go, Cardenas reached the Grand Canyon opposite the east side of the
Shewits plateau.

Of the Little Colorado Garces said: "The bed of this river as far as the
confluence is a trough of solid rock, very profound, and wide about a
stone's throw." That this was an accurate statement the view on page 95
amply proves. Indeed, the accuracy of most of these early Spaniards, as
to topography, direction, etc., is extraordinary. As a rule where they
are apparently wrong it is ourselves who are mistaken, and if we fully
understand their meaning we find them to be correct. Garces found his
way down to the Little Colorado by means of a side canyon and got
out again on the other side in the same way. Finally, on July 2nd, he
arrived at the pueblo of Oraibi, his objective point, and when he and
his tired mule had climbed up on the mesa which bears the town, the
women and children lined the housetops to get a glimpse of the singular
stranger.

Spaniards were something of a novelty, though by no means unheard of,
just as even I was something of a novelty when I visited Oraibi
one hundred years after the Padre Garces, because the Oraibis never
encouraged white visitors.* The first missions were established among
the Moki in 1629, when Benavides was custodian of the Rio Grande
district, and included Zuni and Moki in his field. Three padres were
then installed at Awatuwi, one of the towns, on the mesa east of what is
now called the "East" Mesa. Four were at work amongst the various towns
at the time of the Pueblo uprising in 1680, and as one began his labours
at Oraibi as early as 1650, a priest was not an unknown object to the
older people. All the missionaries having been killed in 1680, and
Awatuwi, where a fresh installation was made, having been annihilated in
1700 by the Moki, for three-quarters of a century they had seen few if
any Spaniards. Therefore the women and children were full of curiosity.
Padre Escalante had been here from Zuni the year before, looking over
the situation with a view to bringing all the Moki once more within the
fold. At that time Escalante also tried to go on to what he called the
Rio de los Cosninos, the Colorado, but he was unable to accomplish his
purpose. Had he once had a view of the Grand Canyon it would undoubtedly
have saved him a good many miles of weary travel in his northern entrada
of this same year that Garces reached Oraibi.

* A year or two after my visit, James Stevenson, of the B