This four part series was motivated by a number of accidental encounters. The four are not
carefully edited stories, but rather an attempt to post some interesting findings and hopefully
motivate others to do the same. Contact Phil Valdez Jr., the webmaster, to have your story included.
At the home page of the Anza Society there is an interesting link to Mission 2000. Don Garate at
Tumacacori National Monument in Arizona, and founder of the Anza Society, has been hard at work
on a project known as Mission 2000, inputting huge amounts of data about people in this region. If
you go to Mission 2000 and click on the site, a page will come up asking for data. Under Given
Name, type Wassaja and hit search. A screen will come up showing Wassaja as a Yavapia and ID
27695. Click on the ID number and an extraordinary story will come up. A summary is given here:
Wassaja was captured in October of 1871 at about the age of five. He was sold to Carlo Gentile and
educated by him and his friends. He became one of the first, if not the first, Native American medical
doctors in U.S. History. He became a great activist and advocate for his people. His story is told in a
remarkable 550-page biography from which the information contained herein comes: Carlos
Montezuma, M.D. - A Yavapai American Hero by Leon Speroff, Arnica Publishing, Inc., 2004, pp. 2,
30, 271, 399, and 462. According to Dr. Speroff, "When the Spaniards first met the Southeastern
Yavapai, they called them Yabibai or Niojoras, the Niojoras being derived from the Maricopa
Nyidwra." This information he credits to Yavapai Indians: A Study of Yavapai History, by Albert H.
Schroeder.
Wassaja determined somehow that he was born on Fish Creek where Roosevelt Dam is today, just
east of Phoenix. His band in 1771 was hunted and attacked by United States Indian Scouts. Many
of the people were killed and he and his two sisters were taken prisoners along with ten other
children by the Scouts, who were Pima Indians. Here are some of his memories of the capture.
“A little on one side, I saw a body with just enough life to give forth a few terrible groans, and a little
further on, in the midst of a blazing fire, was a sight which I shall never forget. It was a dear mother
with her babe. She was wounded and had been thrown into the fire. The babe was held to her
breast by one of her arms, while the other was extended, and her hand was clenched. The child,
suffering from the heat, cried, "Oh, mother, mother!" until silenced in death, while the brave mother
would reply, "Child, be still. Child, be still!" She also died in great agony."……."I was taken to the
Pima country and later taken by three Pima Indians who claimed the ownership of me to a place
seven miles beyond Florence (Adamsville) where they sold me to Mr. Carlo Gentile for the sum of
$30.00. My two sisters were sold to Mr. Charles Mason, and were taken to Mexico, the State of
Sonora, where they died without issue."
In January 2009, Don Garate and I were speakers at the Oregon-California Trail Association (OCTA)
Meeting in Yuma, Arizona. His very informative talk was on Father Kino and his efforts to get to
California around 1700 (Don said our stories are really how everyone has always wanted to get to
California). My talk was on the segment of the Anza Trail near Yuma, including the section just
beyond where the expedition in 1775-76 went into the Baja and then crossed the rugged desert in a
December blizzard.
I became a member of OCTA at that time and recently received the May 2009 publication of one of
the chapters, called “Desert Tracks.” It is published by the Southern Trails Chapter of the Oregon-
California Trails Association.” From this, I learned about their website, southern-trails.org, and
scanned their resources. In Desert Tracks, December 2005 there was a book review by Deborah
and Jon Lawrence, entitled Surviving Conquest: A History of the Yavapai Peoples by Timothy
Braatz. It was listed as a $55 book but is available at Amazon in paperback now for around $29. I
ordered a copy and found it well written and very informative. It is a very even-handed account of
this fascinating but almost unknown (to me) people.
