By Jim Byrkit
Some years ago, when I was still a professor at Northern Arizona University teaching various subjects related to the American Southwest, a young graduate student said to me, "Prescott, Arizona, is my favorite Southwest town because it reminds me so much of my native New England." In my own mind, I forgave her for this ingenuous colonial attitude. As a native-born Arizonan I have had to put up with such insensitive comments for many years.
This student was not the first person to see this region within the context and orientation of a person from New England. Not long after Arizona was designated a United States territory on February 24, 1863, in the midst of the United States Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln chose the people he wanted to serve as the new territory's government officials. All of these men were well educated; several were from New York and New England. John Gurley of Ohio, the original appointed territorial governor, died before the group had left for Arizona. John Goodwin of Maine replaced Gurley.
In late January 1864, Governor Goodwin's party reached Del Rio Springs in Chino Valley and established a temporary capital near the headwaters of the Verde River. They called this place Fort Whipple, in honor of United States Army Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple, who had established a travel route across northern Arizona in 1853. Whipple, a Union officer in the Civil War, had very recently been killed in action.
Within a few weeks of arrival the governor ordered groups of men to go with him and look for a good place for a permanent territorial capital. But after scouting the rugged terrain of central Arizona for several weeks, Goodwin chose a site for the territorial capital only twenty-two miles south of the encampment at Del Rio Springs. The governor's secretary, Richard McCormick, decided to call the place "Prescott," and Fort Whipple was relocated nearby.
He had a reason for choosing this name. Twenty years earlier, in 1843, a Massachusetts historian, William Hickling Prescott, had published a lengthy and very scholarly book, History of the Conquest of Mexico, which focused on the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez who, in 1521, completed the subjugation of the Aztecs and their leader, Montezuma. Even though nothing in Prescott's book mentioned any place close to Arizona, the easterners saw the historian as a general authority on Mexico and the American Southwest.
Another popular book at that time, Essays in New Spain, by Alexander von Humboldt, a German explorer who had explored South and Central America, had been published in 1818. This book placed the Aztecs in northeastern Arizona during the twelfth century. While Humboldt in his travels never got close to this region and his comments were purely speculative with no credible documentation, his book did influence strongly the opinions Americans had about early Mexican history. Apparently Humboldt was referring to the Hopis and the Zunis. Some American travelers in the southwest in the early to mid-1800s reported they had heard from pueblo tribes that Montezuma and the Aztecs had lived in this region before going south to Mexico.
At the time the town of Prescott was founded, many of its original streets were named after earlier Northern Arizona explorers (Leroux and Aubry [later misspelled in Prescott as "Aubrey"]), army officers (Willis, Carleton), territorial officials (McCormick, Goodwin, Gurley) and other Prescott pioneers (Sheldon, Walker, Lount). However, the names of at least three central Prescott streets came out of W. H. Prescott's book: Cortez, Montezuma, and Marina. Cortez Street (spelled "Cortes" on the first map of the town) recognizes the conqueror and Montezuma Street refers to the conquered Aztec leader. A number of years later, Prescott's citizens named another street from Mexico's history. Located west of the downtown, Aztec Street may reflect a continuing interest in the tradition of Prescott's book. Aztec, of course, refers to the pre-conquest people of Mexico.
Many Prescott residents today may think that Marina Street in some puzzling way is related to what the word "marina" is supposed to denote. In Spanish it means "seacoast," and in English it refers to a "mooring basin for yachts and other boats." Where's the ocean?, one might ask. Actually, Marina is the name of the most important woman featured in W. H. Prescott's book. In 1519, when Cortez first arrived in Mexico, he found he needed an interpreter. He soon learned that one of the slaves that the Indians had given him was a young woman who spoke both the Mayan and Aztec languages. Born in Yucatan with the Mexican name Malinche, she had been baptized Marina by the Spaniards. She had no love for the Aztecs, and soon was recognized as one of the most indispensable participants in Cortez's bloody and cruel conquest of the Aztecs. She became Cortez's mistress and bore him a son, Mart'n Cortez.
In one of Gov. Goodwin's 1864 reconnoitering expeditions, about fifty miles east of Prescott in the Verde Valley, a scouting party led by Arizona frontiersman King Woolsey came upon a large natural pond, a rarity in this arid region. Henry Clifton, a member of the party, said that they had discovered near Beaver Creek an immense spring surrounded on three sides by prehistoric ruins. "They were probably built by the Aztecs," Clifton wrote. "We gave the name of Montezuma to the well." This imaginative perception and its connection with W. H. Prescott's book no doubt influenced the names the Governor's party gave to Prescott and its streets.
The claims that Montezuma and the Aztecs had lived in northern Arizona prior to settling in Mexico have no evidence. But some years after Prescott had been founded, archaeologists came to agree that a trade relationship had, in fact, existed between the prehistoric pueblo tribes of Zuni in western New Mexico and the Hopi in northern Arizona and the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico. And ethnologists have discovered that several tribes in Arizona, including the Hopi, speak a Uto/Aztecan language. So a connection did exist, but not as the pioneers from New England imagined.
Prescott's early Euro-American settlers named two other streets in Prescott after Spanish explorers in Arizona: Alarcon and Coronado (Coronado was renamed Pleasant Street by 1882. Coincidentally, what is now Coronado Street was Pleasant Avenue until the mid 1940s). In 1540, two Spaniards, Captain Hernando Alarcón and General Francisco Coronado, planned to explore jointly the "Tierra Incognita" north of Mexico to see if they could find the rich and legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. Alarcón was to proceed in ships up through the Gulf of California and go as far north as he could. Coronado's proposed route would take him more directly overland through Arizona. Traveling north on the gulf and then on up the Colorado River, Alarcón reached the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers. But upon hearing from the local Indians that Coronado had found Cibola, Alarcón returned to central Mexico. Cibola turned out to be the Zuni pueblos located close to the northeastern New Mexico-Arizona border. Men from Coronado's expedition also visited the Hopi villages. It is interesting that both the Hopis and the Zunis do have a cultural connection with Mexico.
In no place does William Hickling Prescott mention Coronado or Alarcón. But some of the 1864 newcomers to Prescott most likely had heard about the two Spanish explorers and the Cibola story.
Within a few years of its founding, nineteenth century New England architecture became popular in Prescott, and the Spanish street names in downtown Prescott today advertise further the New England influences on the town by its earliest settlers.
(Jim Byrkit is a retired professor of history and geography at Northern Arizona University.)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (buh7018p). Reuse only by permission.
The naming of Gurley and Montezuma streets, shown here in 1902, suggests a history influenced by our first Anglo residents. Gurley was named for the first Arizona governor, who never made it here. And Montezuma is named for a conquered Aztec leader as written up in a William Hickling Prescott book.