THE BURIAL PLACE OF FATHER KINO

Father Kino's apostolic work is too well known to require any mention at this time other than to recall that the last twenty-four years of his life were devoted to the exploration and Christianization of the Pimería Alta, or what is today southern Arizona and northern Sonora; and that beyond this he changed the map of the Pacific coast of North America by proving that California was not an island but part of the mainland of New Spain.

It might be thought that the memory of the man who brought civilization to this region of our Southwest would long ago have been materially honored, but this is only partly true. Today, two and a half centuries after the Father's death, his only concrete memorials are a few monuments which purport to be his likeness, whilst his last resting place was long ago forgotten. The spot was doubtless known for a matter of fifty years after his passing, but with the expulsion of the Jesuits from New Spain it was gradually lost sight of.

While it has always been known that Father Kino was buried in the Mexican town of Magdalena (sixty-two miles south of the border city of Nogales), it was not until 1930 that an attempt was made to locate his grave. Unfortunately, it was believed that this was in a chapel forming part of Magdalena's original church, but as the ruins of this building were razed in 1882 and the present Casa Municipal or Town Hall built over the site, nothing but an old cemetery was found. This was the situation six years ago, when the ruins of a small adobe building were located hidden away in the center of a block in the oldest part of the town. The place was known simply as La Capilla, but as it seemed that it might prove to be the site of the long lost grave an investigation was begun. The result of this has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Father's burial place has been located, but thus far no attempt has been made to open the grave. With this background we will sketch the story of the newly discovered historical shrine.

Fr. Eusebio Francisco Kino arrived in the Pimería Alta in 1687, and eighteen years later Fr. José Agustin de Campos began a church and a three-roon dwelling at the Pima village of Buquivapa, or Santa María Magdalena. The dwelling was probably finished in the same year, 1705, but the church was not completed until twenty-nine years after. Fr.. Kino's death and two years after that of its founder. Early in 1711 Fr. Campos built a little adobe chapel a short distance southwest of his uncompleted church and adjoining his dwelling, and it is due to the mistaken belief that this chapel and the church were the same building that the confusion arose twenty-five years ago.

Father Kino had come down from his mission of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores to consecrate the new chapel to his patron saint, San Francisco Xavier, and whilst conducting the dedication mass became ill and was forced to retire to Fr. Campos dwelling. There he lay down without undressing, and as was his custom on two sheep-skins for a mattress, two light blankets such as the Indians used for his covering, and a pack-saddle for a pillow. And there, a little before midnight of March 15, 1711, Father Kino breathed his last.

On the following day Fr. Campos interred his superior's remains, and to make certain that the grave would not be forgotten recorded its exact location in Magdalena's Book of Burials, as follows: "He is buried in a coffin in this chapel of San Francisco Xavier, on the gospel side where the second and third chairs are located." Despite other theories, when he wrote chairs Fr. Campos could only have meant the steps leading to the chapel's sanctuary, where a life-sized image of Saint Francis lay in a gilt and crystal casket.

Fr. Campos died in 1736, and it was not until 1738 that his church was completed. In the meantime his little chapel was Magdalena's only place of worship, but there is nothing of more than passing interest in its history until August 25, 1767, when all but one of the Jesuit fathers were expelled from New Spain, in common with their brethren stationed elsewhere in the country. Fr. Kino's rapidly deteriorating missions were taken over by the Franciscan fathers in the following year, and by 1772 Fr. Campos' church had become so ruinous that his chapel was again the pueblo's only fame. The place had evidently been well cared for, and it now saw the beginning of a series of stirring events.

At two o'clock in the afternoon of October 8, 1775, Lieutenant-Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza's expedition to found the presidio and mission of San Francisco de Asís, in Alta California, rode into Magdalena. Early in the morning of the oth, Fr. Pedro Font, Anza's peppery chaplain, celebrated mass in the Capilla, and as the chapel was too small to accommodate all the communicants ar one time Fr. Francisco Zuñiga, from San Ignacio Caborica (Magdalena's mother mission) then conducted a second mass. On this occasion Fr. Font enlivened the ceremony by accompanying the singing on his psalterio (a flute-like instrument he had brought along at Colonel Anza's instance to amuse the semi-hostile Yuma Indians of the Río Colorado), that he played, perhaps unwittingly, over Father Kino's grave.

