Without Noise of Arms: The 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Search for a Route from Santa Fe to Monterey

By Walter Briggs

Book Overview

Book by Briggs, Walter This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087358418X
• ISBN13: 9780873584180
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Northland Publishing
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A good account of an amazing journey

This book is a good account of an incredibly significant journey. It's the story of Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, two Spanish friars, who were tasked in 1776 with the goal of forging a route from a mission in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to a mission in Monterrey, California, and of locating sites for new missions along the way-to convert Indian "heathens," "barbarians," and "infidels." Domínguez was in his mid-thirties, but Escalante was only about twenty-five years old. The two, with a small group of others, decided to avoid a northern route--out of fear of an Indian tribe rumored to eat light-skinned travelers--and as a result were among the very first to make maps and to record details of the Southwest's rivers and mesas. Their group started late in the year though, a sudden blizzard soon made progress impossible, and when they reached north-central Utah, they decided to head south and work their way back to New Mexico. They ran out of food, lived by eating their horses, and suffered unbearable cold, rebellious group members, and severe, frequent thirst. They reached the Colorado River around present-day Lees Ferry, southwest of where Glen Canyon Dam is now, and worked their way north along the river, looking for a way across. They passed the often-photographed Castle Rock and Gunsight Butte, chipped steps into the slickrock to allow their pack animals to get down to the shore, lowered their belongings over a cliff with ropes, and after some scouting, found an ancient Ute Indian river crossing, where the water was slow and shallow enough to ride across. That place became known as the Crossing of the Fathers, and is right around where Lake Powell's Padre Bay is now. Their trip made an approximately two thousand-mile-long circle through mostly unexplored terrain, took nearly six-and-a-half months, and explored more undocumented, unknown land than Lewis and Clark would later in their over two-year-long journey. When the fathers got back to Santa Fe, however, only their failure to reach California mattered much to anyone, along with their apparent waste of funds, horses, and supplies. Escalante was practically exiled, and died within five years as the result of bad health obtained from his trials in the desert. Domínguez was demoted, his possibilities of advancement destroyed, and he died anonymously as an old man, never recognized for what he'd done. This book is a good account of their underappreciated journey, uses good maps, and explore's the expeditions many characters well. It samples heavily from the expedition's journals, and supplements them well with modern-day descriptions of their old campsites and routes, and it places their story firmly in the context of their times, religion, and nationality. This story is a must-know-story for any interested in the history of the West, and this book is a good place to start.