In this important book, ethnohistorian and archaeologist Steven G. Baker carefully documents for the first time the routes of Juan Antonio de Rivera’s two expeditions from New Mexico into today’s western Colorado in 1765, correcting the mistaken notion, publicized by historian Donald C. Cutter in 1976, that Rivera reached the Colorado River in the area of modern Moab, Utah, via the Spanish Trail on his second trip. From a structural standpoint, this book is strikingly similar to Herbert E. Bolton’s Pageant in the Wilderness for the better-known 1776 expedition of Friars Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante. Although Baker and Bolton are from different disciplines and write in very different styles, in each study the author’s thorough description of the route precedes the translated journals, which, in this case, New Mexico state historian Rick Hendricks has transcribed, translated, and annotated. In addition to clarifying that Rivera reached the Gunnison...
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