FORTS OF THE WEST

FORTS OF THE WEST

MILITARY FORTS AND PRESIDIOS

The American
West
has excited the
interest
and im^ination
of
visitors,
writers,
and
arm-chair travelers
since it
first came to the
attention
of
the
European.
What the progenitors
of
the
American In-
dian
thought of it
can
only
be conjectured.
They
at
least
peopled it,
fought mightily,
if
unsuccessfully,
to
hold
it in the
face of European
encroachment,
and
left
a good many
descendants
throughout its
ex-
tensive
reaches.
The
history
of the
West is replete
with tales
of
won-
der and
of
adventure.
Most of them
had some
basis in fact,
but a
sizable
number
were cut
from
whole cloth.
Alonzo
Alvarez de Pineda,
the
first European
to lead
an
expedi-
tion which
touched the
American
West,
sailed
a
short
distance
up the
Rio Grande in
1519 and
thereafter
skirted the
coast
of Texas and
Louisiana.
He carried
back
to his superior,
Governor
Francisco
de
Garay
of Jamaica,
a
fascinating
account
of the region he
had seen,
an account
which led
to
a completely
unsuccessful
attempt
to plant
a
colony
near
the mouth
of the Rio
Grande.
Alvarez
de Pineda's
account was
but the
first of the
tales
of the
wonders
of
the
West. Cabeza de Vaca,
Fray
Marcos
de Niza,
Coro-
nado, Antonio
de
Espejo, and their
successors
added
to
the
reputa-
tion for
wonder.
Some accounts
were
discouraging,
some
were har-
rowing
reports
of misery,
starvation,
and
death.
Other
accounts were
of fabulous
cities,
strange animals
and
people,
vast
inland
seas and
westward-flowing
rivers,
and, later,
of
lost mines
and buried
treas-
ures,
of such
natural
phenomena
as
Colter's Hell,
and
of such amaz-
ing
revenants
as the
survivors
of the
lost
continent
of Mu, safely

ROBERT W. FRAZER