The Spanish Southwest: The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition of 1776; Hopi, Homeward Bound, & The Epilogue of the Spanish

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I’m going to start this episode, the final in the series over the Dominguez and Escalante expedition of 1776, I promise, with a little bit of a flashback. A last crusade opening, if you will. During the research and recording of this series I grew increasingly interested in The Don Miera y Pacheco and then I learned that John Kessel had written an exhaustive book over the Renaissance man in the new world. Well, at Pecos national historical park I picked up that book and I have since read it and the story of the Don is amazing. So let’s briefly talk about him despite me previously saying he WON’T get his own episode. I suppose I’m keeping my word, but he is going to get a good solid highlight in the beginning of this one. Just listen to what Kessell says of the amazing man, quote, Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco embodied the very heart and soul of eighteenth century Hispanic New Mexico. End Quote.

So after the intro music, we will dive into Don Miera y Pacheco before finishing the Dominguez & Escalante Expedition of 1776. I’ll then essentially wrap up the Spanish in the American Southwest (for now)… Without any further adieu, Let’s get to adventuring…

Miera was a short, under five feet, light skinned peninsular, from Spain which was both favored, and resented in the new world. Especially the new world of New Mexico. But on May 20th, 1741, Miera was not yet in New Mexico but rather he was in Janos, the same place that Dominguez from our expedition which we are taking a break from, Janos is the same place that Dominguez would pass away at years later. Specifically though, Miera was at the Presidio of San Felipe y Santiago de Janos, in the modern day Mexican State of Chihuahua. And you can think of a Presidio like a fort.

Miera was 27 and he would on that day, marry a beautiful local girl with quite the name. Maria Estefania de los Dolores Dominguez de Mendoza. Her family had actually fled Popay’s Revolution years prior. At this time, Miera was a soldier. On the far outskirts of Christendom. And for what purpose, why did he leave the Santander Mountains of Spain and his probably comfy life there? The place where many streams and castles bear his family name…Miera… That is unknown… but by the 1800s, a lot of Spain had left for the Indies and the Americas, truthfully.

His early life is a mystery and he doesn’t really show up in the record until this day in 1741, his wedding day, in Chihuahua which is strange because of how accomplished he becomes later in life. He will after the wedding move around Chihuahua until he reaches El Paso or what would at the time have been called El Paso del Norte, right on the Camino Real. The gateway to New Mexico where his future resided. He also had two sons with his wife by the time he’d made it to modern day Texas.

In El Paso, Miera rode according to his own words, he rode on quote, five campaigns against the enemy Apaches and Sumas, their allies, end quote. He was a cartographer who mapped much territory on those campaigns. He also rode against the Gila Apache. On that campaign he was called to be the engineer and militia captain. His maps truly became necessary and much needed during this time. He also invested in much land, registered a non producing silver mine, sold some dry goods, got into debt, and then spent 12 days in jail for said debt.

But more on that campaign against the Apacheria. During this time, the group of Indians, the same one that had probably burned down many a Sinagua pueblo including Montezuma’s Castle in Arizona. The same group that probably forced the Sinagua and those that had remained after the Ancient Ones fled to Paquime, but the early Apache may have been the ones that forced the Ancient Ones to build walls after the Great Migration of the 1300s. By this time, the 1740s, the Apache had taken over the lands abandoned by the Anasazi and Ancestral Puebloans except for the Hopi in a crescent shape from Chihuahua to Southern New Mexico and they created great havoc for the Spanish and their forts.

In 1747, the Viceroy of New Spain had decided he was going to wage all out war against these Apacheria. He ordered the leaders of three provinces and five presidios to send their best men, as many Indian allies as they could muster, and enough meat to feed them all. Spaniards, genizaros, and Indians from New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, Sonora, Chihuahua, and more began arming themselves for a great battle. Many of these soldiers would be known as the soldados de cuera or the Lather jacket soldiers.

The soldados de cuera wore heavy, sleeveless, knee length protective layered leather coats instead of a uniform. Hence their name… the leather jacket soldiers. They also defended themselves with an oval bull hide shield they got to decorate themselves. They armed themselves with, and I will quote Kessell:

A steel tipped lance, a close quarters short sword, a brace of horse pistols, and a muzzle loading musket, or escopeta, which he was reluctant to fire in combat unless sure of the mark. The minute or two it took him to reload gave his Indian adversary time to get off a dozen arrows. End quote.

Miera… was one of these Soldados de Cuera. And these guys sound… awesome. Also awesome, were their Indian allies who normally outnumbered them 2 to 1 and whom they relied on heavily. Most of these allies were Pimas, Opatas, Tiwas or Piros and all of them were most likely descendants or cousins of the long gone Hohokam, and they all… hated their newcomer neighbors, the Apaches.

When the time came for the campaign, the New Mexican Governor, despite the threat of a hefty fine, had to bail after Abiquiu was attacked by Utes. He sent his soldiers in pursuit to no avail. Despite lacking one prong, the other 4 armies comprising some 700 troops and around 2,000 horses began their march towards the enemy Apaches.

Obviously, the Apaches could see this coming so they banded together to attack now defenseless towns. Then cold and snow and wind set in. The Hopis hindered progress. The Apaches escaped. The furthest Miera got was Zuni. The Campaign was ultimately a failure. But this failure would influence Miera much later, which I will talk about at the end of this episode when I cover his presidios proposal he hands the king of Spain… But these campaigns did allow Miera to practice his mapmaking. A skill that will come in very handy for the future Don.

Epidemics that easily killed children and Indians swept through El Paso in 1749. Floods destroyed a bunch of the town. Sadly… in that same year, Miera and his wife would bury their third child, a newborn son. Indians attacked outlying ranches. More diseases spread through the area. Life at this time in this place was difficult…

By 1756, the Mieras were in Santa Fe after it seems the new governor had paid off his debts AND made him alcalde mayor. Or district officer. So he went from being in jail for that debt, to Mayor of one of the many districts of New Mexico. Kessell writes: The upriver colony during the 1750s was composed of eight districts, from north to south and west to east: Taos, Villa de Santa Cruz de la Cañada, Los Queres, Villa de Santa Fe, Pecos and Galisteo, Zuni, Laguna, and Villa de Albuquerque. In theory, New Mexicans lived not farther than a days travel from their district officer. Each alcalde mayor y capitán a guerra acted as petty governor and militia captain of his district. Although unsalaried, he collected fees and fines for his judicial services, raised and commanded local militiamen and Indian auxiliaries, supposedly aided the missionaries, kept the governor informed, and put grantees in possession of their lands. End quote.

Miera would serve as alcalde mayor from 1756-1760 in the district of Pecos and Galisteo. The most dangerous district in all of New Mexico. During his time as town and militia leader he went on three Comanche campaigns. Always making maps of the terrain during them.

During this time he also wanted to cast or make some cannons so that the people could defend themselves against the feared Comanches who were being given ample powder, guns, and bullets by the French. He would not succeed at making the cannons although the blacksmith, the previous alcalde mayor whom he took over for, would finish these 5 cannons. And he’d even make 30 lance points. Kessell says of the cannons though: Although Sena's efforts, Sena is the man who finished the cannons, although Sena’s efforts were a triumph of sorts in terms of morale, such cannons, in the quick-strike and hot-pursuit warfare against Comanches, were in fact hardly worth the powder to charge them. End quote.

After the cannons, Miera he was called in ’57 to ride with the governor to every corner of New Mexico, as all new governors do. He rode from El Paso to Taos and east and west and during this trip from June to December, he would make quite the impressive map. And he’d be paid to do it.

This map he completes in 1758 is quite accurate too! He did not sign it. It is also beautiful with great sketches of bison and Indians and churches. I debated on wether to read the description Kessell gives it or not and I decided not to but I have just changed my mind. Here’s Kessell’s great description. PAGE 48. AND 53. And 56!

