, mesa, is also called the Morro. Chas. F. Lummis
has also written on this subject.

Skirting the southern edge of the beautiful San Francisco Mountain
region, through the superb forest of pine trees, Onate finally descended
from the Colorado Plateau to the headwaters of the Verde, where he met a
tribe called Cruzados, because they wore little crosses from the hair of
the forehead, a relic, no doubt, of the time when Alarcon had so
freely distributed these emblems among the tribes he encountered on the
Colorado, friends probably of these Cruzados. The latter reported the
sea twenty days distant by way of a small river running into a greater,
which flowed to the salt water. The small river was Bill Williams Fork,
and on striking it Onate began to see the remarkable pitahaya adorning
the landscape with its tall, stately columns; and all the strange
lowland vegetation followed. The San Andreas, as he called this stream,
later named Santa Maria by Garces, he followed down to the large river
into which it emptied, the Colorado, which he called the Rio Grande
de Buena Esperanza, or River of Good Hope, evidently deciding that
it merited a more distinguished title than had been awarded it at the
supposed headwaters. He appears to have well understood what river
this was, and we wonder why he gave it a new name when it had already
received two. Sometimes in new lands explorers like to have their own
way. They went down the Colorado, after a party had examined the river
a little above the mouth of the Bill Williams Fork, meeting with various
bands of friendly natives, among whom we recognise the Mohaves and the
Cocopas. Not far below where Onate reached the Esperanza he entered the
Great Colorado Valley and soon crossed the highest point attained by
Alarcon in 1340, probably near the upper end of the valley. He now
doubled Alarcon's and presently also Melchior Diaz's paths, and arrived
at the mouth of the river on the 25th of January, 1605, the first white
man in over sixty years. A large harbour which struck his fancy was
named in honour of the saint's day, Puerto de la Conversion de San
Pablo, for the sun seldom went down without a Spaniard of those days
thus propitiating a saint. We are more prone to honour the devil in
these matters. The Gila they called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name
never used again. So it often happens with names bestowed by explorers.
The ones they regard most highly vanish, while some they apply
thoug