The way Steven Baker sees it, Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera should be a household name with as much currency as those of Fathers Francisco Dominguez and Silvestre Escalante.
After all, the explorer came through western Colorado in 1765, beating the more famous padres by about 11 years.
As meticulously laid out in Baker’s “Juan Rivera’s Colorado, 1765 … ,” Rivera’s expedition brought the first Spaniards into contact with Ute and Paiute tribes — and they crossed right through this area.
“It becomes very much a local Montrose, Uncompahgre Valley, Delta story,” the archaeologist and president of Centuries Research said of Rivera and the book, which draws on Rick Hendricks’ translations of the explorer’s journals, as well as Baker’s extensive research.
“If the people of our community could realize that, they would have a statue to Juan Rivera. They could rebrand themselves,” Baker said.
“It’s the first meaningful description of the whole state, as well as the entire desert West.”
“Juan Rivera’s Colorado, 1765: The First Spaniards Among the Ute and Paiute Indians on the Trails to Teguayo,” was named a finalist for the Colorado Book Awards, and, along with Baker’s “My Name is Pacomio,” earned him an annual Heritage Award in 2017 from the Museums of Western Colorado.
“As one review points out, it becomes major, (with) Montrose figures and a major, never-before recognized contribution to the history of western North America. Dominguez and Escalante has always held that, but now we’ve got this new stuff ahead of them and it’s actually richer, in terms of Colorado, than theirs, because they didn’t hardly meet any Utes in Colorado,” Baker said.
“… It gets to be a pretty big story, so far as history is concerned. … I’m hoping this will stir them up a little bit.”
Rivera made his journey into the area under the auspices of the Spanish Crown, in part to find silver deposits and in part to find the mysterious “bearded men” — European-looking men, with large beards, said to be living near the Great Salt Lake at a fabled place called Teguayo.
The trips (two journeys) did not take Rivera along the Old Spanish Trail to Moab, as esteemed historian Donald Cutter put forth decades ago in his address to the Western History Association.
The expedition took Rivera to Colorado, to the Uncompahgre Valley, which Baker established once he became Cutter’s partner in analyzing Rivera’s journals and archaeological evidence.
Baker fell into the project by “dumb luck,” he said.
“In a nutshell, when I first came to Montrose in 1975, I read the Dominguez and Escalante report and they talked about bearded people who looked like Europeans up by the Great Salt Lake,” Baker said.
That made no sense to him — not then, and not throughout years of research.
He learned Cutter had found Rivera’s diaries, which predated the writings of Dominguez-Escalante, and was preparing them for publication. Intrigued, he contacted the academic, then met with him in Albuquerque. Cutter handed over the translations and asked Baker to conduct the trail research for the book.
“That was a pretty big feather for me, if I could publish with one of the foremost Spanish colonial historians in the world,” said Baker, who ultimately included the late Cutter among those to whom “Juan Rivera’s Colorado” is dedicated.
When he first partnered with Cutter, the working idea was for a joint volume — but Cutter was as insistent that Rivera had traveled the Spanish Trail into Utah as Baker was insistent he had not.
“As we worked on things, I knew he went to the Gunnison, right through the Uncompahgre Valley,” Baker said.
“I knew we had (Rivera) at Delta, but I couldn’t get (Cutter) off it.”
That took years, plus an airplane ride over the valley. “He called me on the intercom and said, ‘Steve, you’re right,’” Baker recounted.
Cutter then suggested that he write the book and Baker write the annotations, but Baker declined. He partnered up with Hendricks, New Mexico’s state historian, for what would become “Juan Rivera’s Colorado, 1765,” a hefty tome illustrated by Gail Carroll Sargent.
“We ended up with a good book. It all started with that entry in Dominguez-Escalante of the bearded guys in Utah,” Baker said.
Rivera, he said, had traveled into the area under the protection of the governor of New Mexico, who had secured friendships with Ute bands, and an invitation for Rivera.
Rivera’s first foray took him to the area near present-day Dolores, a springboard for the Spanish Trail, which forks there, leading in one direction to Moab, and the other over the Uncompahgre Plateau. Rivera turned back because of the heat, but returned, traveling near Nucla, on top of the divide, then to Iron Springs and down into the Roubideau Canyon.
Rivera spent several days with the Tabeguache Utes (at the time a separate band from the Uncompahgre Utes, per Baker), then made his way home.
The path took him “right up the valley, right through Montrose, right down Chipeta Drive, right through my farm here, and stopped at (the current location) of the Ute Museum, which then was known as the Springs of San Francisco, and one of the finest places for a settlement north of Santa Fe,” Baker said.
“He became the first Spaniard to penetrate Ute territory. … In doing so, he became the first European to significantly document anything about the state of Colorado. He was the first person to document Western Colorado.”
Rivera can also be considered the first archaeologist for this area of North America, Baker said — he found facts, curated them and wrote a report. “That’s all the pieces of archaeology right there.”
Rivera’s journals lay forgotten for decades, though, buried under other reports in the overseas possession section of the Spanish military’s archives until the late 1960s.
That’s when Joseph Sanchez used his connections to get into the archive and transcribed the journals. He published them, but did not know where Rivera had journeyed.
In 1968, a person working for Cutter found the journals and made photostatic wet bath copies — which he still had years later, and sent to Baker when asked.
Hendricks then translated these.
“It was a lost manuscript,” Baker said, adding the book he and Hendricks produced would be difficult for another person to replicate: Hendricks owns the translation and another can only be had by someone with the right connections to access the Spanish archives.
“I kind of inherited the project because I had the skill set and just kind of bumped into it,” Baker said. “I was in the right place at the right time. I consider it a lifetime coup.”
Baker wants the information in his book to become more widely known.
“It’s not going to be a ‘Harry Potter,’” he said, but maybe the area can capitalize on what the book shows — how prominently Montrose and the Uncompahgre Valley feature into the exploration of the interior West.
“This is the first real description of how various Ute bands were located and where they were living and it gives us a lot of information on acculturation. … It gives us the first real picture of the cultural landscape of Western Colorado prior to Dominguez-Escalante and it’s far more detailed,” Baker said.
“ … If people are interested in the history of the region, it’s a must-have. You can’t get any close to the source, because (Rivera) is the source.”
“Juan Rivera’s Colorado” can be purchased at the Ute Indian Museum, Maggie’s Books and the City of Montrose Office of Business and Tourism, as well as from Baker, who can be reached at Centuries Research Inc, 970-249-2283.
Katharhynn Heidelberg is an award-winning journalist and the senior writer for the Montrose Daily Press. Follow her on Twitter @kathMDP.
