampment of the Sabuaganas, which had about 30 tents and was numerous with people. These tents or teepees were a newer addition to the Utes, acquired from the plains Indians after the Utes gained the horse. The horse was able to carry these heavy tents and allow the Ute people to gather more food from around the area, which in turn, had enlarged their groups from 20 or so Utes to the large numbers that the D&E Expedition would run into. A lot had changed since the time of the Anasazi Altepetl in the four corners. And a lot of that change was due to the arrival of the horse, back on its native soil after a separation of ten millennia.
The group respectfully camped a mile south of the Utes. But immediately upon setting up camp, Dominguez, Andres Muniz, and Silvestre the Laguna, entered the village and headed for the tipi of the quote unquote Chieftain. Inside, Dominguez embraced the chief and his sons and then asked if he could please assemble all of his people… he had a message of upmost importance for them. That message was the gospel.
Through the interpreter, maybe both Muñiz and Silvestre? Not sure, but through an interpreter he told the gathered Sabuaganas all about God and Christianity and according to the journal, the people believed him. But then, a hard of hearing older man asked what was all this then? To which the Laguna, Silvestre replied that Dominguez was telling them the truth about the Lord and the heavens and baptism.
Maybe they’d been preaching to this Laguna Ute since he joined the crew and he was already converted and now he was helping Dominguez spread the word?
Dominguez would next ask another Laguna that was present, a man who was helping his fellow Utes in the understanding of the gospel, Dominguez would ask him what his name was, to which, this Laguna would reply Oso Colorado. Red Bear. Awesome name. Or so I thought. Dominguez thought otherwise and immediately gave a lesson on how men are superior to beasts so one shouldn’t name oneself after an animal so he’s going to need a Christian name…. And what better name then the one he himself had! So, Francisco Dominguez named this Red Bear… Francisco. Despite this sermon on conflating man and beast, Briggs points out that quote, Yet Spaniards themselves stood proud of such names as Leon, Lion, and Cabeza de Vaca, Cow’s Head. End quote. I’ve talked bout Cabeza de Vaca a couple times now but that is a very astute observation.
After he renamed him Francisco, the rest of the Ute band in attendance apparently attempted to repeat his name although with quote unquote some difficulty. Dominguez also mentions that Francisco was overjoyed at now being called that… instead of Red Bear. Not sure about that padre but…
Dominguez then went on to rename the Chief, Captain, asked after his sons, gave another sermon on having multiple wives when he learned that one son had two of them, and then asked if they wanted to further learn the truth and if so, he would return in a year to build a mission and to baptize the lot of them. To which… they replied with a… we’ll see.
I can’t help but wonder what was really going through the people’s minds when they were hearing of Jesus and seeing the cross and crucifixion… there’s a solid chance the people truly and readily accepted this and believed he was the one true way to heaven… which was a new concept to them, that is true. There’s also a solid chance they were just sitting through these lessons like a teenager does in church… they’re there because they have to be and they’re polite. Maybe they’d heard from other Indians of this practice and they were told it’s best to just let them talk and then they’ll be on their way. I have no idea, though. Then again, Christianity is the largest religion on the planet with one third of humans counting themselves as such.
After some more preaching, they then sat down and had a big Thanksgiving-esque meal of jerked bison which Dominguez had bought with some glass beds. I love me some beef jerky, especially the bark kind that’s super dry but I’ve never had great bison jerky. If anyone knows of a farm or a group that makes some good stuff, let me know.
They also agree to trade some lame horses for some fresh ones. The trade meeting was set for later that evening. But the meeting wouldn’t go quite as planned. Even before that though, we learn of some treachery amongst our group.
Remember, if you will, because some of the men certainly had not, but remember when it was promised that no trading for personal gain was to occur? Well, it was found out that evening that some of the men had hidden things, probably beads and knives, things small enough to remain hidden this whole time, but some of the men had broken their word and it was found out that they had indeed traded with the Indians. It was practically their only rule before leaving… but it was a tough rule to follow, apparently. And this trading infuriated the padres and accused the men of mutinying.
One of the disobedient was the interpreter, Andres Muniz, another was his brother, and the third was Felipe, who was one of the two young men that showed up fifteen days after the expedition had started. And that boy, remember, is what’s known as a genízaro. Actually, All three of these men were genízaros, or mixed blood Indians, and Felipe had escaped a pueblo ranch. So they would probably have more knowledge of the road ahead than the Spaniards. Especially Felipe. I’ve talked about the knowledge of the Muniz brothers, although I still go back and forth on what they actually knew but it’s possible that the road ahead scared them. Or it’s possible they just wanted to stay with these people that they were familiar with. I say that because it appears, and Escalante certainly writes about this, but it appears that these three traded with the Indians so that Captain, the chief, and his Sabuagana men would persuade the Spaniards to turn around. And this trade is believed by Escalante because when the Chief, Captain, some very old men of the tribe, and some of the younger Sabuaganas showed up before sundown, they began anew their pleading for the Spaniards to turn around.
Escalante wrote:
They began trying to persuade us to turn back from here, exaggerating anew and with greater effort the hardships and perils to which we were exposing ourselves by going ahead, saying for certain that the Comanches would not let us do so and that they did not tell us this to stop us from going as far as we wanted, but because they esteemed us highly. We acknowledged this token and told them that the one God whom we worshiped would expedite everything for us and would defend us, not only from the Comanches but also from all others who might intend to do us harm, and that we feared not a thing that they were bringing up because we were certain that His Majesty was on our side. End quote.
Again with the armor of faith… but I think it’s more than that. I believe they were also aware of the ruse and reason behind the attempts that the Indians were making to turn the Spaniards around. But the Spaniards weren’t budging. So the Utes turned up the heat and said, okay, if you’re not going to turn around then could you please write a letter to your great chief, aka the King in Spain, and could you tell him that you merely passed through these lands and you didn’t stay here because if you end up dead, we don’t want the Spanish thinking it was us, the Sabuagana Utes.
Dominguez and Escalante weren’t buying that either and Escalante wrote in the journal that this tactic was, quote, a ruse from among some of our own companions, who wanted to turn back or loiter among them. End quote. So they knew the trading had taken place and it seems it had been to ask the Indians to convince them to stay.
D&E respond to the Captain though and they tell him that sure, we’ll write a letter and we’ll leave it with you so that the next time one of you goes to New Mexico, you can take it along and hand it over to the Governor.
But, that wasn’t good enough, or at least, the Sabs feared that would not be enough so they asked D&E if one of them could please take it. To which they respond that no, we cannot take it because no one can leave our party, we’re all going together to California.
Escalante writes this of the end of the exchange:
Finally, now that they found no other way to hinder our passage without declaring themselves our enemies, they said that if we did not turn back from here they would not make exchanges for the hoofsore horses we had; to this we replied that we would go on even if they made no exchange, because under no circumstances would we turn back without knowing the whereabouts of the Padre our brother… end quote.
Again with the father Garces… it is possible that they were using his unknown whereabouts and his story and his wandering with the Cosninas as a disarming tactic. Essentially saying that we’re not here to conquer, we’re just here to find our silly wandering friend.
Well, after this exchange the Indians realized they weren’t going to stop these Spaniards so they gave in and said look, we’re only telling y'all this and trying to stop you because we love you and you’re our friends. And then they said, in the morning, we’ll exchange our horses with you, no problem.
In reality, the padres had discovered the previous day, right before entering the camp, that these three men had snuck personal belongings along with them to trade and before they even entered the camp of the Sabs, they were reminding them that trading for personal gain was forbidden and God was on their side so they didn’t need weapons or the like. But again, The Muñiz Brothers and Felipe, the Genizaro weren’t interested in going further than this spot, which was believed by them was the furthest that any Spaniard had ever been north and they preferred to stay right here with the Utes, or, to turn back.
The next morning, all that had spoken with them the evening before and even more this time came to the kings camp, which is what they called their camp when they were amongst the American Indians because they were representatives of the King in Spain. So the next morning, even more Sabuaganas showed up and they began yet again to persuade these men to turn around.
Sometime during the night though, they had gotten to their Laguna guide, Silvestre and that morning their guide gave back the things which the Spanish had traded with him so that he may take the Spanish to his lakeside pueblo… which may well have been Tewayo.
After an hour and a half though, the Spaniards said alright, enough. We’re going wether we have a guide or not but know that if we go, y’all are no longer our friends and we will tell the Governor and the King that news. But y’all ain’t stopping us and we best be leaving now.
This worked and after Dominguez had said it, one of Captain’s brothers got up and said something to the effect of quote, since they had granted us passage and the Laguna had agreed to guide us, placing obstacles before us was no longer appropriate and that they should therefore stop talking about his matter. End quote.
Essentially, the game is up, we lost, it’s time to send them on their way. The playbook that worked with Rivera, had failed them this time around it seems.
After this heated exchange, the entire Sabuagana Ute encampment had packed up and by the time the Spanish were saddled and ready to head out, they were gone. They weren’t messing around, apparently. But because of the whole ordeal and the going back and forth, their guide, the Laguna Ute, Silvestre, didn’t want to guide them any longer and he decided to just stay at the spot where the old encampment was. I can picture him, as if it were a movie. Silvestre centered in the frame, sitting in the dust with the Utes on horseback going one way and the Spanish on horseback going the other and he’s just sitting there dejected and confused as the world moves on around him. In reality, he claimed he was looking for a saddle but… that was most likely just an excuse.
Well, D&E sent Andres Muñiz back there to get him and comfort him and convince him to come along again which eventually he did, and thankfully he did, because again, our adventurers have no idea where they are or where they’re going. But now, on September 2nd, they were finally heading off again to the west, albeit the northwest, so, continually even further north than Monterey. But at least they had a guide. And while Monterey was still on their mind, another gal of the expedition came to the forefront and they might, just might, be heading to the lake of Copala. The Land of Tewayo. But first… they had to travel through Comancheria, but… isn’t Comancheria on the Great Plains?
