Fages

For the remainder of the period of Spanish sovereignty in Mexico, no further advance was made in development of the trails to California. Two mission-pueblos were established on the Colorado River among the Yuma Indians, the purpose being both to minister to the Indians and to strengthen Spain's hold on this strategic point on the overland trail. Though the Yumas had long asked for missionaries to live among them, they had not asked for Spanish settlers or soldiers. The Yumas soon became exasperated at the offenses of the latter and revolted in 1781. In three days, the Spanish presence on the Colorado vanished, and the Sonora-California road was closed. Lieutenant Colonel Don Pedro Fages the same year led a somewhat successful punitive expedition against the Yumas, but it had no effect on re-opening the trail. Fages passed through Yuma lands again in 1782 en route to California to deliver messages to the governor, but he made no attempt to re-establish Spain's hold on the region.

At the opening of the nineteenth century, Spanish control in the upper frontier was approaching an end. The Colorado- Gila region by this time had been abandoned. New Mexico continued to exist, but while the Mexican war for independence raged intermittently in the south, it existed more as an autonomous region than as a province of New Spain. As the Spanish military presence in the north declined, Indian depredations grew, and the towns of New Mexico became islands from which settlers rarely ventured far. For about 275 years, Spanish explorers had trekked the upper frontier ; by the second decade of the nineteenth century, few of their trails were visible or safe.

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Fages, Pedro

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