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Thank you all for coming to Anza Day -- there are a lot of things to do around here tonight, and I'm glad you picked this.
Normally, I find and introduce the speaker, and this year, I thought I'd be introducing a fellow named Paul Martin. We talked several times last spring, and he was excited about appearing at Anza Day, because he's very interested in the history of conflicts in the West. He's a military historian, and Juan Bautista de Anza's 1779 expedition was, after all, a military campaign. At previous Anza Days, we have heard from social historians and environmental historians, and a military historian could give us a new perspective about the first written account of our part of the world.
Paul Martin was the base historian at Fort Carson. More precisely, though, he is the official historian of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, and last summer, the Army moved the Third from Fort Carson, Colorado, to Fort Hood, Texas. And so, he has been busy moving along with the rest of the unit, and could not make this trip.
After I learned that, I tried using various New Mexico contacts to find a speaker. But everyone I contacted was already busy this weekend. I did, however, make arrangements for Dr. Estevan Rael-Galvez, the state historian of New Mexico, to speak at Anza Day next year.
Those failures left me with two options: no Anza Day, which seemed like a pity in the year that Poncha Springs is celebrating its 125th birthday, or do it myself.
So here I am. This is the querquicentennial year for Poncha. Last year was the 225th anniversary of Anza's 1779 campaign and we hosted the World Anza Conference here. Next year will be the bicentennial of Zebulon Montgomery Pike's expedition, and several local events are already being planned, among them a Christmas barbecue near the location where Pike's men feasted on buffalo on Christmas Day, 1806.
The Anza and Pike explorations were 27 years apart, and the men were officers of different empires. This was the extreme edge of the Western Frontier when Pike came out in 1807, just as it had been the extreme edge of La Frontera del Norte when Anza came in 1779. Yet their routes crossed near here, in the middle of nowhere -- which proves that even two centuries ago, Poncha Springs could reasonably claim to be the Crossroads of the Rockies.
As for the exact place where their paths crossed, I'd put it about where the new hospital is planned. Anza forded the river in that general area, and Pike had to cross that route as he moved down the river after the Christmas feast. Their routes also crossed each other in the general area of Pueblo, and in the San Luis Valley. And of course, after Pike was captured, he followed most of Anza's route back to Santa F.
Both gave their countries their first written
descriptions of this valley, and of the great peak between
us and the Plains. Anza called it the Sierra Amalgre,
the red ocher mountain,
a fit description given its
pink granite. Pike's name is on the mountain now, but he
didn't name it. He called it the Grand Peak.
Anza
didn't name any mountains, either -- he did christen the
Little River as the Rio San Augustin -- but his name is on
two peaks in the Sangre de Christo range, and the highest
of the Wet Mountains, Greenhorn Peak, is named for the
Comanche chief he killed in battle.
However, the coincidences between Pike and Anza are not just geographic. Both men were career military officers; both entered the service of their countries as teen-aged boys. Zebulon Pike's father was a career military man named Zebulon Pike. Juan Bautista de Anza's father was a career military man named Juan Bautista de Anza.
Their empires had similar foreign policies regarding the Indians on their frontiers -- ally with them, to some degree, so they would serve as buffers against other empires. In other words, set up trade relations and friendship, so that when outsiders came, be they French or American or Spanish, your Indian allies would attack them, and report the intrusion to your military.
When Pike and Anza came through here, both men were leading their second major expeditions. In 1776, Anza had led colonists from Mexico through the deserts to found San Francisco, and in 1805, Pike had led men north from St. Louis to Minnesota in search of the source of the Mississippi River. And both men had to deal with the Comanche.
As a loyal Coloradan, I think our state should send a thank-you note to the Comanche. They were a tough band of warriors, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, their presence in southeastern Colorado and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles kept Colorado from becoming tied to Texas. They're not there to protect us any more, which may explain why we have a governor from Texas.