More recently, I gave a presentation on Anza to the hiking club at SaddleBrooke, just north of
Tucson and met William McSpadden. He is researching and writing a book on the Yavapai,
specifically about an incident that occurred in December 1872 and reported by John Bourke in his
book On the Border with Crook. Bourke started his Chapter 10 giving the date of General Crook’s
kicking off his campaign against the Apaches, November 15, 1872. Within about a month, Indian
scouts led the soldiers to a cave above the Salt River, not far from where Wassaja had been
captured just a year earlier. The soldiers found Indians at the cave, including men, women and
children and one of the headings of a page by Bourke was “rolling boulders on the caged
Apaches.” Most of the Indians were slaughtered in that battle, and the cave today is known as
Skull Cave. McSpadden learned in a visit to the cave and in subsequent investigations that the
Indians were not Apaches, but rather Yavapai. He also thinks that the Indians that killed the
Oatman family near Agua Caliente, might have been Yavapai (Agua Caliente was one of the camp
sites along the Gila River for Anza and his colonists). I decided it was time I learned something
about the Yavapai and began wondering how many connections there were of the various Indian
Nations to the Anza expedition. This concludes part I of this story. In the next installment called
Jalchedunes, the Anza and padres journals will be looked at in closer detail.
Joe Myers
Jalchedunes Part Two
In Part I, a brief introduction to the Yavapai Indians was given. That information sparked my
interest in going back to the journals of Anza and the padres to see if there was a connection to this
little known Indian Nation. Needless to say, the story only grew more complex. Bolton, in Volume
II of his five volume series on Anza, had a short chapter entitled “GARCES’S DIARY OF HIS
DETOUR TO THE JALCHEDUNES 1774.” If I knew little about the Yavapai, I knew even less about
the Jalchedunes.
This story begins with Garces writing: “After the extraordinary courier set out with the reports of
the expedition down to the 25th of last April, I continued my stay in the neighborhood of the
junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers, awaiting the senor commander and the father companion.”
Garces had gone ahead of the expedition on their return in 1774, and was now waiting for Anza at
modern day Yuma to catch up. The extraordinary courier he referred to was the courier Valdez. He
was the 8th generation grandfather of Phil Valdez, the person responsible for this web site. Small
world. You can read about the courier in Mission 2000, just type in Valdez.
Garces continued: “I do not wish to molest by repeating the story of our return up the Gila, for this
has been told by the commander and Father Fray Juan Diaz. I will only say that if the Yumas are
good the Opas are better, but this is not true of their lands,…..”
Garces loved to travel but he hated to write. The Yumas he referred to are known today as the
Quechen Nation, their homeland is at Yuma and they assisted Anza in all his crossings of the
Colorado River. Their leader Palma went with Anza in 1776 to Mexico City and became a Christian.
The Quechen, we will shortly learn, end up killing Garces in another five years in an uprising at their
villages, but that is the subject of Part IV. The Opas are called today the Maricopa nation. All speak
a version of the language known as Yuman (Hokan stock). Garces estimated the Opas at no less
than 2,500 souls, living between Agua Caliente and the village La Pasion de Tucavi. This put their
home base at that time in the vicinity of today’s Gila Bend. Agua Caliente is still in existence today,
west of Gila Bend (downstream) and Tucavi was a village about 25 miles north (nine leagues
upstream) on the Gila River.
On May 21, 1774 Garces was at the Opas village at Gila Bend and wrote that it was his desire to visit
the Niforas Indians, but he was not able to as the Opas and Pimas were at war with other Niforas,
and they advised him to go back west to Agua Caliente. The name Niforas was his name for the
Yavapai Indians; he typically used the two names interchangeably and hey all spoke a dialect of
the Hokan language. The Pimas referred to here were the Indians living along the middle Gila River,
near Phoenix and their language was different, Uto-Aztecan.
Garces was trying to establish communication with New Mexico and hoped he could send a letter
by Indians to the Moquis (Hopi) in northeast Arizona so he took their advice and headed back down
river towards Agua Caliente, while Anza and his soldiers continued on toward Tubac. Garces
reached a village near Agua Caliente on May 24. The Opas here warned him not to go to the
Niforas, they said his horse was too broken down; it would be too dangerous, etc. Fortunately for
him, there were two Jalchedunes at the village, and Garces decided to go with them to their home
base on the Colorado River, north of today’s Ehrenberg. He was soon heading out across the hot,
dry desert in May with two unknown Indians, almost unbelievable.
