Mission San Xavier del Bac

PHOTOGRAPHS by ANSEL ADAMS

TEXT by NANCY NEWHALL

DRAWINGS by TED De GRAZIA

I. The Place

You come to Bac with the centuries telescoping around you. You come as the Spanish came, priest and soldier and muleteer, riding up from Mexico through the centuries; you come as the Indians came through unknown millenniums, dim tribes wandering and coalescing at last into peaceful Pima, Papago and Sobaipuri, and as they still come, through the same vast plain ringed with mountains, under the same enormous sky.

Nine miles to the north lies the modern city of Tucson; from Bac it is merely a wide sparkle under a haze that stretches across the foot of the massive Santa Catalina mountains. Five miles to the east, jet planes shake the earth as they take off on their long climb to the stratosphere; by the time they are overhead, they are birdsmall darts of light, and their roar shatters for only an instant the desert silence.

You come, probably, no longer with the ears of horse, or mule, or burro bobbing before you, nor, unless on pilgrimage, with your feet in the burning dust. But the dust is still deep; it whirls up from your tracks in clouds. You pass sharp mountains and conical hills, their slopes stippled by the giant spiked columns of saguaros. You pass green fields and rippling ditches. This, as it has been always, is Indian land a country at once soft and harsh, rich and poor, where the sun from morning to evening is still more important than anything except shade and water.

The road dips under cottonwoods, trees always as blessed in the desert as the water they grow beside. The arroyo of the Santa Cruz near Bac is still unbridged; in flood it savagely erodes its banks. In the heat you cross over mud cracked and curling back into dust.

Horses wander before you, impervious to cry or horn, cropping the green, with the wind in their uncombed manes and tails. Rabbits scamper; roadrunners, grey and gaunt, finish their spurt across the road by volplaning on their short wings into the brush. Through the mesquite you glimpse an earth-colored Papago hut. Old iron beds stand in the open. Under the ramada a roof of brush set on four upright poles to make a cooling shade an old Papago woman, solid as a geometrical figure, stirs a pot hung over fire-blackened fangs of adobe. By the housedoor, a burlap-swaddled jug sits in a three-pronged tree crotch; the water in that olla will be cool.

road by volplaning on their short wings into the brush. Through the mesquite you glimpse an earth-colored Papago hut. Old iron beds stand in the open. Under the ramada a roof of brush set on four upright poles to make a cooling shade an old Papago woman, solid as a geometrical figure, stirs a pot hung over fire-blackened fangs of adobe. By the housedoor, a burlap-swaddled jug sits in a three-pronged tree crotch; the water in that olla will be cool.

Then suddenly you sight the white towers, the dome, the little black hill topped by a white cross. Here the Spanish must have spurred, and the Apaches kicked their horses, and foot travellers discovered they could still hasten. White and magical, Mission San Xavier del Bac rises out of the perspectives of the desert. What is it about those towers and that dome? That the towers, one capped and the other open, stand braced like men watching the marvelous skies, with the dome floating like a bubble behind them? That the little chapel with its bells and the little black hill form with the Mission such exquisite counterpoint?

No matter how you approach the Mission, it is backed by distances of mountains. And no matter when you come, even in twilight or in storm, somehow San Xavier is luminous, as though it had its own light within it.

Nothing in the background of many people from the North and East has quite prepared them for San Xavier. The sharp peaks seem strange as the moon, the saguaros monstrous; even the mesquite is double-edged shapes like apple-trees that dissolve under the touch into uncanny thorns, fronds, and long beans. The first Papago hut is unbelievable in the twentieth century; the first Papago, squat, massive and dark, is disturbingly unlike the lean, hawknosed Plains Indians of the history books. The colors Papagos wear are so shrill they sear the eye; there is further shock and dazzle in the vivid beauty of the young Mexicans almost always to be found here.

Then there is nothing else. Nothing but the huge, soaring white church and the black hill and the enormous sky. No store, even, where one might buy a coke, or a hamburger, or a gallon of gas, and exchange a mouthful of comforting talk. Nothing but a wide plaza and a scattering of huts scarcely to be distinguished from the earth.

When, from all this, there emerges a friar straight out of the Middle Ages in brown habit and cowl, his bare feet in sandals, a knotted cord around his waist and a rosary swinging by his side tourists have been known to turn tail and flee. Some, gazing at the apparition, have cravenly answered his courteous invitation to see the Mission with: “Sorry we haven't time” although they have driven miles for no other purpose. Others, standing confused under the towers and crosses, have said, “Yes, we'd love to see the Mission. Where is it?” Nor, following the unexpectedly pleasant voice of the friar under domes and arches, are they sometimes quite able to take in what he is saying about the Indians, and the history of the Mission and the meaning of its ornaments and symbols. Nor, coming from bare pure churches or grey imitations of Gothic, are many people prepared for a church so gay, so full of saints, angels, and flying cherubim, with statues that seem alive, crowned and haloed, clad in satins and velvets, and altar-pieces, glowing like jewels and shimmering with gold, that tower up into the domes through rank on rank of saints and cherubim. The friar's statement that this is still a mission church to the Papago Indians falls on incredulous ears; those huts and this richness?

Time and again a peculiar shuffling noise has caused the tourists to turn and see an old Mexican and his wife coming up the aisle on their knees. The fact that this is a living church suddenly hits home hard. Oblivious of tourists, the old couple cross themselves and pray before the glittering sanctuary, where two great angels look down on them, and two strange lions regard them benignly from the altar rails. In his niche above the high altar, St. Francis Xavier, Jesuit Apostle to the Indies, holds out the crucifix as he held it before dark kneeling people in India in the sixteenth century. Then, still on their knees, the old couple shuffle to the west chapel, where another image of San Xavier representing his incorrupt body that lies today in the church of the Bom Jesus at Goa in the Indies lies under a pall glittering with symbols of his miracles. After prayer, the old couple rise to kiss this image on the cheek. Then, with creaking joints but relieved faces, they light a votive candle in the ranks before him, and go out chattering. More than one tourist, at the sight of their faces, has wished his own pain and trouble might be so instantly dispelled.

Then the guide leads the group out into the bright sunlight again, through jade shapes of cactus, to the little mortuary chapel with its bells, and the old cemetery with its high walls and Stations of the Cross. Back again in the atrium, gazing up at the rich and intricate facade and the white soaring towers, often the tourists feel that somehow, in this confusion of emotions, they have-almost-touched a magic and a mystery. Many then climb up the stony hill to the white cross. Below, the Mission glows like a pearl in the sun. Beyond, perhaps, a Papago is plowing, and dust rises bright from his furrow. Through the dull softness of the mesquite, tiny figures of men and cattle are moving. To the north, clouds gleam and gloom over the huge Catalinas. To the south, a storm is walking over the peaks of the Santa Ritas, and the cottonwoods are vivid emerald against its blue-violet darkness. To the west, above the mesa-shape of Black Mountain and the far sharp peaks of Papago country, the sky is deep, high and mystical. Across the plaza, a horse wanders free, and on the dun earth the shrill colors worn by the Papagos seem suddenly exquisite.

High mass at San Xavier has nothing to do with the pale and well-gloved decorum of churchgoing in the North and East. Here the Mission is crowded with a barbarian dusk and shot with startling splendor. Dark massive faces of Papago women under silk kerchiefs of turquoise, emerald, purple. A Mexican beauty in tangerine, with a gold scarf over her head. A little Papago girl with a crown of scarlet poppies on her jet pigtails. Old Papago men, in blue jeans, with wide straw hats in their huge hands and silver buckles under their paunches. Yaqui patriarchs, of immense dignity, with long braids tied around their heads with ribbons. A Mexican baby, with a skin like dark cream, in a cloud of a pink dress caught here and there by forget-me-nots. And old women, Mexican and Indian, with their heads draped in black lace mantillas and the lace often hanging down over rough old sweaters or housedresses pale with washing.

Blackheaded babies squall or crow, resisting every effort to hush them. A dog or two wanders in through the open doors, sometimes joining with wagging tail a solemn procession down the aisle. Little Papago acolytes shake their scarlet skirts at him and urge him off with a surreptitious foot, usually in vain. It does not matter; nothing mars the great prayer of the Mass.

Overhead, serene and luminous, rise the arches and the domes. And now the whole celestial court the angels, the flying cherubim, the saints appearing in their niches, the Mother and the Son seem strange no longer. They have become one indivisible universe with their worshippers, their rich setting no more bizarre than this their congregation.

Out in the sun again, the dark faces and the gemlike colors are seen to be native to the desert plain, the sharp peaks, the immense horizon.

