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For evidence that history is written by the winners, you can stop on U.S. 285 a few miles north of Poncha Springs where the highway crosses Squaw Creek (politically incorrect name, I have heard, but certainly more convenient than Native American Womyn Cusec-Challenged Water Course).
There, our state historical society has erected a sign about Zebulon Montgomery Pike's expedition and how his frost-bitten soldiers barely avoided starvation on Christmas Day, 1806.
Most of the travails endured by Pike and his men were the result of his ineptitude. They headed west late in the year, clad in thin summer uniforms. Pike led his men on a wild-goose chase because he couldn't tell that the Arkansas River above the Royal Gorge was the same stream as the Arkansas River below the Royal Gorge.
But still, he's part of our lore, and there's nothing wrong with the roadside marker. It's just that our histories generally skip over the 268 years between Coronado and Pike, which explains why there's not a similar marker in Poncha Springs honoring Juan Bautista de Anza.
You've never heard of Anza?
Born in 1735 in Fronteras, Sonora, Mexico, Anza was among the best frontiersmen this continent ever produced. In 1775, he left Sonora with 240 people, many of them women and children, to cross brutal deserts and establish a presidio on the West Coast.
He was such a good leader that he arrived with 242 people -- one woman died, but three babies were born en route -- and founded San Francisco on March 10, 1776. Contrast that competence with Pike's misadventures.
In 1777, Anza was appointed governor of the New Mexico province of New Spain. He arrived in Santa Fe in 1778, only to discover that the province was in danger of falling to the Jupe Comanche, who swept in from the Great Plains and raided the pueblos, Ute villages and Spanish settlements.
Previous Spanish forays against the Comanche failed because the Spaniards took predictable routes: east from Taos and north over Raton Pass, or north and the east over Sangre de Cristo Pass (near today's La Veta Pass).
In either case, Comanche scouts spotted the imperial army's campfires and dust clouds, and the Comanche retreated to western Kansas or the Staked Plains, well out of reach.
Anza devised new tactics and a new route. His forces would move at night and forgo fires as they proceeded north from Santa Fe, so that Comanche scouts wouldn't see them. He'd also go much farther north than previous commanders.
On Aug. 27, 1779, he made the first recorded crossing of Poncha Pass, and his troops -- regular soldiers, Spanish settlers and Utes who sought revenge against the Comanche -- camped at the site of today's town of Poncha Springs.
Parts of their route after that are a matter of contention among historians, but Anza did emerge on the Great Plains near Colorado Springs on Aug. 30, and on Sept. 2, he engaged the Comanche southwest of Pueblo.
Anza didn't go after all the Comanche, just their leaders, especially Cuerno Verde (Green Horn), and his army managed to isolate and kill the chiefs.
Greenhorn Peak, the highest of the Wet Mountains, is named in honor of this battle. (Like the Custer Battlefield, this may also illustrate an American penchant for honoring losers). As for the Jupe Comanche, they made peace and quit raiding the upper Rio Grande.
Now, it could be argued that Anza -- no matter how capable a commander and governor, no matter that he founded a major American city, no matter that he left the first records of visits to much of Colorado -- is merely a historical curiosity.
He rode under the flag of Spain, and Spain lost its hold
on North America. Some Spanish place names remain, but few
if any of Anza's (for instance, he christened the South
Arkansas the Rio San Agustin, and nobody calls Fountain
Creek the Santa Rosa). Other Spanish-sounding place names
like Salida and Buena Vista are from a dialect that writer
Stanley Crawford calls Real Estate Spanish.
So why remember Anza? For one thing, we ought to recognize competence and courage, even if it's currently fashionable to be an incompetent victim.
If more people knew that the Comanche controlled the Colorado piedmont two centuries years ago, we might not have to endure those New Age airheads who claim that Mount Arkansas and the Garden of the Gods served for centuries as sacred sites for the Arapaho, who weren't even in Colorado in 1779.
Further study of Spain's failure to hold a sprawling domain might be instructive in this day of collapsing empires.
And finally, Anza provided as good an excuse as any for a small celebration in Poncha Springs last weekend. We invited Phil Carson, a writer and history buff in Pueblo, to come up the river and present a talk and slide show in the town park.
About 50 people showed up, the weather was perfect, and
we had such a good time that John Englebrecht, the mayor of
Poncha Springs, is now tempted to proclaim and arrange an
annual Anza Day
historical celebration.
Maybe that's not much, but it's got to be an improvement on going outdoors barefoot on Dec. 25 to celebrate Pike Day.
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