Latest / California Frontier / 052: Beyond the Devil's Road Part 1: Interview with author Dr. Jeremy Beer

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052: Beyond the Devil's Road Part 1: Interview with author Dr. Jeremy Beer · California Frontier

• 0:00
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: I think you're really going to enjoy my interview.
• 0:02
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: With author, Jeremy beer.
• 0:05
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: Who recently published a book titled beyond the devils road, Fransisco God says, and the Spanish encounter with the American Southwest.
• 0:14
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: It is an extremely well-researched, but eminently readable story.
• 0:20
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: Of courage and hope.
• 0:22
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: Violence and tragedy and simple and honest humanity.
• 0:27
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: And it takes place in.
• 0:31
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: One of the harshest environments in the north American continent.
• 0:36
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: The U S Southwest.
• 0:39
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: The protagonist.
• 0:40
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: Is Frye Francisco Garces.
• 0:43
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: And he's one of the great very unknown explorers of the American Southwest.
• 0:49
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: he's not a military man.
• 0:51
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: He's not a politician.
• 0:52
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: He's not an administrator.
• 0:54
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: But.
• 0:55
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: A human being, trying to do the best that he can.
• 1:00
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: Under difficult circumstances.
• 1:02
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: It's a fascinating story.
• 1:05
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: And I think that you're going to be intrigued by what Jeremy has to say.
• 1:11
  RODECaster Duo Main Stereo & Cam Link 4K-3: So let's listen to the first part of my interview.
• 1:20
  Damian Bacich: Welcome to California Frontier, the show about the often overlooked and unexpected early history of the place we call California.
• 1:29
  Damian Bacich: I'm your host, Damian Basich.
• 1:38
  Damian Bacich: So, Jeremy Beer, I'm really excited to have you here.
• 1:42
  Damian Bacich: Thanks for agreeing to come on the show.
• 1:46
  Damian Bacich: And, uh, I want to give you a big congratulations, as I mentioned before we started on this podcast.
• 1:52
  Damian Bacich: on this great project that you put out, Beyond the Devil's Road, the story of, of Father Garcés.
• 1:59
  Damian Bacich: And, yeah, I'm really, I'm really looking forward to, to hearing about it.
• 2:05
  Damian Bacich: And It's a book I think everybody should read.
• 2:08
  Damian Bacich: I think it's going to give a lot of, it's going to, it's, it provides a lot of information that maybe people aren't aware of.
• 2:15
  Damian Bacich: So, you know, maybe we can start by talking a little bit about yourself, who you are, what inspired you to write this book.
• 2:25
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Damian, uh, first, thanks for having me on.
• 2:28
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I love your podcast.
• 2:29
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I've learned a lot from it.
• 2:31
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And, um, as I hope I have a chance to say even more later, you played a not insignificant role in this book coming to fruition.
• 2:41
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, you took a meeting with me, uh, in, uh, San, where was, Berkeley or someplace like that several years
• 2:48
  Damian Bacich: I think, together.
• 2:49
  Damian Bacich: That great.
• 2:50
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: You were very encouraging.
• 2:51
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I learned a lot from you.
• 2:52
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: You connected me to the.
• 2:54
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Editors of this series in which the book appears, um, Bob Senkiewicz and Rosemarie Beebe at a time when I had no intention of this book ever, um, seeing the light of day with an academic press.
• 3:07
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So just so you know, you, you, uh, you played a big role in this happening.
• 3:11
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So thank you.
• 3:12
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, but that's not what you asked me.
• 3:16
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I, um, I, my, I'm a total interloper in this field.
• 3:21
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: My doctorate is in psychology, uh, from the University of Texas.
• 3:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I always wanted to be an academic, but that wasn't in the cards.
• 3:32
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I ended up going into nonprofit.
• 3:34
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Work and then starting a firm that works with nonprofit organizations a consulting firm.
• 3:39
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So that's my that's my day gig The great thing about being a frustrated academic is that when you're not in academia, you don't have to care about all the things that you would have to care about if you were in academia like you Damian Maybe like promotion or is this my field or what will other I just don't have to care about that sort of thing So, um, I, I just write on whatever I am interested in.