Anyway, we generally think of our eastern plains as the domain of the Cheyenne and Arapaho before the whites arrived with the gold rush of 1859. But those tribes were relative latecomers. In the 1600s, our plains were part of Apachateria -- Apaches who moved down from the north along the front of the Rockies, eventually splitting into various Apache bands, and a distinct group first known as the Navajo Apache.
Sometime around 1500, the Comanche separated from the
Shoshone in the Wind River area of Wyoming, and began
moving south. The Comanche, Shoshone, and Utes were all
related and spoke similar languages. The Utes call
themselves the Nuche, which means the people,
and
you can hear something very much like Nuche in Comanche --
a Ute word meaning enemy,
or more precisely,
people who fight us.
The Comanche call themselves
the Numunuu,
which means, of course, the
people.
Sometimes the Comanche and Utes were allied, sometimes
they fought. And it's misleading to say the
Comanche,
for there were several bands who operated
more or less independently. Anza was concerned about the
Jupe Comanche, who dominated the plains between the
Arkansas and Pecos rivers. As early as 1719, they were
raiding the settlements of northern New Mexico -- the
pueblos around Taos -- for horses. By 1725, they had chased
the Apache off the plains, and they had pushed the Utes
into the mountains by 1745.
Four years later, the Utes asked the Spanish for protection from the Comanches. Spain agreed, but it didn't stop the Comanche raids. They hit Pecos four times and by 1775 they were threatening Santa F itself.
Spanish control of the Upper Rio Grande -- that is, everything north of El Paso -- was in jeopardy. Spain had already lost control once, in the Pueblo rebellion of 1680, and had to fight its way back. The empire did not want to lose this outpost again -- even if it was remote and poor.
It was in this context that Juan Bautista de Anza was transferred to Santa F in 1777 and appointed governor of the Province of New Mexico. He was an experienced Indian fighter and a proven frontier leader. And he wanted to make peace with the Comanche, but knew there could be no peace until he had removed Cuerno Verde from the picture.
Cuerno Verde -- Green Horn in English -- got his name
from a head-dress which contained one green buffalo horn.
He got it from his predecessor chief (who may have been his
father), also named Cuerno Verde. The senior Cuerno Verde
had led 500 warriors against Ojo Caliente in late October
of 1768. He was killed, and the junior Cuerno Verde took up
a campaign of vengeance against the Spanish, who called him
the Scourge of the Realm.
Under Cuerno Verde, the Jupe Comanche generally rode in from the plains, crossed the Sangre de Cristo range at one of several passes, took horses and women and slaves from the Rio Arriba region, then fled back out onto the plains. The local militia forces were no match for them, and the Provincial Army, based in the capital of Santa F, couldn't catch them. By the time the soldiers got to the pueblos, the Comanche were long gone, and pursuit out on the plains was hopeless. The Comanche were in their element out on the staked plains of the Texas Panhandle, while the Spanish had a long supply route to worry about, among other things.
Anza came up with a plan that would allow him to fight his kind of battle -- almost a set piece, rather than a pursuit -- on his kind of terrain. First he would require the villages to improve their defenses, so that when the Comanche came, they'd have to fight to get anything.
Anza would post scouts at the Comanche approaches to the upper Rio Grande. When they saw the Comanche coming in the late summer of 1779, Anza could set the rest of the plan in motion. Instead of pursuing the Comanche, he'd take a circuitous hidden route, so that when the Comanche emerged from the mountains after their raid, he'd be there with an army. He could bottle them up, kill Cuerno Verde, and force the Jupe to come to terms.
That's why Anza was here on Aug. 27, 1779. His force marched north on Aug. 15, and it was the largest military force that ever came through here -- 600 troops. They came up through the San Luis Valley, which Anza probably named, and marched at night, so that any Comanche sentries atop the Sangres would not see the dust they stirred up.
Along the way, they encountered some Ute warriors. There
were some misunderstandings at first -- the Spanish feared
the campfires were Comanche -- they joined forces. The
Utes' basic attitude was You guys are going out to kill
some Comanche? Gee, can we come too?
