ESCALANTE'S DREAM
On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest
by David Roberts
Journalist, mountaineer, and popular historian Roberts (Limits of the Known, 2018, etc.) ventures deep into the rugged country of the Colorado Plateau in this tale of its earliest European explorers.
It was a flash of inspiration on the part of a California-based prelate that sent Francisco Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante—in Roberts’ shorthand, “D-E”—riding from Santa Fe westward in late July 1776: It stood to reason that by doing so, they would end up at Monterey Bay. Things weren’t quite so clear-cut; as Roberts recounts, they went without much preparation and with little idea of what awaited them, and, he adds, “To plunge into wilderness virtually unarmed and untrained for war would have seemed suicidal to most Spanish officials in New Mexico.” D-E bumbled about, making contact with Native peoples unknown to the Spanish administrators but eventually learning that impediments such as the great deserts and canyons of the Colorado Plateau country ruled out an easy route connecting Spain’s colonial provinces. While traveling their route, Roberts, ill with a recurring but for now manageable cancer and all the more intrepid for it, pays homage to his own partner of many years while recounting some of the more modern dangers that await in the form of camo-clad hunters and survivalists. Anthropologically inclined readers will note that some of Roberts’ book learning is well out of date, with ethnic designations such as Papago and Anasazi long since supplanted; and though he critiques William Least Heat-Moon’s travel writing in passing, there are more than a few of the same genre conventions at work here. Readers looking for a comprehensive account of the expedition will find too much Roberts in it, and readers eager to read Roberts’ travelogue will find the Spanish colonial history laid on too thickly. Readers with a sense for both history and a living narrator, though, will find it just right, and they’ll be glad that Roberts has lived to tell the tale.
Armchair travelers looking for transport into difficult places will find this an engaging companion.