Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition to the Interior Basin, 1776 recounts the historic journey of Dominguez and Escalante, Spanish Franciscan missionaries who sought to find an overland route from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Monterey, California. Published in the Utah Historical Quarterly (Volume 18, Numbers 1–4, 1950), this work provides a detailed narrative of the expedition’s trials, discoveries, and encounters in the largely unmapped Interior Basin of the American Southwest.
The account highlights the expedition’s interactions with Indigenous peoples, including the Ute, Paiute, and other Great Basin tribes, documenting their customs, settlements, and responses to the travelers. It also describes the expedition’s navigation through challenging landscapes, including deserts, canyons, and mountains, providing early geographic and ethnographic knowledge of the region.
By combining historical documents, firsthand journals, and interpretive commentary, Pageant in the Wilderness illuminates a pivotal moment in the history of European exploration in the American West. It serves as both a scholarly resource and an engaging narrative, tracing the complex interplay of religion, exploration, Indigenous cultures, and the harsh realities of frontier travel in the late eighteenth century.