The Anza saga illustrates that the idea of whites
and Indians
at war is way too simple. Anza was
riding to protect Utes and Pueblos against Comanche. That's
not all that hard to understand, but the Colorado Springs
Historical Commission said it was just too complicated for
them to mention in the historical signage at America the
Beautiful Park, site of one battle between Anza and the
Comanche. Fortunately, we're smart enough here to handle
that sort of thing, even if they can't in Colorado
Springs.
Anyway, here's what Anza had to say about our part of the world:
27th. Friday. At seven we continued our march by way of a very narrow canyon with almost unscalable walls, the first one with plenty of water that runs in a generally northeast direction which is all that separates the two aforementioned mountains. The one that is rarely traveled cost us a lot of effort to cross, which we managed to do after walking 5 leagues , at the end of which we came to the confluence of the water referred to with that of a considerable river that we called the San Augustn where we finished the day's march.
28th. Saturday. A little before seven we started out toward the northeast and in little more than a league we crossed the Ro Nepestle which flows from the northwest and has its source in the aforementioned mountain range. After one league we started to cross another medium mountain range which cost us two more, and after that we went four more to the east along some low hills where from two in the afternoon until seven we rested the horses, after which we continued in our predetermined direction for 5 more and came to what we called the Lost Hills for all the trouble we had from the snow and fog that bothered us before nightfall.
Anza's journal provides the first written account of our part of the world, and his was the first official trip here, but there must have been some informal visits. We know that because he had a fairly accurate map, prepared by Don Bernardo Miero y Pacheco, who had been the cartographer on the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776.
Miero's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson is
Wilfred Martinez of Pueblo, who spoke here a few years ago.
I like to think that Anza summoned Miero to prepare a map,
and I imagine him going to the cantinas of Santa F and
plying various traders and frontier types. Hey, I know
you weren't supposed to be up there, but tell me what you
know, and you won't get into any trouble.
Despite the Miero maps, made before and after the campaign, Anza's exact route across the south edge of South Park remains a source of some contention today, but he probably crossed Ute Pass and emerged onto the plains at the site of Colorado Springs on Aug. 31. He found a Comanche camp there and attacked. He moved south and attacked, and on Sept. 3, he met Cuerno Verde's emerging warriors somewhere southwest of Pueblo. They had attacked Taos on Aug. 31, but thanks to Anza's order to improve its fortifications, there was only one Spanish casualty, while 10 Comanche were killed before they retreated.
On Sept. 3, Cuerno Verde and 17 other Jupe chiefs and warriors died in battle -- including a medicine man who had declared himself immortal.
Anza returned to Santa F on Sept. 10. Cuerno Verde was dead, and the raids stopped. Anza agreed to make peace with the Comanche if they would appoint a leader to meet with him, and by 1785, the Spanish and Comanche had a treaty -- the Spanish would even supply guns to the Comanche.
Anza was 50 years old in 1786, and probably felt even older. His health was failing and he requested a transfer to the south. He died on Dec. 19, 1788, probably of heart failure, at Arispe, Sonora, Mexico.
Thanks to Anza's campaign, the Comanche and Spanish were allies by the end of the 18th century. But just as Anza was locating the presidio of San Francisco in 1776, a new country was being formed in Philadelphia. And on Jan. 5, 1779, just as Anza was sitting in the Palace of the Governors planning his Comanche campaign for the coming summer, Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born in Lamberton, New Jersey; he was named for his father, an officer under George Washington in the Revolutionary War. The family moved to the frontier soon afterward -- in those days, Ohio and Illinois. Pike joined his father's regiment in 1794, when he was only 15 years old.
In 1803, the frontier moved west. Napoleon had been shuffling things around in Europe, so that the western drainage of the Mississippi, which had been claimed by France, then Spain, moved back to France, and he sold it for 3 cents an acre to the United States -- the Louisiana Purchase.
Spain did not like this. The French didn't present any real problems, but the Americans were energetic and might press their empire west into land that was definitely Spain's, like where we're sitting now.
