Collateral Materials - Supplies

THE ECHEVESTE-ANZA CALCULATION OF
THE PROBABLE COST OF THE SECOND ANZA EXPEDITION*

* Charles Edward Chapman, The Founding of Spanish California; The Northwest Expansion of New Spain, 1687-1783, 1916. The Macmillan Company, New York.

"In course of the preparations for Anza's second expedition Anza and Juan Jose de Echeveste were asked to draw up a minute calculation of the probable cost of the expedition. A translation of their calculation is given below, partly because it bears a relation to the northwestward movement, showing in one instance the expense which the government was ready to undergo, but more because of its interest from the standpoint of individual equipment, wages, and prices at that time. The estimates are in pesos and reales, eight reates being worth one peso. The present [1916] value of a peso would be fifty cents. I have seen copies of this document in three testimonios concerning the preparations for the second Anza expedition. The location and nature of the three testimonies are as follows:"

The original is probably in A.G.P., Provincias Internas, v. 134, a volume which contains the originals of other documents in the file of papers concerning the authorization of the second Anza expedition. Jose de Gorraez certified that the copies mentioned in A and B conformed to the original, and Melchor de Peramas did so for the copy referred to in C. There are some differences in the three. B employs abbreviations of words, while the words appear in full in A and C. Certain obvious errors or omissions in some of the copies are corrected by use of the others. The translation is based on all three, with an indication in notes of some of their difficulties and differences. [Emphasis added]

"Minute calculation of the cost that it may amount to: for the wardrobe of thirty recruits, their wives, and the garments adequate for one hundred and eighty children, six for each one, half for males and half for females; for the arms, riding-horses, rations, and baggage for the service and transportation of all, from the province of Ostimuri to the presidio of San Carlos de Monterey, namely:

(Prices in reales or pesos per each article determined in 1916.)

"Collection of stores at the presidio of Tubac necessary for the expedition, of useful articles necessary for it, of cattle, provisions, and their conveyances, to ration all its people, reckoning 70 days' march, including rests, for 122 individuals, to which its number reaches, the expense of everything in detail and that of the aid [in useful articles] which it is bearing to the presidio of San Carlos de Monterey, namely:

"Table for the comandante and chaplain about which Echeveste is making a statement to His Excellency the viceroy against the objection of the party concerned [Anza].

"As appears in the margin, the calculation of the outfit of the 30 recruits with their families and wardrobe, the arms, horses and trappings, baggage and beasts of burden, and other expenses of the second expedition of Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, from his presidio of San Ignacio de Tubac to that of San Carlos de Monterey, [amounts to] 21,927 pesos, 2 reales, in which quantity is included the estimated value of the effects at present in the royal estate here and at Alamos, to the end that one may at once gain a clear knowledge of the total cost of the expedition."