Along the way, Garces wrote: “I have not made mention of the pleasure and willingness with which
the two Jalchedunes served me on the way and the attention with which they cared for me, giving
me of what they carried for their sustenance and saving the water so that I might not lack, the
patience with which they beat the horse in order to hurry him up, and the care with which they made
stops in order that I might eat.”
Reaching the Colorado River, Garces went up the river to about the vicinity of today’s Lake Havasu
City. On May 31, he arrived at a village “where there were a few Jalchedunes and four Yabipais or
Niforas, who in dress, language, features, and other circumstances are Apaches, although they are
hostile to them, according to what was said by the Pimas, who make it appear that the Moquis and
Siurs are also enemies of the Apaches.”
Garces wanted to visit the Yavapai but was cautioned again that his horse was too worn out and
the trip too difficult, so he ended up not going. Garces wrote: “Indeed, the lack of water and the
great heat might make it somewhat risky, although with respect to the Yabipais there was no risk
whatever, for they are intimate friends of the Jalchedunes, who have such frequent dealings that
some of them speak familiarly in the language of these Niforas.” This is not too surprising to us
today, because both spoke a version of the Hokan language. Returning down river, Garces said he
“saw better fields and recognized in the tribe some advantages which they have over the Yumas.
The majority of them go dressed with blankets and blue cloth from Moqui (Hopis) and from the
Pimeria (Pimas). They plant cotton, have better arrows, and the climate is cooler and better.”
As he now recalled his return, Garces wrote: “Finally, the great assistance given me by these
Indians, the joy which they manifested on my arrival at any of their houses, the care to give me
abundant provisions when I set out to return, are worthy of my greatest appreciation. They
furnished me some servants to return with me, but since I had nothing with which to repay them (a
thing the most embarrassing for any one who receives favors from such people), I chose one who
alone accompanied me to the Tutumaopas near Agua Caliente and who served me as cook. He
carried a fire brand in one hand all the way, and it did not go out. In the other hand he carried a stick
with which to drive the horse, which could not hurry for lack of shoes, especially where there were
stones. And besides all this he carried a jug of water on his head, enduring thirst in order that I
might not suffer, and all this with a smiling face. Who will say that this Indian is a savage? And who
will not praise a service of such qualities?”
In order to understand who these Indians were, I ended up looking in Cycles of Conquest by
Edward Spicer, published in 1962. On page 10, he listed the language groups in the southwest and
provided a map representing their regions about the year 1600. There was another helpful map in
the front cover of the book The California Indians, by R. F. Heizer and M. A. Whipple. Eventually the
following relationships emerged:
The Hokan language (primarily Yuman) was spoken by all the Indians around the Colorado River,
as far north as the “great bend” and as far east as the east end of the Grand Canyon and then
south to the Gila. Nations with this language included the ones at the Gulf (Cocopa and Cochimi)
and ones along the Colorado River north of Yuma including Mohave, Halchidoma, Yuma and
Cocomaricopa. Another nation, the Walapai, occupied land near the Grand Canyon and the Yavapai
lived in the vast territory south of them, all the way across west central Arizona to the Gila River.
Further north were Uto-Aztecan speakers, and bordering them on the east were Athapaskan
speakers (Apaches and Navahos). To the south again were Uto-Aztecan speakers. These Nations
made up a surprising group for me, the Pima, Hopi, Paiute, Mayo, Yaqui, Opata, Tarahumara, (also
Utes, Comanches, etc.)
I think I finally figured out who’s who regarding the Jalchedunes. Going up the Colorado River in
the Spanish Colonial time period, beginning at Yuma, the Indians in that vicinity were called the
Yumas by the Spanish and Quechen today. Just to the north were Indians called Jalchedunes by
the Spanish and Halchidhoma today. The third group on the river going north were Indians that
Garces called Jamajabs, today they are known as the Mohave. All three of these groups spoke the
same basic language, Hokan. And then the fourth group to the north were called Chemehuevi.
