Essay by Ed Quillen
History – August 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
THIS YEAR, Salida and Poncha Springs will host the Anza World Conference, which runs from Aug. 26 to 28 in various local venues like the Steam Plant and the St. Joseph’s Great Hall. The major public event is scheduled for the evening of Aug. 27 when Don Garate of the National Park Service portrays Juan Bautista de Anza at Chipeta Park in Poncha Springs.
(There’s a considerable fee to attend the entire conference, but this event is free and open to the public, a gift to the community from the Anza World Conference. But note that there is no meal included.)
By some quirk, the calendar fits the occasion. It was on Friday, August 27, 1779 that Anza’s army of 800 soldiers came down Poncha Pass, crossed the South Arkansas River, and camped. And it will be at that same place, 225 years later to the day (another Friday, August 27) that Garate, who is probably the world’s leading authority on Anza, will portray him and talk about Anza and our history.
If we define history as “a written record of the past,” then the history of Central Colorado starts with Anza. The Utes had been here for hundreds of years, but they were not a literate people; not until 1977 did the Southern Ute language become a written one (after the tribe hired a linguist who spent two years compiling the first dictionary).
So it was Anza who left the first written record of the Saguache area, Poncha Pass, and the upper Arkansas Valley. He was a frontier soldier, as well as a colonial administrator (governor of the Province of New Mexico), and it was part of his job to file reports for his superiors to read — government bureaucracies haven’t changed much in two and a quarter centuries.
In a literal sense, he put us on the map. Many of his place names did not survive, but it appears that he christened the San Luis Valley as his army marched north at night so that they would not churn up a cloud of dust visible to any Comanche look-outs who might have been lurking high in the Sangre de Cristos. Here’s his journal for Tuesday, Aug. 24, 1779:
“Tonight we continued north and over good terrain made 4 leagues [a league was about 3 miles], then descended for 4 more toward north-northwest which brought us the next day to a beautiful marsh which we named the San Luis. From the beginning of our march, as mentioned before, we suffered cruelly from the cold, and to overcome it we indulged ourselves by building some fires, but since we discovered off to the east of us many signs of what we took to be enemies, we put them out, only to find that what we saw were the remains of campfires made a long while before, a deception that we did not discover before eight the next morning. On the 18th of July of this year a large number of Comanches attacked a larger number of Yutas [Utes] at this place where they had located with their families, and although the former succeeded in taking all their horses under the cover of darkness, the latter came off with the advantage, having killed 12 of the thieves, one of them a chief, their bodies bearing better witness
(These translations are from the University of Oregon at http://anza.uoregon.edu. There’s also a good translation in Ron Kessler’s book, Anza’s 1779 Comanche Campaign, published by Adobe Village Press and available in local bookstores.)
ANZA DOESN’T EXPLAIN why they called the “beautiful marsh” (near the present town of Saguache) San Luis, but scholars point out that they arrived there in the early hours of Aug. 25, which was El Día de San Luis, Rey de Francia — the feast day of Saint Louis.
After the next night’s march, he applied a place name that didn’t stick:
“[August] 25th. Wednesday. At nightfall we resumed our march toward the northeast for one league, after which we went two more leagues toward the north-northwest then three more toward the northwest, coming to a creek that we named San Gines . Notwithstanding the fact that up to this place we had always marched using advance spies I have decided that from now on it will be done more carefully and farther ahead, in consequence of which 15 left today to reunite on the 29th.”
His San Gines creek is now known as Kerber Creek, so this campsite was somewhere west of Villa Grove. They started toward Poncha Pass:
“26th. Thursday. At four in the afternoon we continued toward the northeast for 4 leagues, at the end of which we stopped for the night, waiting for tomorrow to cross the difficult terrain ahead, since this place was the water hole of the Yutas. From the time we left the San Luis Marsh until the last water hole the mountains seemed to be closing in and turn us right and left….”
And on the next day, Friday, Aug. 27, they quit marching at night, and resumed daylight travel from the general area of Round Hill: “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 Augustín where we finished the day’s march.”
SO THEY CROSSED Poncha Pass and came down Poncha Creek to its junction with the South Arkansas (his San Augustín), and they camped there – where the town of Poncha Springs is today. Poncha means “gentle” in Spanish – but from Anza’s description of a hard ride, it’s clear that he didn’t name it that.
Even though this interpretation of his route seems sensible to me and most others who’ve considered it, there are people who will argue about it. Anza didn’t carry surveying equipment, so his “leguas” or “leagues” were estimates. From the journal, it appears that he carried only two instruments: a watch, since he often mentions the time, and a compass, since he mentions directions. But he probably didn’t know about “magnetic declination” — a compass needle points to the magnetic north pole, rather than true north.
Currently, magnetic north is 10º24′ east of true north in this area. But it changes over time (the adjustment was 13º50′ in 1900), so we really don’t know precisely which direction was north for Anza. Or perhaps he was getting directions from Polaris in the night sky, which would eliminate the complications of magnetic north – trying to figure out things like this is one of the fascinations of the Anza campaign.
To return to that campaign, we left them in Poncha Springs on the night of Aug. 27. Here’s the entry for the 28th:
“A little before seven we started out toward the northeast and in little more than a league we crossed the Río 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.”
THE RÍO NEPESTLE is what the Spanish called the Arkansas River. This means Anza knew exactly where he was, unlike Zebulon Pike, who was in the same area in 1806-07, and thought he was on the Red River.
For years I assumed that Anza meant they followed the South Arkansas down to Salida or nearby, forded the Arkansas, then crossed the Arkansas Hills (on some variant of modern Ute Trail) to the south edge of South Park. Others, like Ron Kessler during his first research on the route, had Anza going clear up to Trout Creek Pass, although he changed his mind after a visit to Ute Trail a decade ago.
