< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Thanks to its discovery
by art and outdoor
publications, Salida isn't as much of a backwater as it
used to be, but there's still an element of novelty in
being host to a world gathering -- which is supposed to
happen later this week with the Anza World Conference.
Who was Anza? In our part of the world, Juan Bautista de Anza is important because he left the first written account of the northern San Luis Valley (indeed, he christened the San Luis Valley), Poncha Pass and the Salida area. The Utes, of course, had been here for hundreds of years, but their language was not a written one then, and so they did not leave written accounts.
Anza came through here in late August of 1779 when he was governor of the Spanish Province of New Mexico. Comanche warriors from the Plains had been raiding settlements in the Taos area. The Spanish had promised to protect the nearby Pueblos and the Utes from the Comanche, and thus Anza's military expedition with 800 soldiers and 2,400 horses.
Instead of just pursuing the Comanche after a raid, which had never worked for previous governors, Anza waited until scouts warned that the Comanche were approaching the Rio Grande valley from the plains. Then he took his army north to the Salida area, rode east across the south rim of South Park to emerge on the Plains, then south to catch the Comanche as they emerged from the mountains after their raid. By standing between them and the plains, he forced them to fight his kind of battle where he had the advantage. The Comanche were defeated and signed a peace treaty.
Elsewhere in America, Anza is something more than a footnote, since he founded a great American city, San Francisco, after leading hundreds of colonists across the deserts in 1776. As historian Patty Limerick once observed, though, if you want to do something that gets noticed by American historians, don't do it on the West Coast in the summer of 1776 -- the attention of historians will always be pointed elsewhere.
Although there are many Spanish place names in this part of Colorado, there wasn't much Spanish presence. The only known structure was a simple stone fort on Sangre de Cristo Pass (a variant of modern La Veta), and its precise location is still a matter of contention. This was the remote edge of empire, where Spain sought not to occupy the territory, but only to stay on good terms with the Utes, so that they would repel Frenchmen, Americans and other threats.
The difference between Spanish and American military expeditions is apparent when you compare journals. Anza's is just a pamphlet -- a couple dozen pages -- with little description. His instruments were a compass and a watch. Zebulon Pike crossed some of the same territory 27 years later, and provides reams of description, along with thermometer and barometer readings. Pike speculated about the resources of the country and the population they might support; Anza just mentioned the occasional rough spot and how they were snowed upon in South Park on Aug. 28.
On Friday, Aug. 27, 1779, he camped where Poncha Springs is today. On the evening of Friday, Aug. 27, 2004, he'll be back to talk in the Poncha Springs town park. Actually, it won't be Anza, but Don Garate of the National Park Service, who impersonates Anza with living history presentations. He is the historian at Tumacacori National Historical Park in Arizona, and he's writing a biography of Anza and his father, also Juan Bautista de Anza and also a Spanish colonial frontier soldier.
Garate's talk will be free and open to the public; the rest of the Anza World Conference here, which involves the presentation of scholarly papers about him and his career, as well as some exploration of, and informed speculation about, his route from here to the Front Range, is for paying customers. They hold a conference every year, in some place that Anza visited in Mexico or the United States, and Colorado has hosted two before, in Pueblo and Monte Vista.
In 225 years, this spot has gone from remote fringe of one empire to a railroad hub to an abandoned backwater, and now it's evolving into something else. And it was Anza who put this place on the map, even if he doesn't show up in most American history books.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2004 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >