Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/153

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Coitcs : On the Trail of a Spanis/i Pioneer 143 to report on his expedition. The report being favorable he was ordered to collect colonists and soldiers and go overland to establish a presidio and mission at the port of San Francisco. The priest Garces accom- panied the expedition as far as the Colorado river and from there he made journeys to San Gabriel by way of "the Tulares " and later journeys eastward to the various Indian tribes, going as far as Zuni. It is the diary of this fifth expedition of Garces, conducted largely on his own instance as missionary priest, that Mr. Coues has translated. A priest named Font went with Anza to San Francisco and kept a diary of the expedition, making a creditable map of the country, which is pub- lished in this book. Mr. Coues announced that the translation of the diary of Font would form the next number of the American Explorers series. Mr. Coues found three separate sources agreeing in general in the names and dates and general geography but much varied in some characteristics of general narrative. The first (A) is Diario del Padre Francisco Garces in the Library of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, No. 7415 ; (B) Diario del P. Garces, belonging to Dr. Leon, but temporarily in the custody of Mr. F. W. Hodges; (C) Diario y Dcrrotero que sigiiio el M. P. P. Fr. Francisco Garces, etc., from Vol. I. oi Documenios para la Historia de Mexico. The last is the only printed copy until the present translation, which is confined strictly to manuscript "A," with notes from the other two. While Anza's mission was in the interest of the Spanish government, Garces and his priest companion were more directly interested in the salvation of the natives and the extension of the work of their religious order. One can scarcely realize the difficulties Garces encountered in his journeys among the wild tribes, his only companion an Indian guide. Beyond the southern border of what is now Arizona there was not a white man in the entire region, over which roamed the savage Apache, a terror to whites and natives alike. Although it was about 233 years after the first Spaniards crossed the line of part of his travels, and nearly a century after the beginning of the work of Kino and Ugarte, there were no traces of Spanish exploration except a few traditional ideas, mostly religious, of the existence of the Spanish people. The journey was made at the time of the first and second years of the American Revolution. While the patriots on the Atlantic coast were gaining lib- erty and laying the foundation of a nation, Garces was attempting to bring into subjugation a territory eventually to become part of the do- main of the United States. It was a hazardous undertaking and con- ducted after the usual blundering methods of the Spanish regime, for Garces was finally beaten to death by the people whom he sought to be- friend. Nor was there much accomplished by the apparently aimless and misjudged expedition of Garces. "But," says Coues, " it does not lessen our respect for the man, that he, like his Indians, was the victim of the most pernicious, most immoral, and most detestable system of in- iquity the world has ever seen — the Spanish combination of fiiisionero and