• 4:06
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And, um, I really like writing biographies.
• 4:09
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So I, I undertook this project as a work of biography.
• 4:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, and, uh, but I, I do want to emphasize that I'm in no way, Really qualified to have written it.
• 4:22
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So people can, uh, criticize it or, uh, and, and certainly I'm sure we'll find, um, uh, uh, mistakes and, and, uh, things to, to, uh, that could be better.
• 4:34
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: But, um, yeah, I, I.
• 4:38
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I'm just a, uh, a guy with a consulting firm who likes to write books on the side.
• 4:43
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: That, that's me.
• 4:44
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Well, I can tell you that it's evident that a ton of research went into it.
• 4:51
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Um, copious endnotes, but also all of the background information, the context about the main content.
• 4:59
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: figure, the protagonist of this story, uh, Father Garcés.
• 5:03
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: And so I don't, I don't think that you're on the opposite.
• 5:08
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: I think rather than being an interloper, you've made a really important contribution.
• 5:12
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Could you maybe give us a little synopsis about what this book is about and who, uh, Father Garcés was?
• 5:20
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah.
• 5:20
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, Father Francisco Garces was born in Spain in the province of Aragón and in a tiny little village, Morata.
• 5:36
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It was called, now it's Maratha de Halon, near Zaragoza, uh, and he entered the Franciscans as a young man and either shortly after or shortly before he was ordained a priest in the order.
• 5:55
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, he responded to a recruiter for the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Carretero, Mexico, then New Spain, uh, to, to come over and, um, be trained as a missionary.
• 6:13
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And so this is a book about his life.
• 6:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's the life of Garcés, who ends up having an incredibly adventurous life on the Northwestern frontier of New Spain.
• 6:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: But it's also, uh, for me, anyway, it was, it was, uh, His life offered a lens through which to look at, uh, the Spanish, um, presence in the American Southwest at that time and the Spanish encounter with Native groups there and, um, just a way to tell that story through the life of this one remarkable priest.
• 6:57
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And he was remarkable and the I got interested in this project was I came across Gotta say it's in a book by Robert Kittel called Franciscan Frontiersman, which I'm sure you're familiar with Damian And I would recommend that book to everyone.
• 7:13
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's a great book also from Oklahoma University of Oklahoma Press And he just came off as such a remarkable man.
• 7:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I thought there has to be a biography of this guy Incredibly courageous and also somehow strangely compelling almost a holy fool aspect to him.
• 7:36
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So, uh, he's interesting in his own right because of who he was and because of his adventures.
• 7:42
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And we could talk more about that, the journeys he made, his historical contributions, his ethnological contributions.
• 7:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: But I think it's a bigger story than that in the sense it's just another way to look at that encounter in the late 1700s or this period, 1760, 8 to 1781 to be very, um, specific, uh, and this crucial time, uh, of, uh, this Spanish colonization, exploration, encounter, whatever the noun is we want to use, um, in the American Southwest.
• 8:18
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: So tell me something.
• 8:20
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: You want to, can you give us an idea of the overall amount of territory that he explored?
• 8:27
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Because I think one of the claims you make is that, that he deserves as much or more credit than people like, Lewis and Clark, or other, um, explorers of the South, or of the, of the North American continent.
• 8:44
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Um, he explored a vast area of territory, right?
• 8:47
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah.
• 8:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And in a sense, um, credit, uh, I would just say because of the way he did it.
• 8:55
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, not in so much as, you know, necessarily historical contribution.
• 8:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, it could be, that couldn't necessarily be compared to Lewis and Clark, but, um, no one ever really did it quite the way he did it.
• 9:06
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So what happened was, um, Garcés was trained at Corretero as a missionary.
• 9:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, it gets there in 1763, since the Franciscan college is an elite training center, essentially you might think of it as for missionaries, there are a couple dozen of these.
• 9:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: in, in the new world, uh, in the Spanish dominions at the time he gets there.