A little girl has forgotten her hat. Tall and august, Father Nicholas Perschl, O. F. M. (Order of Friars Minor), holds it in his hand. A family of Papagos he has known for forty years engulfs him. Father Celestine Chinn, O. F. M., the present superior of the Franciscan community at Bac, deftly relieves him of the bonnet, gets involved himself in a flood of Papagos, claps the absurd trifle on his own lean dark head, and forgets it. Reminded of his infantile headgear, he roars with laughter, considers the posy fore and the ribbon aft, puts it on again, and continues to greet his wildly mixed congregation. Any Sunday, in addition to Indians, Mexicans, and Yankees, there may also be present Europeans, Hindus, Africans, and Chinese, all of whom find this Mission friendly and beautiful. No one who has heard the laughter of the Franciscans can forget it; it must be the freest laughter in the world. All men should be able to laugh like that.

II. The History

The history of San Xavier is what myths are made of. Men of many races and creeds have loved the place, the people or the church, and the legends told about all of them are stubborn as the desert itself. Lies and love alike stem from the same source: something here that is unforgettable and acts like a catalyst on heart and imagination.

The River of the Holy Cross, the Santa Cruz, sometimes flowing, sometimes a dry channel, sometimes raging with floods, winds from its source in the Huachuca Mountains south into Mexico, then west and north again into Arizona, always through steep mountain ranges and desert hills spotted with greasewood or bristling with saguaros. Here and there it makes a rich green valley in the desert, then dives underground, reappears, and then dies in the desert before it reaches its ancient destination, the River Gila. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there were valleys where the Santa Cruz flowed brimful most of the year, and in those valleys, with their cottonwoods and elders, the Sobaipuris for generations had set up their domed huts of brush and mud and their airy ramadas. Long ago they had learned to build a dam and dig a ditch and lead the river water to their patches of corn and beans. In the great valley, at Bac “place where the water appears” there were about eight hundred Sobaipuris living in 1691a metropolis in those days. Up the river that year came rumors of a white man in a black robe who carried a bright cross, and came riding on a fearful beast more fleet and glossy than a deer. This man in black brought with him other strange beasts, tame and good to eat, some large, with long horns, that gave milk, some little, with upspringing horns and beards, that also gave milk, and others whose coats when sheared, spun and woven, made warm covering for men. The man in black brought other marvels: sacks of grain that grew into rich shining grasses heavy with more

Maker of peace, meeting strange tribes with courtesy and eloquence, maker of strong allies against the hostile Seris, Jocomes, Apaches; hot defender of the innocent against the stupid brutalities of Spanish soldiers, strong protector of his converts against enslavement in mines and ranches; a man who could take raw material in earth and man and make a civilization. First of all white men, Eusebio Kino looked on the great valley and found it unforgettable, and upon its people, and found them docile and loving. "I spoke to them of the Word of God," he wrote in his Favores Celestiales, "and on a map showed them the lands, the rivers and the seas over which we fathers had come from afar to bring the saving knowledge of our holy faith. And I told them also how in ancient times the Spaniards were not Christians, how Santiago came to teach them the faith, and how for the first fourteen years he was able to baptize only a few, because of which the holy apostle was discouraged, but that the most holy Virgin appeared to him, and consoled him, telling him that the Spaniards would convert the rest of the people of the world. And I showed them on the map of the world how the Spaniards and the faith had come by sea to Vera Cruz, and had gone into Puebla and to Mexico, Guadalajara, Sinaloa, and Sonora, and now to Nuestra Senora de los Dolores del Cosari, in the land of the Pimas, where there were already many persons baptized, a house, church, bells, and images of saints, and many cattle and horses; that they could go and see it all, and even ask at once of their relatives, my servants, who were with me. They listened with pleasure and told me they wished to be Christians."

To the mission he founded at Bac, Kino gave the name of his own chosen patron, St. Francis Xavier, Apostle to the Indies, who, he believed, had once saved his life when he was mortally ill, and to whose example that life was now dedicated.

Not for five years could Kino return to this, the farthest north of the twenty missions he was founding along the river valleys of Pimeria Alta (now northern Sonora and southern Arizona). Doubtless he sent messages and presents, as he always did; when he did come, he brought with him cattle, sheep, goats and a little drove of mares. Here, as everywhere on his hard-ridden journeys, he talked far into the night, sang Mass at dawn, baptized the children and the dying, asked about the country to the north and west, and taught. Endlessly, he taught, beginning with his Indian servants and even his fellow Jesuits: how to care for flocks and herds; how to sow and plant and harvest; how to build an oven and bake bread; how to make bricks of adobe mud, dry them in the sun and raise them into a house for the Father they hoped would come to live among them; how to roof that house with earth and set it with embrasures for defense; and how to raise the greater structure of a church. When he came, people thronged by thousands to see him; boys with crosses in their hands came to greet him, and arches of native greenery were set up along his way. Coming with Kino to San Xavier in 1699, the Father Visitor Antonio Leal looked on the green fields and rippling ditches of the great valley, and said they were sufficient "for another city like Mexico."

On an expedition that year to the River Gila, Indians had given Kino "some curious and beautiful blue shells," such as he had seen during his short-lived mission on the coast of Lower California, and which, so far as he knew, were not found in the sea between California and Mexico. Had these shells been brought overland? Was California then not an island, as ocean currents had recently led him to believe, but, just as he had been taught, the end of the continental massif of North America? Then a string of the same shells came to him from Indians living by the Colorado River, and these Kino sent on to his superiors in the Society of Jesus. With their excited blessing, he set off in April 1700 for the north and, if God willed, the west and California. At Bac nearly three thousand people greeted him, and begged him to stay with them. He yielded, but sent off, on the 26th, fast messengers in all directions to call the Indians he had appointed to govern their tribes together for a conference.

Meanwhile: "On the 28th, we began the foundations of a very large and spacious church and house of San Xavier del Bac, all the people working with much pleasure and zeal, some in digging for the foundations, others in hauling many and very good stones from a little hill which was about a quarter of a league away." (Note: a league varies from two and a half to three miles; therefore this hill must have been at least half a mile from the church.) "For the mortar for these foundations it was not necessary to haul water, because by means of irrigation ditches we very easily conducted the water where we wished. And that house, with its great court and garden nearby, will be able to have throughout the year all the water it may need, running to any place or workroom one may please, and one of the greatest and best fields in all Nueva Biscaya."

By the thirtieth of April and the first of May, "many justices, captains and governors" had arrived, from distances of forty to fifty leagues distances testifying to the speed of Kino's couriers and the eagerness with which the Indians responded. "Immediately, and also at night, we had long talks, in the first place in regard to our holy faith, and in regard to the peace, and quietude, and love, and happiness of Christians at the same time continuing various inquiries in regard to the blue shells, which admittedly came from the opposite coast of California and from the sea which is ten or twelve days' journey further than this other sea of California, on which there are shells of pearl and white and many others, but none of those blue ones they gave us among the Yumas."

From San Xavier, "in order to be nearer so many new nations," Kino wrote to Leal "offering myself and even expressing my desire and pleading to be the missionary at San Xavier del Bac, and asking that a successor be given me at Nuestra Senora de los Dolores." But Spain's empire in the New World was vast; few priests and few soldiers could be spared to this huge wild remoteness of mountains, deserts, and poverty-stricken savages. Kino saw the sun rise over the head of the Gulf of California, and even crossed the Colorado River on a raft, but he could never make the long journey to California and the kingdom he foresaw there. He died in 1711, at Magdalena, where he had gone, according to his successor, Father Luis Velarde, to dedicate "a rare chapel that he had finished a short time before... dedicated to San Francisco Xavier, deceased, whose whole body was representd with admirable workmanship in its gilded casket. While singing the dedication Mass, he became sick, and it seems that his Holy Apostle (to whom he was always devoted) called him, so that, being interred in his chapel, he might keep the inanimate effigy company; and even, as we believe, since he had imitated the original in apostolic labors, might accompany him in glory."

Wars on the other side of the world were draining the Spanish from this frontier; for two decades after Kino's death, no priest, soldier or traveller is known to have passed through this far country, or looked on San Xavier. Then, in 1731, three Jesuits were assigned to Pimeria Alta, and Father Felipe Segesser came to San Xavier. Two years later, Father Gasper Steiger took his place, leaving in 1736. What happened between then and 1750, when Father Francisco Paver is known to have been living here? In November, 1751, the "peaceful" Pimas suddenly rose and killed all the Spanish they could find, including two Jesuits, and destroyed churches and settlements. San Xavier was attacked, plundered and damaged, but Father Paver had fled. The Governor of Sonora blamed the Jesuits for this rebellion, charging them with cruelty to the natives, and the Jesuits blamed him for political and military blundering. Eventually the Jesuits were cleared of these charges, but their work here lacked civil support thereafter. The year after the rebellion, a presidio was established at Tubac, fifty miles down river, near Tumacacori. But one fort and fifty soldiers were little help. The missions and settlements along the Santa Cruz and the San Pedro were exposed to the full fury of the Apaches, whose strongholds were the mountains to the east. Even in times considered quiet, the bodies of solitary travel-lers and men working alone in the fields were found scalped. From under the very noses of the soldiers at Tubac horses and cattle were stolen by the hundreds. All the tribes of the Pima nation were doughty fighters, but now a frightful epidemic, described as “a scourging, shaking fever,” invaded village after village and claimed among its victims most of the Sobaipuris. Weakened within, one by one the missions and settlements fell before the Apaches, and the survivors left the smoking, blackened ruins to come with what remained of their goods and stock to San Xavier. And Papagos from the desert, hardy, tenacious folk, were coming to replace the vanished Sobaipuris. At San Xavier, in 1762, Father Alphonsus Espina was reported as having more people than there were in all the other missions combined.

