THE TWO AMERICAS
1567-1673
Chile and Peru--Valdivia--Peruvian Bark--Paraguay Reductions--
Father Fields--Emigration from Brazil--Social and religious
prosperity of the Reductions--Martyrdom of twenty-nine
missionaries--Reductions in Colombia--Peter Claver--French West
Indies--St. Kitts--Irish Exiles--Father Bath or Destriches--
Montserrat--Emigration to Guadeloupe--Other Islands--Guiana--
Mexico--Lower California--The Pious Fund--The Philippines--
Canada Missions--Brébeuf, Jogues, Le Moyne, Marquette--Maryland
--White--Lewger.
In 1567 Philip II asked for twenty Jesuits to evangelize Peru. The
request was granted, and in the Lent of 1568 the first band arrived at
Callao and made its way to Lima. They were so cordially welcomed, says
Astrain, that the provincial found it necessary to warn his men that
much would have to be done to live up to the public expectation. Means
were immediately put at their disposal, and they set to work at the
erection of a college. While the college was being built they heard
confessions, visited the jails and hospitals, gave lectures on canon law
to the priests of the cathedral, and started their great training school
on Lake Titicaca, to which we have already referred. There the novices
were set to learn the native languages to prepare them for their future
work. For the moment the population of the city also gave them plenty to
do. It was made up of three classes of people: negroes, half-breeds, and
wealthy Spaniards. Father López looked after the negroes, and by degrees
succeeded in putting a stop to their orgies and indecent dances. Others
were, meantime, taking care of the whites and mestizos. The usual
Jesuit sodalities were put in working order, and soon it was a common
thing to see the young fashionables of the city laying aside their
cloaks and swords, and helping the sick in the hospitals, going around
to the huts of the poor or visiting criminals in the jails.
A new detachment of missionaries arrived in the following year with the
Viceroy Toledo, who evidently took to them too kindly on the way over,
for besides their normal duties, he wanted them to assume the office of
parish priests, and he immediately wrote to Philip II to that effect.
They refused, of course, with the consequence of an unpleasant state of
feeling in their regard on the part of the authorities. Indeed, the
pressure became so great that the superior finally yielded to a certain
extent, and even assigned some of his professed to the work, but he was
promptly summoned to Europe for his weakness. Meantime novices came
swarming in, among them Bernardin d'Acosta, whose virtues merited for
him, later on, a place in the "Menology." There was also little Oviando,
called the Stanislaus of Peru. He was an abandoned child whose parents
had come out to America and had lost him or had died, and he was begging
his bread in the streets of Lima when the Fathers picked him up. They
sent him to the college and helped him to become a saint.
The great man of Peru and, subsequently, of Chile, was Father Luis de
Valdivia, who was hailed by both Indians and whites as "the apostle,
pacificator and liberator of Peru." The Indians had fascinated him, and
he learned their language in a month or so. When he saw that the only
difficulty in making them Christians was the slavery to which they were
subjected, coupled with the immorality of their Spanish masters, he got
himself named as the representative of the colonial authorities, and
started to Spain to lay before Philip III the degraded condition of his
overseas possessions. The king received him cordially, enacted the most
stringent laws against the abuses, and appointed him royal visitor and
administrator of Chile, where similar disorders were complained of. He
also wanted to make him a bishop, but Valdivia refused. Returning to
Peru from Spain, he gave 10,000 Indians their freedom. When that got
abroad among the savages, all the tribes that were then in rebellion
immediately came to terms, and on December 8, 1612, the grand chief
Utablame, with sixty caciques and a half-a-score of pagan priests, all
of them wearing wreaths of sea-weed on their heads, and holding green
branches in their hands, descended from their fastnesses and the grand
chief, their spokesman, addressed Valdivia as follows: "It is not fear
that makes me accept the peace. Since my boyhood I have not ceased to
defy the Spaniards, and I have withstood sixteen governors one after
another. I yield now only to you, good and great Father, and to the King
of Spain, because of the benefits you have bestowed upon me and my
people."
In spite of the difficulties and dangers of the work, as well as the
calumnies of the slave-hunters and even the wrong impressions of some of
his brethren, Valdivia succeeded in establishing four great central
Indian missions, which evoked the commendation of successive kings of
Spain. Before Valdivia went to Chile, Viga, who had been there since
1593, had already compiled a dictionary and grammar in Araucanian, and
Valdivia followed his example by writing other books to facilitate the
work of the missionaries. The colleges founded at Arauco and also at
Valdivia--a town named not after the missionary, but to honor his
namesake, the governor of the province--furnished a base of operations
among the Araucanian savages, a fierce and, for a long time, indomitable
people, who were united against the Spaniards in a league composed of
forty different tribes. The work among them was slow and hard, and three
of the priests were killed by them in the wilderness. Their success also
aroused the colonists to fury, and a war of extermination of the Indians
was resolved upon, but Valdivia opposed it, and not only succeeded in
getting the Araucanians to agree to terms of peace, but brought in the
Guagas, and persuaded them to lay down their arms. The great missionary
was eighty-two years of age when called to his reward.