On that map he made in 1758, the don actually comments on the legend of the white men who speak Castilian up in the Rockies. And he puts a multi towered city by a lake and labels it…. Tewayo. So the Don was convinced of the two legends and stories way back in the 50s! I did not know that but that nicely ties into our story thus far.

By the early 1760s Miera was spending a lot of time in the palace of the governors of New Mexico. His star was on the rise as Kessell puts it. He made a lot of maps during this time as well. Some descriptions of which I just read. Around this time he also carved a massive alter screen for a Church the governor and his good friend was building in Santa Fe for the presidio. It is truly a beautiful piece of art. There are pictures in the Kessell book. It was 19 feet wide by 25 feet tall and three tiered. Kessell writes of it, quote, Felipe R. Mirabal, who has studied Miera for years, points out how precisely the artist used geometry to lay out the altarpiece, citing the artist's obvious training as a mathematician. But don Bernardo did not innovate when it came to the saints. He closely followed printed engravings, faithfully copying the poses and clothing of the holy images, then incising them on stone. End quote.

Despite life looking good for the Don, life in New Mexico, the edge of Spanish civilization, was still rather tough…

Here’s another quote from Kessell: On Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco's forty-seventh birthday, August 4, 1760, the most ferocious and long-remembered Comanche attack of the century occurred in northern New Mexico. End quote.

Almost 20 years later, Dominguez, our Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez of the expedition would give the reason for this horrible attack when he wrote, quote: to avenge the fact that two months earlier they [the Indians of Taos Pueblo] had danced under their (the Comanches) eyes with twentyfour scalps of their people. End quote.

Apparently, 3,000 Comanches rode into the territory, right as the puebloans were tending to their fields.

Kessell writes what occurred:

According to Miera, a warning preceded the Comanches, which wasn't surprising given the unprecedented mass of their force. Evidently this hell bent wave of heavily armed, painted, and screaming attackers swept around Taos Pueblo itself, which Dominguez described elsewhere as resembling "those walled cities with bastions and towers that are described to us in the Bible." They raged down the open Taos Valley ravaging farm after farm. The valley's terrified residents fled for refuge to the fortified great house of Pablo de Villalpando, who had left that morning on business.

Miera captures what happened next: Now quoting Miera.

The enemy attacked the said house with daring force, sneaked below the embra-sures of the parapet and towers, and thus safely under cover, proceeded to open breaches at various points and set fires in them. To stop this maneuver, the besieged showed themselves upon the parapet, and then the said enemies took advantage of the opportunity to wound them with bullets and arrows. They all perished.

Villalpandos wife, Tamaron related, fought fiercely alongside her cousins. Seeing that the attackers were breaking down the outside door, [she] went to defend it with a lance, and they killed her fighting" Dominguez added that the raiders "Killed a number of women, who had fought like men, and when they were dead, they insolently coupled them with the dead men." The bishop stated the Comanches then carried off fifty-six women and children; the cartographer made it sixty-four; and the friar in 1776 allowed more than fifty, a number of whom had since been ransomed. But the Comanches also paid a price, with either “forty-nine" "more than eighty,' or "more than a hundred" killed. End all quotes.

That’s quite the battle… those Comanche were truly ferocious.

In response, the governor in Santa Fe mustered every available man and and boy who could fight and sent them out with some Jicarilla Apache brethren in pursuit. They wandered for 40 days through 520 miles of the Great Plains and easter Rockies to no avail. The Don was almost certainly likely among the warriors who responded.

After that Governor left, the next one did not need Miera’s maps. But private citizens and the church still hired Miera y Pacheco for other artistic works. Mostly of a religious nature.

That same new governor didn’t last long though. And during his brief tenure he would get some revenge on the Comanches. Not revenge of the sweet kind. He would come upon Comanches at Taos who were there to trade and he would fire cannons and muskets down into their teepees when they refused to return all their prisoners from the previous raid. Meanwhile the Utes stole a thousand horses and three hundred women and children from the Comanche. Those that weren’t cut down, only 36 of them, they burned the rest of their belongings, killed their horses, and ran to the plains. The governor called it a quote unquote glorious victory.

This governor of new Mexico’s replacement was the capable Comanche fighter Tomas Velez Cachupín. Good name. This was also his SECOND term as governor. The Comanches called him Captain that Amazes. He sat down with the Comanches, offered them tobacco and chocolate. They made peace.

Of Cachupin, Kessell writes: Why Vélez Cachupín wanted to return to raw and remote New Mexico is nowhere obvious. Perhaps no other post was available. Had he, like several earlier Spanish governors, fallen under the spell of New Mexico or its women? End quote. I like that and it’s kinda funny. My brother married a New Mexican woman and they just moved to the northwest corner of the state. My sister just moved with her family to west of Albuquerque. My wife and I are moving to east of Albuquerque within the next few months. There’s just something about the land of enchantment… or entrapment as my sister in law calls it.

In 1762, Cachupin appointed the capable and trustworthy Miera to alcalde mayor of the Queres (Keres) jurisdiction. This was west of Santa Fe from the Rio Grande in the east to the Puerco river in the west. The Jemez Pueblo was pretty much in the center of it.

1763 saw the end of the French and Indian war or as the rest of the world called it, the 7 years war. This would have huge ramifications for America and the colonies situated there. It would eventually cause the revolutionary war when England tried to recoup its losses and house its soldiers on the continent. France lost big in the new world. They no longer had the land Louisiana west of the Mississippi. They’d given that to Spain. But they also lost to the English, all of Canada, Acadia, cape Breton, and now Louisiana EAST of the Mississippi as well. Which meant the big baddie of the Spanish in the new world was no longer their bourbon cousins to the north. But those English across the channel.

Also in that year, Kessell writes of something interesting that happened in Abiquiu:

A witch scare bubbled over in the town of Abiquiu, complete with demonic possessions, accused sorcerers all over the kingdom, shrines to the devil, and multiple exorcisms.

Through it all, Governor Vélez Cachupin kept his head and presided over the necessary proceedings. A dozen years later, Father Dominguez would lament that the governor had confined some of the women possessed by the devil in the Franciscan library and archive, where they tore up rare books for cigarette paper and burned mission registers. End quote.

I used to think witch scares were a curious quirk of history but… I now see witches as real and they’re quite open about being real. And they’re not just confined to being women. The demons and witches of our ancestors, in my opinion, have returned…

When the new governor arrived, governor mindenueta, a name you should remember as it’s the one to sign off on our expedition. Well when he arrived he let Miera go as alcalde mayor. At this time Miera he was ranching anyways. He had a small herd that he combined with an old friend near modern day Cuba, NM. It was a dangerous territory honestly as it was the buffer zone between the Navajo and the New Mexicans. This area is west of the Jemez Mountains and it’s a pretty place I’ve driven through a few times. In this land grant Miera and his friend were told not to drive away the Navajo but instead quote, try to attract them into the folds of Our Holy Faith and vassalage to our sovereign, treating them without guile and with Christian charity, on pain of nullification of said grant. End quote. So play nice with your Navajo neighbors who might just build a Hogan on your land occasionally.

By 1768, Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco had further moved up the social ladder as his son married the alcalde mayors daughter and he rubbed shoulders with new Mexico’s elite even more than he previously had.

In 1774, almost caught up to our expedition, the Don met Escalante as has previously been mentioned when the latter asked the former to create a new carved and painted alter screen for the church at Zuni. Kessell writes this of their interactions: While he worked, don Bernardo had recounted to fray Silvestre his firsthand experiences as "engineer and captain of the militia" on the general campaign of 1747. End quote.

He then writes this of the pieces that Miera made for Zuni. It’s lengthy but very interesting.

Pieces of Miera's Zuni altar screen, "collected" (read stolen) in the late nineteenth century, found their way into museums in the eastern United States.