MURAL PAINTINGS IN SACRISTY

But, brilliant, austere, stiff-necked and out-spoken, the Jesuits had become thorns in the sides of more common men. The military resented their breathless journeys and their mercy toward the savages the soldiers considered no better than cattle; the settlers whose desire was to live easy and grow rich on the labor of these same human cattle found the Jesuits an obstacle to wealth. The politicians also were uneasy; there were too many men among the Jesuits who, like Kino, had the force and organization that makes empires. Throughout New Spain bitterness mounted until, in 1767, a royal decree expelled the Society of Jesus from the New World and gave their missions to the Order of Friars Minor, commonly known as Franciscans.

The next year, on June 30, there arrived at San Xavier its first friar in brown. A humble man, monumental in his simplicity, with a great heart and the courage to follow any trail that promised to lead to his desire: new souls to win to the Cross, new lands to explore.

Fray Francisco Hermenegildo Garces found Kino's church almost in ruins, thanks to the Apaches. He found a populous dependent mission, called San Augustin del Tucson, where more and more Spanish were settling. He found a country whose horizons called to him, and he found in the Pimas and Papagos a warm and friendly people whom he immediately loved and who immediately loved him. And the response of the chiefs whom he called together at San Xavier was to beg him so urgently to come to their tribes that in August he got on his horse and went with them off into the burning distances. It was that simple, that start of several solitary explorations that rank among the most heroic and momentous in the discovery of America.

Where Kino, despite his personal abnegation, must often have appeared with a certain majesty, with men in armor, other Jesuits, and his own servants riding around him, with shining images to set up and flocks and herds to give, Garces came alone “a poor friar, with only an inferior horse, and what he carried in his saddle bags,” as Anza describes him, and another contemporary adds: “... with no other provision than a little pinole, a little chocolate, and a few strips of jerked beef, and with no other escort than his guardian angel.” On his first trips, Garces did not even have a compass nor a burning glass for making fire. With scant experience of the desert and unmapped lands before him, he entrusted himself to the Indians, going where they led him, eating what they gave him. And went across deserts and mountains that had daunted stout expeditionary forces, and beyond, into the unknown. “Oh, what a vast heathendom!” he wrote. “Oh! what lands so suitable for missions! Oh! what a heathendom so docile!” If only the King and the Viceroy could see these lands. “What vigorous measures they would take...” But his pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears; his handwriting was crabbed and his language artless, and “I concluded that it was because of my many sins that no provision has been made for these parts where I have travelled, for not even for El Tucson have I been able to obtain a minister.” Nevertheless the diaries he kept on his journeys to the Gila and the Colorado fired Juan Baptista de Anza, captain of the presidio at Tubac, with nothing less than Kino's old dream of going overland to California. If a solitary friar could go to the Colorado in a few days, the way could not be arduous nor the tribes hostile. In 1774, Anza, aided by Garces, led a company of soldiers to the Pacific. Then, with the further dream of founding a mission and a presidio by the Bay of San Francisco, in 1776 Anza shepherded two hundred and forty men, women and children pausing now and then while a child was born and over a thousand animals over the desert trail later known as the Camino del Diable, the Devil's Highway. In the same week that, beside the Atlantic, a Declaration of Independence was read to a new nation, Anza's colonists heard mass beside the great Bay of the Pacific Coast. Garces had accompanied the colonists only as far as the Colorado; he was to explore further possibilities of founding missions and presidios among the Yumas. To Father Pedro Font, chaplain and astronomer to Anza on his journey, the Yumas appeared hardly more than animals, and he regarded Garces with a mixture of scorn and wonder: “Padre Garces is so fit to go along with Indians and go about with them, that he seems just like an Indian himself. He shows in everything the coolness of the Indian; he squats crosslegged in a circle with them, or at night around the fire, for two or three hours or even longer, all absorbed, discoursing to them with great serenity and deliberation; and though the food of the Indians is as nasty and disgusting as their dirty selves, the padre eats it with great gusto, and says that it is appetizing and very nice. In fine, God has created him, I am sure, totally on purpose to hunt up these ignorant, unhappy, and boorish people.” Garces had accompanied the colonists only as far as the Colorado; he was to explore further possibilities of founding missions and presidios among the Yumas. To Father Pedro Font, chaplain and astronomer to Anza on his journey, the Yumas appeared hardly more than animals, and he regarded Garces with a mixture of scorn and wonder: “Padre Garces is so fit to go along with Indians and go about with them, that he seems just like an Indian himself. He shows in everything the coolness of the Indian; he squats crosslegged in a circle with them, or at night around the fire, for two or three hours or even longer, all absorbed, discoursing to them with great serenity and deliberation; and though the food of the Indians is as nasty and disgusting as their dirty selves, the padre eats it with great gusto, and says that it is appetizing and very nice. In fine, God has created him, I am sure, totally on purpose to hunt up these ignorant, unhappy, and boorish people.” But Garces, describing a man whom the Jaldechunes insisted on sending with him, could write: “... He carried a firebrand in one hand all the way, and it did not go out. In the other he carried a stick with which to drive the horse, which could not hurry for lack of shoes, especially where there were stones. And besides all this, he carried a jug of water on his head, enduring thirst in order that I might not suffer, and all this with a smiling face. Who will say that this Indian is a savage? And who will not praise a service of such qualities?” To Garces, always the great river called, and the unknown lands and nations. He left the Yumas and went among the Opas and Gilenos down to the mouth of the Colorado; then north again, through the Yumas and Jaldechunes, up to the Grand Canyon, and down into it “they cause horror, these precipices” to the Havasupais. Before all the tribes, he unrolled a banner with a lovely picture of the Virgin and Child on one side and a soul in hell on the other. “I talked to them, and exhibited the linen print of Maria Santissima and the lost soul. They told me that she was a nice lady, that senora; that the lost soul was very bad; that they were not such fools as not to know that up in heaven above are the good people, and down under the ground are the bad ones, the dogs, and the very ugly wild beasts; and that this they knew to be a fact because the Pimas had told them so. I laid before them the proposition, whether they wished that Espagnoles and padres should come to live in their land, and they answered ‘Yes,’ that they should then be well content, for then they would have meat and clothing. I gave them some tobacco and glass beads, with which they were much pleased.” Tribe passed him on to tribe. Sometimes his guides fled in terror at the approach of their enemies; Garces rode on alone. His was the apostolic spirit; if death awaited him, so in heaven would the crown of martyrdom. Often in this long journey, he nearly perished from thirst or hunger, cold or heat, and yet he could never turn back from the impossible until he had ridden to the top of the next rise to see what countries lay beyond. Going east, he climbed up the steep ascent to Oraibe. But the Hopis, who had poisoned their missionary a century before and had helped massacre the Spanish in the New Mexico revolt of 1680, spurned his cross, his banner and his gifts, and kept him without food, drink or shelter for two days and two nights. The last night, Garces heard the drums; at dawn, the housetops were crowded. The drums and flutes grew louder; a procession in full war paint and feathers swept toward Garces. He prepared himself for death, but this was not the moment of his martyrdom; the procession escorted him out of the pueblo and bade him be gone.

When, finally, Garces returned to San Xavier, he had been gone nearly eleven months and had travelled more than two thousand miles.

After watching Anza's colony and its herds go by, after having had Garces and other priests among them, the Yumas could hardly wait until missions and presidios were to be established among them. But to the surprise and mortification of their chief, Palma, there was postponement after postponement, until his people began to accuse him either of deceiving them or being himself deceived. Suspicion and irritation grew; Garces sent repeated warnings that danger brewed. But throughout New Spain unrest and even revolt were stirring. To send soldiers and settlers for new missions was even more difficult than usual. Finally, in 1779, the Yumas beheld a mere handful of poorly equipped soldiers and settlers, and four priests - Garces among them in beggarly guise. Instead of the old triune system of presidio, mission, and pueblo, two small amorphous settlements were built too little, too late, like so much else on this frontier. The soldiers were brutal, the settlers careless. The priests did what they could to avert the catastrophe they saw coming, but not even Garces could soothe the Indians now. Horses turned out to graze in the Yumas' crops were the final spark. In July, 1781, the Yumas attacked both settlements at once, clubbing to death nearly all the men. Fearlessly and quietly the priests ministered to the frightened women, the crying children and the dying men, until they too were struck down. Strangely, no knife or gun was used in this massacre, and though the women and children were enslaved, they were not harmed. Affection still lingered about Garces; for two days his life and that of a fellow priest were spared. But finally came the cry that all was lost to the white men if these two were not killed they were the worst of all, and they also were beaten to death.

