Foot-loose and fancy-free By Angie Debo

Spanish Exploration of Oklahoma 1599-1719

After Coronado, the Spaniards advanced more slowly towards the regions he had penetrated. Effectively established in northern Mexico by 1580 these colonizers were in that year again contemplating the further extension of their civilization. Missionary zeal, greed, and fear of foreign aggression stimulated this new expansion. Of the series of explorations between 1580 and 1598, which opened this new movement, only Humaña and Leyba in 1592-1593, so far as is known, explored parts of present Oklahoma. Leaving Mexico without proper authority, these adventurers sojourned among the Pueblos for a year and then made off towards Quivira, accompanied by an Indian named Joseph. Like Coronado they encountered shortly beyond Pecos the Querechos; wandering further to the east and north they reached eventually, beyond two large rivers an extensive pueblo of grass lodges, surrounded by cultivated fields. Continuing still northward, they came to another larger river and then attempted to return. Only their guide, Joseph, however, reached New Mexico alive. In later years it was learned that they had visited Indians now within present Oklahoma, and Kansas.

These Indians, as indicated on Oñate’s map and in other sources, were called Escanjaques. They guided the explorers to the Arkansas River. The Indians “in a few hours quickly, built a rancheria as well established as the one left behind, which caused no little wonder to all.” Here the main body halted, for, as they claimed, the Indians beyond were their enemies. From other accounts, however, some of the Escanjaques, apparently went on with the Spaniards. Across the Arkansas, in Quivira near present Wichita, the Spaniards found extensive settlements containing several thousand Indians. There they visited several rancherias and wrote in considerable detail concerning the life they saw and the Quivira grass habitations. Their descriptions of the latter bear a striking resemblance to those of the Wichita grass lodges. These Indians treated the Spaniards well, allowed them to move about their rancherias and obligingly informed them of their country.

They told Oñate, as had the Escanjaques, of Humaña’s residence among them, but disclaimed any part in their death.

Some of these Quiviras shortly developed a hostile attitude and Oñate, petitioned by his soldiers, set out to return. Their route was disputed by the Escanjaques with whom they fought a bloody battle, and then continued their journey to reach New Mexico on November 24^th.

Oñate’s expedition to the Quiviras was, of course, an event of importance to the Quiviras themselves and soon after the Spaniards’ return they sent an embassy to secure the aid of the newcomers against the defeated Escanjaques. The incident is described in 1626 by the priest-historian, Zarate Salmeron, of New Mexico, who wrote, while the achievements of Oñate were still familiarly known to the New Mexicans, that there was sent, “from Quivira an Indian ambassador of high standing and gravity. He brought with him six hundred servants with bows and arrows who served him. He Arrived and gave his message inviting the Spaniards with his friendship and lands to help him fight against their enemies, the Ayjaos.” The Ayjaos seem to be but another name for the Escanjaques for a later account furnished by an equally distinguished and well-known New Mexico writer, Father Posadas, writing in 1686, states that the Aijados Indians had accompanied Oñate into the land of the Quivira and proposed to burn their houses. The commander forbade this act of hostility and as a result the Aijados attacked the Spaniards in a great battle.
Baca 1634

For the remainder of the seventeenth century information concerning the eastern plains, particularly for the area within present Oklahoma, is scanty. At present, the only known expedition that apparently crossed the region was that of Captain Alonzo Baca, 1634, who, accompanied by some Indian allies, marched three hundred leagues east of Santa Fe. Arriving on the banks of a large river, his allies, like Oñate’s Escanjaques, refused to cross and warned Baca that if he continued the Quivira tribes beyond would eventually kill him and his men. The Spaniards, too few to go on alone, returned to New Mexico.

Thus Spanish explorations to 1634 had added to the earlier information supplied by Coronado concerning the Oklahoma region. The area in Eastern New Mexico and the Panhadle of Texas, occupied by the Querechos of Coronado and the Vaqueros of Humaña, is found occupied by Indians; doubtless the same tribe called by 1634 the Apache. Beyond them have appeared the Escanjaques in present Oklahoma, in warlike relations with the Quiviras across the Arkansas River. Who the Escanjaques were is as yet un-determined, for there is no known mention of them again in Spanish records.

