Documenting the Route of the Zúñiga Expedition
By the end of the 18th century the northern edge of Sonora and Nueva Vizcaya (Chihuahua) had been sufficiently explored by padres, Indian traders and frontier soldiers that the locations of certain rivers, mountains, and playa south of the Gila River became fixed geographical reference points. Rivers like the Gila, San Pedro, Mimbres, and San Francisco, and mountain ranges (sierras) like the Chiricahua, Cavezas and Mogollon are examples of prominent Spanish reference points, their names retained to this day, though their spelling might be slightly different in some instances.
The names of other Spanish landmarks have faded with time but their locations are known from surviving maps and repeated reference by travelers well into the mid-19th century. Wilcox Playa was once La Playa de los Pimas, the Dragoon Mountains were the La Peñazoosa, and the pass separating the Sierra Cavezas from the Chiricahua Mountains was Puerto del Dado well into the 1840s (later named Apache Pass).
Beyond these recognizable landmarks there are literally scores of other names applied to streams, canyons, and mountains that will remainobscure and their locations forever arguable. Historians like Naylor and Polzer (1986) have pointed out the difficulties in applying Spanish era place names to present topographic features. No two cartographic maps of the northern edge of Sonora and Nueva Vizcaya were ever drawn the same and researchers use caution in how they use these early data.
Identified through aerial
photography; stretching
for many miles over the
landscape; this wagon
road may be older than it looks.
View Larger Image
Seemingly undisturbed
for centuries with a
healthy capping of lichen this concentration
of basalt stone lies
adjacent to the road
shown above (it might
be a trail marker or trail shrine).
View
Larger Image
Zúñiga’s route as described below is defined on two levels: absolute and relative. On the absolute side, we know the captain’s route in its broadest terms. He went from Tupson (Tucson) to the San Pedro River, then to the Gila River near Duncan. He proceeded north along the San Francisco River, passed over the San Francisco Mountains and continued on to Zuni Pueblo. In relative terms I have defined the captain’s trail using a variety of tools including topographic and early cartographic maps, geological and vegetation maps, aerial photography and the captain’s own brief words written over two hundred years ago. I believe the route as defined below is the most likely path of the 1795 expedition.
In the following text the trail is defined in context of modern place names but names in italics are those used for the camps and geographical features mentioned in the captain’s diary. Some of these landmarks retain their original Spanish names today such as the San Francisco River (Río de San Francisco).
The distances traveled by the captain are calculated in common leagues: one league equals 2.6 miles. Zúñiga’s estimate of a league being 4.7 miles is unacceptable by any stretch of the imagination and he is somewhat sarcastic about his own estimate, when he suggests his league was 5000 paces at 5 feet each. Using the standard 2.6 miles per league, the expedition route proposed here fits well within the landscape over which I believe he traveled.