• 9:32
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The Jesuits are expelled from Spain and all its dominions in 1767, and the Franciscans at Querétaro are one of the groups that are chosen to take their place on the mission frontier.
• 9:47
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And so, uh, Garcés volunteers for that duty.
• 9:50
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He's one of 14, 14 or 15 guys who are sent to the furthest part of the northern frontier, northern Sonora, the Pima Ria Alta, and Garcés is put at the, at the most exposed post there is, which is San Javier del Bac, San, San Xavier del Bac, uh, south of today's Tucson, south of Tucson then, um, is the most exposed post, I think it's fair to say, on the northern frontier.
• 10:20
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: What makes him remarkable is almost any other of his brother friars would have sort of hunkered down there and possibly made as many trips down to Tubac where the Presidio was as possible.
• 10:31
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And Garcés went further.
• 10:34
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, he decided he had one of the, part of the orders were to explore the lands beyond, and he took that very, very literally and more, um, radically than I think it was intended even.
• 10:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And so he makes five separate major, um, journeys, explore exploration journeys and TRAs.
• 10:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: They might be called in Spanish, uh, in 17 68, 17 70, 71, 74, and 75, 76.
• 11:07
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And all in all, to answer your question, thousands of miles are covered in those journeys.
• 11:12
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: But what makes them very unique, and I'll get back to one of them in here in a second, is that.
• 11:17
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Almost always he traveled alone, at least alone with respect to any fellow Spaniards or Europeans, uh, often with native guides, never with arms, and often without really any food or water.
• 11:32
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And this is in the hottest region of the North American continent, the hottest, driest region of the North American continent.
• 11:40
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's just an incredible story of courage.
• 11:42
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, the first, uh, journey is a couple hundred miles, next one, same.
• 11:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The 1771 journey, he figures out how to cross the Sonoran Desert and then the Yuma Desert to the west of the Colorado River and sees a route to the California coast.
• 11:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: That was an incredible achievement in and of itself.
• 12:01
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's only a few hundred miles.
• 12:03
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, basically the same journey again in 1774 with the first Onza expedition.
• 12:09
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The journey that makes him stand out is the 1775 1776, another solo expedition.
• 12:16
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Expedition he took from Yuma, uh, up to the, uh, Needles area across the Mojave desert to Mission San Gabriel near Los Angeles.
• 12:25
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Back into the Central Valley, north of Bakersfield, then from there across the Mojave Desert again, then across northern Arizona, into the Grand Canyon, then over to, uh, Hopi Land, uh, Moki, as the Spanish knew it, to Old Uribe Village, back to the Colorado River, back down to Yuma, back to, to the Tucson area, San Javier del Baque.
• 12:47
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: That journey is, is, uh, 1, 500 to 2, 000 miles, uh, in that range.
• 12:53
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Took him almost a year, about 11 months.
• 12:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Never in the company of another Spaniard the whole time, except when he was at Mission San Gabriel.
• 13:03
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Just a remarkable and almost, I think, unparalleled journey when you take all factors into consideration, uh, in American history, if we can consider this part of American history.
• 13:14
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So, Yeah, that's what makes him, that's, that's the really fascinating thing.
• 13:19
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And of course, each one of those journeys he kept a diary of, thank God we have them and they all are full of adventures and near death experiences and encounters that are so revealing and so, um, historically fascinating.
• 13:34
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, and, um, I don't think we have that from quite anyone else that I know of.
• 13:38
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: So how come we don't know more about, and this, how come we don't know more about Francisco Garcés?
• 13:45
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who really loves this podcast.
• 13:49
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: I said, Oh yeah, you're going to like this interview.
• 13:51
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: We're talking about, uh, Father Garcés who, who traveled all over the American Southwest, et cetera, et cetera.
• 13:57
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: And he's like, how come I've never heard of him?
• 14:01
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Why do you think we, We probably don't know as much about him as say others like Sarah or even Father Font who went with Ansa's second expedition.
• 14:11
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The main reason is.
• 14:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Unlike Font, for example, uh, unlike Sarah, Garcés was a terrible writer.