A pair of Miera's handsomely carved wooden estipite columns, curated until recently as part of "Arts of the Americas" at the Brooklyn Museum, have been repatriated to the pueblo. Of special note are matching wooden guardian archangels San Miguel and "San Gabriel, who resided for generations at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. San Gabriel was in truth San Rafael, because an earlier sketch shows him holding a fish. E. Boyd writes:

these are closely related to other works of Miera y Pacheco by their rugged physical characteristics, broad earthy faces, and attention to costume detail.... St. Gabriel [which Boyd guessed correctly was San Rafael] here resembles a robust village boy rather than a supernatural spirit, while St. Michael, the patron saint of the military, suggests that a contemporary of Miera y Pacheco's actually posed for the shrewd, somewhat cocky face--perhaps a young alférez, or lieuten-ant, in the Captain's company of militia.

Also repatriated to Zuni in 1995, San Miguel is now on display in the pueblos Visitor's Center. His counterpart, San Rafael, was not so lucky. He burned in a fire at the Smithsonian thirty years earlier in 1965. End quote.

So Escalante and Miera y Pacheco had met and spent some time together while Escalante was hatching his plan of connecting the coast to the colony. He knew of Miera’s combat and leadership history. He knew of his veteran status and his intelligence… so why didn’t Miera lead this expedition? This one we’ve been talking so much about…

Escalante wrote this in 1776: "I merely said in my letter that he would be useful as one of those who were to go, not to command the expedition, but to make a map of the terrain explored. And I state that only for this do I consider him useful. End quote. Kessell then writes quote, Although in translation the friars statement sounds spiteful, he didn't mean it that way. He knew, after hours of listening to Miera reminisce about the general campaign of 1747 and other explorations, what a valuable asset the aging cartographer would be. End quote.

Still begs the question of why Miera didn’t lead.

And with that not so brief history of both New Mexico and our awesome veteran Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, we are caught up to the present in the expedition. It is November 1776… they have just crossed the Colorado river. The weather was frigid and brutal. They are heading towards Hopi. There’s a lot of ground to cover.

On the 9th, the Dominguez and Escalante Expedition of 1776… came across a camp of Paiutes who, as soon as the Spanish had been noticed, fled the scene. Try as they might though, the D & E men and their interpreter, Andres Muñiz couldn’t get them to come out of hiding. The Expedition really needed some help, just that very day before discovering this camp, they’d wandered around the canyons until steep cliffs forced them to backtrack some 5 miles. Escalante speculated that either these Paiutes were afraid they were friends with the Hopi, their mortal enemies, or they had never seen Spaniards before, but either way, he figured one of those reasons was why they avoided them. He would remark that these Indians were timid in the journal.

On the 10th they discovered some Big Horn Sheep and their tracks, and they also discovered yet some more Paiutes. But this time, Muñiz was able to convince them to give them directions. Not all of them mind you, just Andres Muñiz and Joaquin, the Laguna Ute from the shores of lake Tewayo. So off in secret, the Paiutes told these two the way out of these canyons and towards home. But they also told them, quote, a short distance from here we would find two trails, one toward the Cosninas and another to El Pueblo de Oraibi in Moqui. End quote.

The Cosninas, remember are the Havasupai and the Moqui are the Hopi. So they pretty much just got the best news ever. If the trail pans out.

Which it absolutely did. They then followed this trail for two cold and very rough days. While walking the trail, Escalante would notice and then later write about how the Indians had improved the trail and cut stairs into and made guides of sticks and stones. They would pass over and through cliffs, hewing at the stones as they went. They would walk along creeks and high on ledges. The going was tough. And again, they were very cold. They even feared that Miera y Pacheco was going to freeze on them. Escalante writes, quote, because of the persisting great cold, we held back for a spell while the rest of the companions went on ahead in order to build a fire and warm up Don Bernardo Miera, who was ready to freeze on us and who we feared could not survive so much cold. End quote. At one point they had to break ice at a spring just to drink from it.

They were also still starving as the previous Indians they had ran into had no food to spare. And then, they became thirsty, as the spring water they had to break through to reach wasn’t enough. It continued to be a trail of trial.

On the 13th though, they killed themselves an el espino or, porcupine, which Escalante wrote about it, quote, we tasted flesh of the richest flavor. End quote. Now I want to try porcupine!

It wasn’t enough though, and he wrote it only whet their appetite so they had to kill yet another horse. Escalante had wished it wasn’t necessary but having found no camp of Cosnina with which to provide sustenance, it had become so. Starving is not preferable to having an extra mount.

But then the following day, the 14th, they did indeed stumble upon a Cosnina camp! They arrive at a camp with irrigation, peach trees, beans, melons, corn, and all manner of food stuffs. They found a house of stone and mud with jars and baskets. But no people. Escalante called the camp a Cosnina one, but again, the Cosnina are the Havasupai which were 90 miles away at the very least. Roberts suggests there’s a small possibility it could be a Navajo settlement although, it doesn’t really match the description of one too well. He then suggests its more likely that it was just an outlier Hopi village which makes a whole lot more sense, really.

From this small abandoned village, they continue south on a more direct course for the Hopi mesas. It seems, there had been a latent desire for D & E to visit these Havasupai Cosnina because, the year before, when Escalante was at the Hopi mesas, he’d actually met with two visiting Cosninas who told Escalante that they loved the Spanish and they’d love for him to visit them, which he told them, he would! Well, on this very cold day in the middle of November, the team abandoned that possibility due to quote, the extreme severity with which winter was plaguing us, end quote. Briggs writes of this decision, quote, God’s elements dictated against fulfillment of God’s will. End quote.

All of this land that they’re walking through either parallels or is to the east of the highway that takes you from Page to Cameron, that highway being 89, that very beautiful road throughout this part of the American Southwest. Today there ain’t much to see on the stretch from Lees Ferry exit to Cameron and the road is incredibly bumpy and bouncy. Only sand lays beneath the asphalt and time dictates the road moves. Almost all of the land is Navajo Res land of the Kaibito and Moenkopi plateaus and almost all of it is closed to any sort of camping or hiking by whites and non Navajos. Although, in times past, exploring was possible and sought by those truly adventurous. Again, you will have to listen to the Everett Ruess Episode coming up next!

But again, it’s amazing and I have to ask, where have the Navajo been in this story? It’s very curious they haven’t run into any thus far even though Maria y Pacheco’s later map would call this land Provincia de Nabajo. I copied the map for the cover of the intro episode and on that map I have “De NaBaJoo”. Where were they?!

After abandoning their quest to baptize the People of the Blue Green Waters, the D&E Expedition slowly began finding signs of Hopi, which meant, they were close to the end… almost. They found the Moenkopi Wash. Moenkopi being Hopi for Running Water. That’s near today’s Tuba City. They found Hopi cattle. Which some unnamed members of the expedition begged the padres to be able to kill and eat… maybe they were tired of eating horse.. maybe they didn’t want to run out? Regardless, the leaders denied their request for some beef. It was not what’s for dinner. But horse, again, was for dinner. Their sixth.

By the 16th though, they had made it to Oraibi! That pueblo I have mentioned many times. They were now squarely in Hopi territory and that meant, there would be no more getting lost. Although, the 133 miles between Hopi and Zuni was still fraught with Navajo raiders and both Escalante and the once Zuni mayor, Cisneros knew that well. Remember the story that the Hopi told Escalante on his visit in 1775 about the Navajo planning to kill him? Remember also that the Hopi weren’t overly fond of the Spanish either… and both Escalante and Cisneros learned of that lesson too back in 1775.

On that mission to Hopi I mentioned in the beginning of this series, Escalante had actually been accompanied by three Zuni men, a man from Isleta, and Cisneros himself. And while on that utter failure of a mission, Escalante got into an argument with some dudes when no one showed up to listen to him preach at Oraibi. Eventually, at the conclusion of the argument, one of the two quote unquote captains that had come to listen to him said, quote, he did not want the spaniards ever to live in his land, and for me not to worry myself in going about giving advice to his people, for none would give ear to me. End quote.

