Havasupais Guide Garces to the Hopi Towns. It was on June 4, 1776--memorable year in American annals--that Garces started under the guidance of some Wallapais for the Hopi towns. They had given him fair details of the country he would have to travel over. Passing by their own home in Diamond Creek (one of the earliest approaches to the Grand Canyon), he decided to visit the Havasupais, whom he calls Yabesuas. Those familiar with Spanish spelling and pronunciation will readily recognize that they are almost one and the same. The Wallapais took the priest down their own trail into Havasu or Cataract Canyon,--a trail which made his head swim, and where his mule had to be left behind, to be brought to him later by another route. He also describes the ladder down which he climbed just before reaching the place where the innumerable springs flow out of the solid rock and form Havasu Creek. It was the same ladder descended eighty years later by Egloffstein, Lieutenant Ives's artist, who was so heavy that he took down ladder and all with him. Here Garces stayed five days, being hospitably treated by the natives, who brought him melons, squash, corn, beans, etc., and who had thriving trees of peaches and apricots.
The Grand Canyon Is Reached. Leaving the kindhearted Havasupais, he returned to the plateau above, and soon saw for the first time the deep gorge of the Colorado River itself,--the Grand Canyon. He describes with surprising accuracy of detail the break in the Kaibabs, where the Marble and Little Colorado Canyons unite and form the Grand Canyon, and then, a little later, he gives a true description of the Little Colorado Canyon.
From his account, he doubtless went down by the old Hopi Salt Trail into the gorge of the Little Colorado, and thus on to Oraibi, which he reached July 2, 1776.
Wishes to Baptize the Indians. About this time those interesting, exciting and most important of all discussions were raging in the Continental Congress on the eastern side of the continent, which, two days later, were to result in the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had undoubtedly written it at this time, but Garces knew not the name of the great patriot and his compeers. He was bent on a different mission. He wished to declare to the Hopis how they might have freedom,--freedom from sin and the fear of hell. For, as Elliott Coues (the scholarly translator of Garces's diary, published a few years ago by F. P. Harper of New York)expresses it: "It made him sick at heart to see so many natives going to hell for lack of the three drops of water he would sprinkle over them if only they would let him do it."Garces Reaches Oraibi. His arrival at Oraibi caused great excitement, though a priest had been at work there as early as 1650. There were four priests laboring among the Hopis in 1680, when the great native uprising throughout New Mexico and Arizona occurred, and all of them, with many others (laymen and soldiers as well) were slain at that time. Then, too, the remembrance had not died away of the total destruction of the town of Awatobi (one of the Hopi towns of that day) in the year 1700, because the people of that place were hospitable and tolerant of the "long gowns." The medicine men and leaders of all the adjacent towns gathered together, and led a force which fell upon Awatobi in the dead of the night. Every male in it was slain, and only some of the women and girls were saved and taken to the other towns. The place was fired, and remained a neglected ruin, until the scholarship and labors of recent ethnologists dug up both the town and its tragic history.
Indians Are Hostile. Poor Garces! The hostility of the Oraibis was apparent. They refused to allow him to enter a house, and he was compelled to camp outside, in a corner formed by a jutting wall, while his guide sheltered his mule in a sheep corral. He built his little camp fire, cooked his frugal meal, and slept there during the night, doubtless committing himself and the people who refused to receive him to the protecting mercies of God. The next day the chiefs of the town came to him, clothed in their ceremonial costumes and feathery head-dresses, and bade him leave the place. He held up his crucifix as an index of his mission, and endeavored to tell them that he came solely to do them good. But they would have none of him, and on the following day, the memorable Fourth of July, they expelled him peaceably but forcibly from their town. He returned to the Colorado River again on July 25, and soon to San Xavier, his mission, a failure.
Establishes Missions among the Yumas. Now he threw his whole heart into the two missions which the authorities had decided to place among the Yumas.
Captain Palma, a Yuma chief, who had been very friendly, had urged it repeatedly, and now the desires of both were to be fulfilled. In 1779, Garces went to prepare the way, and the following year the establishment took place. The missions were eight miles apart; one was named La Purisima Concepcion; the other, San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner. Garces and Barraneche took charge of the upper mission, and Diaz and Moreno of the lower.
Garces Is Killed. The missions were a failure from the start. The few Spanish soldiers sent to guard the padres were obliged to utilize some of the best lands which were tilled for their own benefit. The appropriations from the treasury were too small to permit of anything but the rudest and simplest of structures, and Palma and his friends soon became disgusted with the whole affair. On July 17 the Indians, many of whom had been hostile from the first, arose and massacred both colonies of white men, as well as a small force of soldiers under former Governor Rivera, of California, who was encamped temporarily on the western side of the river.
At first, Garces' life was spared, but before the day was over he and his co-laborer were beaten to death, and his unselfish mission on earth ended.
In my book "In and Out of the Old Missions of California", I give this interesting and tragic history in fuller detail. This, then, is the man whose name is given to the railway building at Needles, in order that his heroic labors for the Indians of the Colorado River region may not be forgotten.