They are southern Piutes and speak a different language, Uto-Aztecan. So now we know who the
Jalchedunes of father Garces were. At the time of Anza, they lived on the Colorado River between
the Yumas (Quechen) and the Jamajabs (Mohave). To find out what happened to them, you will
have to read on in part IV, the climax story of the fate of Garces in 1781 and the Indians in the
1800s.
Joe Myers
Havasupais Part III
To continue this story, when Garces left the Anza expedition at the Colorado River in December,
1775, he began a long journey. He traveled north along the west side (California) of the Colorado
River to the vicinity of the Mohave Valley north of Needles with Indians he called Jamajabs
(Mohaves). He went with several of them westward across the desert to the Mohave river (vicinity
of Soda Lake and then Barstow) and then followed the river southward, eventually crossing Cajon
pass north of today’s San Bernardino and going on to San Gabriel Mission.
From there he continued west and then north, over Tejon pass, into the San Joaquin Valley and
crossed the Kern River in the vicinity of Bakersfield. He pushed on north toward the great Tulare
Lake/Marshes and then returned back to the Colorado River over Tehachpi Pass. Quite a journey.
He had some Jamajabs as guides and Sebastian with him as companions during this sojourn. But
he was not finished yet. With different guides, he went on toward the east, and on the brink of the
Grand Canyon, his entry on June 20, 1776 follows:
“….I arrived at a rancheria which is on the Rio Jabesua, which I named (Rio) de San Antonio; and in
order to reach this place I traversed a strait which I called the Nuebo Canfran. This extends about
three quarters (of a league); on one side is a very lofty cliff, and on the other a horrible abyss. This
difficult road passed, there presented itself another and a worse one, which obliged us to leave, I my
mule and they their horses, in order that we might climb down a ladder of wood. ….”
Elliot Coues in Vol II of his book On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer… tells us the real story of this
intrepid padre in a footnote. He said the ladder might not have been the one found by Ives in 1858
but was in the identical spot as there is no other way down the awful chasm from the plateau at
6,000 feet to the bed of Cataract canon at 4,000 feet. Coues wrote:
“The trail down this side canon is thus a descent of 2,000 feet into the bowels of the earth, to the
place where the Havasupais live now as they did in 1776. Garces’ few words on his horrible abyss,
leading to depths still more profound, may be amplified by Ives; vivid description of his
experiences….”
Now he presented the description by Ives:
“Ten miles conducted to the head of a ravine, down which was a well beaten Indian trail….in the
course of a few miles we had gone down into the plateau one or two thousand feet, and the bluffs
on either side had assumed stupendous proportions….we were brought to a standstill by a fall a
hundred feet deep in the bottom of the canon. At the brink of the precipice was an overhanging
ledge of rocks, from which we could look down as into a well upon the continuation of the gorge far
below…A closer inspection showed that the trail still continued along the canon, traversing
horizontally the face of the right-hand bluff. A short distance off it seemed as though a mountain
goat could scarcely keep its footing upon the slight indentation that appeared like a thread attached
to the rocky wall….had been cut with some care into the surface of the cliff…I rode upon it first…..
looking very much like insects crawling upon the side of a building… We proceeded for nearly a mile
along this singular pathway, which preserved its horizontal direction. The bottom of the canon had
meanwhile been rapidly descending, and there were two or three falls where it dropped a hundred
feet at a time, thus greatly increasing the depth of the chasm. The change had taken place so
gradually that I was not sensible of it, till glancing down the side f my mule, I found that he was
walking within three inches of the brink of a sheer gulf a thousand feet deep; and on the other side,
nearly touching my knee, was an almost vertical wall rising to an enormous altitude [This is what
Garces merely calls a difficult road!] the sight made my head swim….After an interval of
uncomfortable suspense the face of the rock made an angle, and just beyond the turn was a
projection from the main wall with a surface fifteen or twenty feet square that would afford a
foothold. The continuation of the wall was perfectly vertical, so that the trail could no longer follow
it, and we found that the path descended the steep face of the cliff to the bottom of the canon. It was
a desperate road to traverse, but located with a good deal of skill – zigzagging down the precipice,
and taking advantage of every crevice and fissure that could afford a foothold. It did not take long to
discover that no mule could accomplish this descent, and nothing remained but to turn back.”