What are we to make of this Comanche threat all the way up in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah? Roberts isn’t convinced the Comanche are there at all and it is indeed a ruse. He cites a 2008 book by an author I shall not name because I had also planned on using this author as a source when their brand new book came out recently. I excitedly picked it up, only to find two flat out incorrect pieces of information in what little I read of the enormous book. I returned it because… how can a book claiming to be a definitive history of the Indians of North America (a grandiose task in and of itself) but how can someone make two errors in the ONLY two passages of the book that I read? So Roberts also uses this author but a different, earlier book. And in that different book that Roberts uses as a source for Comanche homeland, he says that the author makes a map of that area and it's the southern great plains but there’s also… a spot on the map right here on the Colorado, Utah, Wyoming border where the D&E Expedition was being warned to avoid. So he dug deeper and he found that this author’s only source for the Comanche being in this spot was… the very journal I am going through right now, The Dominguez and Escalante Expedition Journal… his only citations were this journal and the maps that M&P will make afterwards. So Roberts isn’t sure of what to make of the claim and since he was writing a book on D&E, he dug no further, I don’t blame him. Although he does come up with a clever way to suggest they were just another distant branch of Shoshone Utes. Could be.
Briggs though, writes that the Comanche once lived beyond the Yellowstone River but eventually left for the Buffalo Kingdom of the Great Plains because it better suited their lifestyle. Either that or Crows and Blackfeet drove them out. That second possibility though, doesn’t quite add up to the Comanche of historical record.
That historical record tells us that the Comanche may have been one of the first northern tribes to acquire, via the Utes, the horse once the Comanche had fanned out of the Great Basin Region along with the others from that area. Once they gained the horse though, they used it alarmingly well. In SC Gwynns Empire of the Summer Moon, which is a hotly debated but incredibly enjoyable read, well in Empire of the Summer Moon, Gwynn suggests that the Comanche were the only plains tribe to successfully breed horses. The other tribes just raided for them. He also claims that the Comanche were the only ones to do battle entirely on horseback. Everyone else, including the Apache, rode TO the battle, dismounted, and then fought. This is actually believed to be the reason the steppe people of Eurasia were so effective at the horse as well. And Gwynn makes that comparison.
The Comanche lived on their horse. They were also seemingly supplied with firearms by trading with the French so they were armed and on horseback. But even without firearms, they could shoot 20 arrows from the back of a horse while it took a soldier to load and shoot one rifle shot… allegedly. Either way, they were impressive and feared. I will talk about them again at the end when Don Miera goes and fights the toughest leader the Comanche ever had, Green Horn.
Herbert Bolton, the first Anglo to write about the D&E expedition, if you’ll remember, but Bolton quoted from a Spanish Indian agent of French Descent named Athanase de Mezieres, who in 1770 wrote about the Comanche, quote:
They are a people so numerous and haughty that when asked their number they make no difficulty of comparing it to that of the stars. They are so skillful in horsemanship that they have no equal; so daring that they never ask for or grant truces; and in the possession of such a territory that, finding in it an abundance of pasturage for their horses and an incredible number of buffalo] which furnish them all the raiment, food, and shelter, they only just fall short of possessing all the conveniences of the earth. End quote.
Miera y Pacheco, the expedition’s gallant map maker and heroic old soldier once wrote in two different legends on two of his maps about the Comanche and very helpfully, the author Briggs has made a composite of those writings, quote:
This nation is very warlike and cruel. They say they left the region farther north breaking through various nations. They obtained horses and iron weapons and they have acquired so much skill in handling both that they excel all nations in their dexterity and hardiness. They have made themselves the lords and masters of all the buffalo country to the province of Texas, taking it from the Apache Nation, which was formerly the most widely extended of all known in America. They have destroyed many of the Apache nations, pushing those that were left to the frontiers of our King’s provinces. The Comanches and Apaches have brought about such panic that they have left no towns, cities or ranchos of Spaniards unattached. End quote.
Their raiding was legendary and would continue to be so well into the 19th century as they fought eventually with the Mexicans and then the Americans. The Mexicans would invite the Anglo Texans to their territory in part as a buffer against these raids. And part of the creation of the Texas Rangers was to pursue and make war with the Comanches. The Utes, obviously, had great fear of them as well. Despite both speaking a Shoshone branch of Uto-Aztecan and being distant cousins.
So who were these phantom Comanche warriors terrorizing the Laguna and Sabuagana Utes during this time? The question remains unanswered but I’m willing to bet, it was indeed, the Comanche who rode into the area when they wanted to via Wyoming from the Great Plains. So numerous as to compare their number to the stars… so quick on horseback they could escape armies and Indians easily and at will… unequalled at making war in the Americas until our own American Empire… I would not put it past the Empire of the Summer Moon to be raiding their old neighbors up north in the summer when the Buffalo Kingdom gets unbearably hot. It just so happens that by September, these Comanche had left and had returned back south to join their brethren where the winters were easier than the northern rockies.
Before our expedition left the old camp of the long gone Sabs, I must inform you that the expedition also picked up another Laguna Ute ute, Ute youth, whom the blacksmith Joaquin Lain put on the back of his own saddle, so he must have been young. Because of this young Indian riding hind-saddle with Joaquin, they named him, Joaquin. So as they left for the Laguna’s homeland, they had yet another guide, albeit a young boy, to help them on their journey. That means the crew now consisted of the original 10, the two add-ons they picked up in the beginning, and I’m going to say the two Laguna Utes only because I don’t think we ever hear from their Sabuagana Atanasio again. He probably went back with his own people by now.
The next leg of their journey takes place in lands that are mostly unknown to me personally but consist of meadows and forests and the over 10,000 foot elevated Grand Mesa. It would rain heavily on them. They encountered no Comanche but they did encounter some Ute women who gave them some sweet and sour goose berries that had been drying in the sun after they’d picked them. They would reach the true highest point of their journey on that 10,000 foot Grand Mesa and there, they would truly feel the cold. They’d come across beaver dams and lands which Escalante was not… overly impressed with but which I am sure are absolutely gorgeous. He wrote of creeks and streams that would disappear into the earth only to reappear downstream somewheres. During these next few days he also learned from the guide how much they’d gone out of the way on their detour to the Sabuagana camp. This detour surely ate through their food supply… but it definitely ate through their supply of time. The days by now were getting shorter. The chill must have been getting stronger. In the end, it wouldn’t matter because all this wasted time only contributed to saving their lives as you will see.
Finally, after four days of traveling, on September 5th, which marks the 39th day of the journey and which said journey had taken them roughly 573 miles… on that fourth day of travel our group made it to a river that the Utes called the Rio Colorado, except they called it that in their own language. The Spanish, however, called this river the San Rafael river. So what river was it? Well, it was THE Colorado River. The one and the same that forms the Grand Canyon. The same river Garces was exploring…. Very far away. This was the Rio Tizon that the expedition was hoping to cross over and explore for both Majesties! Except… our intrepid explorers had no idea that it was one and the same and they crossed it without easily and without much fan fare. As a matter of fact, Escalante wrote that they weren’t very impressed by this river… They wouldn’t see the Rio Colorado again until their dramatic and nearly genocidal run-in with it near modern day Lee’s Ferry, Marble Canyon, and Glen Canyon during the most dramatic events of the expedition. They’d certainly be impressed with it then. But that’s for next episode.
Briggs does write this of the Rio and our explorer’s crossing of it:
The next year, when Miera began drawing maps of the route, he would have it figured out. His San Rafael became for a stretch the Rio de los Sabuaganas with the Dolores and Navajo (or San Juan) as tributaries, and then the mighty Rio Colorado. End quote.
On the 6th, they left that mighty river and continued towards modern day Dinosaur National Monument and the Green River. It seems they were back on their journey to California. But you never know with these guys. This part of the west is a place I have not yet explored. I have tried on three separate occasions to go to Dinosaur National Mon and camp and do the Echo Park Drive from the Utah end to the Colorado end but all three times, it was early spring and weather turned me around. One day I will.
The next four days for the crew seemed to be pretty unpleasant as Silvestre lead them through some rough terrain. Including a spot so thin Escalante was afraid that the horses were going to fall down and slip and slide all the way to the bottom. It was also during these days when they learned from the Muniz brothers and Felipe their stowaway that Silvestre their guide MAY have been leading them on a wild goose chase. ESCALANTE WRITES, quote, POST FROM HOTES.
D&E weren’t buying it though. And they weren’t hearing anymore on the subject. So they continued to head northwest through the Comanche territory and towards the banks of the Laguna Ute’s lake. And then that evening, to vindicate the Padres, they camped next to a Sabuagana Ute encampment filled with men that had been up northwest that very day in the very direction they were traveling in order so that they could steal some horses from the Comanche. but unfortunately for them, although fortunately for our group, the Comanches were no longer there. These Sabs deduced that quote, from tracks in the sand that the Comanches must have moved out to the east, headed toward El Río de Napeste. End quote. El rio de napeste is the modern day Arkansas River.
Wait a minute! The Arkansas River!? The headwaters to that River are 120 miles straight through mountains towards the east, although if they went up and around the mountains they’d avoid that tough hike. And avoiding that would be easier to do on horses. And doesn’t the Arkansas River travel straight through Comancheria and the Buffalo Kingdom?! I’m starting to believe it may have been the Comanche after all.
The men continued through the land northwesterly always on the lookout for these Comanches but thankfully, never seeing them. They’d also never see another Sab Ute after that evening either. They were now on the lookout for these Laguna Utes. Or Lake Utes. Maybe Lake of Copala Utes?
