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

About this book

Northland Press Published Date: 1976. Hardcover 212 pp. From front jacket flap In July of 1776 two young Franciscan missionaries led a party of eight other men on what was to become Spains ultimate thrust of colonial energy in the New World. Searching for a route from Santa Fe to the California presidio at Monterey these ten men explored and adventured over more than two thousand miles of virgin territory in New Mexico Colorado Utah and Arizona a distance greater than that covered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition three decades later. Their circuitous route took them over some of the most beautiful and inhospitable terrain in the Western Hemisphere. Unknowingly they roved the Great Basin and became the first white men to successfully attempt a crossing of the Colorado River canyons. During the five months of their wayfaring they would meet and deal peacefully with more than a dozen Indian tribes many of whom had never seen their like before. Traveling "without noise of arms " the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition would come to represent one of the few bright chapters in the bloody journal of racial and religious oppression written by European man on this continent. The extensive daily chronicle kept by Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante and which later served as the official report of the Expedition is the basis for much of Walter Briggss source material. Excerpts from the Franciscans log provide a fascinating picture of the Expedition and its members. Landscape artist Wilson Hurleys oil paintings of which ten are reproduced in these pages were created as he traveled the route taken by those ten ten unique men two hundred years ago.