Fr. Font returned to Magdalena on October 29, 17764 and a month later all but lost his life at the Capilla. At eight o'clock in the morning of November 16 a band of Pima and Seri Indians made a sudden raid on the pueblo, sacking and burning the Christian Indians houses and running off the mission's stock and cattle. The women and children and two of their men took refuge with Fr. Font in the padre's dwelling, and the savages next attacked that building. Juan Cocinero, their apostate leader, set fire to the roof and leaving this ablaze led an assault on the adjoining chapel. Breaking in the door they destroyed the image of San Francisco Xavier, slashed the paintings, stole the altar ornaments and withdrew for the moment, on their way tearing out the leaves of an illuminated missal and throwing away those they did not fancy. Returning to the attack they then broke in the door of the padre's house (where the refugees were about to be smothered by smoke from the burning roof), but were held off momentarily by the arrows of the mission Indians. The savages were about to rush the building and butcher its inmates when at the last moment help arrived from San Ignacio, some two leagues to the north, summoned by a Christian Indian who had escaped at the first attack, and the smoke of the burning buildings seen from other near-by settlements.

From 1776 onward the Indian peril increased daily, and in 1828 the Capilla saw the beginning of the expulsion of the Franciscans. This was not consummated until thirteen years later, but it was the first step in the secularization and despoliation, of Father: Kino's old missions, and, indirectly, the reason why the chapel passed into private hands shortly thereafter. The Capilla having been found too small to accommodate the rapidly increasing number of worshipers, about 1819 Diego Rivera, Magdalena's wealthiest and most prominent citizen, began at his own cost to build the town's present church. The building was completed 1832 or 1833, and whilst this is not quite

The Capilla from the southwest with chapel on the left

clear it appears that he was then given the Capilla property as a reward for his generosity. The fact that about 1837 Rivera was killed by Apaches and his remains buried under the main altar of his church, where those of his wife were later interred, seems to bear out this belief.

In 1841 the last of the Franciscan friars departed from the Pimería Alta, when their missions were supposed to have been taken over by secular curates. But by 1843 the Apaches' depredations has become so intolerable that on June 21 President Antonio López de Santa Ana issued a decree authorizing the Jesuit Order to re-establish their one-time frontier missions as a bulwark to withold the incursions of the savages. Bishop Lázaro de la Garza y Ballesteros, Sonora's recently consecrated prelate, was urged to expedite the matter but excused himself from complying on the grounds that there were no Jesuit fathers available, and as he had pointed out nine years earlier, there was a scarcity of secular padres interested in martyrdom..

It was not until early in 1844 that Padre Domingo San Martin was appointed curate of the ex-missions of the Pimería Alta, when he found that during the past eighteen years these establishments had been so thoroughly looted of their temporal wealth that little remained but the churches ornaments and the mission records, together with what was left of their one-time libraries. Padre San Martin collected the books and the records and stored them in the sacristy of Diego. Rivera's church at Magdalena, and as it was from the latter documents that much of much of the history of the Capilla has been reconstructed it may be interesting to know their subsequent fate. On January 28, 1879, M. Alphonse Louis Pinart, a French savant, in his own words "abstracted" the most valuable of these papers and subsequently turned them over to Hubert Howe Bancroft, the California historian, and today they are preserved in the Bancroft Library at The University of California.

Word of the 1848 gold discovery in California quickly spread to Sonora, and by the following year most of Magdalena's miners were on their way to the new Golconda. At the time a beautiful and deeply revered image of Nuestra Señora de la Imaculada Concepción stood in a niche in the Capilla's sacristy, the old chapel being still in use as a semi-private place of worship, and before their departure many of the miners made vows to our Lady to insure their success. Some of them did so well that on their return they presented the image of the Queen of Heaven with an elaborate crown of California gold, surmounted..by an orb and cross surrounded by a silver. halo, in gratitude for her intervention on their behalf.

Three years later Count Gaston de Rrousset-Boulbon and his French filibusters repudiated the agreement to colonize Sonora's northern frontier and stem the inroads of the Apaches. Marching down from their headquarters at Saric, on October 1, 1852, they occupied Magdalena as the first step in a plan that, with the tacit approval of Napoleon Napoleon III, was to convert Sonora into a French colonial republic as a prelude to the Emperor's seizure of Mexico. The Capilla was the Count's headquarters, and Magdalena's priest was so involved in the project that he enlisted the support of the near-by ranchers, and assisted in perfecting the pronunciamiento then issued by the French adventurers. The plan failed, but it served to establish the Capilla as the local center of the Conservative or Catholic Party's future efforts to thwart the anticlerical reforms of Mexico's Liberal Party.