Coues went on to explain that this is the road Garces called “another and a worse one” and where
he had to leave his mule for the Indians to bring into the canyon by a different route. Now comes
the part about the ladder as described again by Ives:
“At the end of thirteen miles from the precipice an obstacle presented itself that there seemed to be
no possibility of overcoming…..Looking over the edge, it appeared that the next level was forty feet
below. This time there was no trail along the side bluffs…Mr. Egloffstein lay down by the side of the
creek, and projecting his head over the ledge to watch the cascade, discovered a solution of the
mystery. Below the shelving rock, and hidden by it, and the face, stood a crazy-looking ladder made
of rough sticks bound together with thongs of bark. It was almost perpendicular, and rested upon a
bed of angular stones….”
Egloffstein tried the ladder but he was too heavy for it and crashed to the bottom. While Ives and
his comrades tried to devise a way to get him back out, he went around the bend and realized he
was at the bottom of the canon. There was a stream there, and room for fields of corn and a few
scattered huts.
Garces described all this in only a few words. From here he went on to the Hopi villages, was
refused entry there (they wanted nothing to do with the Spanish and their missionaries at that time,
being all too familiar with the ones in New Mexico). Garces returned to the Colorado River and
eventually to his mission near Tucson, San Xavier del Bac.
We learn from all this that he visited the Havasupai at the Grand Canyon and traveled back and
forth along the northern border of the Yavapai lands, but apparently never did really visit their heart
land. He was very familiar with the Indians all over the southwest though. Father Font described
him the following way in his diary entry for Dec 8, 1775:
“Father Garces is so well fitted to get along with the Indians and to go among them that he appears
to be but an Indian himself. Like the Indians he is phlegmatic in everything. He sits with them in the
circle, or at night around the fire, with his legs crossed, and there he will sit musing two or three
hours or more, oblivious to everything else, talking with them with much serenity and deliberation.
And although the foods of the Indians are as nasty and dirty as those outlandish people
themselves, the father eats them with great gusto and says that they are good for the stomach and
very fine. In short God has created him, as I see it, solely for the purpose of seeking out these
unhappy, ignorant, and rustic people.”
Joe Myers
Indian Wars Part IV
Father Garces views of the Indian conflicts were reported by Elliot Coues in Vol II of his book On
the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer…. under the heading “Indian Friends and Foes:”
“The Yumas have always been on good terms with the Jamajabs, Yabipais Tejua, and Papagos of
Sonoitac and of the seacoast; and have waged war with the Jalchedunes, Cocomariocopas, Pimas
Gilenos, with all the nations down the river, and with the Jequiches of the sierra. The Jalchedunes
have always been well disposed toward the Cocomariocpas, the Pimas Gilenos, and all the nations
that there are from the Yumas downward, as also toward the Papagos of the north, toward all the
Yabipais excepting the Yabipais Tejua, and likewise toward the Jequiches and Jenigueches of the
sierra….being unable ever to reconcile themselves with their enemies the Jamajabs, the Yabipais
Tejua, the Chemeguet and the Yumas. The Jamajabs have been always united with the Yumas, with
the Yabipais Tejua of the other side of the river…..The Yabipais whom I visited on the road to Moqui
hold for friends those of the pueblo of Oraybe, the Jalchedunes, Chemeguabas, Cocomaricopas,
Pimas, Yutas, Baquiovas, Yabipais Lipanes, and the Yabipais Natage, and their enemies are the
Yabipais Tejua, the Jamajabs, and the Yumas….The Chemeguaha nation is friendly to the Yutas
and to all the Yabipais including the Tejua, as also to all the nations of the west; it is hostile to the
Comanches, to the Jalchedunes and to the Moqui. Those of the Rio Gila are all friends of one
another and of the Jalchedunes, but enemies of the Tejua and Apaches.”