On the 9th of September, they came across some Fremont pictographs which are still visible today despite them being quite old. There were ghostly cloud burst figures or spirits, and by that I mean the figures representing the summer monsoons that I talked about in the first episode for this series. Again, that’s just a theory but I like it. there were also big horn sheep, dogs, plants which are probably corn, horned beings, shields, warriors with shields & spears, and a whole lot more. Like I said before, I will be doing a series on the Fremont Peoples who were contemporaries to the Anasazi and ancestral puebloans albeit to the north. They would not have been related to the Utes a,though they may have had similar ancient ancestors. Still, the Utes may have understood these sites as being old and significant and may have even imparted their own significance on them.
They named the canyon with the many petroglyphs and pictographs Canyon Pintado or Painted Canyon. Also in the canyon they apparently found some ore which Miera, the learned geologist as well as everything else he had so far in his life accomplished, I mean the man was a true Renaissance man. Maybe I’ll do an episode over him for those who want to donate to the podcast. I like Kessell’s writing and Don Bernardo seems incredibly interesting.
Briggs writes of this entry in the journal while quoting it. It’s worth repeating.
Don Bernardo Miera said it was one of those which the miners call tepustete [copper], and that it was an indication of gold ore.
Tepustete is the first of a number of Aztec words to crop up in the diary. Readers may be able to recognize others for a flavor distinct from Spanish.
Miera had become a geologist too.
On this matter we assert nothing," Escal-ante wrote, "nor will we assert anything because we are not experienced in mines, and because a more detailed examination than the one we were able to make on this occasion is always necessary. End quote
Miera, who of a certainty read the completed diary, may not, in his vanity, have appreciated these remarks. End all quotes.
in truth, D&E may. Not have wanted to be responsible for a literal gold rush into this territory if there wasn’t actually any gold.
I want to now just read a passage from Briggs about their current path cause he just writes so well.
Still in barren country, they crossed an invisible line into what in 1847 would become Mormon country, part of a projected State of Deseret of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From a Book of Mormon word interpreted to mean "honey bee," Deseret was envisioned to take in not only Utah but huge sections of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and even California. The United States, needless to say, refused the bee access to so much potential honey. End quote. I’ll cover the Mormon Battalion, Deseret, and the Utah War one of these days.
On that same day, the 9th, the expedition made it to the white river, a river I had to look up because I do not know that one at all. Every other river named so far, I’m familiar with, even tangentially but again, this is unknown territory to me. And to the padres. They were totally in the hands of the laguna, silvestre now and he was taking them on quite the journey.
They named the white river El Rio de San Clemente, who my research told me was the third successor to Peter, way back in the 1st century AD, not long after Christ. I live near San Clemente in Orange County, California but they, the… Californios call it san clemany. *shudders*.
After the river, on the 10th, they traversed rockless hills, plains, and passed many a Buffalo trace. Or the paths they make in the wild. If you’re interested in my favorite creature, my first ever episode was over the bison. You should give it a listen!
around this time our team was running low on both water and food. The water part though, was worrisome because without it, the animals may lep up out the camp in the middle of the night as they had previously done. And will do again. Spoiler alert.
But for the humans, the lack of food was also presenting itself a problem. in the journal, Escalante blames the hungry Sabuaganas for tearing through their food but as Roberts writes, quote, That the men thought they could possibly carry enough food for the whole journey, no matter how many pack animals they allocated for the purpose, signals a disastrous miscalculation. End quote. I couldn’t agree more. And they have a lot of traveling left to do too.
But, at this desperate point, a miracle saved them… a miracle and a gun, although, now that I’m reading the journal, he doesn’t actually say they shot this miracle. And that miracle is my good friend and just mentioned, bison.
After realizing the big beasts must be nearby with the freshness of the Traces, they sent two of the crew out to see how far away the Bison were. They thankfully reported, not far.
Here’s Escalante:
We dispatched others on the fleetest horses and, after chasing it for about three leagues, they killed it; then at seven-thirty at night they brought back a grand supply of meat. End quote.
The Bison saves the day again. So they may not have shot it after all. A fact I took for granted until reading Briggs, who, as usual, writes beautifully about this:
Who the hunter hero was, Escalante didn't say. Nor how the buffalo was slain. In the next century, Josiah Gregg, a chronicler of the Santa Fe Trail, would admire the skill of ciboleros, Hispano and Pueblo buffalo hunters on the Plains. A buffalo having been singled out amid a herd, a cibolero shouldered his horse up to it and drove a lance down past its ribs into the heart, Gregg said.
so with these hardy New Mexicans, a rifle may not have even been necessary and truthfully, may not have even been as effective. That’s hardcore and awesome though.
They named their camp that evening after the Buffalo, Arroyo del Cibolo. They then stayed in camp an extra day to prepare, jerk, and dry the meat so it wouldn’t go to waste and spoil.
On the 13th of September, the crew finally arrived at the Green River, that river that flows through Dinosaur National Monument and eventually into the Colorado near Canyonlands National Park: island in the sky. To the D & E crew, this was the largest river they had come to yet. Surprisingly… their Laguna guide, this Silvestre, wasn’t even sure if it ever met up with the Colorado River… Which, really wasn’t that far away from where they were. Although, the American Indians they run into will constantly feign knowledge of the land they inhabit. It was either a ploy to keep from being a continual guide, a trick to confuse the Spaniards, or they just… genuinely were unaware. The last one I highly doubt.
But… maybe by the late 1700s, the area of the greater American Southwest, and the people that lived there, had changed so much so that knowledge such as the land around them wasn’t as strong as it had once been.
I have not researched enough of this to make an educated guess but I sure can make an uneducated one and with that caveat out of the way, I do think the area of the American west changed dramatically after the Europeans came with their disease and their horses and their gun trade and their wars and conquering. From the Athabaskan Navajo & Apache pouring down from northwest Canada & Alaska to fill in the abandoned areas of the southwest… which the abandonment in the 12 and 1300s wasn’t the europeans fault, of course, if you’ve listened to the Ancient Ones series, but rather the abandonment was caused by the civil strife the Anasazi, Ancestral Puebloans, and Mesa Verdeans had amongst themselves. The Navajo and Apache though, arrive and cause trouble in the four corners after the Spanish subjugated the Puebloans. Who knows what catalyst caused them to rapidly flee the cold north.
Then there’s the rise of the once Wyoming Shoshone branch of Native Americans who would become the Comanche powerhouse quote unquote Empire after European horses fell in their lap. And then there’s the introduction of eastern Great Lakes tribes into the area of the western great plains and eastern Rockies… such as the Sioux, the Dakotas, and the Cheyanne. In reality, by 1776, the west looked dramatically different than it had in 1276, just before the abandonment. Or 1476 just before the Spanish. And even much different than it would in 1876 after the Mormons and the Americans, only 100 years later… not to mention the year of the Bicentennial of the founding of the United States of America: 1976. I wonder what the west and the southwest will look like in 2076… I’ll be 89 and maybe still recording podcasts… we’ll see.
Back to our Dominguez & Escalante crew and their adventure… They just found the Green River and it’s large and scary and their Laguna, Indian guide is oblivious to where it goes… so they end up calling it the San Buenaventura river or, the River of Saint Good Fortune. They mention that this is the river that Fray Alonso de Posada claimed was the river that separates the Ute and the Comanches… despite Posada never actually saying the word Comanche.
But wait, who is Fray Alonso de Posada? And is he necessary enough to our story to go down a huge rabbit hole? Well, let’s find out… and yes, yes he is, obviously. I’m the king of rabbit holes.
You’ll recognize, if you’ve been listening to the previous episodes, but you should recognize words like Copala, Quivira, & Tewayo… well, they make yet another appearance here, as I have continuously hinted at.
Our tangent starts with a man named Don Diego de Peñalosa Briceno y Berdugo, who we will call Don Diego for short, obviously. But, do not confuse this Don Diego with the man we spent last episode talking about, Don Diego de Vargas… so THIS Don Diego was from Peru and he ALSO, just like our last Don Diego, he was also Governor of New Mexico, except he was governor during the early 1660s. pre-Revolution. He was quite an adventurer and a man with an appetite to explore. While governor, he visited all of the pueblos as all governors do but at the Jemez, Zuni, and Tewa Pueblos, and many other pueblos, he heard the rumors of Quivira, which is on the great plains, maybe Kansas or Texas, but it really did not exist, and he heard the rumors of Tewayo, somewhere in the Rockies. The land of emergence, if you’ll recall. He became obsessed with finding these places, as many Spaniards before and after him would do. As you’ll see.
But in typical New Mexico fashion, Don Diego would find himself in trouble with the church, something I talked about at length a few episodes back. This was quite a common theme in New Mexican Spanish history prior to the reconquest.
Because of this trouble, Don Diego was sent to D F where he was put on trial with the inquisition and… he lost. He was then exiled from New Spain and sent back to Europe. But that didn’t stop his explorer side and while in London and Paris, he visited the courts of the aristocracy and the rich to drum up some support for a visit to North America, north of the Spanish held territories to find these rumored mythical places. All he needed was an army and an armada.
His message was so persistent that even the king back in Spain heard of his stories and sent a letter to the Viceroy of New Spain to inquire about what this exiled man was talking about. I’ll read a little from the letter that the King of Spain wrote in 1678:
In my royal Council of the Indies, information has been received that Don Diego de Peñalosa (who wears the attire of a knight of Alcantara, and is called the Count of Santa Fe), a native of Lima, is in Paris and that the cause of being in that court has resulted from some embarrassing experiences which as governor of New Mexico (in the administration of the viceroy, the Marquis of Mancera, your predecessor) he had with the Tribunal of the Inquisition. It imprisoned him, confiscated his property, and he left, deprived of his office and exiled from that kingdom. From there he went to England, and from there to Paris where he has been ,for five years. He has married a Frenchwoman and he has given a paper to the Most Christian King concerning the conquest and discovery of the provinces of Quivira and Tagayo assuring them that they are very rich in silver and gold, offering to go himself with the fleet on account of being very well informed concerning all the Indies. Furthermore, he has been given a reply to the effect that with the present war waging it would not be possible to discuss the enterprise, but that as soon' as there was peace it would be considered.