Ouch… After the very heated argument where he was told to leave and never come back, Escalante headed to his little house that the Hopi had let him stay in feeling, quote unquote, very sad. He’d then learn that while he was in the little house, word was spreading not just in Oraibi, but throughout all the Hopi mesas that, quote, no one was to listen to my counsel because my aim was to subject them to the Spaniards. End quote.

It had only been 75 years or so since the popwaqt and the sorcery had been wiped out at Awatovi… the Hopi did not want a return to that time, although, at this time in 1775, there was a severe and devastating drought building in the southwest that would destroy a lot of Hopi lives and change the people forever… certainly that had nothing to do with the Religious visit, right?

That unpleasant argument between Escalante and the Captain had taken place at Oraibi… the same mesa they’d made it to the base of over a year later in 1776 on that cold November 16 day… do you think the two cacique captains on the mesa he’d met with are going to remember him?

And on the subject of remembering, did the Spanish not remember what happened at the Hopi mesas during the Revolt and after the reconquest? Both things I talked about in the past few episodes? It’s likely they actually did forget… But what they hadn’t forgotten was that to the religious, the Hopi were the most apostate people in all of the vast Spanish Kingdom.

Also on the subject of forgetting… it’s possible that Escalante was wishing he could forget that last visit of his to the area but even more so, he probably wishes he could forget the letter he wrote to the Governor of New Mexico himself in October of the year before, 1775, a couple months after his disastrous visit.

In that letter, which David Roberts brought to my attention in his book and which letter shocked the author… he says of the letter, quote, I myself was shocked when I first read the text, end quote. First of all, at the tail end of that visit where he was run out of Hopi town, in the last village he came to, Walpi, at that village he accidentally stumbled upon a quote unquote obscene and horrifying spectacle of a kachina dance in the square. More specifically, it was probably the snake dance, or a portion of the snake dance where clowns make fun and humble various tribal members for various reasons, I’ve talked about the importance of staying humble among the Hopis before. Well, what Escalante saw saddened him so much so that he leapt up out the entire Hopi land the next day. Which makes his ignoring the Navajo threat make a lot more sense. He wanted to get out of there at any cost lest the devil take his soul!

This is what he wrote of the Hopi Kachina Dance though:

I heard ... a great noise and disturbance in the street. I hastened out to learn the cause and saw some of the masked men they call entremeseros, and they are equivalent to the ancient Mexican huehuenches. The frightful and gloomy painting of their masks and the height of indecency in which they ran in view of many people of both sexes were very clear signs of the foul spirit who has their hearts in his power. The only part of their bodies that was covered was the face, and at the end of the member it is not modest to name they wore a small and delicate feather subtly attached. End quote.

So Escalante witnessed some men in large painted masks dancing in front of everybody in the town wearing only said large mask and a little feather at the tip of their members. That image would sit and stew in him for months… it frustrated and angered him so much that he eventually wrote a letter to the governor of New Mexico, Mendinueta, himself and in this letter he outlined what, I would not be too wrong in calling Escalante’s final solution to the Hopi or Moqui problem.

Here’s Escalante’s fix:

The proper means that can and ought to be taken is as follows: with forces of the projected expedition, which was a military assault on the Gila Apaches far to the southwest of the Hopi, but with forces of the projected expedition they be subdued by arms to the dominion of their legitimate sovereign; that they be brought down from the pueblos to a plain and proper site, and whatever measures considered imperative be taken to require of them the necessary compliance… he goes on to say… By our seizing and defending the water holes of which they daily avail themselves, because of thirst and need of their flocks, they will be forced to surrender without great fatigue to ourselves. End quote.

In essence, Escalante was suggesting they deprive the Hopi and their flocks of water, which will force them to leave their pueblos, at which point the Spanish would no doubt destroy them, and force them to live on reservations in plains and grow crops as god intended… That’s a pretty harsh response to seeing some errant ween dancing. Especially since as a priest of the Catholic Church, he was not allowed to hurt or kill or draw blood. Even in the capacity of being a surgeon. He could not even hand down sentences himself of death, say if he was in the Inquisition. But as discussed earlier, it was about more than just naked men and masks, it was about that quote foul spirit who has their hearts in his power. End quote. The devil. Escalante wanted nothing to do with the devil, which he felt had taken hold of the Hopi mesas.

Escalante didn’t see a cultural kachina dance, he saw the devil right out in the open. I can sympathize with that, I’d probably think the same thing if I were a 1770s young Spanish Franciscan Friar who longed for martyrdom while saving souls. And he thought, if we can remake the Hopi like we remade the Rio Grande Puebloans, maybe the devil will leave them.

David Roberts was right to be shocked when he read that letter though. You don’t get that sort of vitriolic anger from the Journal, that’s for sure. Nor do you sense it when he is forced to beg for help at their mesas just over a year after he wrote that, final solution to the Moqui problem letter.

So at the base of Oraibi, Escalante, Cisneros, and Andres Muniz told the rest of the team to stay put before they apprehensively ascended the path to the old Hopi town. Almost immediately upon their arrival, they were surrounded by a quote, large number of Indians, big and small, end quote. After asking for the war captain multiple times, but getting nowhere on account of Andres Muniz speaking Ute, not Hopi, eventually Cisneros piped up in Navajo which thankfully worked. Sorta…

A big Hopi man would come find them and he ordered them to turn around and did not permit them to enter further, a rehash of the previous year for Escalante… but Cisneros, thinking quick, asked him, wait, aren’t we all friends here? And surprisingly… this worked. The Spaniards were then shown to their little house, like Escalante and Cisneros had the year prior, and later that night the quote unquote ritual headman with two very old consiglieries let Escalante, Muñiz, and Cisneros know that, quote, they were our friends, offered to sell us the provisions we might need. We let them know that we much appreciated it. End quote. No doubt, this was a godsend, and Escalante, who was probably leery of the coming interaction, must have felt relieved. And thankful that his final solution plan hadn’t been enacted. Briggs also adds, quote, At least the visitors had not been forced to remain on the street and denied sustenance, as had been Garces’ fate here. End quote. A Godsend indeed. Maybe the Hopi had heard from passing neighbors about these men wandering and knew of their hardships and of their coming arrival?

The following day, November 17th, the three were thankfully brought sustenance in the form of quote, some baskets or trays of flour, beef tallow, maize paperbread, and other kinds of food supplies. End quote. Ted J Warner’s footnotes say Paper bread is, quote, a paper thin bread made from fine cornflour; it tastes like cornflakes and is really the forerunner of cornflakes. It is delicious. End quote. And the expedition was brought this despite that devastating drought that was currently affecting the Hopi and would be affecting them even more so shortly.

The entire expedition is then moved to second mesa and the town of Shongopavi where… they somehow talked to the Hopi and got their further understanding that they were still subjects of Spain? I don’t know where this delusion of Escalante’s was coming from… he was just begging for food essentially, after being kicked out the year before, and after wanting to annihilate the Hopi… they were essentially using sign language and Navajo for all of this too.

On the 18th, rested and full, the leaders of the D & E Expedition did what they do best and… they somehow preached to the Hopi about god and the devil but this time, instead of their listeners beaming with joy and love and understanding, the two were interrupted and reminded that uhhh we don’t speak Spanish, and y’all don’t speak Hopi so we have no idea what you’re talking about and we don’t care to know, either.

Saddened, they left it at that but then, to try and play nice, they offered a blanket to the wife of the man who had let them stay at Shongopavi. But instead, the brother of the wife quote, snatched it away from her and threw it at us with a mean look on his face. End quote. The message would be pretty loud and clear to me… I have no idea why they stayed so long here in the first place… especially after his last interaction at Hopi. If I were Escalante, I would have begged that we leave immediately after they purchased the food they’d been given.

