Steve Ayers presented a lecture titled “A Warm Land with Parrots” during the Beaver Creek Preservation and Historical Society’s monthly meeting on Friday, Nov. 17.
Ayers has lived in the Verde Valley for 30 years and recently retired as the Town of Camp Verde’s director of economic development. His lecture explored the history of Spanish exploration of the Verde Valley and its place within the larger context of the Spanish conquest of the American Southwest.
Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca [1490-1559] was part of an expedition that attempted to colonize Florida in 1527. Disease and the hazards of travel reduced the expedition’ initial complement of 600 men to 250, who then attempted to build ships to sail to the Gulf of Mexico. Their numbers diminished further to 80 and then 15 and then to three, with the remaining men setting out on foot to try to find Mexico.
Marcos de Niza [1495- 1558], a well-traveled Franciscan friar, set off with Esteban, a Moorish slave, to find the rumored seven cities of Cibola.
Francisco Vazquez de Coronado [1510-1554] left Mexico in 1540 with 300 soldiers, priests, 1,500 animals and hundreds of Indians to explore Zuni and Puebloan territory, which was the supposed location of the seven cities of Cibola. The expedition was viewed as a failure by the Spanish colonial authorities.
The first recorded Spanish presence in the Verde Valley came in 1583, when Antonio de Espejo and his soldiers arrived looking for silver. Espejo and his brother were initially rich cattlemen in Mexico, but after his brother killed an employee, Espejo fled to avoid prosecution. He later went searching for silver and gold, where the Hopi showed him the turquoise and malachite they used.
Ayers read from an unnamed primary source that called the stream now known as Beaver Creek the “River of Grapevines” and described its surroundings as a warm land with parrots and an abundance of grapevines and walnut trees. The first name for the Verde River was the River of Kings. The Spanish also believed that mines were to be found in a “rough sierra,” which Ayers said he believes was Jerome.
The legend of Sierra Azul relates the story of a mountain full of gold and silver deposits. Accounts of the legend mention the color blue, possibly in reference to the blue mineralized deposits of copper in Jerome. Ayers said he suspects that Sierra Azul is Cleopatra Hill in Jerome.
In 1583, Philip II, the king of Spain, instructed the Viceroy of New Spain to establish a new settlement; Don Juan de Onate was given this task. Marcos Farfan de los Godos advocated for the Verde Valley as the location of the new settlement.
After Spanish official and explorer Juan de Zaldivar was killed by Indians, Onate wanted vengeance, launching a fight that led to 800 deaths in three days, including women and children, with the rest of the available Indians being enslaved afterward. In the aftermath, the Spanish government enacted reforms to its policies regarding the conduct of entrada.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the locals were peaceful, but by the late 1600s they were making an effort to keep the Spanish out of their homelands. In the 1700s, a rebranded effort to Christianize them took place, but the first priest who traveled up the Verde was attacked, either by a Yavapai or Apache, and quickly ended his mission.
Ayers said that the last known attempt by the Spanish to travel up the Verde River took place in 1744.
He circled back to the parrots of the Verde Valley, which were thick-billed parrots. These lived up to the Mogollon Rim and were spotted in the Chiricahua Mountains as late as the 1930s. A failed reintroduction effort occurred in the 1980s. Today, these birds live just south of the Arizona border in the Sierra Madres.