So the King of Spain knew what was up with Don Diego, who, would actually go on to further suggest to the French King, King Louis the 14th, that he would absolutely lead some Frenchmen and soldiers to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the border of modern Texas and Mexico. The same river that flows through Santa Fe. And even more than that, he would help seize the rich mines of Santa Barbara in Tampico, which is pretty far south into Mexico on the Caribbean coast. It was a bold proposition, and it was a proposition the French couldn’t agree to… at least with Don Diego leading it. So the French told Don Diego that, since we’re warring with the Spanish and such, we can’t send you out there right now because that would be bad form… but what they should have told the Don was, thank you for the information, we’ll get our best man on it.
That best man was a certain Frenchman I mentioned a few episodes ago, La Salle. That man that would, after hearing all of this information that Don Diego was giving the French, La Salle would be told all of this and he would sail down the Mississippi and claim the River and all the land around it from the Gulf of Mexico to New France, for France!
We know how La Salle and his colony ended up… it wasn’t pleasant for a lot of them, for sure. Although, like I said, some of the survivors end up in New Mexico after the Reconquest by Don Diego de Vargas. Other survivors eventually did make it up to New France… more on them in a moment.
After hearing about all of this French exploration and intrigue, for a second time, the Spanish King asked his Council of the Indes for a report on what all this Quivira and Tewayo business was about. And this report began the action of chasing down the already dead La Salle, which would begin the eventual colonization of Tejas by the Spanish. Mostly as a buffer zone against the French. But later it would become a buffer zone against the Comanche. And then the Americans.
So about those French who made their way up to New France, or modern day Canada. Well once in the territory, they told their tale of the Great Plains and the Indians and… of Quivira and Tewayo. They told these tales to a man who himself had spent quite some time in the Americas. A man who travelled the Missouri River and who encountered many an Indian and a man who greatly admired the Native Americans and their freedoms and a man who recorded many of their oral traditions… including the oral tradition of how the Mississippian Culture or Native Americans near the Mississippi River and great lakes had many years ago, in the 1200s, at the same time as the overthrow of the Anasazi Chacoan Aztec Altepetl by the Mesa Verdeans… so a long time ago, these Mississippians had overthrown their leader and chopped off his head. He then wrote about how the Mississippians had lived free and clear of tyranny since then… which stories, wether true or not, but these stories may have influenced certain liberty minded thinkers in England and eventually the American Colonies… but I’m getting way off topic here on this tangent… This adventurous military nobleman was named Baron de Lahontan. He was mentioned by Briggs in the beginning of the introduction episode. Is everyone still with me?
Well, in one of those books that he wrote later in life, Lahontan used these tales by these survivors and these tales by Don Diego to weave his own tale of a great lake of salt at the end of a Long River in the area immediately north of the territory of New Mexico. This would later influence our man, Escalante… but by way of Posada, who I mentioned in the beginning of this tangent… stay with me.
Fray Alonso de Posada was in New Mexico as a missionary from 1650 to 1660 where he visited many a pueblo and heard many a stories. Immediately after this post as a missionary, during the reign of Don Diego de Peñalosa as governor, the don Diego trying to mount an expedition to the new world in France… during the reign of said Don Diego, Posada was given the job of Custodian of the Custodia de la Conversion de San Pablo del Nuevo Mexico which gave him access to all of the missionaries reports. He was a man with access to a lot of information on New Mexico, in other words. And he would constantly be acquiring more information about the land and its people. So in 1685, that report that the king ordered a couple times on these lands of Quivira and Tewayo, the writing of that report fell on Posada. Which he would accomplish in 86 or 87. In it, he documents everything he knew about these lands and really about all of the lands of New Mexico and what lies to the north and east and west. It is truly an in depth and descriptive report for the time, especially since a lot of what he writes down was a completely blank space on the map for the Europeans. But in this report, he confidently affixes a geographic X on the map of North America North of New Mexico where this Lake of Copala or Tewayo, the place of emergence, this place rich in wealth, truly is.
The fact that Escalante mentions Posada means that he had read that report from 90 years before, and the fact that he was calling these people the Lagunas, or lake people, means he probably believed they were from the Lake of Copala. Maybe this was an unwritten goal of the expedition from the get-go, to find this somewhat semi mythical place.
Remember the captured Puebloan who told Oñate about how Popay, the leader of the Revolution, had spoken with the three supernatural beings in the kiva who were coming and going from the Lake of Copala with secrets and plans for their next emergence from Tewayo after they killed all the Spanish and Religious… Remember also that the Aztecs themselves, the rich and powerful leaders of Mesoamerica that the Spanish had conquered which set off the conquering of the New World… the Aztecs themselves, including their leader Montezuma, claimed their people came from a Lake to the North called Tewayo. The Spanish had never found this lake.. yet for over three hundred years, this possibly magnificent place was lingering in the minds of the Spanish. Think of all the gold and silver and souls they could save. David Roberts sums it up nicely when he wrote, quote, One of the major goals, then, of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition was to find Tewayo and to discover whether or not it was the rumored land of incalculable wealth and luxury. End quote.
But wait, there’s more… in the 1740s, while preaching to the Navajo, a Fray Carlos Delgado wrote a letter detailing how the Navajos described Tewayo, a letter which Escalante no doubt was aware of and read. Delgado wrote, quote:
Information which I Fray Carlos Delgado give to your Reverence Fray Pedro Navarrete of El Gran Teguayo, which is between west and north. It is distant about two hundred leagues more or less from this custodia. On this entry that I made to Nabajoa, I heard some of the natives tell how this Teguayo, so renowned, is made up of various nations, for in it are found people from all of them, both civilized from among those whom we are governing as well as others who are heathen. One division, or city, is so large that, after their manner of expressing themselves, they say that one cannot walk around it within eight days. In it lives a king of much dignity and ostentation, who, as they say, neither looks nor speaks to anyone, except very briefly, such is his severity. He rules all the nations in those regions, and I am sure they desire to be acquainted with our holy habit, for they say that in former times a religious went there and contracted a fatal illness. After his death they kept him in a box, which they give one to understand is of silver. The said religious merited this honor because of his having catechized the king. All his successors regard as relics a shrine of gold, and the articles used in saying mass, as well as other things that he used. End quote.
So there’s an enormous city you can’t walk around in 8 days with multiple nations who revere a dead Spanish Catholic missionary enough to encase him in a silver box and whom are just waiting to be preached to again… Delgado would never make that trip but no doubt, D & E were now making it for him.
Phew… I’ll be honest, I’m proud of that tangent and it’s many tentacles. It rather nicely borrows from so many themes and stories that I’ve already discussed while also bringing in some new tantalizing arms. But with that out the way, let’s get back to our D&E 13.
For the next two days, after finding the Green River, the largest river they’d come to yet, a river they named the River of the Saint of Good Fortune, for the next two days they’d camp there on its banks. They’d also get themselves another bison, albeit a little one this time. It is also here where they reached their most northerly point of the entire expedition. They’d take a reading on the astrolabe, it would be incorrect, but M&P still understood they were too far north. Briggs would write that they were, quote, 385 air miles from Santa Fe while having gained only about one hundred eighty on Monterrey. End quote. This Estrada should be called the D&E Detour instead of Expedition.
While camped at the River and waiting, Joaquin, the very young Laguna who had ridden hind saddle with Joaquin Lain the blacksmith, apparently as a quote unquote, prank, grabbed and mounted a very fiery horse bronco which began a buckin’. He then raced across the open terrain at top speed, only for the horse to stick its hoof in a prairie dog hole, throw off the quote unquote horse breaker and broke its own neck. Thankfully, the child survived, although he was apparently quote, shedding a flood of tears. End quote. I doubt the men of the expedition expected to be playing at babysitting or consoling but that’s what they now found themselves doing.
That night, Silvestre the Laguna, slipped away from camp without being noticed to sleep alone. Briggs jokingly writes, quote, to escape Hispano snoring, it might jocularly be speculated. End quote.
Once the team had left the banks of the green river, two days later, on the 16th of September, Silvestre, curiously donned the woolen cloak they had given him to be a guide for the first time as he led them over little rivers and up high and very stony ridges. His demeanor seemed to puzzle D&E as the Laguna contemplated continuing on their current trajectory or going back to the River. Might he have been wondering if he should really be taking them to his encampment? Is it time to employ the Rivera tactic again?
At the top of this hill though, the group discovered fresh tracks of about twelve horses and some men on foot. Silvestre claimed it was the dreaded Comanche but the padres… we’re leery and this omen did not bode well for our intrepid leaders who pretty much immediately assumed Silvestre was up to no good. They began thinking maybe these were tracks left by some Sabuagana Utes that Silvestre had talked to when they left him there briefly before convincing him again to come along. They thought maybe those Sabs were going to rob them of their belongings and horses and blame it on the Comanches. Who it was well known now, and probably known earlier, that they were long gone, on their way back to the Buffalo kingdom. What if Silvestre putting on the cloak we gave him way back at the Gunnison River, but which he had yet to wear no matter how cold it had gotten… maybe donning that cloak was the signal to his compatriots to steal the horses? They then remembered that hey, didn’t he go off and sleep alone last night? Maybe his conversation hadn’t happened at the camp but had happened last night!
The journal makes it clear that Dominguez and Escalante discussed this but never told Silvestre their worries. Did they discuss it only amongst themselves or with others in the group? Had M&P or Andre Muniz been the one to suggest such trickery? In the end, as the day progressed, it turns out, quote, he gave us convincing proofs of his innocence. End quote.
so they were wrong this time and it may have been a little old fashioned distrust of the Indians but, it’s always important to trust your gut feelings. Especially in situations like our expedition members find themselves in.