This man though, who had thrown the blanket proceeded to explain that he remembers Escalante, he was there when that whole debacle had gone down the year prior! He remember specifically when the Cosninas told the padre about how they wanted him to come preach to them. That information, imparted to Escalante the previous year, angered this Hopi man because he believes now that the D&E crew had just come from the Havasupai, of whom they were having a bit of a roux with right now… so, the writing is vague, and Escalante says the deduction is obvious, although it is not obvious! But he says the reason why this man is mad should be clear to the reader so he leaves it at that. We are left to deduce that this man thinks the D&E crew are at Hopi on behalf of their current enemy to the Peaceful Ones, the Havasupai or Cosninas… hopefully you’re still with me… anyways, they left for first mesa shortly after that.

They arrived to the First Mesa on the night of the 18th and they were received joyfully and warmly. They were then given lodging in the quote unquote ritual headman’s house at the pueblo of Hano. Remember, Hano is the place with the refugees from the pueblos who had been there since the Reconquista. They act as Hopi Mesa police. David Roberts sums up what happens here next though pretty well:

Later that night, through the counsel of a "backslider Indian" originally from Galisteo pueblo south of Santa Fe, the padres got their first real inkling of what was going on at Hopi to explain the curiously mixed reception the Spaniards had received. The "very old" Galisteo man told the friars that Hopi was "currently engaged in a cruel war with the Navajo Apaches, and that these had killed and captured many of their people." Thus whatever warmth the team felt at Walpi sprang from a beleaguered nation that saw in the ragtag band of Spaniards a party "through whom they might beg the lord governor for some aid or defense against their foes." The Galisteo elder, who evidently spoke Spanish, even volunteered to travel with the team to Santa Fe to plead for a Spanish alliance against the Navajos. End quote.

That matches up with history pretty well. So to coincide with a 5 year awful drought, the Apaches were also raiding and killing the Hopi in that moment… much like the Apache ancestors had done to the Hopi ancestors at places like… Montezuma’s Castle perhaps… if you’ll remember the episode over the Spiral Migration or the Anasazi Art of Vanishing into Thin Air.

After hearing this news though, D & E figured they could try and help so they told the ritual headman to gather a similar ritual headman from each of the Six Hopi pueblos and to meet with them the following day to quote, talk over and to discuss it all, and to decide on what was best. End quote.

The following day, the 19th, the meeting happened in a kiva in the Hopi Village of Tano near Walpi. And in the meeting, the six reps from the six villages all begged the friars to quote, do everything possible in their behalf. End quote.

That’s all the Franciscans needed in that moment… they immediately seized upon the possibility of converting them and finally getting them to subjugate themselves once again to Spanish authority, and more importantly to God’s authority. They literally, could not help themselves, it seems. They said that while they sympathized with the Hopi’s plight, they simply couldn’t help them until they submitted to God, since he alone is truly the one that could save them. They laid heavy on eternal punishments and hell, and how the Hopi were offending God but it can all go away, if they just submit humbly…

I’m going to quote a long passage from Roberts cause he does a good job summarizing the Hopi response:

The padres were utterly unprepared for the Hopi response. Between the lines in this November 19 entry in Escalante's journal-the last substantive passage in the five-month record of the great journey--the courage of the Hopi pueblos even at their lowest ebb shines through. Submit to the true religion, D & E promised, and the Hopi would "enjoy continual and sure recourse to Spanish arms against all infidels who should war against them." From the padres' point of view, the bargain was win-win. In one stroke the Hopi could ensure their eternal salvation and gain an ally equipped with swords and firearms to crush the savage Navajos. "Three times we made our plea," wrote Escalante, choking on his incredulity, "exhorting them to submit themselves to the church's bosom by impugning and demonstrating as vain and false the reasons they gave for their not converting to the faith." The Hopi parried every argument the friars brought forth. They had seen padres before who tried to manipulate them into bending to Spanish rule, and "they never had wanted it then or now.” End all quotes.

The Hopis simply weren’t having it. They’d rather die against the Apache and the Navajo than submit once again to Spanish rule. The Hopi and Tanos also mentioned how there were way more Indians in the Southwest then there were Spaniards anyways so why join the side of the few? They mentioned how far away they were from Santa Fe and how the promised weapons probably would never make it anyways. And in reality, the Spanish could barely keep the Pueblos around Santa Fe safe, how were they going to keep these outposts safe? Remember Mendenuetas rebukes at enlarging the province? Plus, the Hopis could barely feed themselves at the moment, how would they give tribute to the Spanish? Eventually, the six representatives of the six villages unanimously, after much discussion, quote, recalled the traditions of their forebears and urged their observance, concluding that it was better for them to undergo their present calamities and hardships than to go against them. And they replied that they solely desired our friendship but by no means to become christians, because the ancient ones had told them and counseled them never to subject themselves to the spaniards. End quote. The ancient ones spoke, and the Hopi listened.

Crestfallen, as Escalante puts it, they headed back through the now heavily falling snow to their lodgings where they decided that they were leaving for Zuni tomorrow. They had no hope of converting or helping these Hopi, not to mention, it really had been snowing so much, they were afraid the passes and the trails would be closed if they didn’t leave soon.

Briggs has some history I did not know about the weather and this area:

Sometimes it still snows constantly hereabout. In the winter of 1968-1969 for one, snow fell so long and heavily that the Air Force deployed helicopters to rescue isolated navajos and cargo planes to drop fodder to their snowbound livestock. End quote.

As David Roberts puts it, the last few journal entires over the next five days are curt and spiritless. The expedition was tired, hungry, and now so cold while walking through quote unquote tiresome blizzards, that they yet again feared for their lives and freezing to death. They were ready to be home and to forget about the many failures they’d encountered, especially the failure at Moqui or the Hopi Mesas.

But they’d have to travel through much snow and with weary animals. Eventually, the team would break up and Dominguez, Escalante, and three others, unnamed, pushed ahead.

On the 24th of November those five, quote, arrived extremely exhausted when it was already dark at the Pueblo and mission of nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zuni. End quote. They were back at Zuni… They were within the known territory of Nuevo México. They were essentially, home. Or at least, almost. 

In footnote number 460 of the journal after this just quoted sentence, Ted J Warner writes, quote, this was fray silvestre velez de Escalante’s assigned mission. He was stationed here in June 1776 when he was ordered by father Dominguez to report to him in Santa Fe to discuss prospects for an overland trip to Monterey, California. Thus, arriving here was like reaching home after a long, arduous four month journey. End quote.

But it wasn’t home for the rest of the team. Which, curiously, were never mentioned again. Although in letters to Santa Fe, the other eight do make it to Zuni. Including the young Joaquin the Laguna. It is probably so that the only buildings he had ever seen were Anasazi ruins, if he’d even seen them.

D & E would linger in Zuni for 17 more days until December 13th. No explanation is given for why.

From Zuni they would travel through some of my favorite places in New Mexico. El Moro, the Inscription Rock that I’ve mentioned before with the graffiti of Oñate. They would have passed mountains, badlands, malpais. Briggs and his beautiful writing covers this so I will give a long quote from him:

About halfway along they dropped south of the 8,400-foot Zuni Mountains and recrossed, after 133 days, the Continental Divide at about eight thousand feet.

Probably on their third day they struck El Malpaís, detritus of three distinct basaltic tidal waves, the latest less than a millennium ago. The Badlands is an understatement, their one hundred twenty thousand acres more tortured than any terrain our astronauts met on the moon.

Wending about six miles across El Malpaís, our travelers were fortunate to have a prehistoric trail both to find their way and to save their animals' hooves. The trail is nicely engineered of small chunks of lava, with yawning fissures spanned by bridges of larger ones.

To be seen hereabout, though Escalate mentions El Malpaís not at all, are cavelike lava tubes, some over fifty feet in diameter and one almost eleven miles long.

Here also are inverted cinder cones, one of them half a mile across, a thousand feet deep and of almost perfect proportions; ice caves with delicate ceilings of crystal, formed and maintained by nature's critically adjusted temperatures, and crystal-clear stalagmites rising from rinklike floors; splatter cones, formations ten feet or so high, and sinkhole ponds of lava, from several feet to over an acre across, with a variety of distinct ecological communities representing various stages of biological parade - some cozying an algae that radiates a translucent glow, others nourishing bullrushes, cattails, even fish.