• 14:26
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He was not an intellectual, so his writing is bad in a couple of ways.
• 14:30
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: First is the orthography.
• 14:31
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The handwriting is, is, is terrible.
• 14:35
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, he
• 14:36
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: the book.
• 14:36
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: You talk about his, his letters are really hard to follow even for the people who, who received them then.
• 14:44
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: exactly.
• 14:44
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So they were hard for them then.
• 14:45
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Imagine how hard they are for now, even for true experts like yourself or someone like Rosemary Beebe.
• 14:53
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: who, uh, translated some documents for me to make this book possible.
• 14:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Even, even Rosemary, who's an incredible translator, one of the, surely one of the, if not the best translator of Spanish documents from this time period, gave up on a few.
• 15:10
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He said, I'm just going to summarize these and give you bullet points the best I can of what I think is going on here.
• 15:16
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So, that's part of it.
• 15:17
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It was a bad, uh, Uh, not just bad handwriting, but a bad, it just wasn't a good writer.
• 15:22
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He may have had a learning disability of some kind.
• 15:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He may have been dyslexic.
• 15:25
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: People have speculated on those things.
• 15:28
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, Rosemary points out that he was an incredible, um, inventor of neologisms, just smashing together several words to make one new word.
• 15:37
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So he presents challenges just from the sources perspective.
• 15:42
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I think that's number one.
• 15:42
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Herbert Bolton, founder of the field of borderline studies, really wanted to write a biography of Garcés.
• 15:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He was a, um, Uh, he had, had high, uh, regard for him, but he always had too many publishing projects on his plate and never got around to it.
• 15:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: John Kessel.
• 16:00
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Very important scholar in this area.
• 16:03
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Still alive, uh, today.
• 16:05
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, but his heyday in the, was from the 70s, 80s, 90s.
• 16:09
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: John wanted to write a biography, just never got around to it.
• 16:12
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So it's been on the radar for people.
• 16:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And then in the last.
• 16:17
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: You know, 30, 40 years, it's just not where the field has gone.
• 16:21
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: You don't, um, Spanish missionaries are not in fashion from a scholarly perspective, so it probably took someone like me coming from totally outside the field to say, yeah, you know, what the heck?
• 16:34
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, I think this, he, this guy is worthy of a, of a book length, uh, study.
• 16:39
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So I think those are probably the factors.
• 16:42
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, Garcés kind of did it to himself.
• 16:44
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He just not, Font is so, you know, So quotable, such a wonderful writer.
• 16:50
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, Garcés is more of a doer, uh, as they say, maybe a little bit of a holy fool.
• 16:54
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Certainly there's a simplicity to him.
• 16:57
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, and I think that's, uh, unfortunately what that meant was that the sources he left behind were not as rich in some ways as someone like Font.
• 17:07
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: You know, let's go back a little bit.
• 17:09
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: You were talking about how unique he was.
• 17:12
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: But one of the things that you kind of bring out in the book is the, um, the training that the missionaries underwent prior to being sent out.
• 17:23
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: on their missions and how you even compare it from a certain standpoint to Marine Corps training.
• 17:29
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Let's say that, that it was, that the lifestyle and the, and the way they were formed was very rigorous and, and certain from a certain standpoint really did prepare them well for what they did.
• 17:44
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Is that true?
• 17:45
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Am I characterizing that correctly?
• 17:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah, I think that's true.
• 17:50
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, I mean, that's my perspective and interpretation.
• 17:54
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The, the real, um, expert on all this is David Rex Galindo, whom you know, Damian, and who, and from whom I take almost everything I know about the Kalaheos and how they worked.
• 18:07
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And that's what really stood out to me was, And I wanted to put this in terms that, you know, a contemporary, uh, um, of ours can understand for whom the training that a religious and by religious, I mean, someone who's a member of a religious order would get at the time.
• 18:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, it can seem very strange.
• 18:29
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The, the emphasis on self discipline, the emphasis on the disciplining of your appetites, uh, not just your physical appetite, but appetite for pleasure, for instance.