Back at San Xavier, and all up and down the chain that Kino had founded, great plans were going forward. Instead of patching up the ruins of Kino's churches, the Franciscans were bulding nobler and greater ones. Spain's grasp on the New World was faltering, threatened by resentment and unrest, threatened without by Britain, France, Russia, and the new little nation that called itself the United States of America. The founding of San Francisco, like the settlement of California generally, had been one move to strengthen the long-neglected northern frontier. Now, for a few years, there was money to build up this chain of missions, forts and settlements, and to appease the Apaches with cheap guns, trinkets and whisky. The presidio, at Garces' recommendation, had already been moved from Tubac to Tucson; adobe houses and walls for defense were being built for mission Indians. Appeasement of the Apaches did not work well or long; they took from Tubac all its horses and cattle and then camped in its crops. In 1800 nearly a thousand warriors swept down on Tucson, which was saved not by the soldiers but by the Pimas and Papagos. But for a little while Apache attacks were fewer, and building could go on in what, by comparison, seemed like peace.

Perhaps the river had changed its course; perhaps the site Kino chose had proved too open to sudden attack. Whatever the reason, the Franciscans chose a new site about a mile and a quarter to the south, beside a little black hill that commanded all vistas. In 1783, under Garces' successor, Father Baltazar Carrillo, work commenced on a great new church for San Xavier.

So much is known, and the builder, Pedro Bojorquez, carved his name and the date 1797 on the back of the sacristy door, as though his work was then proudly done. But now we enter into traditions, legends and fantasies. Tradition says that the architects were two brothers named Gaona from Caborca, Mexico, where they were building, simultaneously, the church of Nuestra Senora de La Purisima Concepcion. Certainly, that church is a twin of San Xavier, though heavier in proportions and lacking the same soaring grace. Certainly also, its construction is as solid, for the Rio Altar, as though to climax Caborca's tragic history of martyrdom and massacre, changed its course and undermined apse and transept. Yet, with half its support gone, the great dome still hangs almost intact above the ruins. Tradition also says that Ignacio Gaona fell from San Xavier during the last months of its construction, and

died, leaving one tower unfinished. A Papago legend insists that in dying he turned into a huge rattlesnake, and lives under his unfinished tower to this day.

Tradition, again, attributes the frescoes inside to a friar from the Franciscan College of the Holy Cross at Queretaro, who had studied with the Mexican painter Francisco Eduardo de Tresguerras. But at least three different hands are visible; one distinguished by sharp and beautiful color and taught by the traditions of Spain and Italy, at work in the great dome, the choir, and perhaps the sacristy; another whose severe and rigid forms and sombre sense of color or perhaps his choice of pigments that darkened with age are seen in the murals of nave and transepts; and a third, who enhanced his inept copies from older masters with his own gay color and fantasy, to give us the angels high in the nave, the archangels around the Savior, the cherubs on blue wings about the Virgin, and the delightful bouquets in both transepts. No names have come down to us. Nor do we know the sculptor whose rich fancy formed the five tall altar-pieces and set them about with the cherubim that climb among arabesques and flowers, uphold niches, float holding cornucopias intended for candles, and loop up draperies that seem blown back by delight at the saints' appearance. Gaona, of course, probably designed the architectural and symbolic scheme of each reredos; his was doubtless the concept that, in spite of exotic additions, makes Mission San Xavier one joyous and exquisite whole.

But who made the santos? Are the Apostles all from one workshop? Who added to their number St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus? Who made the fine St. Francis of Assisi, and who the great commanding Savior? Where did San Xavier, pale and intense in his niche above the high altar, come from? Perhaps in Mexico or Spain the letters, bills, ledgers, or diaries that might illumine all this lie buried.

Here, in the building of San Xavier, the fantasies enter in, and there are still people in Tucson who believe them devoutly to be the truth. In the fantasies, long lines of Indian women are conjured up, each bearing on her head a stone she cannot put down till she reaches the church. Next and this is a legend told of many other domes in both hemispheres the entire church is filled with dirt, the domes are laid on this loose fill, and then, the crafty padres or nobles or czars having scattered a few gold coins in this mountain, the Indians or peasants or slaves are told to dig down and find them while hauling the earth out. The fill in this case is supposed to form the little black hill; unfortunately for the legend, it is almost solid rock and probably volcanic in origin.

The stubbornest legend of all insists that Kino built this church, in spite of the discovery of his actual site. But Kino, working with wild humanity and wild earth and little support from civilization, was pleased when his neophytes had learned to make bricks of adobe and dry them in the sun, and when they actually made those bricks into a house or a church, Kino felt he should give thanks for celestial favors. And sun-dried adobe soon erodes in the Southwest unless a new coat of mud is smoothed over it yearly. In the absences the Jesuits could not avoid, their churches became roofless, then ruins, and slowly sank back into the earth.

The main evidence that the Franciscans built San Xavier lies in the building itself. Not even Kino, in his rare visits of a day or two or at most a week, could have taught his raw converts to raise such intricate domes and arches. Architecturally, San Xavier is a unit one man's or at least one generation's concept from foundations to belfry; it has not, like most great European churches, been built piecemeal, reflecting changing styles across the centuries. Franciscan symbolism is woven throughout the original concept: into the facade, into the Franciscan frieze that binds nave and apse together, into the murals, the santos, the frescoes, in the great dome, and the panels on the pilasters. None of this is overlaid on earlier work; nothing essential has been changed since the first colors were laid on the lime plaster.

Father Baltazar did not live to see his great church completed; he died in 1795 and was buried at Tumacacori. Father Narciso Gutierrez, who had come to help him during the last year, now took up the task of finishing San Xavier, and then that of building a new church at Tumacacori, in which tradition says he was guided by plans Gaona had drawn up before he died.

What was it like, being a missionary at San Xavier in those days? From an old trunk in Puebla come letters written to his mother and brother by a young priest, Fray Ignacio Jose Ramirez, who served here from 1802 till he died of fever in 1805. He found the long journey on mule-back up from Queretaro so long it appeared "to be a state of existence rather than a trip." Later he invited his brother: "Get on a saddle some afternoon and come here for a ride and you will eat good watermelons and cantaloupes, peaches, grapes, pomegranates, and a thousand other things, for although we are poor, nothing is wanting to us... in order to eat a fig from the fig tree, it is necessary to cover it with a protective awning... the severe frosts... spare nothing." To Mexicans, Arizona was the North. "... The snowfalls come every year, and water is scarce, the storms are many and terrible even though it does not rain. Now I am an everlasting exorcist, for I have never anywhere seen the heavens so angry! What noises! What thunder! What wind! It appears that these elements wish to lift us and the house up to the stars. Thus there is no remedy but to take in one's hands the cross and holy water. However, for your visit, choose a good afternoon, see the church and house, and we will take a walk in the garden. Of the work, he made the same plaint as Garces and Kino before him: "The neglect on the part of the government, if not the calculated disregard, to work for any advance here, stupefies us without their help, what can we do?" The temper of the Indians had further changed; instead of the hordes that kneeled to Kino and the perspectives of tribes who gave Garces loving greeting, there were now only refugees from famine or the Apaches who turned Christian for expediency's sake and often fled afterwards. There were the Papagos who came from the desert to help with harvest; they allowed their children to be baptized and taught, but themselves utterly refused the cross; there were the Yumas coming in daily, and no advantage gained; there were the Apaches whose plundering, murdering, torturing, and stealing were taking on new force and fury, so that the weak presidio had to join with the mission Indians and the desert pagans to effect even a small punishment in return.

In 1821, Mexico threw off the dying grasp of Spain, and declared its independence. In 1827, to break the system by which soldier and priest had been used by Spain to conquer, enslave, and ravage America, Mexico expelled the Franciscans from the missions. In 1833 and 1834 a series of laws placed all religious and educational activities under the control of the state. San Xavier and other northern missions were assigned to the care of the parish priests of Magdalena, Sonora, over a hundred and twenty miles away. There were now so few priests not even one could be assigned to this huge northern territory. Rarely could one be spared to make the long journey through these Apache-infested distances. Tucson, when it wanted a priest to celebrate Easter or some other festival, had to send twenty well-armed and well-mounted men to escort him.

Darkness descends again on San Xavier. Now and then a priest hurries through, baptizing and making entries in the parish register. To the north pass extraordinary figures the Mountain Men, the scouts, the soldiers the first wave of the deluge of Americans; beginning along the Alleghenies in 1776, when Anza was founding San Francisco, by 1846 the deluge had swept to the Pacific and raised the stars and stripes over California. To the south, in 1849, hundreds of Americans died along El Camino del Diablo - the Devil's Highway the dread desert trail Kino and Garces had broken so quietly. And after the terrible winter of 1848, the Indians of Tumacacori, too starved and weak to face the Apaches any more, abandoned their pueblo, and came up river with their thin flocks and herds. From their ruined church they brought their own beloved santos, much chopped and mutilated by the Apaches, to place in San Xavier.