They eventually went back to the Green River and continued their journey and during said journey, they in fact learned that Silvestre had been telling the truth. It indeed had been Comanche who were hunting both Sabuagana Utes and their favorite prey, the Buffalo.
On September 17th, silvestre led the team to a high point in the terrain and pointed out to them the confluence of the green and white rivers. That night they saw smoke from distant fires.
In somewhat related news, on this day, the 17th of September, 1776, seven hundred miles to the west, not far from their goal, the presidio at San Francisco was completed, ushering in that city’s beginnings.
They then travelled west for the next five days in earnest search for the lake and the Lagunas. But those days were filled with more Fremont ruins, thick brush and cactuses and thick forests and creek crossings and detours and setback and turn backs and criss crossing across the land. It seems Silvestre was employing the Rivera tactic. After all, he did indeed have first hand eye witness knowledge of the lack of food and supplies our team was struggling with. If only he could keep them wandering through these mysterious regions… maybe they’d turn around.
At this time they were traveling through the heart of what is known today as the Uinta Basin. Briggs has this to say of the land they were encountering:
Our expedition was now in the heart of the Uinta Basin and traversing what would become the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. The Uintahs, for Pine Land, are another division of Ute stock; Ouray was the chief whose name is perpetuated by a monument at Montrose.
To protect Ute ancestral rights against Anglo intruders, President Lincoln in 1861 would proclaim the Unitah reservation, to encompass almost all of the basin. Utes farther west were reluctant to move over here, but Mormon leader Brigham Young told them: "If you do not sell your land to the Government, they will take it. . . . We shall increase, and we shall occupy this [Utah Lake] valley and the next and the next, and so on until we occupy the whole of them." The Utes moved.
The Tabehuaches, Sabuaganas and other northerly Colorado Utes in 1882 by federal decree were shunted here, hence the addition of the name Ouray. Twenty-five years later an "Indian-giver' Congress broke a treaty by opening the reservation to Anglo homesteaders. It now is a mere three hundred eighty-four thousand acres, mainly "badlands" remnants of the Uintah domain. End quote.
While traveling through this basin they would notice and indeed Escalante would write about, today?s Uinta Mountains but which they called Sierra Blanca de los Lagunas or the White Mountains of the Lake Utes. They are, I learned, the only east west trending mountains in the lower 48 and the highest peaks in Utah. There are other east west trending mountains, I would know, I live not too far from the San Bernardino and other Southern California ranges which do the same thing. But these re admittedly much smaller than the Uintahs. The highest of these mountains would be Kings peak. Escalante wrote that they would soon be going through them, which must have seemed a difficult feat to swallow.
During the trek which was quote unquote almost impassable terrain, they had a horse get lost and they lost a horse. Dominguez would be injured by a tree, no doubt running knee first into a branch in a very thick wood. And to pile on, an unceasing cold wind swept through their limbs from the west. Winter was approaching. They had no idea what it was going to throw at them. But they were getting a taste here. It was so cold, Escalante wrote, that quote, even the water which stood close to the fire all night was frozen by morning. End quote.
It seems a complete turnaround from the other night on the banks of the green river or San Buenaventura.
On the 21st of September, the fathers were fed up and ever more suspicious of their guide. Quote:
The guide, anxious to get there sooner than we ourselves could make it, was hurrying so fast that he vanished in the forest at every step, and we knew not where to follow him... He was ordered to go slow and always within our sight. End quote.
The going didn’t get easier as they came upon rough and rugged rocky mountain terrain of sinking and stumbling in earth and over rocks. On that day, The young Laguna Joaquin arrowed some trout from a stream today known as Strawberry River. Nearby in a very pleasant pasture, the Laguna Silvestre told the team that they used to live in this lovely spot but had to flee on account of the Comanches reign of terror against them.
They eventually came to the Wasatch mountains which has peaks up to 12,000 feet. And after crossing these peaks one enters the Great Basin. And as a matter of fact, this D&E crew were probably the first Europeans to ever step foot in it, beating even Garces down south.
Within the Great Basin there is not a single water outlet to the sea. Each creek or River or stream will simply lead to a dried up lake and disappear. Of course, if you listened to the episode over the Mammoth eaters and the ancient ones, you know these basins were once impossibly large and deep lakes that sported banks teaming with ancient megafauna and the intrepid hunters who pursued them. Along with innumerable migrating birds, some of which, still land in the empty playas by some quirk of ancient biological knowledge they have yet to forget. Escalante would remark while in those Wasatch mountains that the nights were the coldest ones the crew had faced thus far.
The night of the 22nd they saw more fires and smoke signals and they tried to answer including Silvestre yelling into the night in his language at around 2am. Although the signals of smoke were answered, there was no answer from the others in his language. It’s possible no one heard him. Or no one who spoke his language heard him. Or those that heard him wanted to stay anonymous. In any case, the padres were uneasy. Might they have been Comanche?
Their uneasiness didn’t wain the following day as they grew closer to the banks of the mythical lake and the encampment of the Lagunas, despite the fact that Silvestre told them the Lagunas were going to treat them kindly. They were then led to a high point and shown the lake, THE Lake of the Lagunas. The lake we call Utah Lake. The lake they will call though, nuestra senora de la Merced de los Timpanagotzis. The lake which they were assuming was the lake of Copala. This was the land of tewayo. Also from that spot they saw that many smoke signals had been started and were spreading which D&E took to mean their arrival had been noticed and the warning had been sent. But absent… was the impossibly fantastic city which took eight days to walk around. No doubt. This was noticed. Although not recorded.
Anxious to finally speak with the Lagunas, the team set up camp quite early in an area known today as the Spanish Fork Valley. And then, the leader, Dominguez, Andres Muñiz, and Silvestre the Laguna tore forward, quote, racing their horses as much as they could, even to the point of exhaustion, so as to get there this afternoon. End quote. There being the Laguna’s home.
When the three men of the expedition approached the encampment though, they were met with quote, some men who came out to see them with weapons in hand to defend their homes and families. End quote. That’s a pretty natural reaction to strange men riding into your town but then Escalante writes of the defenders turnaround once Silvestre spoke to them in their own language. Keep in mind though, that Dominguez was there and not Escalante. Quote, As soon as Silvestre spoke to them the show of war was changed into the finest and fondest expressions of peace and affection. They very joyfully conducted them to their little humble abodes, and after he had embraced each single one and let them know that we came in peace, and that we loved them as our greatest friends. End quote.
While speaking to the people and letting them speak to Silvestre, Dominguez shared tobacco, obviously, and it seems people from all over came to see this strange Spanish man, Dominguez.
Dominguez also told Escalante how Silvestre told his people about how the Comanches, which were surely out there somewhere, but Silvestre told his people, quote, how, after the Sabuaganas had said that the Comanches would surely kill us or deprive us of our herds of horses ... they had not attacked us nor had we seen them- -what the padres had said thus coming true, that is to say, that God would deliver us from all our enemies and ... that even if we passed through their very own country they would not detect us nor we ourselves see them. End quote.
I wonder at this point, if Silvestre himself is a Christian or if maybe there’s some lavish storytelling going on. Regardless, it is true that they apparently went through some dangerous territory and nothing ill came of them or to them so it would stand to reason that Silvestre would be relieved and excited at this. Silvestre seems stricken by the fathers at this point. He ends his story to his people with, quote, only the padres spoke the truth, that in their company one could travel all over the earth without risk, and that they were nothing but good people. End quote.
He apparently didn’t pick up on the uneasiness and wariness that the group had towards him the previous few days as they thought maybe he was leading them into harms way… Well, that was all gone now that they were reunited. Now that that was over though, it was time for Dominguez to work his magic.
After giving them some Tobacco, obviously and as usual, he would launch into an explanation of their appearance and preach to these Lagunas how he was there to, quote, seek the salvation of their souls and to show them the only means whereby they could attain it. End quote. That only way, of course, was through Christ. He told them how he was going to baptize them, that Spaniards would come live among them, he’d teach em how to farm and raise livestock, and that they’d submit and quote, live in the manner ordered by God and as the padres would teach them, our Great Chief whom we call King would send them everything that was needed, because, on seeing how they wished to be Christianized, He would already be guarding them as His children and would be caring about them as though they were already His people. End quote.
That definitely goes against Governor Mendinueta’s words of not expanding the lands since there aren’t even enough padres in New Mexico! But, hey, lucky Lagunas! Dominguez told them that they would soon have a King across the land and Ocean and he’d give them everything they’d ever need as soon as they drastically turn around every single aspect of their life. Apparently, they listened gladly, and they were ready to do everything Dominguez asked of them. He then bid his new friends adieu after telling them, don’t worry, we’re not staying long, because get this, quote, we had to continue our traveling in order to learn about the other padre, our brother. End quote.
They’re still looking for good old Garces, or at least easing all the American Indians worries with the implication of moving on in search of a lost dear friend.
Oh no, we’re not staying, we can’t stay, we’ve got a friend to catch.
Back at camp, a tired Dominguez relayed all of this to Escalante who dutifully wrote it down in their journal. I’m sure none of the details were lavishly exaggerated. Like how the Lagunas were super ready to change their entire lives. But if you’ve been listening to my series over the Spanish in the Southwest, the pattern of the native Americans being super excited about immediately converting as soon as a Religious opens their mouth, is one we should all be used to by now.
They apparently talked very late into the night and Silvestre, all night with his people after his long absence. Dominguez slept in a wikiup in town.
The following day, the rest of the group would arrive to the camp around noon. During this visit, the group would learn that the Lagunas actually called themselves the Timpanogotzis which they translated as people of the rock water mouth or rock canyon. People of the water rock canyon. The Sabs on the other hand, called them the fish eaters… which the Timpanogotzis were not fond of being called, apparently. But they did eat fish and Dominguez even wrote later about how they were quite good.
