Anza All Over Again

Historians Have Slighted the Spanish Explorer, but Re-enactors Remember

History offers no better evidence of its fickle heart than Juan Bautista de Anza II. Does the name ring a bell? Can you say why he's important? Probably not. Few can. But he played a seminal role in the early Southwest, earning his place as a giant of exploration, peace-making, sol-diering and settlement.

"He did more to impact this region than anybody, possibly even Father Kino," says historian Don Garate, referring to Eusebio Francisco Kino, the Jesuit who established a string of missions in northern Mexico and what's now southern Arizona, including San Xavier del Bac in Tucson.

Anza's signature accomplishments came in 1774, when he became the first European to establish an overland route. through the Sonoran Desert to California, and in the winter of the following year, and into 1776, when he returned to the Pacific Coast on a colonizing trip that led to the founding of San Francisco.

Both expeditions departed from the Spanish presidio at Tubac, Arizona's first European community.

Today, Tubac attracts tourists with its gift shops, art galleries, restaurants and Old World charm. But it also offers a highly entertaining dose of history at Tubac Presidio State Historic Park, one of Arizona's best.

Every year, around the third weekend of October, the park hosts Anza Days, a celebration of this forgotten hero. Events include stage performances, mariachi music and Aztec dancers. Characters roam the grounds in period clothing portraying the people of Tubac during Anza's time. In past years, interpretive ranger Terri Leverton says the park has featured speakers on the Spanish Conquistadores, and it has drawn visitors to its 1885 schoolhouse to hear what it was like to attend school in Tubac in the 1800s. The park also has one of the best small museums in the state. Using displays, photographs, folk art and rarely seen artifacts-Tohono O'Odham war sticks, copper bell pendants, Spanish swords-the museum skillfully and visually lays out the history of human development in the Santa Cruz Valley.

But the most popular event during Anza Days might be Sunday morning's high Mass at the mission at Tumacacori National Historic Park. Performers attend in costumes similar to those Anza and his followers wore.

At its conclusion, the actors meet outside and mount their horses. In imitation of Anza's departure, the priest blesses them. Then, with the choir from the high Mass accompanying, the priest sings the alabado, or "hymn of praise," the same song Anza expedition members heard while leaving for California.

These modern re-enactors only travel as far as Tubac, 4.5 miles away, where Garate, dressed as Anza, talks about the town's history.

The Spanish founded the presidio at Tubac after suppressing the Pima Indian revolt of 1751. The fort measured 144 by 200 feet, and its 51 soldiers were expected to prevent further rebellion, protect outlying missions and explore the region.

"Soldiers, their families and settlers built homes around the presidio," says Leverton. "If people felt scared, especially of raiding Apaches, the number one problem, they'd flee to the presidio. But it offered more than protection. It was the center of social and cultural life here."

At age 23, Anza, born in the summer of 1736 to a Basque father at Fronteras, Sonora, became the presidio's second captain. He bore the full weight of a dream that his father, as well as the Spanish Crown, had long held-finding a supply route across Sonora to the Pacific Ocean.

Apaches killed Anza Sr. before he could accomplish that goal. But the son suc-ceeded, and Garate says his accomplish-ment opened California to future waves of European settlement, including the 1849 gold rushers.

"His trip to California was a phenomenal thing," says Garate. "He settled the West Coast before we ever got there. If you include both the exploratory trip and the colonizing trip, he traveled two to three times farther than Lewis and Clark. Even though people no longer remember it, Anza did tremendous work in securing the frontier."

To remind the world of Anza's greatness, Garate has spent 14 years writing a biography of him and his father. The already-published first volume, Juan Bautista de Anza: Basque Explorer in the New World, 1693-1740, deals mainly with the father. Garate is working on the second volume, mostly about Anza Jr.

But if Anza was such a force, why has his legacy been lost? Historians say that archival records of his work were shipped back to Spain, and they were written in Spanish, both of which limited researchers' access.

"We're an English-speaking Protestant nation, and he was from a Spanish-speaking Catholic nation," says Garate, chief interpreter and historian at Tumacacori. "We don't remember Anza because he was working for the wrong government."

With history so fickle, we need a fun and interesting celebration like Anza Days. It elevates the West's greatest explorer to his true place in history. Al Leo W. Banks wrote the two preceding stories.