Now and then a traveller came across the great valley among the moon-strange mountains and saw the white church rising from the Desert. Cave J. Couts, a captain in the American army, wrote in his diary in October 1848: "San Xavier del Bac: Said to be the finest in Sonora. It is truly a noble and stupendous building... It stood solitary and alone. No building short of Tucson save for the rude Indian huts of the Pimas who have charge of this fine old church... The decorations magnificent wax figures and paintings particularly so... there is an appearance of age about the interior, which rather adds than detracts from the sublimity of the impression. It is kept by these Pimas with incredible care and neatness."

But the Pimas probably by now almost all Papagos - were in no hurry to admit just any Yankee to their church. Judge Benjamin Hayes, in December 1849, was "struck with strange appearance of Indian wigwams on one side and adobes on the other; still more with the splendid church of solid structure whose dome and belfries overlook the town and a wide extent of mountain and plain... The splendor of the outside and a glimpse of the beauty of the inside through a high window exciting our curiosity to the highest." But the Papagos made him kick his heels for hours, trading percussion caps for beans, firing his own revolver and managing to shoot off an old stiff double-barrelled shotgun that was handed him; finally the Papagos sent for the key. The two girls who conducted him showed him all the treasures, including old missals in the sacristy, and took him up on the roof. The Judge was overwhelmed. "The delay seemed to have been made only to astonish and please us the more."

The Mexican war, however inevitable at the time and however unnecessary in perspective, was over; with the Gadsden Purchase, this strip of what had been northern Sonora was acquired by the United States of America. In 1859 the new Bishop of New Mexico, J. B. Lamy, sent his Vicar-General to see what had happened to the missions in Arizona. Father Joseph Machebeuf, on whose life and character Willa Cather based her Death Comes to the Archbishop, came to San Xavier and its devoted Papagos.

He found he had only to send someone to ring the bells to have all the people flock to church. After thirty years they still knew their prayers and could even sing at mass. And Jose, the governor, brought from his home the sacred vessels he had been keeping safe ever since the Franciscans left; four silver chalices, a gold-plated monstrance, two gold cruets and a silver plate, two small silver candlesticks, two silver censers and a sanctuary carpet.

Of the several missions in the northern chain, San Xavier was the only one not in ruins; nevertheless leaks in the domes and vaults were injuring the frescoes. The Indians volunteered their labor and even what little money they could spare, to help Father Machebeuf cover the roof with cement and brace the walls to prevent spreading.

Then Father Donato Rogieri was assigned to care for Tucson and San Xavier, but after working faithfully for three years, he was found murdered by the Apaches. From California came two Jesuits to take his place. Embarking on their duties with enthusiasm, they started learning Pima, and Father Mesea set up at San Xavier a school for Papago and Mexican children. For this, probably the earliest organized school in Arizona, the First Territorial Legislature appropriated $250. But in August, 1864, the Jesuits were recalled by their superiors, and once more Arizona was without priests. Bishop Lamy, back in Santa Fe, hesitated to command anyone to go on so dangerous an assignment, and asked for volunteers. Three presented themselves; he chose two. But halfway to Tucson, the priests were halted. Their way lay through the very heart of

the Apache country. Under the brilliant Cochise, who had been friendly to Americans until he met with treachery, the Apaches were waging the most terrible and implacable of all their campaigns. Between the spring of 1864 and the fall of 1871, they murdered three hundred and one whites, two of whom they burned alive; fifty-three more they wounded and crippled for life, and five they carried into captivity. Not until 1886, with the capture of Geronimo, was the horror and danger to cease. At Las Cruces, in 1864, the fathers waited three weeks; they offered good money for a guide and two horses. But no guide offered himself, no strong party they might accompany arrived, and reluctantly they returned to Santa Fe.

Finally in 1866, thanks to military escort, three priests, headed by the Reverend J. P. Salpointe, and accompanied by a young schoolteacher, arrived in Tucson. They found a frightful plague raging. Mexico, after the French Intervention, was at war, and refugees flocking up from Sonora had brought with them the “scourging, shaking fever,” that had ravaged the Indian populations a century before. For three years, the priests worked incessantly among the sick and the dying. At San Xavier people died in such numbers that they were buried three and four deep in the old cemetery, then around the walls. of the church, and finally under the floors of the cloisters. For a while, the entire village fled from Bac and went to Black Mountain and Martinez Butte. It is not surprising that the attempt by the young schoolteacher to start a school failed after a few months.

But in 1873 the Indian Agent for the Papagos reported that he had received $2500 for educational purposes, had erected a schoolhouse, and engaged two Sisters of the Congregation of St. Joseph Carondelet to teach at San Xavier. The nuns came in a covered wagon. They found the church full of bats, most of the cloisters a ruin, and the Indians living in wickiups of sticks and mud. The women were scantily clothed, the men wore G-strings, and the children went naked and neglected. All day the men kicked a ball about the plain, and the women watched them. Sometimes the whole village went off to tribal dances in the mountains. Work and cleanliness were unknown, no crops were being raised in the river meadows, and the people were living on mesquite beans and wild game.

Resolutely the Sisters set to work, but in 1876 the Department of Interior decided to coalesce the Pima and Papago Agencies, and their school was closed. Now and then a priest came out from Tucson, but the Papagos had now neither agent nor teacher. And the church they had guarded so faithfully was looted of two massive silver chalices, two gold cruets, and a silver censer.

In 1888 the Sisters were called again by the Government, and again they went to work. They began by gathering up the wild unclad children. School started with ablutions every morning; nevertheless about thirty children came regularly. To reach their parents Mother Aquinas spent two years learning Papago; even so, it was difficult to enter a house unasked and still more difficult to stay. Gradually, the Sisters persuaded the women to care for their children; gradually they showed them the use of stoves - to this day the Papagos love to cook outdoors under the ramadas - and the use of needle, thread, and sewing machine; they encouraged them to make baskets and pottery once more. Through the women they reached the men, and persuaded them to till and plant their ancestral lands. In 1900 the first adobe hut since the old days was put up; adobes went on replacing wickiups, though even now there are still huts whose roofs rest on tree crotches and whose walls are ocotillo wands daubed with clay.

In 1906, there was much bustle and stir at Bac. Tucson was now a Diocese, and its second Bishop, the Right Reverend Henry Granjon, began to restore the Mission. He covered church and chapel with a gleaming white new coat of lime plaster, even to the unfinished tower which had always remained burnt brick. He rebuilt the balustrades of the towers and the wooden balconies of the facade; he rebuilt the walls of the cemetery with an entrance to the east instead of the north, and made the walls of the atrium decorative; now that the Apaches were gone, they were no longer needed for defense. And whenever he could get away from his other duties, Bishop Granjon was to be found up on the scaffolding in overalls, wielding hammer and trowel alongside his workmen. Catching his enthusiasm, the Papagos managed, even after a season of bad crops, to give their Mission a new floor, to replace the hard earth on which they had always kneeled.

Church and chapel in order, Granjon went on to repair the old cloisters and add a new wing to the east, with an arching colonnade around what may still someday be a garden. He enclosed his new back court with gates, including the sevenfold arch that is so impressive an addition to San Xavier's domes and towers. Apart from the new floor it was the Bishop's own money he was spending, and San Xavier was his love and delight. He ordered finials for roof and walls, and lions' heads of cast cement to set along the parapet where travellers had described strange beasts. He ordered two more lions to guard the road around the little black hill, and had a grotto hollowed and cemented up there to house a statue of the Virgin of Lourdes which he imported all the way from France. He bought from Mexico the image of La Soledad, the Sorrowing Mother, who stands by the door, newly gorgeous in black and silver, with a lace mantilla and a star-pointed tin halo on her head, and a tin heart with daggers on her breast. The fine old Christ at the Pillar that once stood in the mortuary chapel had so suffered from bats that it was removed for safety to the chapel in the cloisters and Granjon replaced it with the modern plaster San Xavier who now stands over the altar. To restoring San Xavier and two other churches in Tucson, Bishop Granjon happily gave all his fortune; he died a poor man.

To a mission once more resplendent, the Franciscans returned. Since 1895 they had been working in the region; in 1908 Father Mathias Rechsteiner, O. F. M., went into Papago country and began founding there the missions Kino and Garces had dreamed of. When he died in 1911, Fathers Bonaventure Oblasser and Tiburtius Wand took up his work, and started off by touring in a horse and buggy the entire Papagueria. In San Xavier, the next year, they took up temporary headquarters. But they were founding not only missions but schools where there had never before been any schools of any kind; soon, as their territory expanded, they needed headquarters further west. In 1913, the first native of Tucson to be ordained a priest, Father Ferdinand Ortiz, O. F. M., set up at the mission its first Franciscan community since the expulsion.