President Thomas Jefferson didn't mind the arrangement. France was a strong country, Spain wasn't. He preferred the West in Spanish hands, figuring that America could take it when the time came.
But there had been no map with the Louisiana Purchase,
no survey, nothing like that. France just transfered its
claim to the territory, as France possessed it,
whatever that meant.
The original French claim, made by LaSalle in 1682, was to the Mississippi and all its drainage. The last substantial river to flow into the Mississippi from the west is the Red River -- the squiggly part of today's boundary between Texas and Oklahoma. The next river to the north was the Arkansas.
Since the claims were based on drainages, America needed to find out where those rivers started in order to perfect its claim to Louisiana. That's part of the rationale for Pike's expedition.
Thomas Jefferson was a genius in many fields, but not military. His defense of Virginia, when he was its governor during the revolutionary war, basically consisted of riding away from the British, as quickly as his horse would carry him.
In Jefferson's presidency, the chief general of the U.S. Army, and the administrator of Louisiana territory, was Gen. James Wilkinson, one of the great scoundrels of American history.
He had fought in the Revolutionary War, then moved to Kentucky where he left the army. He returned to service and by 1805 was based in St. Louis. He was also on the Spanish payroll, and he tipped off the Spanish about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Spanish dutifully sent a force to intercept those explorers, but missed them by about two weeks.
Pike's trip is often called a southwestern
counterpart to Lewis and Clark,
but it really wasn't.
Lewis and Clark were dispatched directly by President
Jefferson, and Meriwether Lewis had received more than a
year of special training in geology and botany so that the
expedition could serve the purposes of science.
Pike was dispatched by Wilkinson, not Jefferson, and he had no special training. The actual southern counterpart, ordered by Jefferson and led by men with scientific training, was led by cartographer Thomas Freeman and botanist Peter Custis in 1806. They were supposed to ascend the Red and descend the Arkansas, but were stopped by Spanish soldiers in present Oklahoma.
Pike, too, was apprehended by Spanish soldiers, but we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here. And we should note that Pike wasn't the first American to penetrate our mountains -- that honor belonged to James Purcell, a trader and trapper who found gold at the top of the South Platte in 1805, then ended up in Spanish hands. Pike met him in Santa F.
Wilkinson had already sent Pike up the Mississippi before he ordered him west in the summer of 1806. Pike was a protege of Wilkinson's, without any special exploring experience, let alone the education that Jefferson arranged for Meriwether Lewis -- he'd been a regimental paymaster.
It's hard to know now why Wilkinson chose Pike; I've read a potboiler novel which supposed that Wilkinson had the hots for Clarissa Pike, and thus wanted Zebulon to be far out of town as much as possible. But there's no historic evidence that Mrs. Pike was anything other than devoted and faithful.
Wilkinson, as I've noted, was neither devoted nor faithful to much of anybody. Thus his motives for ordering the Pike expedition remain mysterious to this day. Wilkinson and Burr might have been conspiring to raise their own army to take territory from the Spanish and set up their own little empire in the West -- in which case, information about Spanish defenses in the West would be quite useful.
War between the United States and Spain was a distinct possibility in 1806, and in that case, an American commander would be wise to learn all he could about Spain's defenses in our West -- as well as what routes to take to get there. Wilkinson could have been thinking of our country.
And there was the matter of establishing the boundary of Louisiana, which meant finding the source of the Red River. No American knew than that it headwatered in the panhandle of Texas.
Pike's belief that it started in the Rocky Mountains was based on the most modern of scientific theories -- a map prepared by Baron Alexander von Humboldt, one of the few outsiders ever to visit New World Spain. He'd spent a year in Mexico. Problem was, his map of the northern frontier was based on theories, rather than interview in Santa F cantinas with men who had been there.
And it was the spirit of the age to believe in theories. Jefferson, for instance, believed the continent was symmetrical, with mountains flanking both sides of the Mississippi. Since it was a fairly short portage to get from the Potomac to the Ohio, it must also be a short portage on the west side, from the Missouri to the Columbia. This belief caused a great deal of suffering for the Lewis & Clark crew.
