78 
The Colorado River 
Moki ten leagues, they crossed a stream flowing north-westerly, 
which was called Colorado from the colour of its water,—the 
first use of the name so far traced. This was what we now call 
the Little Colorado, They understood it to discharge into the 
South Sea (Pacific), and probably Onate took it for the very 
headwaters of the Buena Guia which Alarcon had discovered 
over sixty years before. As yet no white man had been north 
of Moki in the Basin of the Colorado, and the only source of 
information concerning the far northern region was the natives, 
who were not always understood, however honestly they might 
try to convey a knowledge of the country. 
Skirting the southern edge of the beautiful San Francisco 
Mountain region, through the superb forest of pine trees, Onate 
finally descended from the Colorado Plateau to the headwaters 
of the Verde, where he met a tribe called Cruzados, because 
they wore little crosses from the hair of the forehead, a relic, no 
doubt, of the time when Alargon had so freely distributed these 
emblems among the tribes he encountered on the Colorado, 
friends probably of these Cruzados. The latter reported the 
sea twenty days distant by way of a small river running into a 
greater, which flowed to the salt water. The small river was 
Bill Williams Fork, and on striking it Onate began to see the 
remarkable pitahaya adorning the landscape with its tall, 
stately columns; and all the strange lowland vegetation fol¬ 
lowed. The San Andreas, as he called this stream, later 
named Santa Maria by Garces, he followed down to the large 
river into which it emptied, the Colorado, which he called the 
Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza, or River of Good Hope, evi¬ 
dently deciding that it merited a more distinguished title than 
had been awarded it at the supposed headwaters. He appears 
to have well understood what river this was, and we wonder 
why he gave it a new name when it had already received two. 
Sometimes in new lands explorers like to have their own way. 
They went down the Colorado, after a party had examined the 
river a little above the mouth of the Bill Williams Fork, meet¬ 
ing with various bands of friendly natives, among whom we 
recognise the Mohaves and the Cocopas. Not far below 
where Onate reached the Esperanza he entered the Great 