In 1859 the Capilla was again in the limelight of rebellion. The parish priests throughout Mexico had been instructed to preach against the reforms, and José María Piñeiro, Magdalena's cura, became so violent in his denunciations of President Benito Juarez and the Liberals that on October 14 he was arrested and charged with sedition. But before he could be brought to trial he escaped and fled to the presidio of Santa Cruz, whose commandant, Hilario Gabilondo, was another outspoken Conservative. Padre Piñeiro was probably in accord with Diego Rivera's son Remigio, the then owner of the Capilla, as late in the following year the latter revolted. Supported by Gabilondo and his troops he made his head-quarters in the chapel, from where on September 20, 1860, the rebels issued their Plan de Magdalena. Defeated at Hermosillo, they fell back and fortified themselves in the Capilla, where they held out for a matter of two months. But in February, 1861, they were dislodged and forced to seek refuge in Arizona. There at Tubac the titular leader of the short-lived revolution, Remigio Rivera, became very friendly with Charles D. Poston, the so-called "father of Arizona," and other American pioneer mining men in the new Territory.

On July 31, 1865, the Imperialist troops of Emperor Maximilian forced Governor Ignacio Pesqueira of Sonora to retire to Tubac, when General Emile Langberg occupied Magdalena and established his command post in the Capilla. The parish priest (who may well have been Cura Piñeiro), believing that the Republican government of Mexico had been overthrown, gave the French his full support. This proved ill advised, as when the Mexican troops reoccupied the town he was immediately arrested and, convicted by a drumhead court-martial of having aided the enemy, given his choice of "contributing" ten thousand pesos to the Liberal cause or starving to death in jail. After fasting for two days the chastened cura contributed, and with this the Capilla's political history ended.

Fr. Campos' chapel appears to have been an extension to his dwelling, and whilst its walls are still standing the roof fell in some fifty years ago. What have every appearance of being the original doors are still in place, and the lower left-hand panel of the main door was rudely broken and repaired long, long ago. Whilst this may be only a coincidence, it agrees remarkably with the description of the Indians' raid in 1776. Nothing remains of the sanctuary or its steps, and a few chickens now scratch perfunctorily over what is believed to be Father Kino's grave.

Two of the rooms which formed part of Fr. Campos' dwelling are now a private home, and it is in the northern-most of these that Father Kino is believed to have died. This room now opens onto Avenida Pesqueira, once Calle Rivera, and originally the Camino Real, leading from Mexico City to Tucson and California. The original entrance was in the rear, near the Capilla's main doorway, and in the lower panel of this door is an old break that is also reminiscent of the 1776 raid. What was at one time the chapel's sacristy is now a separate apartment that may originally have been the dwelling's third room.

from Mexico City to Tucson and California. The origi-nal entrance was in the rear, near the Capilla's main door-way, and in the lower panel of this door is an old break that is also reminiscent of the 1776 raid. What was at one time the chapel's sacristy is now a separate apartment that may originally have been the dwelling's third room.

No vestige remains of the Capilla's once beautiful garden or of Magdalena's original Spanish cemetery, both of which were within the chapel's outer walls; nor is there any trace of the extensive orchard or the Indians' cemetery, which were located just east of the Capilla enclosure. But local tradition still recalls these and many other details of the once flourishing establishment.

Documentary records have been found of the ceremonial accessories and ornaments which adorned the Capilla as early as 1772; several of these have been located and the fate of others has been ascertained. After the Indians' raid the head and hands of San Francisco Xavier were rescued, and when Diego Rivera completed his church the reconstructed figure was installed before the main altar. There it acquired miracle-working fame until the building was turned into a meeting place for members of the anticlerical party. In 1934 one of the reactionary leaders is said to have shipped the effigy to Hermosillo, where the much harried saint was finally broken up and burned under the boiler of the Sonora Brewery.

Three of what are said to be the Capilla's original paintings have been found, two of these, one of the Virgin and the Infant Jesus and the other of Saint Joseph carry-ing the Child, being on canvas. All four throats in these paintings were violently cut many years ago, and as during the raid in 1776 the Indians slashed the chapel's paintings this seems indisputable evidence that the works described hung in the Capilla at least as early as that time.

The statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception has also been found, and its face and hands are indeed beautiful examples of the woodcarver's art. The image's golden crown, orb and cross, and its silver halos are in excellent condition, and, needless to say, are priceless mementos of the great gold discovery in California.

The culminating evidence that the Capilla is indeed Fr. Campos' old chapel are dramatic statements made by a great-grandson and a great-granddaughter of Diego Rivera. The former says that his grandmother on many occasions told him that the place was the oldest building in Magdalena, and the latter states that she has always understood that the old chapel is the burial place of Father Kino.