Today the unknown immensities of land are mapped, and threaded by roads. Tucson is a city. In America, the Indian reservations are like islands which the sea, rising within and without, will some day submerge. Mission San Xavier del Bac is still a mission church to Papagos on the reservation. But the men who tend the church and its congregation wear habits eight centuries old; the faith to which they are dedicated has already endured two thousand years. There are, in this brief epoch of the rise of humanity, certain truths realized, certain beauties created, certain things of the spirit that the death of generations cannot kill; men will not let them die. And among them is this church built in the desert by missionaries and Indians.

III. The Church

San Xavier faces south, like most of the missions in this chain, perhaps because it was from the south that the Spanish came riding to their doors. But also from the south, from Mexico and the Gulf, even more than from the thousand miles of mesa, desert and mountain to the east, come the great storms. Savage rains and winds erode continually the fabric of the Mission, and the heats of noon beat full on its facade. St. Francis of Assisi, who once stood between the curves of the gable, is now a mere cone, distinguishable only by traces of his habit and cord. The Churriguerresque pilasters that give depth and shadow to the three tiers have lost their sharp outlines, and two of the Virgin Martyrs in the niches are headless.

St. Lucy, to the right of the door, still has her head; around her neck the Indians hang little silver eyes, and often she is blackened by the smoke of grateful candles. It is she who helps those who suffer in this hot light and blowing dust from the ancient desert curse of sore eyes and blindness. St. Cecilia, above, has lost her head but not the tambourine she carries, a symbol of music more

Comprehensible to Indians in the eighteenth century than organ pipes they had never seen. On the other side appears St. Barbara, patroness of soldiers and artillery, dear to the fighting Spanish and to Indians harried by murderous Apaches. Below, to the left of the door, St. Catherine, headless, bears her martyr's palm a lady much loved in this country; the massive mountains to the north, the Santa Catalinas, are named after her. At the top of the gable are the leaves and grapes of the Vine of Christ, of which all Christians are branches; they twine around the monograms of Jesus and Mary, and surround the Franciscan emblem in which the cord, with its three knots signifying poverty, chastity, obedience, surmounts the Cross, to which are nailed the bare right arm of Christ and the sleeved left arm of St. Francis. Rampant in the corners of the gable, the royal lions of Spain still glare out across the desert, and paw the volutes, within which a cat and a mouse watch one another century after century. The Papagos say: “When cat catches mouse, end of world will come.” Above the window that opens on the center balcony springs the scallop shell of St. James the Greater Santiago, patron saint of Spain, whose name was its ancient war cry. Tradition tells that his ashes were miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Compostella on the Spanish coast, and pilgrims to the Apostle's shrine took home a scallop shell as a sign they had truly been there. So holy was his shrine and so many its pilgrims that throughout Europe in the Middle Ages the scallop shell became the symbol of all pilgrimage. Again and again in Mission San Xavier the scallop shell recurs, holding holy water, holding light above the deepset windows, crowning the niches of the saints and the painted armchairs in the choir, and finally springing up like a sunburst above the high altar.

Every day at San Xavier, the old dark doors of mesquite wood are swung wide for all humanity to pass through. And with what serenity and splendor is humanity welcomed, with what exuberant fancy, what mingling of primitive and sophisticated, what fusion of themes and ornaments from the ends of the earth! To the discerning eye, no inconsiderable part of the history of the world is packed into this one church deep in the deserts of America.

Here, in the shape of this basilica and the system of its interlocking domes and arches, in its glitter of gold and its richness of simulated marble, is Byzantium, eastern capital of the early Christian world when Europe was plunged in barbarian darkness.

Here, in the flat vaults, the high arches, and the wealth of architectural fantasies, of arabesques and tile patterns, are the Moors who conquered Spain. Here, on facade and altar rail, are the lions of Leon and Castile, lions on the flag of Ferdinand andIsabella when they drove out the Moors and sent Columbus across the Ocean Sea. Here, transmitted through Mexico, is the power of Spain in the New World; in Mexico, the High Renaissance and the Baroque reached heights of imagination and gorgeous spectacle unequalled in Europe. And crowning the whole is the joy of St. Francis of Assisi, a joy as alive here as it was in the twelfth century on a hilltop town in Italy.

Here, too, are bouquets of flowers that were designed in fifteenth century Persia; here, along the base of the walls of the nave, on dadoes now almost rubbed away by generations of shoulders, is a frescoed pattern of blocks that may also be foundon the ruined walls of Pompeii. Here, over the niches, the curtains that along the Mediterranean are hung over doors at noon, are looped up into regal canopies, and on them are painted chrysanthemums and waterlilies that were embroidered on silk in China And brought half around the world to be worn in shawls by ladies and in chasubles by priests. The curious flounced robes on the archangels are naive descendants of the Roman armor in which Renaissance painters like Raphael portrayed them. To all these the Papagos and Sobaipuris have added the diamondback rattlesnake pattern that writhes around the niches of the Apostles, and legend says, created the all-over pattern on the pilasters by dipping their thumbs in paint and pressing them against the plaster.

The zigzag imitation of marble along the cornice was also theirs to do, and they took delight in curling into the flecks a snail here, a rabbit there, elsewhere a hunter and deer. Below this cornice runs the Franciscan frieze: the knotted cord above the pleated folds of the priest's robe, hung with the bells and pomegranates ordered by Mosaic law; loop in loop, two cords start under the choir and end hanging in tassels on each side of San Xavier on the high altar. A stubborn fantasy insists that this is no cord but a snake; the Franciscans mildly inquire: “Did you ever see a snake with tassels?” Yet all these themes and ornaments, brought here for the delight of simple worshippers and for the greater glory of God, somehow fuse into a beauty perennially fresh and surprising. The narthex, or vestibule where by custom the unconverted stand and the nave where the faithful kneel are light and gay. On the white groined ceiling of the narthex, the vision seen by St. Bernardine of Siena of the Holy Name the JHS encircled by fire is painted bright as a sun. Overhead in the nave the shallow oval domes are ribbed and fluted like canopies of cloth. The once brightly stippled paint has fallen from the plaster, but still, in the pendentives (the triangles formed between the spring of the arches and the base of the domes) angels in jade and scarlet pull on ropes to spread these canopies between the worshippers and the hot sun.

In the niches around the nave, the Apostles appear as the missionaries themselves must often have appeared: un-aureoled, mere men to be distinguished from other men only because of an inner fervor, discipline and dedication, and because sometimes through them the eloquence of the Holy Ghost could speak, mere eloquent and believing men knowing that through their human imperfections they must somehow bring Christ to those before them, and that if they did not, the alternative was often death - a death that since Christ Himself had suffered it, they welcomed.

Ahead, in the great dome, the Good Shepherd, in black Spanish hat, looks down in blessing from among His lambs, and supporting the great dome, like the church itself, by the majesty of their learning, there appear in the pendentives the Latin Doctors: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and St. Jerome, seen in scarlet and prussian blue, black and dark olive.

Overwhelmingly, from his niche above the high altar, St. Francis Xavier dominates his church. Standing between the gold curtains, in black velvet Jesuit cassock, white satin surplice, and black biretta, he gazes at some unearthly vision. About him the great retable shimmers, gold on black and rich red. Beside him, in their niches, stand St. John and St. Andrew. Above him, gold and white, among roses, appears the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, with St. Peter on her right hand and St. Paul on her left. Above her, where the huge shell rises like a sunburst, is a bust of God, the Father and Creator, with medallions of Adam and Eve at His either side.

Below San Xavier, on the door of the Tabernacle, radiant angels invite the worshipper toward a monstrance gleaming like the sun. Set into the base of the Churriguerresque pilasters are small oil paintings of a gold tower and of a cedar tree, names given to Mary by the Franciscans in the thirteenth century hymn to her. Four cherubim once sat on the architrave above San Xavier, with instruments for music; vandals have chopped at them until only one, much mutilated, still holds his viol by the sacristy door. The other cherubim, here climbing among the gold arabesques, upholding niches, and looping back the draperies above San Xavier, are solemn. They are the bearers and revealers of immense concepts. The great angels on each side of the sanctuary gaze down with love and delight on those who come to communion, to the mystery of the Bread and Wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. The angels are wood, their draperies of canvas dipped in paint and molded. With an equivalent delight, the lions on the altar rails gaze at communicants. Once, like the angels and the cherubim, they too held candles in their human paws. Carved by someone who never saw a lion, and doubtless took them from the heraldic flag of Spain, they are strange as sphinxes. They have human eyes, and look on humanity benignly from somewhere beyond human time or knowledge.

All this is of the immeasurable glory and majesty of God; mortals kneel in awe, and pray, and go to the chapels in the transept, where everything speaks of the compassion of God towards men.