At any rate, Pike's major duty was to travel from St. Louis to the Arkansas River, ascend it to its source, then move south to the headwaters of the Red River, which were theoretically just over the hill, and descend the Red to Louisiana. He had a few rudimentary scientific instruments (thermometer, spyglass, and a surveyor's tool to determine latitude) so he could make a map of some accuracy.
Anza led a force of 600 New Mexico men later augmented
by 200 Utes; Pike had 18 men, whom he called a dam'd set
of rascals.
This brings to mind Gen. William T.
Sherman's comment about Judson Kilpatrick, whom he wanted
to command the cavalry on the march through Georgia. I
know Kilpatrick is a hell of a damned fool, but it is just
such a man that I need to command the cavalry on this
campaign.
Another of Pike's orders was to treat with the Comanche, who were seen as too friendly to the Spanish. In other words, Pike was supposed to undo Anza's work in this department.
After various adventures, which did not include encountering any Comanche even though he begged the Pawnee to take him to the Comanche, Pike was at the mouth of the Royal Gorge on Dec. 7, 1806. Three streams converged near there -- Grape Creek from the southwest, the main Arkansas from the west, and Fourmile Creek from the northwest. Pike sent a couple of privates up the main stem, into the Gorge.
His journal recounts that They had ascended until the
river was merely a brook, bounded on both sides with
perpendicular rocks.
As a former Army private, I'm
pretty sure I know what happened. They ascended until they
were out of Pike's sight, found a comfortable place to loaf
all day, and returned to say that they'd found the source
of the river.
But there was also a Spanish trace
-- a trail
left by scores of horses in the recent past that led
northwest up Fourmile Creek. With a force of 500 men and
2,000 horses, Lt. Facundo Melgares had been out and about
that summer, looking for American explorers and solidifying
Spanish alliances with the Comanche and Pawnee before
returning to Santa F before the hard winter set in.
Pike followed the Spanish trace
into South Park,
where he found a river flowing northeast. He correctly
surmised it was the Platte -- the South Platte -- and
headed west again. By his logic, the river that headwatered
behind the Arkansas had to be the Red. And since the
Arkansas started at the Royal Gorge, that river on the
other side of Trout Creek Pass must be the Red.
His small force crossed Trout Creek Pass on Dec. 18, and
descended down to what he thought was the Red River,
which was here about 25 yards wide, ran with great
rapidity, and was full of rocks.
They hunted for game
unsuccessfully. Pike sent the men downstream, while he and
two men went upstream so he could inspect the headwaters.
The river continued close to the north mountain
[Mosquito Range], running through a narrow rocky channel in
some places not more than 20 feet wide and at least 10 feet
deep. Its banks were bordered by yellow pine, cedar,
etc.
The next day, Dec. 22, they Marched up 13 miles, to a
large point of the mountain, whence we had a view of at
least 35 miles, to where the river entered the mountains;
it being at that place not more than 10 or 15 feet wide,
and properly speaking, only a brook..... Killed one turkey
and a hare.
The party re-assembled on Dec. 23, but was out of food.
Then they killed eight buffalo on Christmas Eve. Thus,
from being in a starving condition, we had eight beeves in
our camp.
The next day, the celebrated the first Christmas in Colorado. They were camped at the downstream end of Brown's Canyon, a couple of miles southeast of where the highway historical marker is today.
Pike wrote that Here, 800 miles from the frontiers of
our country, in the most inclement season of the year --
not one person clothed for the winter -- many without
blankets, having been obliged to cut them up for socks,
etc., and now lying down at night on the now or wet ground,
one side burning whilst the other was pierced with the cold
wind -- such was in part the situation of the party, whilst
some were endeavoring to make a miserable substitute of raw
buffalo hid for shoes, etc.
