On July 29, 1776, another even greater entrada was begun at Santa Fé by the Fray Padre Francisco Silvestre Velez Escalante,[[9]] in his search for a route to Monterey, unaware that Garces had just traversed, next to that of Oñate, the most practicable short route to be found. Garces had written to Escalante, ministro doctrinero of Zuñi, a letter from Oraibi, but as the ministro had already departed for Santa Fé, leaving Fray Mariano Rosate in charge at Zuñi, the letter probably did not reach him till his return. The northern country, notwithstanding several small entradas and the considerable one of Juan Maria Ribera in 1761, who went as far as Gunnison River, was still a terra incognita, and the distance to the Pacific was also an uncertain quantity. Escalante believed a better road existed to Monterey by way of the north than by the middle route, and a further incentive to journey that way was probably the rumours of large towns in that direction, the same will-o’-the-wisp the Spaniards for nearly three centuries had been vainly pursuing. The authorities had urged two expeditions to Alta California, to establish communication; Garces and Captain Anza had carried out one, and now Escalante was to execute the other.
[9] H. H. Bancroft gives a map of the route as he understands it, History of the Pacific States, p. 35, vol. xxv., also a condensation of the diary. Philip Harry gives a condensation in Simpson’s Report, Appendix R., p. 489. Some river names have been shifted since Harry wrote. What we call the Grand, upper part, was then the Blue.
A Zuñi Home.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
The Governors of Zuñi.
Shows well the genreal type of the Puebloans of the Basin of the Colorado.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS.
