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Show PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND "COLLIER'S WEEKLY." hi the issue of "Collier's" for January 30th, I tiiere will be -found on the editorial page the fol- lowing criticism of an executive order changing the name of a certain mountain range in eastern i ' : i Utah : i . "Nothing attracts the president more than the history of the United States and the preservation s of our forests. It seems like the irony of fate, t therefore, that in a matter affecting both of these j great interests he should have been led into a mis- ', take which will need To be undone either by him ' , or by his successors The great explorer. Robert . I Cavclicr de la Salle, was honored by Mr. Roosevelt in the year 1008 by an executive order naming af- fer the famous Frenchman a salt mountain ih the deserts of eastern Utah. Because of his saliency i ; in helping on the story of western growth. La Salle is to have a permanent position on the tall top of I 1 ; the salt mountain. The error was natural in its i i i origin. This mountain has not remained for all these years anonymous. On the 25th day of Au- gust, J77G, it alrady had a name, and this name i was La Sal (the meaning of the Spanish term is' ! !''. 'salt'), which was given to the mountain by Father I , Silvestre Yelcz de Escalante. the "first white man ; - to cross the great Colorado river of the west. He was striving to aid Spain to extend her foothold ; . ( in North America from the beginnings made by r ; i De Soto in Mexico. Escalante's memory is chiefly lost, but traces of his work remain in line too defi-k defi-k ; nite to allow La Sal ever permanently to become La Salic. There is an Escalante river and an Es- ' calantc valley, and this salt mountain must ever s f ; remain in history associated with the Spaniard's ; efforts to extend his country's power." ' While the too great desire of the President to I change, at times, the face of nature as well as the ! , ' nomenclature applied thereto, undoubtedly leads him into many erroneous deductions, and is there- j "' fore subject to some criticism, it is not apparent - in the present instance that he would have been ' guided any nearer aright had he applied to the critic of '"Colliers,'' whose knowledge of the subject sub-ject is certainly not so great as to give unwonted value to his criticism. The mountains in question had the name "La - ; Sal." or Salt mountains, prior to Ftaher Esca- lante's visit, and which was the Spanish equivalent for the name already given them by the Indians. In the entry in his journal, under date of August ' tlo. 1776, when describing the San Miguel river, which runs for the greater part of its length through Montrose county. Colorado, and to which the name Rio San Pedro had already been given t 1 - V by Escalante's predecessors, Rivera and Posada, in their incursions into this part of Colorado, Father Escalante writes: "It (Rio San Pedro) Hows to the northwest; and to the west joins the Rio Dolores Do-lores near the small range of mountains named '"of the Salt" (Sierra de la Sal), because they have near them salt pits "from which, as they inform us, the Uutes who dwell near here provide themselves with salt." Further along in his journal, and under un-der the heading. "Description of the mountains thus far Jen,'' he again mentions these mountains, moun-tains, writing: "About twenty leagues to the west of this range (San Miguel mountains) are the Salt mountains, which, moreover, appear small.'' It will be further observed that these mountains, moun-tains, already named before they were viewed by' Escalante, are not salt mountains, but are so named by reason of the salt deposits in their vicinity. vicin-ity. On August 25, 776. the date oh which it is so specifically stated that Escalante gave the name to these mountains, he was traveling northward along the eastern slope of the LTncompaIigre plateau pla-teau in southwestern Cnbirudr nn Tna war in 1'tuli lake. Neither was Father Escalante the first white man to cross the Colorado river. Near the mouth of the Gila river it had already been crossed many , times by Spanish priests and explorers, and there is specific record of the crossing by Father Francisco Fran-cisco Garces, a Franciscan priest, who crossed the river below the mouth of Pyramid canyon, near Fort Mojave, June 5, 1770, when on his way to visit the Moqui Indians. This crossing antedates by at least five months that effected by Escalante, which was made November S, 1776, at the. upper end of the canyon, and in the vicinity of the present pres-ent Lee's Ferry. Unromantic. as it may seen, Father Escalante's journey through western Colorado and into Utah, where he later discovered (to white men) Utah 1-1. - j. : :i ju t T. lam-, as uui, primarily, lur nitr e.iciiaiuiiii uu: domains of Spain in North America, but for the more prosaic purpose of discovering and opening a practicable route of travel between Santa Fe and the then recently established mission Monterey on the Pacific coast in California. Nor in any event could it have been for the extension of those domains do-mains "from the beginning made by De Soto in Mexico," as De Soto's explorations at no time took him into Mexico; and in this part of America were confined entirely to that region east of the Mississippi Mis-sissippi and south of the Ohio rivers; his other exploits on the Western Hemisphere consisting of the part taken by him in the conquest of Nicara-' gua, and his later operations with Pizzaro in Peru. The Escalante river and Escalante valley, as the latter is officially knotvn on the maps of the U. S. Geological Survey, the Escalante desert, both in Utah, and named long after Escalante's journey was completed, have no significance other than their tribute to the memory of the priest-explorer, who was the first white man to visit and pass through the territory which now comprises Utah. Escalante did not journey to the river which bears his name; and when he passed along the eastern border of the Escalante desert, October 10-12, 1776, on his return to Santa Fe, he gave it the name of the "Valley and Plain of Our Lady of the Light." It seems hardly possible that the president, in making this executive order, could have been misled mis-led into thinking the name of La Sal to be a corruption cor-ruption of La Salle, and that it originated from any visit of the latter to this portion of the west. The mostfcursory examination of the records of La Salle's travels would show his explorations to have been confined to the Great Lakes, and to that territory ter-ritory east of the Mississippi river, except when in his attempt to locate a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi river, he sailed into Matagordos Bay, Texas, under the misapprehension that it was a western outlet of the river; and it was while returning re-turning to Canada from this expedition, in order to secure supplies, that he was assassinated by his j followers. i If criticism is due for a perhaps silly considered consid-ered executive act. the criticism, when dealing with historical facts, should be free from error. Perhaps Per-haps the whole discussion might be trivial, did it not come just at a time when the researches of impartial historians are discussing the voluminous and invaluable records of their journeyings and explorations ex-plorations in the southwest, which have been left us by the Spanish priests, and which form one of the most priceless heritages, historically, which has descended to us from Spain's one-time occupation of this great portion of our territory. |