PADRE KINO AND THE MISSIONARIES

Padre Eusebio Francisco KINO and Other Missionaries

AFTER the Spanish explorations of the sixteenth and very early seventeenth centuries, it was many years, apparently, before any travelers of consequence recorded their appearance in Arizona. No doubt a few Indian traders and prospectors, lured by the story of Espejo, did enter the region occasionally, and there may have been a few causual missionary visitors. But such scattered visitors as these seem to have left little or no trace of their journeys, and the most that we know about them comes from vague references to them in the records of missions and military posts much farther south in Mexico. Until more definite information is unearthed regarding these travelers, we can therefore dismiss them as not being very important. It would appear that some of the Franciscan missionaries from New Mexico attempted to penetrate to the Hopi country. At least we can assume that they were interested in Tusayan before the middle of the seventeenth century because just about that time, they had one or two missions there which are said to have been found ed in 1629. These missions represent the first determined effort to convert the Hopis (the modern Moquis, as the Spaniards called them) to Christianity. Probably the first white man to visit these pueblo-dwelling Indians of Tusayan (the modern Hopiland) were Pedro de Tovar and his men, detached from Coronado's expedition in the summer of 1540. After a brief fight, Tovar and his some twenty followers won their way into the pueblo of Awatobi. But their visit was of little real importance, nor were those of Espejo in 1583 and Onate in 1605 or 1606.

What was probably Arizona's first building erected for permanent use by the hands of white men was the Mission of San Bernardino de Awatobi, one of five missions supposed to have been founded in 1629 by Franciscan friars from New Mexico. The story of the founding of These missions is quite obscure, and we must remember that there was often quite a space of time between the date of the ceremonies which the padres performed in "founding" a mission, and the time of erecting its buildings. So we cannot be sure of the exact time of the building of San Bernardino Mission. But it would seem that some priests were performing their functions near the ancient pueblo of Awatobi about that time (1629) and for three or four years afterward. Their names may be of interest as they have been precariously preserved in the New Mexican church archives: Fray Francisco Porras, Fray Cristobal de la Concepcion and Fray Andres Gutierrez. Apparently they came accompanied by a small guard of Spanish soldiers, in August of 1629, built some sort of shelter and perhaps began the erection of a makeshift chapel, the dedication of which they regarded as the formal act of founding their mission.

This group of Franciscans appears to have spent three or four years in the Hopi country. Two of them, Gutierrez and Concepcion, seem to have died unrecorded as to the manner of their deaths, but it is more definitely known as to the fate of Porras. Due to the hatred toward him on the part of the Hopi medicine men, he was poisoned, June 28, 1633, at the Hopi town of Walpi. After his death records become obscure until 1650. Fray Jose de Espeleta came to assume the work of the mission at San Bernardino. Later two or three assistants seem to have joined his labors; at least, in 1674, padres Jose de Figueroa and Agustin de Santa Maria came to the Hopi country. But Espeleta and all of his aids were massacred as soon as news Came to the Hopis of the great Pueblo or Pope Rebellion of New Mexico in 1680. Four Franciscans then met their deaths in Tusayan. Padre Figueroa was killed at Awatobi (San Bernardino); Fray Jose de Trujillo was killed at what was called the mission of San Bartolome at the Hopi pueblo of Shongopovi; Espeleta and another priest were thrown to their deaths from the cliffs of Oraibi village, according to Hopi accounts; and, apparently, still another priest, whose name is uncertain, was killed at Walpi. It was not until after the reconquest of New Mexico by the Spaniards under Governor Diego de Vargas in 1692, that we know of other white men visiting the Hopi. These white men were soldiers who demanded the submission of the Hopi towns of Awatobi, Walpi, Mishongnovi and Shongopovi, and appear to have received their promises of obedience to Spanish law. Yet it was eight years before another missionary (Fray Garaycoechea) ventured to visit the Hopi, in 1700, and, a few years later, Awatobi, the Hopi pueblo which had been most friendly to the white visitors, was destroyed by its neighboring pueblos. The four missions founded by Porras and his companions in northern Arizona were destined to have tragic endings. Yet their names survive in the records of other missions, so we remember them as San Bernardino de Awatobi, San Bartolome de Shongopovi, San Francisco de Oraibi and San Buenaventura de Mishongnovi (orginally a visita or branch of San Bartolome). There was still a fifth mission, it appears, at the pueblo of Walpi, although when it was erected and even its name are today not definitely known. Perhaps if it had not been for the disastrous New Mexican Indian rebellion of 1680, these missions might have been well established and centers of civilizing influence upon the intelligent Hopi pueblos. As it was, after 1680, Spanish missionaries seldom visited the Hopi or remained with them very long and the influence of Spain upon these people was negligible.