Bizarre shapes, created during lava's hardening, confronted our journeyers everywhere-dwarfs and dragons and whatever else they may have conjured up; and everywhere junipers stunted and twisted, contorted into writhing crones and clowns. If they had been aware of it, semicircular lava walls and fire rings at the mouths of those horizontal tunnels - these betokened campsites of Indians on the move.

On their fourth day our men climbed the 357-foot height to Acoma, popularly known today as the Sky City, by a trail that, as Domínguez recorded in his visitation report, "makes a number of boxed-in turns, so difficult that in some places they have made wide steps so that the pack animals may ascend with comparative ease." These days we may drive to the top.

"Immediately," wrote Escalante, "there fell a heavy snow which prevented us from continuing as soon as we desired." This would be his last diary observation, other than of distances, directions and stopping places, until the expedition's arrival in Santa Fe. End quote.

They wouldn’t make it back to Santa Fe until the following year, meaning they spent Christmas on the trail. They’d arrive on January 2nd to complete their epic loop.

Once they’d returned, they handed over to governor Mendinueta the painted deer skin from the Timpanogotzis or Lagunas, those mythical but ultimately humble people on the banks of Tewayo. They also handed over Joaquin, the Laguna boy who’d stayed with them through thick and thin. And lastly, because, quote, everything stated in this diary is true and faithful to what happened and was observed in our journey, end quote, they handed over the journal. But not before signing it. Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez. Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante.

Today, both the deer skin art and the boy Joaquin’s fate are unknown. Although, many aspects of this story were unknown until later discovered. Take for instance the report that Dominguez was to write about all of the missions in the region. He actually finished that report once he’d returned from this incredible journey and handed it over to his superiors where… one unknown superior would write, quote, Report that is intended in part to be a description of New Mexico, but its phraseology is obscure, it lacks proportion, and offers little to the discriminating taste. End quote. It would be filed away with the note attached and lost, completely forgotten about until 1928. It was then uncovered, studied, and became as Roberts puts it, quote, one of the the two or three most valuable accounts of life in eighteenth century New Mexico. End quote. So information and stories and writings may yet emerge, like the location of the carving that they made which was uncovered during the cleaning of graffiti.

Dominguez would be elevated to Custodian of New Mexico’s Franciscans and he would be sent to El Paso del Norte. He appointed Escalante as his Vice Custodian, but Escalante remained at San Ildefonso.

In El Paso, things didn’t go as smoothly as Dominguez had liked and he wrote to Mexico City, quote, Jupiter rains calamities upon me, but with the favor of Heaven I keep insisting that there is a remedy for everything and that it can be applied without making a din. End quote. It seems though, he was indeed making a din. His standards were too high. Charges, unknown nowadays, were filed against him. A fellow priest became fed up and he quote, took the liberty of drawing his knife from his pouch and speaking his mind. End quote. Malicious rumors, Catholic intrigue. He’d write that he was going blind in his left eye and that he was losing the quote serenity and peace of mind which I so greatly need. End quote.

Dominguez would disappear from the record for 17 years. When he reappears, he is asking for help in his little forgotten post of Janos in the northern part of the state of Chihuahua. He’d die there in 1805.

After the trip, Escalante asked Mendenueta if he could go through the archives to discover if there was any hidden information about the territory. Mendinueta said, sure, you can go through the archives but they probably, quote, contained nothing but old fragments, end quote. In Kiva, Cross, & Crown, John Kessell writes of the book worm, that is Escalante, quote, undaunted, Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, not yet thirty but already in failing health, spent hours poring over, copying, and abstracting what documents he could. End quote. It’s in these documents that he discovered that Otermín had PLENTY of warnings before the Revolt! It was also in those documents where he uncovered a lot more information about the various pueblos involvement in the revolt and the reconquest. Especially Pecos. So it’s a good thing for us and for historians like Kessell that Escalante was such a seeker of information because Kessell used his writings and I used Kessell’s for the Pueblo Revolt Episode.

After the expedition, Escalante wrote a letter to his superior, that Fray Morfi who okayed the expedition in the first place, well in 1778 Escalante wrote him a letter that I think is important for us to read because he sort of puts to bed the theory for the Spanish that a city of gold or a city of riches, that mythical Tewayo, he pretty much shoots down the fact that it actually exists. After all, he was there. He saw nothing. He is now the doubting apostle. After him, a few other Spaniards would claim the place was actually EVEN further north but those rumors would never take off like the earlier rumors had been taking off since at least, Coronado, but really even before that. In writing about Tewayo and the Lake of Copala to Morfi he mentions what some historians believe is Mesa Verde and other Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ruins near where he traveled through, although he barely mentions them in the expedition’s journal. Apparently he was perceiving them after all. Well, Escalante would write of Tewayo, quote:

It is nothing but the land by which the Tihuas, Tehuas and the other Indians transmigrated to this kingdom; which is clearly shown by the ruins of the pueblos which I have seen in it, whose form was the same that they afterwards gave to theirs in New Mexico; and the fragments of clay and pottery which I also saw in the said country are much like that which the said Tehuas make today. To which is added the prevailing tradition with them, which proves the same; and that I have gone on foot more than three hundred leagues in the said direction up to 41 degrees and 19 minutes latitude and have found no information whatever among the Indians who today are occupying that country of others who live in pueblos. End quote.

Essentially, the Tewas came from the area to the northwest, clearly, which I talked about at length in my Kachina episode, so they came from the Mesa Verde area and any talk of pueblos even further northwest is simply not true. Trust me, he wrote, I’ve been there. There was no infinite riches or a kingdom of many different Indians who had pueblos and writings and there was no city that took eight days to walk around. No priest buried in a silver box… just, Indians on a lakeshore who other Indians called the fish eaters. The fabled city or place of emergence that is Tewayo which sits on a giant lake that is the lake of Copala, it simply was just that, a fable… at least until the Mormons would build their kingdom of Deseret there many years later.

As part of his job that Dominguez elevated him to, Escalante was to reign in abuse from the Spanish Religious. No more trading in quote, boys, girls, pelts, whatever, end quote. Yikes… No more forcing the Indians to work for the church or for the religious, themselves. NO more punishing the Indians when they refuse to work for you. And NO MORE having women, no matter how pretty they are, come into the church alone and absolutely no more visiting said women at their house. I think I’ve seen this episode before…

In 1780, as I mentioned in the opening of this series, Escalante dies in Chihuahua like his friend Dominguez. He was only 30 and he was heading towards Mexico City to look for a cure for that urinary ailment. That same urinary ailment that had probably saved the team’s life by delaying them those weeks. But which ailment he never once mentioned in the journal. Despite mentioning Dominguez’s rectal trauma.

His old boss, Father Morfi would write of Escalante:

Despite his youth, among the most meritorious of the Custody because of his talent, his erudition, his hard labors, and above all because of his virtues, which led him to sacrifice his hopes, health, and life for the conversion of those souls. End quote.

The journal Escalante wrote so well, would go from Mendinueta to possibly Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, along with his finished map, and he’d take them to Chihuahua before they would be further carried to Mexico City where Viceroy Bucareli would have received the documents. Bucareli would have then sent a copy of each to the King and his court in Madrid. Eventually a copy would reach my hands. And your ears.

Now for the veteran, the esteemed, Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco. Wrapping up his story requires some zooming back out. But first, before getting back into Kessell’s A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth Century new Mexico, I’d like to bring up a different article by the author that reveals the fact that Miera named Chaco Canyon! On one of his maps, the place is named Chaca, but it got turned into Chaco. Which, if you’ve been listening, I had a bunch of episodes over the people in that canyon and their influence on the wider world of the Four Corners.