More about these Laguna Utes though, these lake people Utes… Escalante won’t mention the lack of anything resembling what the legends say until after the expedition but he and Dominguez and everyone among the crew aware of the centuries of rumors, must have been bummed as they recognized the fact that there was no gold. No silver. No massive pueblos of many nations. There aren’t even any horses mentioned which suggests the Laguna Utes had none of their own. The plains tipis hadn’t even been adopted yet because of the lack of these horses. So no pueblos. No tipis. No horses. The land of tewayo was yet another rumor in a long line of Spanish rumors. They must have felt like Coronado and his men after fray ************* had promised Zuni was an acropolis instead of the adobe and mud buildings they’d come across.
Nonetheless, Escalante writes of the many timbers and woods in the mountains, he writes of the plentiful game and fish and geese, beavers, rabbits, deer, and even bison! Even the climate was fantastic or as he wrote it, quote, the climate here is a good one, for having experienced cold aplenty since we left El Rio de San Buenaventura, we felt warm throughout the entire valley by day and by night. End quote. Not to mention the fact that a huge body of fresh water was right there in front of them. M&P would write the king of Spain and say how this spot, with Utah Lake, he’d describe it as being quote, the most pleasing, beautiful and fertile site in all New Spain. End quote. Everyone, it seemed, really liked and raved about this beautiful valley that the Mormons would eventually inherit and do exactly what Escalante and M&P suggest and they turn it into quite the settlement. But that’s still quite some years in the future.
The Timpanogotzis told them that there was an even bigger lake to the north! Although, it was too salty to drink and it apparently made your skin itch. Obviously, they were talking about the great salt lake but the Spanish named both Utah lake and the Great Salt lake, 40 miles to the north Laguna de los Timpanogos, after their new friends. They never did go up and see the lake though, which Brigs says is one of the greatest mysteries of the whole trip. They would have seen quite the sight, that lake which has no outlet and which evaporation causes the saltiness or mineralizes, which is 8 times higher than the ocean!
One more curious thing about these Utes, the Lagunas apparently had beards and Don M&P would record that fact on the map he would create later.
D & E again gave some sermons in front of all the gathered chiefs, which was apparently all of them, this time. And then, you will not be surprised to hear, the Timpanogotzis accepted the message and invited the Spanish to stay and build their houses and live among them on the lake’s shores. In response, Dominguez and crew gave the quote unquote head chief a big knife, white glass beads, and a hatchet. White glass beads were also passed around to anyone who wanted them. Dominguez then asked for an object or a token or a sign that they could take back to Santa Fe with them to prove that the people had converted and had accepted Jesus and that they were friendly with the Spanish.
Surprisingly, the next day, this main head chief presented the Religious with a painting on deerskin of their proud warriors, each one of them wearing red ocher which represented the blood pouring from the quote, wounds in battles with the Comanches. End quote. I would very much like to see this awesome sounding painting, truthfully. No one is sure where this lovely piece of art is today and it may not have survived time regardless. This is what Briggs wrote about the artwork, quote:
On a small piece of buckskin five men were painted with earth and red ocher. On both sides, the one with the most ocher or, "as they called it, the most blood," depicted the head chief "because in the battles with the Comanches he had received the most wounds." Two other figures, "not so bloody," represented subordinate chiefs, including Silvestre, and another, unbloodied, was "not a war chief but a man of authority among them." A shaman? At the suggestion of one companion a cross was painted above each figure. End quote.
After the gift was received, the padres promised to return and to build a mission and to preach to the people in due time.
But for now, they really needed a new guide and if someone agreed to be one, they’d receive a big knife, glass beads, and a woolen cloak. This is the same goods they’d given Silvestre all that time ago.
*************** Did they have two guides? Thankfully for our crew, a Ute came forward and agreed to do the job but, in typical fashion, they really could not pronounce his name so they dubbed him Jose Maria. They then bought some dried fish for the journey and the rest of the day was spent talking and hanging out with their new friends.
At midday on September 25th, the padres decided it was time to lep up outta there and head for Monterrey way out west so they could complete their mission. They then told the Lagunas that if they got sick, to pray to God for health. But the Utes couldn’t quite say all of the prayer they gave them so instead they told them to just say Jesus Maria. Escalante writes of this, quote, this they began repeating with ease.. and during all the time we were making preparations to leave they did not cease repeating these holy names. End quote. That’s kind of a funny scene if you think about it. They’re packing their bags and loading the horses and a bunch of Utes were crowding around them chanting over and over again Jesus Maria, Jesus Maria…
Escalante writes that they all bade them farewell quote most tenderly, especially Silvestre, who hugged us tightly, practically in tears. End quote. So Silvestre wasn’t coming along anymore but now they had Jose Maria and Joaquin. Then they all left with Dominguez promising he would be back within a year. A promise, he would not keep.
Over the next few days the party would travel southwesterly, essentially along today’s I-15, but they’d travel southwesterly INSTEAD of just straight westward, which would have put them on pace to eventually reach California… While on this trajectory, they’d run into a small group of Indians, a larger group the following day, except this group they met without their guides so they just used sign language, and then on the 29th, they’d run into an old man who was quote, alone in a tiny hut, and he had a beard so full and long that he looked like one of the ancient hermits of Europe. End quote. That’s a curious description, honestly. Not many native Americans of the time grew beards or at least are recorded as growing beards. But these Lagunas sure did.
Although that’s not entirely true, I suppose. I learned from David Roberts, that Moctezuma himself had a beard. The Aztec emperor. Not to mention Paiutes and Pahvant Utes are also known to grow some nice beards every now and then.
Also on that day, they came to a large river which they thought was the San Buenaventura aka the Green River which they’d already crossed but… that river was 120 miles to the east… this one was the Sevier River… so the Spaniards might, at this point, be a little lost and confused about where they were and where they were going.
The following day was an exciting one when 20 Indians showed up to their camp complete with animal bone nose piercings, buckskin loincloths, blankets of rabbit furs, speaking Ute, and owning long full beards… and this seems to be an A-ha moment for Escalante because it is here where he mentions the old legend of the long lost Spaniards I mentioned earlier. He writes that these may be the people, quote, who perhaps gave rise to the report about Spaniards who were said to exist on the other side of El Rio de Tizon. End quote. So much for rescuing the group of conquistadors turned farmers that had been lost in the vast deserts of the American Southwest for over 200 years.
You’ve got to wonder, what if there really was that band of people out there and D & E actually did find them but when they told them in a Spanish that maybe they wouldn’t even comprehend that they were taking them back, what if this long lost group refused? What if they didn’t want to be found and they killed these religious. Not likely, but an interesting thought.
On October 1st, the crew inexplicably, while heading south, backtracked a mile and a half, cross a river, and head due west. Were they finally heading towards California?! This route they took, forced them to head through a small isolated group of mountains known as the Canyon Mountains where there was no trail. That means they saw these mountains and decided to just… head right up and into them. Which must have been a daunting and possibly tiring task. Which was made harder by the fact that it seems they were out of water. But luckily for them, from atop the canyon mountains, they spied a distant lake. They probably thought it was much like the one they had left days ago. So they rode hard towards it. That day actually marks the longest day of the expedition in miles. When all is said and done, they travel 36 miles that day. But in that moment, they were riding and walking as quickly as they could towards this blessed lake which… in typical desert cartoon fashion, turned out to be a mirage. Just a salt flat in the great basin. They’d search in vain for the rest of the day for water but they wouldn’t find any. They’d sleep with parched throats and tongues that evening at a campsite they named Llano Salado, Salt Plain.
Not learning their lesson though, before they fell asleep, two of the party who had been sent ahead to look for water came back and said they defiantly saw another lake, for real this time, about two or three miles yonder. So after the moon had risen, giving them light enough to see, five of the party, with the entire horse herd, save one horse, went out in search of the life saving liquid.
You’ll be shocked to know, it was another mirage. Once it was discovered that it was another mirage, three of the five men decided to go even further in search of some water, while two of them were to stay with the horses and guard them until the three returned.
Unfortunately, the two left fell asleep and when they awoke… all of the horses, meaning all of the Spaniards horses, were gone. Obviously, they chose the smartest course of action and the two nitwits lit out in opposite directions in search of the missing heard that they were supposed to have watched. I mean… falling asleep on guard duty? Letting 95% of the horses escape… That’s a capitol punishment offense right there. You’re hanged or put in front of a firing squad. Probably even still today in a lot of places! You can’t let your buddies down like that…
Meanwhile, back at camp it was now the morning of October 2nd and uhhh…. There were no horses and all five of the men sent out for water had yet to return which means they also did not have water. And now they’re down five dudes and all but one horse…
But then one of those two men who fell asleep and then had ran off in a direction after the herd, well, he stumbled bedraggled and tired and toe up, he came back into the D & E camp and told the tale ending with… I don’t know where anyone else is… so immediately, Juan Pedro Cisneros jumped on the last remaining horse and rode it bareback, meaning no saddle, but he jumped on the horse and he rode hard to go and track down the horses and the men.
David Roberts sums up the next part of this story very well so I will just quote his telling of it:
Desperately thirsty horses will usually backtrack to find the last water they encountered, and sure enough, Cisneros found the whole herd halfway back to the previous night's camp. He managed to return with the missing horses by noon. It was a spunky performance, riding bareback without water 36 miles and rounding up the spooked horses in a mere six hours. End quote.
That is quite the spunky performance, indeed. Talk about a real caballero.
Shortly after the rescue of the horses, the three men who had gone further to look for the water finally returned. Except they had some company. Among them were six bearded and nose pierced Indians, much like the ones they’d met the previous days.