To the east is the chapel of the Sorrowing Mother. To her old Mexican and Indian women come on their knees, with their tragic, mortal faces framed in black lace veils, to pray and light a candle. From the starwindows in the great dome, sunrays fall all day, travelling from santo to santo; a little after noon most of the year, sunlight reaches the face and clasped hands of the Virgin and makes her silver halo glitter. Above Mary, in the shadows, rises an immense incised cross within which there is still nailed one arm of the Crucified Christ that once hung there. But as though no Franciscan, no painter, no Indian could bear her being sorrowful, Mary's niche is strewn with stars and roses. A circle of cherubs on heaven-blue wings is painted behind her head, and more cherubs still surround her. For years she wore a wedding dress brought her by a Mexican girl whose lover was killed just before the wedding. And now, at any time at all, some woman who loves her and whom she has comforted, will bring her a new dress and veil in her favorite blue, and climb up on the altar to slip it on her; every last fold of skirt and flow of veil will be most lovingly arranged. For Mary, like many other santos in the Southwest, stands on laths; she is only real to the waist. Therefore the folds of her gown must always hang a little over the edge of her niche, and the loving little trinkets given her are often found tucked under the ruffles of her petticoats.

On Mary's right stands St. Didacus, on her left, St. Anthony of Padua, holding an exquisite Christ Child. Other saints attend her: St. Fidelis, St. Benedict the Moor, St. Bernardine of Feltre, and high above in medallions, other saints of the Franciscan Order. Then, in her own chapel, the Virgin appears twice more; first in a statue of polychromed gesso, crowned with gold and sapphires, with holy fire scarlet and blue behind her, as the Immaculate Conception, and second, in a fresco, where as Queen of the Holy Rosary, wearing a skirt stiff as a bell and standing on the crescent moon, she looks out severely through the ruff of the women of Tehuantepec.

In the chapel to the west, in a niche filled with stars, Christ, crowned with thorns and clad in the crimson of suffering, lifts his hand. Frescoed on the walls, on clouds, the archangels surround Him. On His left appears St. Joseph, bearing a staff blossoming with lilies and with more lilies painted in the dim blue of his niche. Above the Savior appears St. Francis of Assisi, and around him float, bearing cornucopias, copper-colored cherubim with Indianblack hair and eyes; in the Kingdom of Heaven envisaged by St. Francis and by his followers to this day, a copper, yellow or black cherub may sometimes fly higher than a white one. On the left of St. Francis is placed his friend, St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order. St. Bonaventure, St. John Capistran, St. Bernardine of Sienna, St. James of the Marches, surround him.

On the right of the Savior, standing out in the chapel, is San Cayetano. He is an image from Tumacacori, and has lost his hands to the Apaches. Somehow, mysteriously, he has become the cowboys' patron saint, and wears a silk kerchief knotted around his neck over his satin surplice. The Franciscans, seeking some reason why the cowboys should select him, could discover only that he once received a Papal Bull an order from the Pope to go talk to an apostate monk named Martin Luther. In the niche behind him, doubtless by accident, there is a charming santo whom a Protestant lady chose as the one she felt closest to. The Franciscans moistened his pedestal with water, to see if his name could still be read there, and then looked him up in the hagiologies - the his-tories of the saints. To their amused embarrassment, he turned out to be St. James of the Marches of Ancona, distinguished during his lifetime for his zeal in pursuing heretics.

An old Papago woman waddles up the aisle, with two dark little granddaughters walking lightly before her. They kneel and cross themselves before the sanctuary and the remote and holy San Xavier, then go over to the recumbent image and inhale gently at his cheek. Then they start laying aside his tributes - the child's dress, the bridal crown, the pall. Tenderly, as if he were a sick man, they lift his head, his limp arms with leather elbows, his broken hands and legs chopped off at the knees by the Apaches long ago. And over all his other shrouds they pull down q new shroud, of white damask silk, with deep lace at cuff and hem, and make it smooth. With infinite care the old woman arranges the pall, the dress, the crown, while the little girls scrub at San Xavier's beard and cheek. The lipstick stains left on San Xavier by Mexican women are considered by older Papagos to be a shame and a desecration. When everything is straight again, nothing of the new shroud shows except at the neck. With a last gesture of veneration, the three leave San Xavier and go out happily. Perhaps he has brought a son or father from the wars or healed a child. In winter they will remember how cold he must be, and bring him a warm quilt and perhaps another soft pillow for his head.

As shrine for pilgrimage, San Xavier is the holy place of this region. A favorite light penance with Mexicans is to walk the nine miles out from Tucson, sometimes barefoot, sometimes fasting. The Franciscans frown on such self-imposed penances, but something in the Mexican temperament demands them. To acquire merit, to fulfill a promise, or simply for fiesta, the Mexicans go on much longer journeys, down to the great shrines in Mexico. To Magdalena, where the pink-and-white image of San Xavier is so heavy that, some say, only the pure in heart can lift him; to Plateras and the Santo Nino, the Christ Child, as he appeared at Atocha long ago, in pilgrim's dress and cockle shell, with His gourd of water and basket of bread that were not emptied though He fed and comforted all the Christians imprisoned by the Moors. The greatest shrine of all, of course, is at Guadalupe, where the Virgin, surrounded by a burst of rays and borne by a cherub on the crescent moon, appeared to a poor Indian and announced she was to come to America to be their Mother and Special Patroness.

From such pilgrimages, Mexicans and Indians bring back postcards, rosaries and ceramic images of Guadalupe and the Santo Nino to give to San Xavier. After these tokens have exceeded space limitations, the Franciscans are obliged to remove all but the Santo Nino. He sits on the altar before St. Joseph, and four votive candles burn around him. The Nino means much to the Mexicans; He frees prisoners, brings back those who were lost or gone on journeys, and plays with children, even exchanging shoes with them.

People of all faiths find themselves liking the Franciscans for their humor, their intelligence, and their unspoken dedications; they find themselves also convinced that the joy and beauty built into the walls of this old Mission are among the great heritages of America. And it does not matter to San Xavier whether you are black, copper, yellow, or white, though maybe he has a preference, like the Franciscans themselves after years in the desert, for massive copper faces. He will not refuse your love because you do not pray as he does.

IV. Papagos and Franciscans Beside every Papago door there hangs a cross of willow from the Feast of the Holy Cross, held here around the white cross on the hill. And inside every hut, whether so poor its walls are sooty with charcoal and the family roll up in blankets to sleep on the floor, or so rich there is a kitchen with a stove and an icebox, and a bedroom lined with white iron beds, there is an altar glimmering with tinsel and glowing with paper flowers, with a votive candle ready to be lit before it. Santos of all kinds crowd inside it, plaster and ceramic, postcard and medal. At the Feast of Corpus Christi,

held at night because it comes in the great heat of summer, many families get out their santos and their seeds for next year's plantings and set them side by side in the plaza to be blessed.

The great feast of the year, of course, is that of St. Francis Xavier on December 2nd, 3rd and 4th; this is a feast of the Church, and a time of prayer and pilgrimage. But from this fiesta the Tucson Festival Society has developed a brilliant pageant which it holds in April. Bonfires are lit in the plaza. Inside the church the sanctuary light is out and the Blessed Sacrament is removed. Arches and staffs Of yucca, bound with gaudy flowers, lean against the pews. Little dark girls, bright in their best clothes, shine with excitement. Older Papagos and Yaquis with their faces ceremonially daubed in white, come in carrying their babies and leading their older children by the hand. Their dogs are not to be restrained; they come in too. Fireworks, in a country so near Mexico, are essential to a fiesta, and momentarily the night sky is shattered by spraying brilliance. To the original fiesta have been added speeches and pageantry; magically appearing under spotlights, men in Spanish armor ride down the hill carrying torches, friars in the grey habit they first wore in this country kneel to bless the site of the mission. But still the most moving moment comes when, to a clamor of bells fiesta, and momentarily the night sky is shattered by spraying brilliance. To the original fiesta have been added speeches and pageantry; magically appearing under spotlights, men in Spanish armor ride down the hill carrying torches, friars in the grey habit they first wore in this country kneel to bless the site of the mission. But still the most moving moment comes when, to a clamor of bells in the lighted towers, the procession slowly emerges from the church. Yaquis, in shirts and jeans and glittering tall headdresses, dance ahead, with drums, flutes and gourd rattles, blessing the ground. Then, borne by a Franciscan, comes the Cross, glittering in the light of huge decorated candles carried by Papago acolytes in lace and scarlet. Behind the Cross, with candles in their hands and lighting their massive faces, the Papagos, the old women in their black shawls, the young carrying their babies; several hun-dred, two by two, with toddlers and stragglers, make a long line. Then the little girls, holding up the gay arches and the staffs of yucca bells, and, borne on a flower-trimmed litter by more acolytes, the exquisite little St. Francis of Assisi from Tumacacori, in his shining habit and glowing cape, followed by priests in liturgical vestments. Down from the lighted cross on the hill come long lines of young girls in white, with candles, to join the great procession as it slowly circles the plaza and returns into the church towards the shimmering altar.

