CHAPTER 3
EARLY TRADE AND EXPLORATION The Spanish Explorers The traditional date for the beginning of the historic period in the southwestern United States is 1540, when Spanish conquistadors, led by Captain Garcia Lopes de Cardenas, discovered the G r a n d Canyon and claimed for Spain the entire American Southwest. A n u m b e r of Spanish explorers and traders followed, p e n e t r a t i n g northern and central Utah, beginning with Father Estevan Perea in 1604.1 By the mid-1600s Spaniards were trading with Utes as well as raiding them for slaves on the eastern Colorado Plateau. The Spanish settlers in Mexico and New Mexico of this era found the less-docile tribes like Utes, Apaches, a n d Navajos difficult to govern and Christianize, but they could—and did—have some measure of control over them through slavery. Thousands of Native Americans were sent into the mines of northern Mexico and to the haciendas of the landed gentry of New Mexico where they toiled away their lives in hopeless bondage. 2 39
