* Font says of Garces:  “He seems just like an Indian himself . . . and though the food of the Indians is as nasty and disgusting as their dirty selves the padre eats it with great gusto.”  Dr. Coues had planned to publish a translation of Font’s important diary.  See Garces, by Elliot Coues, p. 172, Font meant his remark as praise.

Garces, like most of his kind, was an enthusiast on the subject of saving the souls of the natives.  “It made him sick at heart,” says Coues, “to see so many of them going to hell for lack of the three drops of water he would sprinkle over them if only they would let him do it.”  With this idea ever in mind he toiled up and down the lower Colorado, and received assistance from a Yuma chief called Captain Palma.  Once when he came up the river to Yuma, where he had left Padre Eisarc, the report the latter gave was so encouraging that Garces exclaims:  “I gave a thousand thanks to God to hear them sing psalms divine that the padre had taught them.”  He further declared that Captain Palma would put to the blush for observing the forms of piety, “many veteran Christians, by the reverence and humility with which he assisted at the holy sacrifice.”  But alas for the padre’s fond hopes!

The Yumas called the Colorado Javill or Hahweel according to Garces; and he also says the name Colorado was given because, as the whole country is coloured, its waters are tinged in the month of April, when the snows are melting, but that they are not always red, which is exactly the case.  The name is also said to be a translation of the Piman title “buqui aquimuti.”

Leaving Mohave June 4, 1776, Garces struck eastward across Arizona, guided by some Wallapais, but with no white companion.  These people had told him about the distance to Moki and the nature of the intervening region.  Heading Diamond Creek* on his mule, Garces made for the romantic retreat of the Havasupais in the canyon of Cataract Creek, a tributary from the south of the Grand Canyon.  He was the first white man, so far as known, to visit this place, and in reaching it he passed near the rim of the great gorge, though he did not then see it.  This was the region of the Aubrey cliffs and the place in all probability where Cardenas approached the Grand Canyon, 236 years before.  Garces arrived among the Havasupai or Jabesua, as he called them, by following a trail down their canyon that made his head swim, and was impassable to his mule, which was taken in by another route.  At one place a ladder was even necessary to complete the 2000 feet of descent to the settlement, where a clear creek suddenly breaks from the rocks, and, rapid and blue, sweeps away down 2000 or more feet to the Colorado, falling in its course at one point over a precipice in three cataracts aggregating 250 feet, from which it takes its name.  Here are about 400 acres of arable land along the creek, on which the natives raise corn, beans, squashes, peaches, apricots, sunflowers, etc.  There are now about 200 of these people, and they are of Yuman stock.  Garces was well treated and rested here five days.