• 18:40
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, the, Uh, the disciplining of the body, uh, that can seem so weird to us, but I think if you think about it in terms of, well, look, this is what we do in the military, or this is what elite athletes do, um, It's, it's, yeah, CrossFit.
• 18:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Exactly.
• 18:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's CrossFit for not just for the spirit and the body, right?
• 19:02
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And that is what you got at the Colegios.
• 19:05
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I think I say the only way in which I think it wasn't, didn't prepare you well for the Frontier may be that, um, the belly was, was fed pretty decently at Carretero.
• 19:17
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, you know, you had chocolate, as you know, drinking hot chocolate was the thing, uh, and some things like that.
• 19:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: But otherwise, it really, instilled, yeah, disciplined desire in the body so well that it made living on the frontier, which was no piece of cake, um, I think possible for guys like Garcés.
• 19:44
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, it, look at his predecessors at San Javier del Bac, um, non Franciscans, the Jesuits, And, again, not that Jesuit training is any piece of cake, but it was harder for them.
• 19:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, one of them, uh, Philippe Segeser.
• 20:02
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Is that how you say his name?
• 20:03
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Do you know, Damian?
• 20:04
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: S E G E S S E R.
• 20:07
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I'm gonna say Segeser.
• 20:08
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He's
• 20:08
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Yeah, I mean,
• 20:09
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah.
• 20:10
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: We'll go with that.
• 20:13
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's not Spanish, so you can't correct me on that one.
• 20:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, he was born to a noble family in Switzerland, and his letters and some of his diaries have been published.
• 20:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And they're just wonderful by To contrast with Garcés, he's writing back to his family like could you send me a, you know, um, all this, these very advanced like kitchen utensils, you know, like a cookie press and, and all these things that would make all of us for a decent life.
• 20:41
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, but he felt he needed those sorts of things to, to, to live in that place.
• 20:46
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, Garcés didn't need any of that and most of his Franciscan peers didn't, to be fair.
• 20:51
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It wasn't, he was totally unique, but that's how the Calejos prepared you.
• 20:56
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: You got by with almost nothing.
• 20:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, and these were not rich missions.
• 21:00
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: These are not the missions of California, you know, in the early 1800s, you know, where these are flourishing, uh, materially.
• 21:09
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: There's basically nothing that's on Javier del Bach when he gets there.
• 21:12
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, um, don't need to go into that story and those details necessarily, but it's, It's rough and the, those, the training that he got at the Colegio I think is responsible for his being able to adapt to that situation well and for his being able to live beside and with the native peoples whom he encountered or lived with at San Javier del Bac, the Oldham, um, without That being a hardship for him either, you know, they're there in some ways, maybe their, uh, material flourishing was better than what he would have had.
• 21:52
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, it's on how to, you know, the Bach in the, in the mission missionaries quarters.
• 21:57
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: I can only imagine.
• 21:57
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: I mean, I've been to San Javier out there outside of Tucson, and I mean, even today in the 21st century, it's a pretty, uh, for lack of a better word, it's sort of a desolate area, right?
• 22:11
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: And, uh, the mission itself is impressive, the people there are impressive, but it's, I can only imagine if it were an outpost, you know, hundreds of miles away from anything, uh, how it must have been then at that time.
• 22:25
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: You know,
• 22:26
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah,
• 22:27
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: I was wondering, can you, how did he, maybe we can zoom out a little bit and talk a little bit about what was going on.
• 22:36
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: on the frontier.
• 22:38
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: Why was Garcés sent where he was?
• 22:41
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: And what was the context of the Spanish, uh, occupation of the Southwest at that time that he's, he's doing all these things?
• 22:52
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: right.
• 22:52
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah.
• 22:53
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Good question.
• 22:54
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So.
• 22:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The frontier had been expanded to San Javier del Bac by Father Eusebio Quino, a Jesuit, um, and, and prior to Garcés, I would say, sort of the other really big figure on the frontier, um, in the late 1600s.
• 23:14
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I think, I think San Javier del Bac was founded as a mission in 1692.
• 23:19
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It didn't, it didn't really have anything, um, there was no real building there.