Many officers might thing that these deficiencies might reflect on their inability to equip their men properly for the expedition -- Lewis & Clark made camp and laid over for the winter -- but not Pike.
He concluded that We spent the day as agreeably as
could be expected from men in our situation.
Pike didn't make it to Poncha Springs, the Crossroads of the Rockies, on the next day or any other day. And that persuades me that he was honestly lost.
Many historians theorize that Pike knew he was actually on the Arkansas, not the Red, when he camped near here, and that he planned to get on the Rio Grande and penetrate Spanish territory.
But if that was the case, why didn't he use Poncha Pass? The gap was quite visible from his route, and it led straight to the Rio Grande and what was definitely Spanish soil. If Pike was mainly a spy headed for the Rio Grande, his path would have crossed Anza's here, not near Salida.
But Instead, he went down the river -- the river he honestly thought was the Red. Here's his account of Dec. 26, 1806:
Marched at two o'clock and made 7 miles to the
entrance of the mountains. On this piece of prairie the
river spreads considerably, and forms several small
islands; a large stream [the Little River or South
Arkansas] enters from the south. As my boy and some others
were sick, I omitted pitching our tent in order that they
might have it; in consequence, we were completely covered
with snow on top, as well as that part on which we
lay.
There are a couple of things worth noting here. One is that the river was wide and braided, not the narrow channel we know today -- which is probably a result of railroad excavation and filling along the banks. Another is that the river was frozen over -- not just around Granite, but at Salida, and clear down to Parkdale, as Pike describes later. And for that matter, there aren't many White Christmases hereabouts. Pike must have picked a brutal winter, or else he was exaggerating -- he was prone to that.
Pike's trip got worse from here. We will hear plenty about it next year, so I'll make this very brief.
They made their way down their Red
River, worked
their way around the Royal Gorge, and found their old camp,
realizing they had been on the Arkansas all along. Instead
of settling in for the winter in balmy Cañon City,
Pike climbed rugged Grape Creek Canyon in the dead of
winter, had to leave two men behind whose feet were
freezing off, got into the Wet Mountain Valley, then
crossed Medano Pass -- he gave us the first account of the
Great Sand Dunes -- and eventually built his little
stockade in the San Luis Valley. He was on Rio Grande
draining, not the Red, even if logic told him it had to be
the Red.
There the Utes spotted him, reported him to the authorities in Santa F, and he was captured by Spanish soldiers. They were sent to Chihuahua before being released to United States Territory at Natchitoches, Louisiana, on June 30, 1807. Pike continued his Army career, and died in 1815 when a powder magazine exploded at the siege of York (present Toronto). A flying stone smashed his head; he was a general by then.
Five of his men, for reasons still unknown, were kept for two more years in Mexico, and Sgt. William C. Meek, after killing Private Theodore Miller in a drunken scuffle, was held for 14 years.
The governor in Santa F, Joachim Alencaster, wrote a
report to his superiors. I conclude distinctly that the
expedition of July was specially designed to conciliate two
Indian tribes in behalf of the U.S. Government, to make
them liberal presents, and drawing them into friendship,
treaty, and commerce, to place them under the
Anglo-American protection -- all this referring especially
to the Comanche tribe, the most powerful of our allies.
Allies, thanks to Anza's successful 1779 campaign.
Now to some comparisons. I think any of us would have rather rode under Anza, even though he was bound for battle. Pike's men shivered in their cotton summer uniforms without shoes, and were armed with rifles which often broke. Anza, though he mentions suffering from the cold and a summer snowstorm, was much better prepared. And let's face it, Central Colorado in August and September is much to be preferred to Central Colorado in December and January.
Anza also succeeded in his campaign. He forced the Comanche to make peace, and the Spanish held on to Santa F and the Rio Arriba -- had they been forced to withdraw to El Paso in 1779, the culture of the American Southwest would be very different.
Pike failed to find the source of the Red River. He failed to treat with the Comanche, for he never encountered them. He failed to look after the welfare of his soldiers, and threatened to have one shot just for complaining about having to carry a 70-pound pack through three feet of snow while barefoot in subzero weather.