De Vargas 1696

For the moment, however, we must note the activities of Governor de Vargas, whose reconquest of New Mexico compelled him to engage in the fall of 1696 in an expedition to the east. In that year some Pueblos, adamantly refusing to accept the Spanish king and God, rebelled and fled from their homes eastward over the Taos Mountains. De Vargas, setting out at once from the Picuries Pueblo recaptured, after an exciting chase, the majority of the rebels but the rest escaped in the company of some Apaches. The governor’s journal of the event does not give sufficient information to state how far he penetrated on this march. He later stated he traveled eighty-four leagues; but whether this is the distance for one or both ways is not clear. His entire journey, going and coming, however, consumed only seventeen days, two of which were spent in camp because of a blinding snowstorm. Colonel Twitchell, nevertheless, has interpreted his remark and the diary to mean that the journey took de Vargas eastward beyond Clayton, New Mexico, into the western Panhandle of present Oklahoma.

In the following year, 1697, the Reconquest of New Mexico was completed but the re-occupation of the lost province still presented serious problems to the Spaniards. Constantly on the qui vive against a new uprising, they were quick both to investigate suspicious rumors of revolt and to lend helpful hands to the Pueblo Indians. In this latter spirit the governor dispatched in 1706 an expedition to the far off Cuartelejos to bring back the fugitives who escaped de Vargas in 1696, and others there enslaved, and who now sought the privilege of returning to their kinsmen. The expedition, commanded by Captain Juan de Uribarri, journeyed through the Jicarilla country of northeastern New Mexico, the Carlana country south of the Arkansas and then eastward from near present day Pueblo, Colorado, to the Cuartelejos in eastern Colorado. These savages received the expedition with genuine expressions of friendship, offered no objection to the loss of their slaves and servants but loaded the Pueblo ponies high with corn and sent off Spaniards and Indians rejoicing.

Uribarri’s expedition is important to Oklahoma’s history. For the first known time there appears, in Uribarri’s notes, the Indian name of the Arkansas River, Rio Napestle. The commander first noted the Arkansas under this name when he crossed it in the foothill region near present Pueblo, Colorado. Thereafter, until the early nineteenth century the stream was always spoken of in New Mexico as the Rio Napestle. Finally, however, the usage of the French, Arkansas, applied to the lower reaches of the stream was carried westward by the Americans and succeeded in displacing this original Indian name.

The French entered present Oklahoma from two directions; west/southwest from their Illinois settlements through the Osage country, and northwest from Louisiana via the Red, Arkansas, and Canadian rivers. As early as 1703 expeditions from Illinois traded towards New Mexico; thereafter the movement from that direction developed rapidly and joined with the one coming from the southeast. This latter advance was led by St. Denis, the well-known Frenchman who dominated the lower Red River valley in the early part of the eighteenth century from his post at Natchitoches, in present Louisiana. From there French influence extended itself into present eastern and northern Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. In 1719 the Nasonite post was founded among the Cadadocho just beyond the southeast boundary of Oklahoma. In 1719 La Harpe established another trading center among the Cadadoches tribes, visited the Touacaras then living near the mouth of the Canadian River and proposed a third post for that region. At the same time Du Rivage was sent up the Red River to extend French control in that direction. Paralleling this penetration at the moment was the expedition of Du Tisné who, coming southwest from the Osage, visited and made an alliance with the Pawnees on the Arkansas River where he left a flag flying to indicate French possession. Two years later, 1721, in exploring the Arkansas River, La Harpe’s travels took him about half way to the mouth of the Canadian.

Most of these French explorations had for their object, besides Indian commerce, the opening of a trading route via these streams to New Mexico. We have already seen the earliest indications of this advance in the Spanish reports of the French, Plawnee, and Jumano attack on the Cuartelejos. But the French about this time, 1720, as noted above, found themselves blocked by two powerful tribes of Indians. The Apaches along the Red River were hostile to these westward moving Europeans who traded with their enemies, the Indians of Northern Texas and present Oklahoma, known to the Spaniards as the Norteños. North of the Red, along the Arkansas and South Platte rivers the Comanches on their part were averse to French traders supplying weapons to their enemies beyond, the Apaches. Finally, the Spaniards themselves took definite steps to encourage Apache enmity to prevent the French approach to New Mexico. Indeed, the Viceroy of New Spain wrote to the Governor of New Mexico in 1719 that he should take particular care to win the Apaches to the Spanish allegiance so that they might be used with those allied with the Spaniards in Texas, to prevent French entrance into Spanish dominions. As a result, this tribal rivalry and Spanish policy, successfully shut off the advance of French traders until about the middle of the century. Meanwhile, on their side, the French traders and officials concentrated their efforts on persuading the Comanches and Apaches to let them pass beyond. Much of this little-known struggle took place on the soil of what is now Oklahoma.