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Show that he detailed 5 of his 9 men to take them back to Zuni. remaining 4 men, he proceeded onward, with Moqui guide s. It is said that he discovered a silver mine---of course this would With his mean that he was led to it Espejo also indicate that by the Indians. "dis eovery" might southwestward, per This tra velled far to the far as Bill Williams Fork. (It still seems that the Lit tle Colorado Valley doesn't produce the precious metals in appre cia ble quantities, if at all. I have heard of'lost mines' not west of St. Joseph; am, indeed, home miles from old Arizona my many hav.e searched for the cedar tree that marked the way to one of haps as these mythical El Dorados} JUAn de Onate Onate came ftom Mexico up the Rio Grande in 1598, intending to This he probably did at or in the vicinity of Dhama. as far as the Moqui Villages that year; and was make settlement. He went westward prevented from going farther by an Indian uprising, perhaps at Acoma, From the Moqui Villages, how that required his immediate attention. to look for the silver westwa tothe IDarfan he sent Marcos on ever, minediscovered by Espejo some 16 years earlier. Gov. Onate made a second trip westward in 1&>4-05. On that re= markaQLe headland, El Morro, between Ramah, New Mexico and the Con tinental Divide, is the inscription, "Passed by here the Adelantado Juan de Onate from the dis 00 'Wry of the Sea of the So uth, the 16th day of 1605". This would evidence as fact that Onate had tra'Wersed April, length of the Little Colorado River been onward to the Gulf of California. "discovered"a half century earlier). the * It seems to me that the Valley both ways, (The and had had teen Gulf J however J * Spanish may ha ve been as well acquaint ed th the Little Colorado country in 1605---and perhaps in 1540- as was the United States in 1850. Above, we have spoken of the de Niza expedition of 1539 as the first Europeans to enter the Valley of the Little Cblorado-- by the IndianS;; Rio de Lino and then Colorado Chiquito by the Spanish. It may unc:ertain that the Priest, As TI remember read Marcos de Niza, was the first European here. samuel W. Q)zzens, pub "The Marvellous book the by Country" ing lished in l87 he speaks of an inscription etched on the lower left hand corner of the El Morro headland by one Basconzal:i.Il 1526. Some of the zealous early padres seem to have considered martyrdom a crowning glory that would ensure 'salvation', and It seems that such a some may have even sought such a fate. would have been far safer among the aborigines of 'wanderer' the Little lorado Valley in 1526 than after the conquest of (I have been at El Coronado had aroused their animosity. Morro a number of tvnes; but rangers seemed to know nothing of the inscription; and I take it t my really dou bted its exist ence. Althoush I had heard the story earlier, I have not been at the in I take it that the headland since reading the book. main it---near the locates Gbzzens scription could be where be hidden where it might cliff from which El Morro projects, called Tolcheco by br iah , |