A more ambitious and lasting missionary effort was brought to bear by the Jesuits upon the docile Pima Indians of southern Arizona. These Indians, although they faced as many enemies as did the northern Hopis, were so much more numerous, it seems, that they did not need to live in isolated mesa-top villages and were able to defend themselves in the valleys of the Gila and its branches, where they occupied sometimes the lands which had been cultivated and irrigated long before, either by their own ancestors or by some previous race of farming Indians. We may suspect that to some degree the receptiveness of these pastoral Pimas toward Christian missionary teachings was due to a desire to have Spanish military protection against their traditional Apache foes. However that may be, it is fairly certain that the Pimas lived for the most part very quietly under mission control, only two rebellions taking place on their part against the Spanish authorities, and those rather in anger at the conduct of the Spanish soldiers and rancheros and miners than against the missionaries.

The Pimas were a rather loosely organized and scattered group of people, occupying in general Arizona south of the Gila River and part of northern Sonora, their descendants being plentiful in both states today. Listing the Pima tribes from east to west: in the valley

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

of the Rio San Pedro were the most warlike Pima tribe, the Sobaipuris; west of them, in the valley of the Santa Cruz and along the Gila were a somewhat larger group, known to the Spanish as the Pimas Gilenos (Pimas of the Gila.) Farther west was another large but less cultured group, known as the Papago, occupying a region known to the Spaniards as the Papagueria, centering around Ajo and Sonoita. Down in what we call Sonora today were two other large Pima peoples, the Opatas and the Sobas. The Spaniards loosely referred to the land occupied by these relatively peaceful folk and some closely related people as Pimeria, a region vaguely extending from the Rio Sonora to the Rio Gila, and subdivided into Pimeria Alta and Pimeria Baja, the latter being approximately northern Sonora today, and Pimeria Alta being the present state of Arizona south of the Gila. This Spanish naming of the Pima country helps to link the history of Arizona with that of its neighbor state, Sonora, rather closely. The Pimas were essential a sedentary nation, devoted to agriculture of a relatively high quality and much harrassed by their wild mountain neighbors, the Apaches. Their villages were simply built, with little evidence to show that they had ever been architectural geniuses such as the people who built the cliff-dwellings or Casa Grande of the Gila. But, if they lacked some of the building skill of the Hopis and Zunis, at least their agricultural methods seem to have been rather more prosperous as a rule, and they seem to have been a little more sure of themselves and their rights to their land than were the hill-top dwelling Hopis.

It was among the Pimas that Arizona's most important missions were to be founded, and, like most of the Spanish frontier missions in North America, they had a political as well as an economic and religious motive. In a sense, due to the piety of the Spanish monarchs, Spain's equivalent of the Indian agents employed by the United States government in later years were the Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit missionaries. They were economical Indian agents and their own objectives and intentions kept them busily at work among their thousands of converts. Particularly was this true of the Jesuits, who seem to have system-ized their methods of conversion much more efficiently than was done by the Franciscans. From the viewpoint of the Spanish government, which partly subsidized the building of missions and the transportation of missionaries, the mission padre was an excellent means of keeping the outer barbarians friendly. To be sure, the Church had its own mo(Continued on Page 20)