The Romance of the Colorado River / The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons

by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

Entrance to Acoma, N.M.
The town is on top of a mesa, and was a prominent point on the highway from the Rio Grande to Zuñi.
Photograph by BEN WITTICK.

Preliminary to the entradas of the padres, Don Antonio de Espejo, in 1583, went from the Rio Grande to Moki and westward to a mountain, probably one of the San Francisco group, but he did not see the Colorado. Twenty-one years elapsed before a white man again ventured into this region. In 1604, Don Juan de Oñate, the wealthy governor of New Mexico, determined to cross from his headquarters at the village of San Juan on the Rio Grande, by this route to the South Sea, and, accompanied by thirty soldiers and two padres, he set forth, passing west by way of the pueblo of Zuñi, and probably not seeing at that time the celebrated Inscription Rock,[^[1]] for, though his name is said to be first of European marks, the date is 1606. From Zuñi he went to the Moki towns, then five in number, and possibly somewhat south of the present place. Beyond Moki ten leagues, they crossed a stream flowing north-westerly, which was called Colorado from the colour of its water,—the first use of the name so far traced. This was what we now call the Little Colorado. They understood it to discharge into the South Sea (Pacific), and probably Oñate took it for the very headwaters of the Buena Guia which Alarçon had discovered over sixty years before. As yet no white man had been north of Moki in the Basin of the Colorado, and the only source of information concerning the far northern region was the natives, who were not always understood, however honestly they might try to convey a knowledge of the country.

[1] This is a quadrangular mass of sandstone about a mile long, thirty-five miles east of Zuñi. On its base at the eastern end are a number of native and European inscriptions, the oldest, of the European dates according to Simpson, being 1606, recording a visit by Oñate. The rock, or, more properly, mesa, is also called the Morro. Chas. F. Lummis has also written on this subject.

Skirting the southern edge of the beautiful San Francisco Mountain region, through the superb forest of pine trees, Oñate finally descended from the Colorado Plateau to the headwaters of the Verde, where he met a tribe called Cruzados, because they wore little crosses from the hair of the forehead, a relic, no doubt, of the time when Alarçon had so freely distributed these emblems among the tribes he encountered on the Colorado, friends probably of these Cruzados. The latter reported the sea twenty days distant by way of a small river running into a greater, which flowed to the salt water. The small river was Bill Williams Fork, and on striking it Oñate began to see the remarkable pitahaya adorning the landscape with its tall, stately columns; and all the strange lowland vegetation followed. The San Andreas, as he called this stream, later named Santa Maria by Garces, he followed down to the large river into which it emptied, the Colorado, which he called the Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza, or River of Good Hope, evidently deciding that it merited a more distinguished title than had been awarded it at the supposed headwaters. He appears to have well understood what river this was, and we wonder why he gave it a new name when it had already received two. Sometimes in new lands explorers like to have their own way. They went down the Colorado, after a party had examined the river a little above the mouth of the Bill Williams Fork, meeting with various bands of friendly natives, among whom we recognise the Mohaves and the Cocopas. Not far below where Oñate reached the Esperanza he entered the Great Colorado Valley and soon crossed the highest point attained by Alarçon in 1340, probably near the upper end of the valley. He now doubled Alarçon’s and presently also Melchior Diaz’s paths, and arrived at the mouth of the river on the 25th of January, 1605, the first white man in over sixty years. A large harbour which struck his fancy was named in honour of the saint’s day, Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo, for the sun seldom went down without a Spaniard of those days thus propitiating a saint. We are more prone to honour the devil in these matters. The Gila they called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name never used again. So it often happens with names bestowed by explorers. The ones they regard most highly vanish, while some they apply thoughtlessly adhere forever.

Across the House Tops of Zuñi.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS.

All the tribes of this region, being familiar with the Californian coast, described it in a way that caused Oñate to believe that the gulf was the South Sea, extending indefinitely beyond the mouth of the Colorado northwards, and thus the persistent error that Lower California was an island received further confirmation. Without going across to the sea beyond the mountains, which would have dispelled the error, Oñate returned to the Rio Grande by the outward route, suffering so greatly for food that the party were forced to eat some of their horses, a source of relief often resorted to in future days in this arid country. A few years after Oñate’s expedition Zalvidar (1618), with Padre Jiminez and forty-seven soldiers, went out to Moki, and from there fifteen leagues to the Rio de Buena Esperanza, but they evidently encountered Marble Canyon, and soon returned.