Wow. This is just a smattering of his observations and he wrote all this in 1776. Notice that
although his ministry had been confined to the region around Tucson and west to the Colorado
River before the Anza expeditions, he knew about the eastern Apaches in NM and TX (his Lipanes),
the Utes and the Comanches further to the east. Incredible documentation but inexplicably ignored
by some modern historians!
To shed more light on who some of these Indians were, a publication of the Pima-Maricopa
Irrigation Project, Part 45 entitled “The Consolidation of the Maricopas” was found on the internet.
It tells a complicated story about the migration of the Indians in the 1700s and 1800s. A new term
for the Opas was introduced (Kaveltcadom) and the Cocomaricopa were called Maricopa. The
report noted these two tribes migrated up the Gila River toward the Pima Indians and in the early
1800s were jointed by smaller tribes known as the Halchidhoma (Jalchedunes), Kohuana and
Halvikwamai and by mid-1800s all would be called the Maricopa.
This report noted that in 1694, Kino visited the Pimas on the Gila River, just south of modern
Phoenix, and recorded that two tribes west of the Pimans spoke a language very different; he called
them Cocomaricopa and Opa. The report suggested that when Jacobo Sedelmayr visited the region
in 1744, the Halchidhoma (Jalchedunes) had moved up the Colorado River to the vicinity of modern
Ehrenberg. By the end of the 1700s, the Maricopa had relocated onto the Gila River near the
junction of the Salt (just west and south of modern day Phoenix) and there were no permanent
villages on the north side of the river because they were too exposed to Yavapai and Apache
attacks. Faced with raids from the Mohave and Quechen, they eventually left the Colorado and
joined their relatives on the Gila. The report noted that when William Emory and the American Army
of the West arrived in 1846, the Gila River was empty for 200 miles above the junction of the
Colorado at Yuma.
William McSpadden, the person writing about the Yavapai at Skull Cave, pointed out another book
to me called Massacre on the Gila – An Account of the Last Major Battle between American Indians,
with Reflections on the Origin of War. It was coauthored by Clifton B. Kroeber and Bernard L.
Fontana and published in 1986. In my opinion, it is really three books in one. In the first section,
the story unfolds about a major battle between the Colorado Indians (primarily Quechen and
Mohave) and their enemies, the “Gila Indians” near Phoenix (Maricopa and Pimas). The second
part is an ethnohistory of the Indians in this region. The third part is a probe into the origins of war.
In the preface, the authors explained that this book was a decades long effort to understand an
August 31,1857 battle that took place near Pima Butte on the Gila River. Pima Butte is an
outcropping near the highway between Maricopa and Phoenix. The battle took place at Maricopa
Wells and was watched and reported on by a Butterfield Stage employee. (Elliot Coues believed
Maricopa Wells was the location of the Anza expedition camp called The Hospital. Bolton disagreed
but from my investigations, I have to side with Coues and believe the battle site is the exact same
spot Anza camped at nearly eighty years earlier.) Apparently the main attackers were Mohaves and
Quechen, and they had traveled by foot some one hundred and sixty miles across the Sonoran
Desert. The authors suggested the term Maricopa for Indians did not appear in writing until 1846
and they were actually a Yuman-speaking amalgam, forced from their homelands on the Lower
Colorado river and included the Opa, Kaveltcadom (Cocomaricopa) Halchidhoma (Jalchdunes),
Kohuana and Halyikwamai.
As the story is related, twelve Indian communities were strung out on the Gila River, with the last
two on the west the Maricopas. The river did not play a role in the battle as it was bone dry at this
location at this season. Sometime in the morning on August 31, the attackers from the Colorado
River set upon the first Maricopa village and soon it was in flames. A rider rushed toward the white
men at the stage station and asked for help but they knew better than to get involved; their stage
route went through the country of the attacking Indians. On the rider raced toward the ten Pima
villages seeking aid and now there was a lull in the fighting. We are told that some Mohaves as well
as Yavapai and Tonto Apache allies decided to leave and head back home toward the north. The
majority of the Quechen and most of the Mohaves stayed though, to enjoy their victory.
