Dominguez Escalante Journal: Their Expedition Through Colorado Utah Az & N Mex 1776

Great book. The beginning is a little dry & slow but it gets better after the first few weeks of the expedition. An unusual encounter of West meeting East that didn't result in conflict and war but peaceful communications.

This is a translation from Spanish of an early exploration in the Southwest of the US. Pretty amazing journal.

Fray Atanasio Dominguez and his junior colleague, Fray Francisco Velez de Escalante, set out with fifteen men from Santa Fe, New Mexico in July 1776 searching for an overland route from Santa Fe to Monterrey, Alta California, but also looking for new mission and settlement fields for the Franciscan Order and the Spanish Crown. While ultimately unsuccessful in terms of its principal goal, reaching Monterrey, the Dominguez-Escalante expedition was exemplary in terms of honorable treatment of the native peoples, description of their customs, lifestyles, linguistic affinities and appearance, as well as careful recording of geography, natural resources and settlement potential of the route travelled. In regards to good relations with the Indians, this expedition ranks up there with the survival trek of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions Dorantes, Maldonado and Estavanico two and a half centuries earlier.Probably the foremost discovery made by the expedition was Utah Lake (their Timpanogos Lake). While there, they recorded the local’s description of a larger, salt lake (the Great Salt Lake) in the next valley to the north, although they never visited it. They also encountered heavily bearded groups of Ute Indians, which they reasoned accounted for various accounts of a lost Spanish colony north of the Colorado River. They found a crossing of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon, now submerged, later used as part of the Spanish Trail, a route for trade between New Mexico and California, before hostilities with the Navajo made it impractical.I’d rate both an excellent read for those interested in the history and cartography of European exploration of the American West, as well as for fascinating insights into life in colonial New Mexico and the interaction amongst Europeans and Native Americans there and beyond.

This is a great book and in great condition. I am a historian of spanish history in the United States. It is unfornute that spanish history gets breezed over/ignored in our country. I search for books like this all the time and Amazon has always been the best source.

This was required reading for a class several years ago and I lost the book. Loved it so much that I purchased it for my personal collection.