Anza knew where he was at all times.
As for their journals, Pike wins here. Anza's was terse, strictly a military report. Pike describes the Arkansas here; Anza just says he forded the Rio Nepestle and leaves it at that.
Pike runs for hundreds of pages, which is quite impressive when you realize it was written from memory because the Spanish had confiscated his papers. One big difference is that Pike writes his like a guide to occupying the territory. He speculates about what crops might be grown, what clay might make brick, where towns might arise, the loyalty of the residents toward the Spanish authorities, how the Spanish colonial army might be defeated -- he basically wrote a road map for much of the Santa F Trail, as well as the Mexican War that came 40 years later.
As it was, he was one of the provocations that led to
the settlement of the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase.
That came in the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819. The U.S.
got Florida, and forever
renounced any claim to
Texas. (In view of my politics and the current
administration in Washington, that's one treaty promise we
might have been better off keeping.)
The boundary between the United States and New World Spain was set at the Red River, by then known to originate in the Texas Panhandle, to the 100th Meridian, then north to the Arkansas at about Dodge City, Kan., and the river from there north to its source. The boundary remained the same after Mexico got its independence in 1821.
Anza's journal just went to the archives. So far as I know, it was never published until 1922, when an American historian translated it. Pike's account was published in 1810, and was something of a best-seller in its day. He, however, never collected any royalties because the publisher went bankrupt. But it must have made thousands of Americans look for adventure in the West, and he rightly pointed out that the New Mexicans wanted American trade, for Spain had established monopolies and prices were exorbitant for manufactured goods. Anza's journal never inspired Mexicans to think about moving north.
And I should note that in reading Pike's journal, we can understand more about Anza. One year here, someone asked what rations Anza's soldiers carried, and how they were armed.
Pike's spywork answers those questions. Their lances
are fixed to the side of the saddle ... and slant about
five feet above the horse. On the right the carbine is
slung in a case to the front of the saddle ... on each side
of the saddle, behind the rider, is a pistol; below the
breech of the carbine is slung the shield, which is made of
sole leather three doubled.... The dragoons ... do not make
use of the lance or shield.... When they recently expected
to be opposed to the American troops they were deprived of
the lance and shield, and received the straight cutlass in
their stead.
As for their food, The traveling food of the dragoons
in New Mexico consists of a very excellent species of wheat
biscuit, and shaved meat well dried, with a vast quantity
of red pepper, of which they make bouilli [basically, a
soup that sounds a lot like chili] and then pour it on
their broken biscuit, when the latter becomes soft and
excellent eating.
So to fill out our understanding of Anza, we need to read Pike. And we can speculate about what would have happened if they had actually met out here, if Anza had been 25 years younger
Alencaster, who had Anza's job in 1807, received Pike with suspicion and courtesy, and reported the intrusion to his superiors. There's no reason to believe that Anza would have acted any differently.
When I'm in a certain mood, I like to imagine an old soldier's home somewhere in the sky, where one afternoon Pike strolls into a sitting room, spouting romantic bombast about his adventures.
Relaxing in a comfortable chair is Juan Bautista de Anza, tough and hard as boot leather. He fixes Pike with a a wordless glare.
The American officer knows the real thing when he sees it, so General Pike quietly and respectfully sits down next to Governor Anza.
Hell, I knew it was the Napestle [Arkansas] soon as
we crossed Footpath [Poncha] Pass,
Anza says. Even
knew where it headwatered, up in the sierras to the
northwest. How in tarnation did you get so turned around
out there?
Those damned maps from Baron von Humboldt,
Pike
replies. That so-called scientist had me convinced the
Red had to come out of the Shining Mountains.
Indeed, I had a better mapmaker,
Anza replies. He
snaps his fingers at a steward, who fetches a bottle of
madiera and two glasses. They begin an eternal afternoon of
swapping tales about old times out here on the fringes of
empire.
Thank you, and good evening.
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