And then, almost to dispel the notion I brought up earlier in this episode that Native Americans must not have had the same running prowess by the late 1700s that I have previously mentioned in past episodes, well immediately after they told these six bearded native Americans about their one remaining guy who was lost out in the wilderness, the leader of these Indians understood the gravity of the situation and sent four of his own men in four different directions to find him and return him. Which, obviously, they did in pretty short order. Escalante says of this kindness, quote, it was a gesture deserving the greatest gratitude and worthy of admiration in so wild a folk who had never before seen people like us. End quote. That’s pretty rare praise of the Native Americans from Escalante. He still managed to call ‘em wild folk but to the Spanish, they definitely were a wild people.
These wild people D & E would learn after this fiasco had played out, but these people called themselves the Tirapangui and again, Escalante commented on their impressive facial hair which to him, he though these men were, quote, so fully bearded that they looked like Cachupin padres or Bethlehemites. End quote. (WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, EXPOUND). Roberts informs his readers that these are Catholic monks who are forbidden to shave. Not sure why they’re forbidden, but that’s who Escalante was referencing.
In typical Catholic friar zeal, as repayment for saving their man, they immediately began preaching the word of god to these Tirapangui. It was the usual sermon of God and baptism but with the added benefit of god’s divine punishment thrown in this time. I’m actually not sure how they were communicating with these Native Americans unless they also spoke some Timpanogotzi which, the names are somewhat similar so it’s possible they were Ute or Paiute. While they were preaching though, more of the Tirapangui filtered in to listen to these crazy foreigners who can’t find water and lose all their horses.
Obviously, according to Escalante, these people ate it up! Whether they really did or not is only for the lord to know but the padres sure did record that they did. They also promised they’d be back to teach em some more, don’t worry, y’all.
At this point it may be tempting to think he was making up the Native American’s jubilance at accepting the Good Lord’s word but… when he was working with the Hopis the year before, he had zero success. Remember when I talked about how the Hopis kicked out the Spanish and the Religious and they were free from their churches and religious fervor. Awatovi and its massacre ring any bells? They apparently still allowed the Spanish to proselytize but they weren’t very open to the message it seems. Well, Escalante didn’t lie about that so I doubt he’s lying about this… unless Dominguez was forcing his hand… but I doubt that as well. There just wasn’t much to gain for lying about any of this, truthfully. And later, he will be open about even more failures among the Hopi. That being said… the passage in the journal about the crew leaving is… almost unbelievable. I mean… unless these men really possessed extremely high amounts and quality of the Holy Ghost. I suppose it is possible.
After the sermon, the Tirapangui very surprisingly agreed that they would do whatever the religious asked of them, including going to live with the Timpanogotzi or Lagunas on the Lake that was quite a distance away, but they would do that as long as the padres came back and preached to them again. Escalante then writes, quote:
Scarcely did they see us depart when all, following their chief, who started first, burst out crying copious tears, so that even when we were quite a distance away we kept hearing the tender laments of these unfortunate little sheep of Christ, lost along the way simply for not having the Light. They touched our hearts so much that some of our companions could not hold back the tears. End quote.
The Spirit can make one have… strong emotions. But this is quite strong… dramatically strong. It’s possible the group’s mental health was somewhat fraying at this point after two months in the wilderness among the wilderpeople as they skirted the Colorado Plateau. Which is absolutely a place filled with mystery and power and spiritualism and… what the French call a certain… I don’t know what. I know I’ve felt it. I know I’ve conveyed it here for y’all on this podcast before. And up on the website I have a short story about it as well. There’s just something about the Colorado Plateau and its many canyons, peaks, sandstone hoodoos and arches and natural bridges, the orange and red walls,1,000 foot sheer drops, the dangerous thick colorful rivers, all the ruins, the ghostly petroglyphs and pictographs that dot the entire landscape. It’s a storied place. That’s why I love it so much. Maybe it was all starting to wear on our group here after so much time bushwhacking through tough terrain. It wasn’t going to get any easier for the D & E crew from here on out, either. But at least the horses were watered.
On October third the crew left and headed pretty much straight south instead of the nearly straight west they’d been on so confidently. A course which had taken them over mountains and through salt flats and had nearly gotten them in quite the pickle. In this southerly direction, the group travelled through rocky marshes that unfortunately, didn’t offer any real drinking water despite being… wet. And at one point, Andres Muniz was thrown from his horse which caused him to smack his face on a hard surface, probably a submerged rock, in the mucky marsh. Not to mention the going wasn’t easy on the horses, either. They were making rather slow time those first couple of days.
And then, on October 5th, their luck continued to change for the worse. That morning, without saying a single word to anyone, the Timpanogotzi guide, Jose Maria walked out. He just… vanished in the direction of his people’s lakeside homeland right before Dominguez and Escalante’s eyes. Escalante writes of the incident, quote, Jose Maria the laguna turned back and left us without an adieu. We saw him leave the king’s camp but did not want to say anything to him, nor to have him followed and brought back, so as to allow him complete liberty. End quote.
I mean, that sucks, you’re now down a guide but at least you have Joaquin, right? Well… according to the journal, the D & E expedition was now out in the wilderness surrounded by hostile everything without, quote, without anyone who knew about the country ahead, even if from hearsay. End quote.
I guess this land was as foreign to their remaining Timpanogotzi guide, Joaquin, as it was to the Spanish padres. Although, that line, even if from hearsay, does kind of indicate that not even Jose Maria knew where he was going from first hand experience. It kinda sounds like he was just along for the ride and expertise of the land in general and he was making as educated a guess as anyone about what lay ahead. The detour west and then abrupt detour south makes a little more sense when you realize they were all, guides included, but they were all just… wandering the wilderness. Blind leading the blind.
After morning prayers though, which incidentally, was the cause of the fathers not going after Jose Maria, you simply cannot interrupt morning prayers, but after said morning prayers, things got a little cleared up with the padres about the fleeing guide.
Apparently, the evening before, Juan Pedro Cisneros, the bareback riding caballero who had found the horses, Cisneros asked his servant, Simon Lucero to come over and pray the Virgin’s rosary with him, which was probably custom and habit. But for whatever reason, Lucero the servant, flat out refused! Which led Cisneros to scold his servant which then led Lucero to revert to blows against his master, or as Escalante put it, quote, grappling with him arm to arm. End quote. So the two fought about prayer time which… while usually not leading to violence, can rather easily lead to arguments and accusations of laziness among families, even today! Or at least, when I was growing up. Thankfully, I have the coolest dad who doesn’t have a violent tendon in his body. And a sweet mom with the patience of an actual saint. There were also five of us so end of night prayer time was a… challenge. Nightly. If my memory serves me correctly. But I promise, dear listener, I was an angel who never once disobeyed my parents…
Back to this encampment! On this October 5th day in 1776, Cisneros and Lucero fought… again.. this could just be because of the general unravelling of the entire crew that I mentioned a few minutes ago that may have been happening without them knowing it. We’ve all seen the movies or the TV episodes where this happens. The Thing… the X-Files episode copying the Thing… Lost… you get the picture. I’m absolutely convinced that these hardships had something to do with this fight. It isn’t totally random that the disagreement and fisticuffs happened at this moment in the journey. These men have been cooped up with each other for 2 months! Traveling through this very tough and rough land and alien terrain and meeting strange people. All the while every day the tensions and anxiety were heightened and occasionally surviving was questionable. It’s enough to wear even the heartiest warrior or religious down.
Well, after prayer and learning this story of the fight that Jose Maria witnessed, Dominguez & Escalante ran him down and tried to convince him to return. They said, quote, those involved were not angry at each other, and that even when a parent corrected his youngster as it now had happened, they never reached the point of killing each other as he was thinking, and therefore, he should not be scared. End quote.
Apparently, explaining that violent parents didn’t want to actually kill their children while physically beating them did not convince Jose Maria to stay so… he was gone. And with his physical presence being gone, so too, according to Escalante, his spiritual salvation was gone; quote, we felt very bad about this incident because we had wanted to hasten his salvation, which now he will not be able to attain that soon. End quote. I guess by that soon, he meant that he wouldn’t be able to save him until he returned again to his people in a year. Which, he would not do, unfortunately… for everyone involved.
This sour event led the Spaniards to stay put for the whole day while they recuperated and planned out their next move. It seemed like, to me, Jose Maria really had no idea where he was leading them but he was confident in his blindly leading them regardless. A sort of fake it till you make it. And that’s me… every time I go on a hike with my wife and slightly, somewhat, maybe lose the way or the trail or the path or slightly go a little off track… although… it turns out, I’m always right, and we’re never lost or off the straight and narrow. Except that one time. When… I accidentally added a couple hot annoying sandy miles to a hike that was already 11 miles… Anyways!
Since Jose Maria departed, the crew FELT completely lost, even though I think they were somewhat with him, they just didn’t allow that fact to settle in. But the way he used hearsay, says in his bones, Escalante knew Jose Maria was just guessin’. But now the safety net, safety net full of holes mind you, but the perceived safety net was gone and now they were leery of setting out on their own. At least before, someone was saying, This way… even if they were pullin’ it out there butt. Now, when asked which direction, only silence greeted the leaders of the expedition.
To remedy this, D & E sent out two scouts to, quote, find out if the Sierra’s western side, and likewise the valley that was there, could be negotiated and furnished any hope of finding water sources. End quote.
When the two scouts returned after dark, they returned with heartbreaking news. First, the mountain had no good pass with which to travel through. Second, there wasn’t no water beyond it anyways.