Another oft mentioned place by me, including in this very series when they walk by it, but Miera also named Chimney Rock! That sacred landscape spot for the Chacoans. In that article Kessell also reveals, quote, we do not have an original of the first map he drew in May 1777, only copies. The original we cite was his revision in 1778. End quote. So the map he would have sent on to Mexico City with the original journal, has been lost to time. Something for a future book wormish Escalante to find in a museum or library, perhaps.

That map though, is indeed a masterpiece. On it, he places a little circle with crosses where every campsite they stayed at was. Or at least his estimation of it. Sure he gets things wrong and he assumes Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake are combined. But technically they never went up there to see it themselves. Yes, he believes that not only one but two rivers flow from that area and head straight west towards the ocean, and yes, those phantom rivers will influence later explorers to search for the nonexistent waterways, but… the map is a gorgeous cartographic dream. I have no idea how he kept it all straight in his mind while they were traveling. It’s astonishing. I love maps. I have so many maps. Maybe a hundred at this point. In my office where I work and study and record I have maps of the four corners, maps of the colorado plateau, a map of the US, and a map of California all on the wall… I love maps and because I look at so many, I’m beginning to be able to think in terms of where I am on a map when I visit or explore an area, so maybe that’s just a talent you have when you can’t pull out your phone and get your exact spot on the globe whenever you want… that’s probably a talent that is disappearing. Still… through all the twists and turns, canyons, cliffs, backtracking, mountains, storms, incorrect reading of the astrolabe… I don’t know how he did it. It’s amazing. Roberts says of this amazing map, quote, as a map of the American southwest, Miera y Pacheco’s was not superseded until well into the nineteenth century. End quote.

Miera’s map was used and examined by the German geographer and explorer and all around smart guy, Alexander Von Humboldt as he travelled the American West in 1803. Humboldt would then share his studies and his own maps with the man, one of my favorites, Thomas Jefferson. These maps and studies which all stemmed from Miera, would influence, greatly influence, the Lewis and Clark expedition, which brings this series full circle since I opened it with the quote about how the D&E Expedition explored more land than that American expedition would. And the D&E crew did it without noise of arms. Without killing.

Not as awesome as the map, but what would have no doubt been a very important topic at the time of this story, in October of 1777, a year after the expedition, Miera y Pacheco would present a lengthy proposal to the King of Spain in a letter. He wrote the King to say that he had a plan to conquer the new lands they’d just explored where the Spanish could build three presidios or fortified walled cities filled with soldiers but also preach to and convert the natives. He suggested they put one fortification where the Gila and the Colorado converge near Yuma, that way they could finally compel the Apaches to give up the fight. Earlier, M & P had actually fought in a campaign at that location against the very same Apaches. That fortification would kinda be built, but on a much smaller scale.

The second fortification should be built at the confluence of the Navajo and Las Animas river which is impossible because the two rivers never meet. What he probably meant was the Navajo and San Juan River south of today’s Pagosa Springs near the Colorado New Mexico border and near Chimney Rock. And he felt the third Presidio or large fortification should be near today’s Provo, in Utah, on the Utah Lake. Where they spent time in the land of Tewayo. If Tewayo didn’t really exist, the Spanish would go ahead and build it.

That second fortification though, the one near Pagosa Springs, M & P’s ultimate goal with that one would have been a fortified city wherefore to put all the newly relocated, after they brought them off their mesas, all the newly relocated Hopi people. A nice fenced in camp, where they could concentrate all of those American Indians who listened to their ancient ones and not the Spanish. He also mentioned to the king that the Moqui would probably make great slaves as they worked on the Navajo river’s fields. I think he’d been talking with Escalante a little too much about them Hopi… or maybe the fact that the Hopi could live out there without a care in the world in regards to the Spanish, that was a black mark on the map he was making of the American Southwest, but what was then technically, the Spanish Northwest.

Nothing would come of these plans though. Not really. That small fort in Yuma didn’t amount to much and it wouldn’t save Garces life. Even the governor of New Mexico, Mendinueta, if you’ll remember, thought going out into the wilderness to convert and conquer more Indians was a foolhardy idea. So no Presidios would be built in the lands they explored. Besides, where would they get the funds?

A year later, in 1778, a new Governor of New Mexico arrived, a Juan Bautista de Anza after he replaced Mendinueta. Although, at nearly the same time, New Mexico would lose its title of Kingdom and ultimately become just a colony. Therefore Anza wouldn’t be governor, but rather just Captain-General, and no longer under the control of the Viceroy but under control of a new territory. A territory known as the Internal Provinces. The Deepest Provinces. Anza’s new boss would be the French born Spanish Politician and Soldier Comandancia General de las Provincias Internas El Caballero Teodoro de Croix. Nonetheless, Juan Bautista de Anza would go on to become according to Briggs, quote, the greatest Indian fighter and ablest peacemaker in all New Mexico history down through and to the days of the United States. End quote.

It turns out, Anza, this greatest of Indian Fighters, he and Miera y Pacheco were very close buddies and even distant cousins through the Don’s wife, Estefania! In fact, Anza would later give Miera the official epithet distinguido or distinguished to add to his other titles. He also gave him the title of Exempt Soldier of the Royal Presidio of Santa Fe. That exempt part meant he did not have to do any garrison chores. Which is nice considering his advanced age. But also, the man got to carry a sword around, which… that’s awesome. He also promoted Miera y Pacheco’s son to squad leader. His other son, Manuel, a painter enlisted at this time. The three Miera amigos would spend a lot of time together in Santa Fe after years of separation.

Kessell writes of Anza, quote, Among fellow colonists, Anza always inspired a mix of admiration and resentment. Natives of the Kingdom of New Mexico resented the fact that he was sonorense, born in the mere Province of Sonora. Worse, he governed with an iron will. End quote.

Anza’s father was killed by Apaches when he was only 4 years old… so he was raised by some Basque elites in Sonora before obviously following an officer’s career from cadet to lieutenant colonel. Revenge wasn’t going to serve itself.

A year after arriving to the colony of New Mexico, Anza would amass an army of 600 Spanish soldiers with an auxiliary force of Utes and Jicarilla Apache Indians numbering around 200. And with this army he went off to fight the Comanches and their legendary chief, Cuerno Verde, or Green Horn, on account of his headdress having a leather horn affixed to the forehead. Like a unicorn, kinda. Apparently his own father had worn it. Possibly his grandfather. While it is completely unknown, since the name of the soldiers weren’t recorded, but while it may not be 100% that Miera y Pacheco was one of the soldiers, the map made of the war sure does look a lot like the one he made for the expedition. That combined with the familial and friendly relationship with the Governor, leads historians to believe without a doubt that the three Miera amigos were among those who fought. They not only fought that battle, but they won a resounding victory against the rebel group of Comanches.

Briggs sums up the battle:

Anza in August, 1779, moved up the Rio Grande's west bank and on to the Arkansas River, the first recorded Hispano use of this route. The campaigners climbed the Rockies' Front Range just south of Pike's Peak. Espying Comanche quarry from the heights, they overwhelmed a ranchería of about one hundred twenty lodges in the foothills. Cuerno Verde indeed had left recently to raid New Mexico, Comanche prisoners said.

Three days south near modern Pueblo, Colorado, the New Mexicans caught up with the fully accoutered Cuerno Verde, "his horse curvetting spiritedly," and a bodyguard of fifty warriors. Trapped in a forested ravine, the Comanches dropped behind their horses and made "a defense as brave as it was glorious," said Anza. Green Horn was slain. The commander had administered to the Comanches their most telling defeat ever. End quote.

As brave as it was glorious… brings tears to my eyes, seriously. The way we used to view our adversaries was honorable…

Anza returned to Santa Fe after the battle complete with the trophy of Cuerno Verde’s green horn headdress. After presenting it to the crowd, Anza handed it over to de Croix, who handed it over to the King, who supposedly handed it over to the Pope. It’s probably sitting still to this day in some vault in the Vatican.