Terry Scanga of Salida knows that country a lot better than I ever will, and when I asked him about a possible Anza route from Poncha Springs, he figured they forded the Arkansas near Big Bend, about 4 miles due north of Poncha Springs (where U.S. 285 is next to the river). That’s closer to the journal, but we’ve got that compass problem. Big Bend would have been either due north, if Anza was navigating by Polaris, or northwest, if Anza was going by his compass and magnetic north.
But if you go a little more than a league northeast from Poncha, you end up about a mile downstream of Big Bend in the neighborhood of the Mt. Ouray Fish Hatchery on County Road 160. Cross the river and continue in the same general direction for another three-mile league in Sand Park, and you could be at a gulch (Dead Goat or Long’s) that takes you into the Arkansas Hills, a “medium mountain range.”
Anza says they needed two leagues to cross these mountains; my map makes it more like three leagues, but he was estimating, and he might have meant that he had “crossed” the mountains when he reached the divide between the Arkansas and South Platte drainages. After that, it’s easy to see them heading east for four leagues along some low hills at the south edge of South Park, resting their horses, then continuing eastward for 15 miles to his “Lost Hills,” about 10 miles south of Guffey.
That’s one theory, anyway. Trying to determine Anza’s route from Poncha Springs to the Pueblo area and his battle with the Comanche will be part of this year’s World Anza Conference.
WHY BOTHER? Good question, and I don’t have a good answer. Just call it a hobby, I suppose. My first encounter with Anza came in 1979 or so, when we were working on 100 Years in the Heart of the Rockies, the centennial project of The Mountain Mail that came out in 1980. Cynthia Pasquale researched and wrote most of it, but I did the editing, and at some point, I read about Anza in her work, and she pointed me to his journal. I thought it would be neat if we could start Salida’s 1980 centennial celebration with a 1979 bicentennial celebration of Anza’s visit, but it was too late in 1979 to arrange anything like that.
We started this magazine in the spring of 1994, and shortly after we got going, I heard from Phil Carson, a writer and history buff who then lived in Pueblo. Phil went on to write a history of Spanish exploration in Colorado, Across the Northern Frontier, but at the time, he was part of the Old Spanish Trail Association. When we talked, he mentioned that he had a presentation about Spanish exploration in Colorado, including Anza, and he’d love to come up here and do it sometime.
Later that summer, the Colorado Glider Association met in Salida, and part of the convention was a picnic at the home of Mark Emmer and Nancy Vickery. I don’t fly gliders, but Mark and Nancy invited a lot of other people who don’t glide, either. Among them was John Engelbrecht (now an owner of First Street Furniture in Salida), who was then mayor of Poncha Springs.
We were next to each other in a long line to get our grilled brats, and somehow the talk turned to local history, and I mentioned I knew a guy who’d like to come up here and talk about Anza, who had camped in Poncha Springs. Since John was mayor, he said it would be no trouble to arrange for the town’s facilities, if I could raise some money to pay Phil Carson. We decided to hold it on an August weekend, as close as possible to the Aug. 27 date that Anza camped there.
It went over pretty well, and so most years thereafter, there’s been an Anza Day in Poncha Springs, with the same general arrangements: the town provides its facilities, and I twist a few arms and raise some money to pay the speaker.
One of those speakers was Ron Kessler of Monte Vista, who spoke in 1995 after coming to the first Anza Day in 1994. He was acquainted with Don Garate, the Anza-portraying ranger at Tumacàcori National Historical Park in southern Arizona. They got to talking, Ron mentioned Poncha’s Anza Day, which indicated there might be interest in something bigger – like a conference for Anza scholars from all over.
Anza didn’t just camp in Poncha Springs. His adventures here were only a small part of his career on la frontera del norte. In 1776 he led colonists across hostile deserts to found the Presidio of San Francisco, and now he’s got a major street and a college named after him in San Francisco, California .
So there have been annual Anza World Conferences since 1995, in locations that Anza visited, ranging from Arispe, Sonora, Mexico, to Monte Vista, Colorado. I’ve never been to any of them, so this year’s will be my first.
BUT AS I NOTED at the beginning, the calendar makes this a good year to hold the conference here, since Don Garate’s presentation can be on Friday, August 27, in the same place as Anza camped on a Friday, August 27, 225 years ago.
And the recognition that Anza is part of our history seems to have had some effect on local lore. Poncha has an Anza subdivision, and a local chamber-music group calls itself “De Anza.”
As for next year, I’ll try to get speakers with differing perspectives – my current hope is to find a military historian who can talk about weapons, strategies and logistics. Over the years, we’ve had some wonderful presentations. And they have opened my mind.
For instance, we tend to think of “Indians” as a united group who opposed the white men, who were in turn all hostile to all Indians.
But one reason I enjoy learning more about Anza is that he went to war against the Comanche on behalf of Indian allies he had promised to protect — the Pueblos and the Utes. He was that rare powerful white guy who kept his word to the Indians. And along the way to fight the Comanche, he met some Utes who said, in essence, “Hey, if you’re riding forth to kill some Comanche, can we come along?”
Comanche is a Ute word which means “people we fight with,” and this demonstrates that things were a lot more complicated than the simplistic stuff that often passes for history.
There’s much more I could write, but mostly I have more questions – about Anza’s exact route through here, of course, but also about his compass and the magnetic declination in 1779. And who might have been up here before him so that Pacheco could produce such a good map before the campaign. And why didn’t he carry a barometer and a thermometer, and why was his journal so terse? And how much has Spanish changed since his day, and did he write in a formal court Spanish or some New World dialect?
Maybe I’ll get some answers this year, but I suspect that they will just produce more questions. Which makes Anza a pretty good hobby, because it’s one I’ll just have to stick with.
