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Show 476 COMMENTARY ON ONATE, 1604- 05. one which they called ( Rio) del Tizon ae on the expedition that in the year 1604 Don Juan de Onate2T " There is a double error here, for the Rio del Tizon or Firebrand river was the Colorado itself, and it was so called by Melchior Diaz in 1540, not by Onate in 1604, who named it Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza: see note *, p. 136. Another name of the Colorado was Rio de Buena Guia ( Alarcon, 1540). n See note w, p. 144, for a brief mention of Onate's expedition, some further account of which may be here given, in part from Bancroft's digest of the records in Hist. Ariz, and N. M., pp. 154- 157- Onate was at the time governor, and desired to reach the Mar del Sur or South Sea ( Gulf of California) from his capital of New Mexico, which was then at San Juan ( de los Caballeros- for Santa Fe had not as yet been founded). He started on Oct. 7, 1604, with Padres Francisco Escobar and San Buenaventura, and some 30 men. He passed through Zulu, whose chief town was Havico or Ha Huico ( otherwise Hawiku, one of the cities of Cibola), and thence on to the 5 or 6 Moqui pueblos, with their 450 houses and inhabitants weaving cotton. Ten leagues westward the expedition crossed a river flowing from S. E. to N. W., named Rio Colorado from the redness of its waters, and said to flow into the Sea of California after a turn to the west and a course of 200 leagues through a country of pines. This stream was of course the one now known as the Colorado Chiquito or Little Colorado river, supposed to be the main water- course; and the name bestowed is no doubt the original application of the term Colorado to any portion of the great water- course which bears the name to- day. The Colorado Chiquito was crossed at a place called San Jose, and the expedition next came upon two streams which were named respectively Rio San Antonio and Rio Sacramento. These were no doubt two branches of the present Rio Verde in the region north of Prescott, Ariz., where Espejo had been 23 years before. The people hereabouts were called Cruzados |