The Romance of the Colorado River. Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

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 Onate took it for the very headwaters of the Buena Guia which Alarcon 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.

      * This is a quadrangular mass of sandstone about a mile long,

      thirty-five miles east of Zuni. 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 Onate. 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, Onate 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 Alarcon 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 Onate 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 Onate reached the Esperanza he entered the Great Colorado Valley and soon crossed the highest point attained by Alarcon in 1340, probably near the upper end of the valley. He now doubled Alarcon'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.

      All the tribes of this region, being familiar with the Californian coast, described it in a way that caused Onate 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, Onate 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 Onate'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.

      Another name closely linked with the early history of the Colorado is that of Padre Eusibio Francisco Kino,* an Austrian by birth and a member of the Jesuit order. This indefatigable enthusiast travelled back and forth, time and again, over the whole of northern Sonora and the southern half of Arizona, then comprised in Pimeria Alta, the upper land of the Pimas, and Papagueria, the land of the Papagos. His base of operations was a mission he established in Sonora; the mission of Dolores, founded in 1687. For some thirty years Kino laboured in this field with tireless energy, flinching before no danger or difficulty. He was the first white man to see the extraordinary ruin called Casa Grande, near the present town of Florence, and on the occasion of his first visit he took advantage of the structure to say mass within its thick adobe walls. This is probably the most remarkable ancient building within the limits of the United States, For a long time it was called the House of Montezuma, though, of course, Montezuma never heard of it. A similar ruin, called Casas Grandes, exists in Sonora. The construction is what is called cajon, that is, adobe clay rammed into a box or frame, which is lifted for each successive course as the work advances. In the dry air of that region such walls become extremely hard, and will endure for ages if the foundations are not sapped.** Kino paid a second visit to the ruin of Casa Grande in 1697, this time accompanied by Captain Juan Mateo Mange, an officer detailed with his command to escort the padres on their perilous journeys.