...AND COWBOYS RIDE

So much due, perhaps, to the absence of Kino himself, valuable as had been his services. We may rather guess that it was at least in part due to the exhausted condition of the Spanish monarchy in the days following the War of the Span-ish Succession, which raged over much of Europe in the years 1702-1713. The Spanish government, once quite liberal in subsidizing missions and missionaries on the northern front'ers of New Spain, had now changed hands. It was in the possession of hard-headed, unsentimental French Bourbon kings and their satel-lites, men who preferred to spend money on European intrigues and politics rather than upon remote missionary frontiers. Moreover, the fact that both France and Spain were under Bourbon kings, of the same family, seemed to make Spain feel a little safer in North America; less fearful of the French men-ace.

Whatever the cause, the missions did not prosper greatly for many years after Kino's death. There were still function-ing a number of missionaries in Pimeria Alta. Until 1720 we find that most of the missionary labors of what is now Arizona were in the hands of two men, Padre Augustin de Campos at Kino's old mission of San Ignacio; and Padre Luis de Velarde, Kino's faithful companion, at Dolores. They seem to have been slightly reinforced in 1720 by the arrival of Padre Gallardi, who took charge at Caborca and Tubutama; but at San Xavier and Guevavi and Tumacacori there was no regular missionary stationed for any ap-preciable length of time until 1732. Then three new missionaries came to Pimeria Alta: Padre Grazhoffer to Guevavi, Padre Segesser to San Xavier (its first permanent missionary), and Padre Keller to Santa Maria Suamca. It seems that Segesser was replaced at San Xavier in 1733 by still another new arrival, Padre Steiger, who stayed there until in 1736 the death of Campos at San Ignacio (after forty-three years' service in Pimeria Alta) called Steiger to replace him. The next missionary to take up his station in Pima land was the famous Padre Jacobo Sedelmayr (1703-1779), who was an indefatigable explorer as well as missionary during his some eighteen years of service in Arizona and Sonora. He arrived in 1736 and took up his labors at San Ignacio and Tubutama missions, whence he visited the Papago and other Pima tribes, in Arizona as well as Sonora, on many occasions. In 1744 we find him preaching to the Indians at Casa Grande, and exhorting them not to practice witchcraft. He visited all the Cocomaricopa villages along the Gila, telling us that he saw forty-one of them; incidentally mentioning, too, the warm springs at what is now Agua Caliente. He crossed from the region of Agua Caliente northwest to the Colorado at the mouth of Bill Williams Fork, the farthest north any missionary had pene-trated as yet from Sonora into modern Arizona. From the records of Padre Sedelmayr, Father Keller and others, we get only a rather dim picture of the quiet, sleepy mission regime on the south-ern border of Sonora, but more exciting events were soon to take place and make the region more interesting to us today.

For one thing, there was the matter of proper defense of Pimeria Alta, in a day when there was none too great security from the wilder Indian tribes. In 1733 Sonora and Sinaloa had been united into one governorship; and in the follow-ing year we find the veteran Spanish soldier, Juan Matheo Mange, officially approving a petition sent to the new governor to ask for better defense against the Indians. The petition seems to have been drawn up by a group of settlers in the northern border country of Pimeria Alta. The new governor, Manuel Bernal de Huidobro, sent the petition on to Mexico City for decision there by the vice-regal government. Among the documents which accompanied this petition in tes-timonial support of it was a statement made by Captain Juan Bautista de Anza (second of that name, and father of the Anza who led the colony to San Fran-cisco Bay in 1775-1776), commandant of the frontier military post of Santa Rosa de Corodeguachi (the modern Fronteras), Sonora's chief and almost only military post of that day. The tenor of these documents and others accompanying them shows that the Spanish frontier people of Sonora in those days had a lively appreciation of what they consid-ered the real needs of their settlements. Thus Don Augustin de Vildosola, com-mander of a small military company in Sonora, gives us this picture of Northern Sonora in 1734: "This province is found to be almost exhausted of people, since numbers were destroyed by the pestilences which struck it a few years ago as the punishment of Divine Justice provoked by the sins and derelictions of those who inhabit it, and by other natural causes which have aided in the depopulation. Thus the rich old mines of Bacanuchi, San Juan, Nacosari, Basochuca, and other districts are abandoned, from which such great treasures have gone to enrich our Spanish monarchy, and of which now remains the name alone, and, like Troy, the site and the ashes. These with their riches drew many men by the news of their discoveries who thought in short to have the good fortune which they did not hope for in other regions, or at least to attain to some conveniences which were not promised in their native territories. There is reputed to be very much yet to be found in those spots, and with them the province would be repopulated and strengthened, or rather than from lack of gold and silver those who have left departed because of need or because of the continuous hostility of the Apache enemy, of whom at all times there has been a horror among the inhabitants of Sonora since they made impossible the traffic on the roads and the search for metal in the hills. At no time more than the present they watch the few persons who remain, and who maintain most of what are called settled districts, so that these are fearful of the death which in each pass awaits them from the traitorous arrows of the Apaches, who suddenly strike at them without being seen, in spots difficult of passage by the wayfarer, and kill and destroy The pueblos are careful; men shut up their stock and do not go out alone, but accompanied and well armed, in order to escape the evident risk to their lives on the road"

Vildosola's picture of Sonora and Ari-(Continued on Page 26)