Unfortunately for them, there were probably some 500 Maricopas in the area with about 200 men
capable of bearing arms, and another 4000 Pimans nearby, with at least 1000 potential warriors.
What is clear is that the estimated 104 attackers were soon virtually annihilated. Only a few
escaped alive.
Clifton Kroeber, one of the authors Of Massacre on the Gila, is the son of anthropologist Alfred L.
Kroeber. In this book, Clifton reported that a 1925 story by his father referenced this last great fight
of the Mohave, occurring in 1857 or 1858….The Mohave…estimated by themselves at about 200,
were joined at Avi-kwa-hasala by 82 Yuma and a considerable body of Yavapai and a contingent
from a more remote tribe….fits the Apache….The Apache fought fiercely for a time but fled when
things turned against them, and escaped without a fatality. The Yavapai followed but lost seven…..
Sixty Mohave fell and 80 of the 82 Yuma…A. Kroeber was told it took eight days for the survivors to
get home to the Mohave Valley (just north of Needles).
The book continues with a variety of accounts, both American and Indian and is a fascinating
story. Chapter Three describes the protagonists in some detail. Quechen, Maricopa, Mohave,
Yavapai, Pima and Western Apache. There is a good discussion of the history of the various
groups. The Indians called Jalchedunes by Garces (Halchidhoma) were consolidated into the group
as the known collectively as the Maricopa. As mentioned, part three probes into the subject about
war itself.
What fascinated me most about this book, rather than the content though - was what was missing.
Kino was mentioned a couple of times, and the reference in the index was to Bringas. It turned out
the book cited was Friar Bringas reports to the King. It was translated and edited by Daniel S.
Matson and Bernard L. Fontana. There was no mention of Bolton’s book on Kino, Rim of
Christendom. In fact, there was not a single reference to Bolton. I looked in vain for one reference
to Anza, or to any of the stories about Garces and his travels up and down this river in the 1770s.
Not one single reference to Bolton, although Garces was mentioned a couple of times but not by
Clifton, but only by his father when he was quoted. Then a thought struck me.
A. Kroeber was THE great anthropologist at Berkeley in the early 1900s. Herbert Bolton was THE
great historian there at about the same time. He published the five volumes on Anza in 1930. Is it
possible the campus was not big enough for both of them and a feud developed, and now the son
of A. Kroeber is still carrying on the feud between his father and Bolton? Or is it just my imagination
working overtime? I can’t explain the fact there is not a single reference to Bolton or Anza. I called
the coauthor, Bernard Fontana who lives in Tucson, and asked him about this puzzling omission
but he did not believe there was anything to it, just my imagination. We’ll leave that question up to
the reader, but needless to say that since the book is an attempt to understand the origins of war, is
it possible there is a feud still raging? How could all the material written by Font, Anza and Garces
have escaped notice by these authors?
We’ll leave Clifton Kroeber now and turn to his mother. Theodora Kroeber wrote a stunning book,
published in 1964, entitled Ishi, Last of His Tribe. On the back cover of my copy, it notes: “In the
early 1900s, a small band of California Indians of the Yahi tribe resisted the fate that had all but
wiped out their people-violent death at the hands of the invading white man…..In time, one by one
of the tribe died, until there remained a single survivor-the man who became known as Ishi. R.F.
Heizer and M. A. Whipple published “The California Indians” in 1951 and included a description of a
violent encounter in their chapter on Ishi (attributed to T. T. Waterman).
“A party of whites, in April 1871, pursued a band of Indians with dogs. They located them in a cave
across a narrow gulch, and shot a number of them, finally entering the cave itself. Here they found a
lot of dried meat, and some small children. The hero of the occasion, being a humane man, a
person of fine sensibilities and delicacy of feeling, could not bear to kill these babies – at any rate,
not with the heavy 56-calibre Spencer rifle he was carrying. It tore them up too bad. So he shot
them with his 38-calibre Smith and Wesson revolver.”