• 23:26
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: But the expansion of the frontier had stalled by the time Garcés got there in 1768.
• 23:34
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, posted in the area, but it had, there was a sense of decline that the, that, um, Spain was no longer expanding here.
• 23:43
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And that was due to a lot of factors.
• 23:45
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: One, there was a big revolt led by Luis of Zarek, um, in 1751.
• 23:52
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, he was, um, a Pima Indian, uh, in the, to use the Spanish terminology.
• 23:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, Odom, that would be the preferred terminology today.
• 24:02
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So that had, that was a very effective revolt, revolt dragged on for many, many years.
• 24:07
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, and so that had stalled things and there was a lot of tension in the air.
• 24:13
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Also, there were the German speaking Jesuits who had been assigned to this area of the frontier and the generation prior to Garcés getting there.
• 24:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: We're not, um, warm and fuzzy.
• 24:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, insert German stereotype here if you wish, but, but that's really true.
• 24:32
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: They were not that they were, um, I'm not trying to cast them as just, you know, cartoon villains.
• 24:38
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, but they've left a lot of writing behind and the contrast between how they spoke about the Native Americans and their care versus the way Garcés spoke about them is very stark.
• 24:50
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, And I am not, again, um, I don't want to indulge in any sort of easy, um, you know, moralism here.
• 25:01
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Probably most of us would have, would have been the same.
• 25:04
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, but they were, they were not warm and fuzzy.
• 25:08
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: In fact, they can, they could be cruel and they sometimes could be violent.
• 25:14
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And so it wasn't a great to give you.
• 25:16
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So that's sort of the picture.
• 25:18
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I think it was a frontier in decline.
• 25:20
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It wasn't expanding.
• 25:22
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And then the other factor that was really going on is there's, um, the Apache, uh, people that various Apache bands, um, would make frequent raids onto the frontier, uh, this was a integral to their.
• 25:40
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, way of life and, um, they, they sort of had a symbiotic existence with whatever ranches or missions, um, mines, that kind of thing might be there because they, they, they were raiding opportunities for them.
• 25:55
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And in fact, they raided San Javier del Bach multiple times as soon as Garces got there and, and, and it took a lot of livestock and so forth.
• 26:05
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So.
• 26:06
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Does that give you a sense that answer the question Damian is sort of like what's what that's what's happening in that part of the frontier today's southern Arizona northern Sonora and simultaneously what's happening, of course, on the California Coast is Junipero Serra and the other Franciscans from the College of San
• 26:27
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: San
• 26:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Fernandino.
• 26:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Is that right?
• 26:28
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: I think in Mexico it's San Fernando.
• 26:30
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yes, thank you.
• 26:30
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: They're Fernandinos, the College of San Fernando and Mexico City have been assigned to Baja, California.
• 26:36
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And then, um, soon thereafter, uh, working with, uh, Uh, the, um, the crown to, uh, expand the missionary, the mission frontier into Alta, California, so San Diego and up to Monterey.
• 26:53
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So that's happening in the same time period, uh, 1769 to 17, you know, early to the mid 1770s that Garcés and his crew are working in northern Sonora and southern Arizona.
• 27:06
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So things are going much better in California.
• 27:08
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: In many ways, although not without challenges, um, then they are in Arizona and Sonora, in fact, you never do get, um, other than at Yuma, you never get a mission further north of Tucson, um, in, in Arizona, much to Garcés chagrin.
• 27:26
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He pushed for that a lot.
• 27:27
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: So the, the dream then Though, if I understand correctly, Dream was trying to try and see if they could link up, right?
• 27:35
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: These, these missions in Sonora, or that route between California, uh, the coast, I guess the Colorado River, um, plays a big role there.
• 27:46
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: And then everything to the east, is that right?
• 27:49
  damian-bacich_1_09-06-2024_093519: And, and that was sort of the big, uh, strategy at the time, right?
• 27:56
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Right.
• 27:56
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So you have, think of really three prongs.