Miera y Pacheco would die in Santa Fe in 1785 at 71 years old with many titles and accomplishments under his belt. Our friend John Kessell would say of M & P in his time in 18th Century new Mexico that he was, quote, one of the most versatile and fascinating figures, end quote.

Briggs begins the last section of his book, A Magnificent Failure? Question mark? He doesn’t mean it, as he goes on to describe the effects Miera’s map had on the territory, the kingdom, and later, the United States and her many explorers and settlers. But on the surface, the expedition does indeed seem like a failure. I’ll use a long and great quote, as usual, from Briggs to sum up the expedition’s successes and failures:

Despite mountain, canyon and fierce river, no shattering of limb, no loss of life; despite dispute and sullen disagreement, no breakdown in unity and command. New Indians aplenty but, "without noise of arms," none of the carnage that would bloody the thrust of Manifest Destiny. What had our expedition contributed to Spain's desperate effort to solidify territory - their last-gasp Winning of the West?

No road was opened from Santa Fe to Monterey.

The firmest of commitments flouted, no fathers and Hispanos were sent to the Utes and Paiutes.

The Hopis continued as obdurate as ever.

The Havasupais and more westerly tribes were not even visited.

Of stated objectives, aside from mingling with previously unvisited Indians, only the mysterious colony was reached. Or was it?

Of unstated objectives, undiscovered was magnificent Copala-Teguayo, unseen the Great Sea of the West, un-prospected the Sierra Azul.

Ah, but this exception: the Great River - nay, Great Rivers - of the West!

Nor would little Spanish effort come of the struggles and wonderment experienced by our twelve men and the Laguna lad Joaquin. It was as though Columbus had made his first momentous voyage, then failed to sail back those three times more; as though Spain, once having heard of the admiral's tropical islands and strange peoples, had lost all curiosity and interest. End quote.

He’s such a fun writer.

The expedition did not lose a single man and in fact they picked up a new one! Although as I stated before, his outcome is unknown. Hopefully he made it back home to his people. They explored over 2,000 miles… and they influenced later explorers. That is their success. But possibly even more important for us; they successfully excited our appetites for adventure.

The year of the expedition, 1776, is a good reminder of what lay ahead for Spain in New Mexico and, consequently, the New World in general. To the east, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, a nation had just been formed that would one day dwarf in power what the empires at that time could ever even imagine. Even then, during the D&E expedition, the start of that American Revolutionary War would eventually use up Spanish resources as they fought against their enemy the Protestant English. The Spanish would open their Caribbean ports to patriot privateers and move weapons and ammunition up the Mississippi River all the way to the Ohio River. They’d arm Indians who were allied with the Americans. They gave sanctuary to American Rangers. All of this came at a price.

Even more Spanish resources were being spent on the constant protection of New Mexico and Mexico herself from the never ending raids, destruction, and death from the Comanche, Apache, and others. Anza would be sent to end rebellions by the Hopis who had, because of the aforementioned drought, allied themselves with their enemies the Navajo. Those that didn’t fight, began trickling into the Pueblos at the Rio Grande.

Oddly enough… some of the Hopi caciques blamed the drought and their current predicament on their own ill treatment of the man, the great wanderer, Father Garces way back in 1776… by the time Anza arrived to the Hopi mesas, he only counted 5 towns, down from 7 when Escalante visited. And only 738 Hopis remaining in those 5 towns… less than a tenth of the population Dominguez and Escalante had recorded.

In 1779, a massive push to drive the English from the Gulf of Mexico and the Louisiana Territory, would force the Spanish to raise immense amount of capitol. Almost 4,000 pesos, a not unsubstantial amount, was raised by the New Mexicans for the war effort. It all was for not. One hundred and twenty years later, the Americans would use an accident, a lie, and the battle cry Remember the Maine! to further dislodge the Spanish from their remaining strongholds on those islands, the New World, and beyond. Manifest Destiny.

Spain would lose Mexico and by extension the colonies to the north long before that though, in 1821 when Mexico gained its independence from the European Crown. That would be only 45 years after our expedition. But even before that, Napoleon would upend the European continent after the French Revolution, further weakening Spain and turning it into a Bonaparte vassal state, and forcing it to once again fight the English.

Because of the Napoleonic wars, France would also lose their hold on the new world. Or rather, sell it to Thomas Jefferson, and right out from under Spain’s nose who apparently had some sort of arrangement with France about the territory.

Great Britain will rise to encompass a larger and wealthier empire than the French and Spanish combined but will also eventually lose a good amount, but not all, of its influence in the Americas. Manifest Destiny indeed.

Russia’s American Colonies never really took off and would eventually be part of the United States after they sell Alaska. Although a settlement was created 85 miles north of San Francisco. Despite trading between the Spanish and the Russians near this settlement known as Fort Ross, despite trade being outlawed by the crown, the trading was welcome and enjoyed by the locals. Briggs writes of the arrangement, quote, it was tovarish and compadre. End quote. Both words meaning, comrade, in their respective languages.

And speaking of Comrades, much of our comrades, the D & E expedition’s trail, that route Dominguez, Escalante, and the others, most of their route would, by 1847, become under the control of the Theodemocracy known as Deseret, ruled by Brigham Young. And a few years after that, all of New Mexico and the southwest, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, the entirety of the Dominguez & Escalante Expedition’s explored territory, and even Monterrey in California, that place they never reached, all of the land in between Monterey and Santa Fe, all of it would come under control of the largest empire the world has yet to see. Manifest Destiny completed. Certainly, this new Empire will never fall.

For now, I am done with the Spanish in the American Southwest. I began with the original inhabitants of this continent, migrated to the Chacoans and their contemporaries, then the Puebloans, and then the Spanish, forming an almost complete peek into the history of the four corners, especially New Mexico. In essence, accidentally, I told a 20,000 year history of the state and surrounding lands. New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment is one of my favorite places and a place I hope to call home soon. I hope you enjoyed listening to the stories from that… storied region.

My next episode will be over the mystery of Everett Ruess, the Vagabond explorer and adventurer who in the 1930s, disappeared in the American Southwest, somewhere in the Grand Staricase-Escalante National Monument. Somewhere in the places I’ve been describing. He met people I’ve talked about, he searched for ruins I’ve discussed. He lived a truly free life… until he lost that life. He influenced many people including the great writer and adventurer Edward Abbey, David Roberts. And, myself.

But for that episode, I am doing something I have not done yet but something that will become necessary if I am to continue to provide these stories and histories. The last series over the Dominguez and Escalante Expedition was over 70,000 words… and it involved months of reading, studying, researching, and writing. Book buying too. Lots of books. Traveling to these places to see them, to get a feel for them. I’m no armchair historian. A massive amount of my free and spare time is taken up by providing these stories, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. That being said, I do have a day job. And an amazing wife. And we travel a lot throughout the region, as that is our true passion. So my next episode, won’t be free. While I may one day soon, do a subscription service like nearly all of the podcasters I listen to now offer, which entails getting bonus content and early access, etc, while i may do that soon, for now, I am busy studying for licensing exams, and preparing to move out of Southern California with my family which will hopefully soon be growing. So I can’t promise the time to offer subscription based services… yet, although I have a lot of good ideas. But what I can do is charge for this one episode for now. For three dollars, you can unlock the download or stream which will be… oh I don’t know a four hour episode, as usual it is growing to be unwieldy. Or for five dollars, you can have the episode, and I will mail you some goodies I’ve created. Artwork, stickers, postcards, etc… We’ll see how this goes. If you’d like to donate to the podcast in the meantime, feel free to head to the website, the American southwest dot com, and click on the donate page. Books aint free and my time aint cheap. Thank y'all so much for listening, though, for real.

With that… I’ll see you again soon, in the American southwest.

The Dominguez & Escalante Journal Edited by Ted J Warner

Escalante’s Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest by David Roberts

Without Noise of Arms: The 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Search for a Route from Santa Fe to Monterey by Walter Briggs

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.the-journal.com/articles/miera-y-pacheco-was-first-european-to-map-the-four-corners/