This Shows the Nature of the Colorado where Escalante Crossed in 1776. The Surface on Each Side is Barren Sandstone.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
The missions of the Rio Grande and those of California possessed no route for overland communication. Two monks of the Franciscan order, in trying to establish such a route, established for themselves imperishable fame. They were Garces and Escalante. Not far from where Tucson now stands a mission had been founded by Kino, whom Humboldt calls the "astronomer of Ingolstadt." This was San Xavier del Bac. Franciscans were occupying the place, and there Garces made headquarters, accomplishing five journeys from that point. The presidio, or military post, of Tubac was about thirty miles south of Bac, and from that post soldiers kept watch on the natives of the region. Garces reached Bac in June, 1768, and made two preliminary explorations before the end of 1770. In 1771 he reached the Colorado over the same trail that Kino had followed long before, but the Franciscans seemed to have no record of this nor of Oñate's trail; at least they did not profit by these earlier explorations. In 1774, with Captain Anza, Garces made the trip across the Colorado through to the mission of San Gabriel, near the site of the present town of Los Angeles.
In the winter of 1775-76 Garces again went with Anza, who was bound for San Francisco Bay, there to found a mission, to the Colorado, where he stopped for a time, then went on to San Gabriel. Returning to the Mohave country he struck eastward, June 4, 1776, on his celebrated entrada,[48] with no companions but the natives along the route, and on July 2d reached Oraibi, only to be there treated with supreme contempt. On the 4th he was driven from the town, and he returned to the mission of Bac by way of the Colorado River.
Escalante was at this moment making preparations for his traverse to the San Gabriel Mission. On July 29th he started north, absurd as it may now appear to us who know the whole geography. Crossing western Colorado, over Green River, which he called Buenaventura, near the mouth of White River, he mounted the Wasatch Range by the Uinta and its branches, and entered Salt Lake valley, probably by what is now known as Spanish Fork. After viewing Lake Timpanogos (Utah Lake), he turned southward, followed down the western edge of the great mountains extending north and south along the central line of Utah, about through where Fillmore, Beaver, and Parowan now stand, to the Virgen River at about Toquerville. Here the season indicating the approach of winter, it was decided to abandon the attempt to reach San Gabriel, and strike eastward for the Moki Towns, where Escalante previously had been. He was not aware of the tremendous obstacles, in the nature of deep canyons, which intervened. After a vast amount of effort he crossed, not the Grand Canyon, as has sometimes been stated, but the lower end of Glen Canyon, at a point about thirty-five miles above what is now Lee Ferry. The place is still known as the Crossing of the Fathers. From here there was a trail to the Moki Towns, and their anxiety soon came to an end.
The route Garces travelled from the west to the Moki Towns became no highway; indeed, for years was not travelled at all, nor had Escalante's anything in its favour so far as reaching California was concerned. For half a century longer the New Mexican and Californian missions remained about as far apart as ever. Those in California waxed rich and had little cause to desire the world to come to them. When it did come it was the beginning of their end.
The Spaniards were as brave a people as ever lived. They had now firmly established themselves in Texas, in New Mexico, and in California, and their claims on the basis of first exploration covered a vast area. In every direction they opposed the entrance of other nationalities. The lands were forced to pay tribute to Spain; nothing was left for local government, and these methods, the antithesis of home rule, were the undoing of this noble race.