• 27:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: You've got California coast up to Monterey, uh, um, by 1769, 1770, you've had New Mexico, the Santa Fe area forever for a hundred years at that point more.
• 28:16
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, and then you have this little.
• 28:19
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Third prong, shortest tine, and the fork coming up into southern Arizona.
• 28:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And what's hard to wrap your mind around at first if you don't know this, this area of history is that, um, to, to get from northern, let's say northern Mexico to, Upper California, our California, um, you would have to sail down the Gulf of California around, uh, the tip of the peninsula and then back up to San Diego or Monterey or where have you.
• 28:47
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: There was not known how to do that in an overland way.
• 28:53
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: There's, it's a very forbidding desert.
• 28:55
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's easy to us now with interstates and air conditioning.
• 28:58
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It was a very forbidding desert.
• 28:59
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: In fact, um, the early finding that Baja California was not an island has long been And which Kino, among others, um, reconfirmed.
• 29:10
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Was kind of that, that, that finally kept getting lost.
• 29:13
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Like, well, maybe it is an island.
• 29:14
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Yeah, it was.
• 29:15
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: They, it, the Spain was v they were very unclear about that whole geography.
• 29:20
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And, um, so it was Garce, um, role, um, which he sort of just irrigated to himself.
• 29:27
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Nobody told him to do it.
• 29:29
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: To Fi was to find a route from.
• 29:32
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, Northern Sonora overland to the California coast.
• 29:37
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And that was the dream.
• 29:38
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: As you say, he knew that if you could link this up over land, that would, that would solve a lot of problems.
• 29:44
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, yeah, you send, if you to sail from there, it took much, uh, from, you know, New Spain to Alta California took much longer than you might think.
• 29:53
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, there's no steam.
• 29:54
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: We're talking, we're talking really sailing, right?
• 29:57
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The sailors often land, when they finally touch land, they're scurvy, they're, many have died.
• 30:04
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's, it's, it's, it's not easy.
• 30:06
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, so it's a, it would be a big victory to, to connect over land.
• 30:10
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And that was Garcés, what he did in 1771 when he traveled the Devil's Road, El Camino del Diablo, it is not known that day.
• 30:18
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: as that at the time, but it runs right along today's international border and served symbolically as the sort of the upper northern limit of the sort of what was known to the Spaniards.
• 30:32
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, he traveled that, got to Yuma, befriended the Quechuns there, in particular, uh, their, um, headman or chief at the time, uh, known to the Spaniards as Salvador Palma, um, and then finds a way across.
• 30:48
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The desert to the west of Colorado River, uh, to at least within, um, shouting distance, more or less of the coast.
• 31:00
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So now you're right.
• 31:00
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: That was what was needed was to find a route.
• 31:03
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Now it turns out that route stinks.
• 31:04
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's a terrible route.
• 31:05
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: It's a, it's really, really difficult, but it's a route that was taken by the first Onza expedition in 1774.
• 31:13
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: With some modifications, and they made it all the way to Mission San Gabriel.
• 31:18
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, and then the next year, 1775, 1776, the second Onza expedition leads, uh, the first group of settlers, uh, across.
• 31:29
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Um, not quite that route, but across by the Gila River and then across California, um, to Mission San Gabriel and then up the coast, uh, and found San Francisco.
• 31:40
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So that's, that's, that's exactly right.
• 31:43
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: The link was needed.
• 31:44
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Garcés played a key role in finding the route, serves as a guide in the 1774 expedition, and it's a long for part of the 75.
• 31:54
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And then his goal then becomes, all right, now we've got to link New Mexico to Monterey by a more direct route.
• 32:00
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And that's what he was trying to do with his solo expedition of late 1775 and 1776.
• 32:08
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: And essentially, Succeeded.
• 32:11
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: Uh, he, he didn't go all the way to San Luis Obispo, for example, but he knew where he was in the Central Valley and he had to get there.
• 32:18
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: He didn't get all the way to New Mexico, but he got to where the Hopi were and the route from there to New Mexico is well known.
• 32:24
  jeremy_1_09-06-2024_093520: So that was his other contribution in making and linking up the Northern frontier.
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