The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission in Washington, D.C., has urged its western collaborators to emphasize our Hispanic past in historical observances of the present decade. This book, therefore, is an important milestone on the road to the second centenary of the birth of our nation. The author has made his work especially timely by recording events on our eastern seaboard, paralleling the exploits of Spain in the West. The midnight ride of Paul Revere finds considerable competition in the epic expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza in 1774 and 1775-1776, overland from the Sonoran Desert to found the first European colony on the shores of San Francisco Bay.
This study is admittedly a popularization, and a very good one. It synthesizes sources already published. For this reason, the reader would do well to review the acknowledgments at the end of the volume to learn where to further widen his familiarity with the theme and to secure a more exact knowledge of some points. Placing the Papago Indians on the Gila River and imagining a Spanish settlement at Tucson in October of 1775 are, from the standpoint of the expert, inexcusable errors.
The choice and execution of photographic illustrations surpass by far all publications on this theme to date. The author might have done well, however, to omit his own personal commentary on these photographs in some instances. His interpretation, for example, of the desert scenery surrounding historical sites photographed in the Sonoran Desert as economic motivation for the colonists there moving on to California is an unwarranted conclusion. Mining, cattle, and riverain agriculture in the Sonoran Desert of Anza’s time were capable of supporting a much greater Spanish colony. The fabulous mineral wealth of Sonora was much more than legend and Franciscan missionaries attested to the extraordinary fertility of the desert river valleys.
Despite a full-time occupation with grass-roots research in the field surrounding this theme, the present reviewer found this book both highly entertaining and informative, and can confidently assure any reader the like experience.