I don’t personally know this terrain at all. I have never been this far west in central Utah so I’m clueless as to these mountains and the land they’re trudging through. I’ve been to Utah countless times but I’ve never travelled west of I-15. So when David Roberts, who retraced as best he could, not the first nor will he be the last one to do this, but he retraced the expeditions path as best he could so I know he’s seen this area. Not to mention he’s a very accomplished mountaineer and explorer. So I’ll quote him about what’s going on in the journal at this point:
As Sharon, that’s his wife, he’s very sick with cancer at this point… As Sharon drove slowly south on Route 257, I stared out the passenger-side window, trying to make Escalate's account fit the landscape. It simply made no sense except perhaps for the comment about the scarcity of water and pasturage. The "high and rugged sierra" that Escalate cites as a serious barrier simply doesn't exist. A pair of short chains of rocky hills stretching north to south, called the San Francisco Mountains and the Wah Wah Mountains, rise some 2,000 feet above the plain, but both are easily skirted on the north. The Spaniards' camp on October 5 was very close to the old Black Rock railroad siding. From there today a dirt road stretches, mostly in straight lines, some 60 miles to the Nevada border. Nothing but the lack of water and pasturage could have blocked the expedition. Yet Escalate claimed that the scouts' brief reconnaissance proved that quote, we could no longer take this direction, which was the best for getting to Monterey, where our goal lay. End all quotes.
Maybe it was all starting to get to them now. It’s also worth mentioning that wind and snow ceased their progress at this point for two days. Quote, On the two previous days, a very cold wind from the south had blown fiercely without ceasing. This brought on a snowfall so heavy that not only the Sierra’s heights but even all the plains were covered with snow tonight. End quote.
The last time I visited Utah, in March of ’23 for my wife and I’s one year wedding anniversary, ceaseless snow and wind struck us for the entire week from Moab to Boulder and the town of Escalante to Kanab. Mountain passes were closed, rivers were too large to fjord with my Tacoma, the wind made camping loud and miserable, and all the dirt and slick rock roads we had wanted to take were impassable. At one point I pulled over near factory butte and Capitol Reef to take a picture and nearly got stuck in the ********* mud. Only quick thinking and my exceptional driving saved us… Life out there on the Colorado Plateau can be brutal and it can be made a whole lot worse when that wind ceaselessly blows and the snow creeps in. I understand the frustration and demoralization that heavy snow and wind can cause and i think the padres were feeling it now.
On the 6th of October, the storm hadn’t let up and it wouldn’t until around nine that evening after the group prayed non stop to the saints, to the mother of Jesus, and to Jesus himself for a reprieve. Finally, their prayers were answered. But even still, they stayed put on the 7th as well. Escalante writes of this decision, quote, we were in great distress, without firewood and extremely cold, for there was so much snow and water, the ground, which was soft here, was unfit for travel. End quote. They were stuck in the impassable terrain. If you’ve travelled out in the area, you know what it means when roads are impassable.
On that same trip with my wife, we were turned around by a massive snow storm on the Hole in the rock road in the monument named after Escalante. There was a massive storm cascading off of fifty mile mountain that started at Highway 12 and stretched to Navajo Mountain by lake Powell. We could see the clouds and precipitation pouring off the cliffside to the west and making its way to us as we drove through ever increasingly large puddles which threatened to swallow my truck. So we turned around, frustrated, but that was the theme of that trip, which in the end was still fantastic anyways, but after we turned around, we headed to Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. It was north of the storm and it didn’t require any 4WD muddy impassable roads, so it was just about our only choice. And when I say impassable roads, the roads on the Colorado Plateau, if they are wet, can become dangerously slick and thick and they can threaten to swallow a car to the axel. The roads then become a very expensive extraction at a future date when the mud hardens again. Well thankfully, I have never experienced that and hopefully never will. But at that Escalante Petrified Forest State Park there’s a short one mile hike that starts at the visitor center and goes straight up a hillside where you can see many of the old Jurassic logs… let me tell you. At the top of that hill, my wife and I’s feet were so heavy from extremely thick, viscous, multicolored mud, that it was tiring to walk. The mud was ceaseless at the top as well. People passing us were barefoot. Others had given up and were sliding around carelessly. It was quite the experience. It took me quite a while to get all of that mud off my hiking boots and jeans. All of that’s to say, I totally get why they were stuck there another day. They wouldn’t have made it far in that mud regardless. Little did they know, this mud and wind and snow would be the last straw.
On the morning of the 8th, they woke up and got going with all intentions of reaching Monterrey but they really should have stayed until the ground had hardened because it was still, quote, so soft and miry everywhere that many pack animals and mounts, and even those that were loose, either fell down or became stuck altogether. End quote. The end was approaching.
After stumbling and getting stuck and unstuck and stuck some more, they called it quits after only 9 miles of heading south. They then took took a reading from their inaccurate astrolabe which put them off further south than they were. Well after their data collecting, they realized, even with their incorrect reading, but they realized that they were still nowhere near the coast of California, and they intuitively guessed correctly that in between them and Monterrey were a lot of cold, snowy mountain passes. Knowing all of this, I imagine they took a good quiet look around, saw the snow white mountains to the west, felt the cold wind from the north that, quote, did not cease blowing all day. End quote. They took a look around and let it all sink heavily on their mind and they had to have known that the going was only going to get tougher. Plus, they were cold and without a guide and stuck in the quagmire… they knew they only had one choice… and it no doubt was the right choice because truthfully… they never would have made it to California in the winter. They had the endless and water scarce Great basin and ranges of Nevada laid out for hundreds of miles in front of them. They still had 60 miles before they even made it to modern day Nevada. They had all of that in front of them… and all of that sits BEFORE hitting the tallest mountains in the lower 48: the Sierra Nevadas.
There’s actually a hike to the top of Mount Whitney, in the Sierra Nevadas in California that starts below sea level in Death Valley, and that peak sits at 14,505 feet. I’m not suggesting the D & E group would have gone that exact insane route but no matter which way they would have gone, they would have had to have travelled, as the crow flies, over 550 miles. And that traveling would have been through so many mountains and valleys and mountains and valleys… those valleys or basins that used to hold endless great lakes teaming with millions of birds and mastodons and giant ground sloths at their banks. Well, they would have gone through all of those dried up harsh basins and over martian looking mountains over and over again until they hit the lowest point in the US, only to climb back out of it to the highest point in the US, continental, US. With all of that, and with winter approaching, there’s a good chance they would have ended up icicles… or worse… They could have ended up as man corn on each other’s menu. Donner party, anyone?
if you’re unfamiliar with that harrowing tale, here’s Briggs summing it up rather nicely:
The trepidation expressed in the diary forecast the strait the Donner party would find itself in when bogged down in snow short of the Sierra Nevada to our expedition's west seventy years later. It was a strait that ensued in cannibalism and starvation. The only major disaster in Anglo migration to California, it had been brought on by dallying en route and following an ill-advised itinerary . .. just such blunders as afflicted our expedition. Of seventy-nine Donner migrants, only forty-five, aided by rescue parties from California, survived to reach the Promised Land.
Briggs days it is the only major disaster brought in Anglo migration to California but in the next episode I will talk about another one that maybe he hadn’t thought about… the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
I recently went to Owens Valley where Lone Pine, the Alabama Hills and Mount Whitney, that very tall mountain lays… those mountains to the east, the ***** Inoyo are rugged and rough and the Sierras look impossible to climb and impossibly high from the valley floor. I could not imagine being among the 10000 year old volcanic rocks smoothed by a waterfall that is fossil falls and seeing the old volcanoes around and seeing the glaciers at Mount Whitney, I could not imagine seeing all of that in the winter and continuing on. There’s just no way they would have made it.
Back in the beginning of the episode I said the delay in leaving may have saved them. If they hadn’t have waited 20 days or so because of Escalante’s ailments, they possibly would have plunged ahead with better weather further west only to get stuck in this winter wonderland nightmare. Or they may have gone through the Great Basin in the heat and never found water and they could have ended up like those skeletons picked clean on funny postcards. They may have then decided to turn around but by then it may have been too late and either way they went could have meant their end. Thankfully, they waited and instead of being 20 days west, they were right where they were supposed to be surrounded by horrible cold and wind and fed up with the elements.
Escalante writes of this, quote, Since winter had already set in most severely, for all the sierras we managed to see in all directions were covered with snow, the weather very unsettled, we therefore feared that long before we got there the passes would be closed to us, so that they would force us to stay two or three months in some sierra where there might not be any people or the wherewithal for our necessary sustenance. For the provisions we had were very low by now, and so we could expose ourselves to perishing from hunger if not from the cold. We also figured that, even granting that we arrived in Monterey this winter, we could not be in La Villa de Santa Fe until the month of June the following year. End quote.
He then contemplated how such a delay would hurt the salvation of all the Indians they had already promised they would return back to and preach with. He figured these timpanogotzis and Tirapangui and Utes, they all would have thought the padres were liars or trying to deceive them and they’d leave the faith, never to return. And that would hamper future expeditions and missionary voyages. Not to mention their only remaining guide, Joaquin the Laguna might also leave them which would mean they would be truly lost. Therefore, their only option was to, quote, continue south for as much as the terrain permitted as far as el rio Colorado and from here point our way toward Cosnina, Moqui, and Zuni. End quote. He then writes in all caps at the end of the entry for October 8th: NEW ITINERARY AND START OF OUR RETURN.
And with that, the D & E Expedition had decided it was time to head home. But the trouble wasn’t over yet.
Stay tuned for the next installment when our brave men will have their toughest challenge yet, finding a way across the Mighty Colorado River under the imposing Vermillion Cliffs.
The Report of Fray Alonso de Posada in Relation to Quivira and Teguayo by S. Lyman Tyler & H. Darrel Taylor
The Myth of the Lake of Copala and the Land of Teguayo by S Lyman Tyler
http://npshistory.com/publications/kessell/kiva-cross-crown/chap6.htm Kessell- Kiva cross and crown
https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/juan-antonio-maría-de-rivera
The Phantom Pathfinder: Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera and His Expedition by G Clell Jacobs
The Rivera Expedition by Thomas G. Alexander
https://www.southernute-nsn.gov/history/