CORONADO

With the Coronado expedition at Cibola and in need of supplies, Coronado, in late November 1540, dispatched Melchoir Diaz and his troops to attempt to locate Alarcón’s ships. (Díaz had been alcalde mayor of Culiacán until volunteering for the expedition, and as such had welcomed deVaca and the other survivors of Narvez’ expedition to Florida.) He and his troops retraced their footsteps from Hawikuh to this point on the Colorado River. Heading downstream from where he encountered the river. Díaz (as reported by Coronado’s soldier Castañeda)

Pedro de Castañeda, “Relación de la jornada de Cíbola … ,” Nacera, ~1562, trans. George Parker Winship, The Coronado Expedition 1540-1542, (Washington: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896), p. 486:

"…reached the place to which the ships had come, which was more than fifteen leagues up the river from the head of the bay," approximately halfway from the Gulf to Yuma. There, Díaz found the message carved on a tree: "Alarcón came this far. There are letters at the foot of this tree."

During this foray, the party’s band of 25 mounted Spaniards and Indian allies on foot alarmed the local Yuman Indians, and a skirmish ensued. Though he survived this as well as the westward march along the Camino del Diablo desert trail (the “Devil’s Highway”), Diáz could not survive a horse-riding accident near the River, and was buried somewhere along the Devil’s Highway 1/8/1541 in a hasty return to get him to a doctor.

● Colorado River State Historic Park in Yuma presents visitors with a snapshot of the navigable old days, the present, and mulls what’s next.

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