The famous Peruvian bark was brought to Europe about this time, but it
was regarded with extreme suspicion because of its sponsors, and the
wildest stories were told of it. Medical treatises teemed with
discussions about its properties, some condemning, others commending it.
Von Humboldt says: "It almost goes without saying that, among Protestant
physicians, hatred of the Jesuits and religious intolerance were at the
bottom of the long conflict over the good or evil effected by the drug."
The illustrious physician, Bado, gave as his opinion that "it was more
precious than all the gold and silver which the Spaniards obtained in
South America."
It was in 1586, eighteen years after their arrival in Peru, that the
work of the Jesuits in Paraguay was inaugurated. Francisco de Victoria,
Dominican Bishop of Tucumán had invited them to his diocese, which lay
east of the Andes, and his brother in religion, Alonso Guerra, Bishop of
Asunción, which was on the Rio de la Plata or Paraná River, also
summoned them to his aid, both for the whites and Indians of his flock.
They obeyed, and without delay colleges, residences, and retreats for
the Spiritual Exercises were instituted in Santiago del Estero,
Asunción, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Corrientes, Tarija, Salta, Tucumán,
Santa Fe and elsewhere. These were for the civilized portion of the
community, while a new system was devised to save the Indians from their
white oppressors. These poor wretches knew the colonists only as
slave-dealers and butchers; hence, every attempt to teach them a
religion which the whites were alleged to follow was futile.
On the other hand, when it was represented to the authorities that
Indian slavery had to cease before the natives could be pacified, angry
protests were heard on all sides, even from some of the resident priests
who maintained that the proper thing for a savage was to be a Spaniard's
slave. The missionaries took the matter in their own hands, as they had
done in Peru. They went to Spain and applied for royal protection. They
obtained what they wanted, so without waiting for the edict to arrive,
began their work by plunging into the woods, where cougars, pumas,
serpents and savages met them at every step. But this vigorous act only
enraged the colonists the more, and the inhuman method of cutting off
the missionaries' food-supplies was resorted to in order to force them
into submission.
In this group of heroic apostles there was, curiously enough, an Irish
Jesuit whom Crétineau-Joly calls Tom Filds, which is probably a Spanish
or French attempt at phonetics for Tom Fields, or O'Fihily, or O'Fealy,
a Limerick exile. Paraguay was the second field of his missionary
labors, for he had previously been associated with the Venerable José
Anchieta in the forests of Brazil. He had left Ireland when very young,
and after studying at Paris, Douay and Louvain, had gone to Rome to
begin his novitiate. Six months of trial were sufficient to prove the
solidity of his virtue, and he then walked all the way from Rome to
Lisbon, to take ship for America. He reached the Bay of All Saints in
1577, and spent ten years in the wilderness, with sufferings, privations
and danger of death at every step. From thence he was sent to Paraguay,
but was captured by pirates at the mouth of the Rio Plata, and then,
loaded with chains, he and his companion, Manuel de Ortega were cast
adrift in a battered hulk which drifted ashore at Buenos Aires, where
their help as missionaries was gladly welcomed. He was at Asunción when
the plague broke out, and the way in which he faced his duty won "Father
Tom" as great a reputation among the white men as he had already
acquired among his copper-colored brethren. When the plague was over, he
again became a forest ranger, and in 1602 found himself all alone among
the Indians, his companion, Father de Ortega, having been cited before
the Inquisition on some ridiculous charge or other. O'Fealy finally died
at Asunción on May 8, 1624, at the good old age of seventy-eight, after
fifty hard years as a South American missionary--ten in Brazil and forty
in Paraguay.
These journeys among the wandering tribes in the wilderness gave
occasion, it is true, for extraordinary heroism, and saved many a soul,
but the results were far from being in proportion to the energy
expended. Hence, at the suggestion of Father Aquaviva, the missionaries
all met at Saca, far out under the Andes, and determined to gather the
Indians together in separate colonies which no white man, except the
government officials, would be allowed to enter. Such was the origin of
the "Paraguay Reductions," which have won such enthusiastic admiration
from writers like Chateaubriand, Buffon, de Maistre, