Diaz called the large river he found here the Rio del Tizon. This was the Buena Guia of Alarcon. The natives were prodigiously strong, one man being able to lift and carry with ease on his head a heavy log which six of the soldiers could not transport to the camp. Here Diaz heard that boats had come up the river to a point three days' journey below, and he went there to find out about it, doubtless expecting to get on the track of Alarcon. But the latter had departed from the mouth of the river at least two or three weeks before; one writer says two months.* The same writer states that Diaz reached the river thirty leagues above the mouth, and that Alarcon went as far again above. This coincides very well with Alarcon's estimate of eighty-five leagues, for Diaz did not follow the windings of the stream as Alarcon was forced to do with his boats. At the place down the river, Diaz found a tree bearing an inscription: "Alarcon reached this point; there are letters at the foot of this tree." Alarcon does not, as before noted, mention burying letters, and these were found at the foot of a tree, so that Diaz evidently failed to reach the cross erected at Alarcon's highest point.
* Relacion del Suceso. Alarcon must have reached his highest point
about October 5th or 6th, and the ships on the return about the 10th.
Diaz probably arrived at the river about November 1st.
Diaz now proceeded up the river again, looking for a place where he could safely cross to explore the country on the opposite side. After ascending from the spot where he found the letters for five or six days, he concluded they could cross by means of rafts. In the construction of these rafts he invited the help of the natives of the neighbourhood. He was probably up near the Chocolate Mountains and the Cumanas, who were hostile to Alarcon, and whose sorcerer had attempted to destroy him by means of the magic reeds. They had been merely waiting for an opportunity to attack Diaz, and they perceived their chance in this assistance in crossing the river. They readily agreed to help make the rafts, and even to assist in the crossing. But while the work was in progress a soldier who had gone out from the camp was surprised to observe a large number of them stealing off to a mountain on the other side. When he reported this, Diaz caused one of the natives to be secured, without the others being aware of it. He was tortured till he confessed that the plan was to begin the attack when some of the Spaniards were across the river, some in the water, and the others on the near bank. Thus separated they believed they could easily be destroyed. The native, as a reward for this valuable confession, was secretly killed, and that night, with a heavy weight tied to him, was cast into the deep water. But the others evidently suspected the trick, for the next day they showered arrows upon the camp. The Spaniards pursued them and by means of their superior arms soon drove them into the mountains. Diaz was then able to cross without molestation, his faithful Amerind allies of another tribe assisting.
Alarcon had conveyed in his letters the nature of the gulf and coast, so Diaz struck westward to see what he could find in that direction. The country was desolate and forbidding, in places the sand being like hot ashes and the earth trembling. Four days of this satisfied them, and the captain concluded to return to San Hieronimo. The subsequent fate of Diaz is another illustration of how a man may go the world round, escaping many great dangers, and then be annihilated by a simple accident that would seem impossible. A dog belonging to the camp pursued the little flock of sheep that had been driven along to supply the men with meat, and Diaz on his horse dashed toward it, at the same time hurling a spear. The spear stuck up in the ground instead of striking the dog, and the butt penetrated the captain's abdomen, inflicting, under the conditions, a mortal wound. The men could do nothing for him except to carry him along, which for twenty days they did, fighting hostile natives all the time. Then he died. On the 18th of January they arrived without their leader at the settlement from which they had started some three months before.
Cardenas with twelve men had meanwhile gone from Cibola to a place called Tusayan, or Tucano, situated some twenty or twenty-five leagues north-westerly from Cibola, from whence he was to strike out toward the great river these natives had described to Don Pedro de Tobar, who recently had paid them a visit, and incidentally shot a few of them to invite submission. Cardenas was kindly received by the people of Tusayan, who readily supplied him with guides. Having lived in the country for centuries, they of course knew it and the many trails very well. They knew the highway down the Gila to the Colorado, and they told Cardenas about the tall natives living in the lower part of it, the same whom Alarcon and Diaz had met. In the direction in which Cardenas was to go they said it was twenty days' journey through an unpopulated country, when people would again be met with. After the party had travelled for twenty days they arrived at a great canyon of the Colorado River, apparently not having met with the people mentioned. If Cardenas started from the Moki towns, as has generally been believed, where would he have arrived by a journey of twenty days, when an able-bodied man can easily walk to the brink of Marble Canyon from there in three or four days? Why did the guides, if they belonged in the Moki towns, conduct Cardenas so far to show him a river which was so near? The solution seems to be that he started from some locality other than the present Moki towns. That is to say, there has been an error, and these Moki towns are not Tusayan. Where Cardenas reached the great canyon the river came from the NORTH-EAST and turned to the SOUTH-SOUTH-WEST. There are but two places where the canyoned river in Arizona conforms to this course, one at Lee's Ferry, and the other the stretch from Diamond Creek to the Kanab Canyon. The walls being low at Lee's Ferry, that locality may be excluded, for where Cardenas first looked into the canyon it was so deep that the river appeared like a brook, though the natives declared it to be half a league wide. Three of the most agile men, after the party had followed along the rim for three days hunting for a favourable place, tried to descend to the water, but were unable to go more than one-third of the way. Yet from the place they reached, the stream looked very large, and buttes that from above seemed no higher than a man were found to be taller than the great tower of Seville. There can be no doubt that this was the gorge we now call the Grand Canyon. No other answers the description. Cardenas said the width at the top, that is, the "outer" gorge with its broken edge, was three or four leagues or more in an air line.* This is the case at both great bends of the river. The point he reached has usually been put, without definite reason, at about opposite Bright Angel River, say near the letter "L" of the word "Colorado" on the relief map, page 41 op., but here the river comes from the SOUTH-EAST and turns to the NORTH-WEST, directly the reverse of what Cardenas observed. The actual place then must have been about midway of the stretch referred to, that is, near the letter "A" of the word "Canon" on the relief map. Where he started from to arrive at this part of the canyon cannot be discussed here for want of space, but the writer believes the place was some three hundred miles south-east, say near Four Peaks on the new Mexican line.** Cardenas was, therefore, guided along the southerly edge of the great Colorado Plateau, through the superb Coconino Forest, where he had wood, water, and grass in abundance. The locality he reached was very dry, and they were obliged to go each night a long distance back from the brink to procure water. For this reason, Cardenas gave up trying to follow the canyon, and returned again, by way of Tusayan, to Cibola, passing on the way a waterfall, which possibly was in the Havasupai (Cataract) Canyon. Castaneda, the chief chronicler of the Coronado expedition, says the river Cardenas found was the Tizon, "much nearer its source than where Melchior Diaz crossed it," thus showing that its identity was well surmised, if not understood, at that time. Nothing, however, was known of its upper course; at least there is no evidence of any such knowledge, though the natives had doubtless given the Spaniards some information regarding it. The special record of the Cardenas expedition was kept by one Pedro de Sotomayor, but it has apparently never been seen in modern times. It is probably in the archives of Spain or Mexico, and its discovery would throw needed light on the location of Tusayan and the course Cardenas followed.*** The distance of this whole region from a convenient base of supplies, and its repellent character, prevented further operations at this period, and when these explorers traced their disappointed way homeward, the Colorado was not seen again by white men for over half a century; and it was more than two hundred years before European eyes again looked upon the Grand Canyon.
* "A las barrancas del rio que puestos a el bado [lado?] de ellas
parecia al otro bordo que auia mas de tres o quatro leguas por el
ayre."—Castaneda, in Winship's monograph. Fourteenth Ann. Rep. Bureau
of Ethnology, p. 429.
**