Outside, before the gate, seen over the heads of the crowd, La Soledad in her star-bright halo looks up to heaven, and before her rises an object strange in this country: a flower-crowned maypole. In tinsel headdresses, the Yaquis, dancing, weave the streamers in and out, adding to a dance as old as Europe their own im-memorial drums, and enhancing with their native touch the strange and lovely fabric that is America. Under a lighted ramada, they also do their Deer Dance, the deer lithe and quick in his white stag's head mask with the branching antlers, and the flute he dances to might have been played by shepherds on the hills of Greece. Out in the center of the plaza, men and women hand in hand, the Papagos tear deliriously round and round a bonfire. Back in the atrium, on what was the speakers' platform, Mexicans with guitar, fiddle and castanets sing old songs. Overhead burst the rockets, and with each one, the crowds seem to rise outlined by light and then sink back into darkness.

Apart from fiestas, church, and occasional weddings, the Papagos have little social life. Each family lives within its own hut, on its own lands. In winter the fields around the Mission turn emerald with wheat and barley; in spring, acres are white with bean flowers. In summer, the corn tassels and melons and squashes grow heavy. In autumn, the chili peppers blaze. But the land cannot quite support the Papagos now; there is seldom enough water. The Santa Cruz cannot be depended upon, sometimes flowing, sometimes bone dry, sometimes savage with flood. Nor is there sufficient forage to maintain a profitable herd of cattle.

Officially, the range is up beyond Black Mountain; unofficially it is anywhere a horse or cow can find a nutritious mouthful, and often there are cattle nibbling cactus buds in the Mission garden. Many Papagos, to eke out the family income, hire themselves out as agricultural laborers to the neighboring ranches. Early every day cars, busses, and trucks depart laden with workers across the plaza, and disappear into the morning distances. A little later, the Papagos have relatively few abstract concepts; they speak in terms of the house, the fields, the well, and that is how they think. Translating the precepts of the Church into Papago is a dilemma that precipitates the translator into something perilously close to herey. For instance, there is no word or phrase equivalent to "person," and therefore in Papago the catechism runs: "God is composed of three men." As with all primitive tongues, the inflecNations are staggeringly complex, and much more difficult to master than Greek or Hebrew. The ways of the language can be acquired from grammars, such as those compiled by various Franciscans, but no one not Papago by birth or upbringing can speak it with even reasonable accuracy unless he lives among Papagos year in and year out, with his ears attuned to every subtlety. The sound of it is curiously like German, and Papagos pick up German rather easily. All the old-time Franciscans can speak Papago fluently, if not accurately, yet when they go away, perhaps to live among Papagos who pride themselves on speaking English, the use of it soon dims and tends to slip away. There are no books written in it except translations of the catechism and the Gospels. One translation of the Gospels, made by a Pima still living, is considered by the Franciscans to be exceptional. But already the tongue in which it is written has become almost archaic; continually, the living speech changes as Mexican and American words enter it. For the first two years a new priest at the Mission has his difficulties. Anything he does that varies in the slightest from how things were done in Kino's time produces endless argument and resistance. Then he begins to be accepted, then beloved, especially if he acquires a few grey hairs among them. Eventually he can work surprising changes, and the Papagos will merely remark, with affection, "He must have a good reason." When finally he receives his three days' notice to go elsewhere Franciscans, owning nothing, not even books or clothes, have nothing to pack there Are commotions, protests, tears. The Papagos cannot understand why their priest should be taken away from them; why shouldn't they have their own priest always, from the day he comes among them a young man to the day he dies? With some of the older Fathers, such as Father Bonaventure Oblasser, O. F. M., this affection amounts to a delight and adoration the Papagos might very well not accord San Xavier himself if he came walking among them. A truckload of Papagos coming home from the fields nearly exploded at the news that Father Bonaventure was actually at the Mission. Indians fell out on all sides and started running to crowd about the old man in the dusty habit and shake his huge gnarled hand. He knew them all, not only by their names and faces, but by those of their fathers and grandfathers, their wives and mothers, and their children. Other Franciscans say of him that he resembles Garces; if Garces could not bear to see a mountain he didn't know on the horizon, Bonaventure cannot bear to see an Indian he doesn't know at any distance. And probably only the very young, born since his last visit here across the huge Southwest, are unknown to him for the first five minutes. That trip in 1911, driving a horse and buggy, took him into places where very likely no priest and often no white man had Even been. Once, with Father Tiburtius, he was nearing a village famous in a parching dry country for its large pool. Neither the priests nor the two horses had had a drink of water for a very long time, and It was blazing hot. Suddenly the horses scented water, pricked up their ears and broke into a run. The priest who was driving tugged at the reins; the horses went Faster. The pool appeared in the distance. The buggy careened wildly from boulder to gully to patch of brush. Both priests were now pulling on the reins and yelling; no use. At full gallop, horses, Fests and buggy landed in the pool up to the hubcaps with a huge splash. Now-adays, Father Bonaventure goes by jeep everywhere except by the roads; he doesn't seem to care much for roads, He looks as if the desert sunlight had hewn at his face until it found the man inside was as vivid as itself: a man blazing with joy and kindness, a man who will go anywhere, help anyone, do whatever needs doing, make use of any material and any tool, and DO it. His hands are misshapen from the building he has done; with no knowledge of construction, plumbing, electricity, or anything else, he has built whatever needed building, and some-how made it work. Four times this desert-loving priest has made the long journey to Washington, to defend the people he loves against unjust legislation, or to get them nurses, doctors, teachers and priests to help them, or to stop delegations of Indians from going, confused, unprepared, ineffective, to Washington, and to induce senators and congressmen to come out here instead to see for themselves.

Like Kino and Garces before them, the Franciscans find the Papagos lovable for their warmth, their simplicity, their friendliness. And the Franciscans grieve when, moving into town, and becoming aware of the created not the basic needs, most Papagos are unable to earn them and sink into wretchedness. In the future, as the most intelligent acquire the skills and ideas of white civilization, the picture will change, but the Franciscans feel that for the present the Papagos are happier on the reservations. Of course, the Franciscans see the amalgamation of all Indians with the mass of America as inevitable. "They the Indians will lose something wonderful, and so will the rest of us. But what can anyone do, except try to make the process as painless as possible?"

Here the ideals and dedications of the Franciscans themselves become visible. They have spent long years acquiring their freedom from the things of this world if, indeed, anybody dedicated to such projects as restoring old missions and founding new ones can be imagined as free from anything and to behold a people, whose natural needs were almost as simple as their own, moving backward, not forward, into the phantasmagoria of civilization, saddens them. The Franciscans are highly educated and intelligent men. They are masters of many languages and usually conversant with the arts, literatures and sciences of several cultures. Sometimes the latest bulletins take a little while to arrive in the desert, but for them, a buzzard, circling high in silence, with the sun in his wings, is still more wonderful than a jet plane.

Oh yes, the Franciscans will acknowledge, the desert for three months in the summer is hot. They themselves stride out into sunlight that falls on skin like a blow wearing their brown wool habits. They trudge in sandals through the burning dust and the cactus and the hot wind that seldom removes from face and eyes the clothing of little gnats. Steadily under a steel hot sky, they drive their cheap and usually clattering cars while metal becomes searing to the touch, to say Mass, or give the sacraments, or just to help and comfort people in some blazing pocket in the hills. Across the immense and lonely plain, dust-devils, glowing with a dull fire in the sun, waver like madmen, each in his own orbit. Often they break against the shoulders of the Mission, and expire with a last flurry among the mesquite; to be caught in one in the open is to be stung, blinded and blasted by dust and sticks. Yet the Papago children jump into them screaming with delight.

There are days in summer when thunderheads stand upon the mountains, growing, then towering up, and up, until finally, full of lightning, they move off across the valleys. There are afternoons when two o'clock is black as midnight and shut in by thunder, with fierce winds driving the dust and lightning flickering almost continually. Franciscans who find a Papago out chopping wood at such moments are apt to shout, threaten, and chivvy, and the Papago is apt to shrug and go on chopping. Not infrequently he does get killed by a bolt, but the fact does not seem to impress his family or neighborhood, and people go on chopping with their hatchets glimmering in the spectacular play and flash. Then there are cloudbursts, with the sky slit open, and water falling like Niagara, and house and road and desert strange with running water, and the arroyos roaring as the flash floods, boiling, almost solid with boulders and uprooted brush, rage down the dry channels.

Perhaps the greatest moment of beauty at San Xavier, winter or summer, is at dawn when the moon is old a moment Franciscans never see unless called by the sick or the dying, for they rise at five to pray, ring the Angelus at six, and celebrate morning Mass at six-thirty, after which they may have a sip of coffee and some breakfast. But for those who can rise in the night, the drive out to the Mission is unforgettable. The universe seems at its most visible. On earth, form is rising out of darkness. Overhead, deep and endless, the stars still glitter; the setting moon is bright on its underside from the sun, and its shadow, in the pure desert sky, is clear and tender with earthshine. Near it, the morning star still stabs with brilliance the new light behind the peaks. From beside the white cross on the hill, the Papago huts lie quiet beneath the mountains. The Mission, cooled under the night wind and the stars, is pale and luminous. A bell rings in the tower; a few Papagos cross the plaza in the growing light. Then suddenly the Mission glows like a shell with sunrise.