These Indians lived in northern California and have nothing to do with our story of Yuman speaking
Indians - the story is included only to indicate that atrocities were not restricted to Arizona and the
Apaches. This story took place the same year that Wassaja, the Yavapai, noted in Part I was
captured as a 5 year old boy in Arizona by Pima Indian Scouts, later sold and educated, and became
a medical doctor. Who were the savages?
What was the eventual fate of father Garces? Back in Part I it was mentioned the Southern Trails
Chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association publishes Desert Tracks, and also has a lot of
information posted online. At the conference in Yuma in January 2009, two of the talks that were
given were reproduced in the May, 2009 issue of Desert Tracks.
Marc Santiago presented the talk “The Yuma Massacre of 1871.” His talk began: “On three days,
July 17, 18, and 19, 1781, Quechen Indians destroyed two mission/pueblos of Spaniards at the
junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers at what would come to be known as the Yuma Crossing.”
Marc then went on to tell the story; the gist being that Father Garces, along with an estimated one
hundred four other Spanish men, women and children were killed, and another seventy six were
taken captive. These are the same Quechens (Yumans) that had joyously carried Garces across the
Colorado River only a few years earlier with the Anza expedition.
This has been a rambling essay on trying to understand some of the history between the Indians
and the European adventurers, but there is one last story to comment on before closing. At the
Yuma convention, Professor Paul Hutton gave the keynote speech at the Banquet. His talk “Kit
Carson’s Ride” is also reproduced in the May 2009 issue of Desert Tracks. Paul spared no effort to
make Kit Carson appear a hero, rescuing fair damsels from the nasty Indians in New Mexico.
Surprisingly, the questions and answers at the end of the talk were included and there was a
question: In Hampton Side’s Blood and Thunder, I read about the opposite side of Kit Carson: how
he sometimes engaged in what could be considered cold-blooded murder of Indians.”
Part of Hutton’s answer: “…Recent historians have engaged in a lot of revision, which I think has
gone a little too far. You have to deal with the reality of those people at that time and the value
systems that they lived with. If you tell the story straight, you have to include the fact that Carson
could be very cold-blooded.” His reference to revisionist history is absolutely correct. I was sitting
in the back of the room and asked the question, which somehow became distorted in the write-up.
It is possible my question was not recorded accurately. I did not have it written down and can only
try to recall from memory what the question was, but here is an attempt.
I had recently read the book Blood and Thunder and the book documents a killing in cold blood of
an old man in California in 1846 by Kit Carson. (I did not remember the names of all involved, but
did remember the name of the old man, Jose Berreyesa. The book referred to the three men as two
twenty-year old twins, Ramon and Francisco de Haro, and their elderly uncle, Jose de los
Berreyesa.)
The question was difficult to frame, but I explained that my talk earlier that morning had been about
the Anza expedition taking colonists to settle San Francisco in 1775-76 and there were two children
on the expedition, Nicholas Berreyesa (Anza recorded it as Nicolas Antonio Berrelleza at Tubac) at
age 15 and Gertrudas Peralta, age nine. After reaching California, they married in 1781 and their
oldest son was Jose Berreyesa. He would have been roughly sixty years old when stopped by Kit
Carson. After Carson interrogated the trio, he turned to John Freemont for further instructions and
was told he wanted no prisoners. Carson proceeded to execute the three men in cold blood.
The reason for bringing all this up is that I found it amazing that the question had been distorted and
that Carson had only killed Indians which is apparently OK even today, but killing the local Mexican
(formerly Spanish) citizens in cold blood would be harder to explain. We are over 160 years from
this incident, but when I read the book Massacre on the Gila by Krober and Fontana, and do not
find a single reference to Anza or the historian Bolton, I wonder - how far have we really come?
Joe Myers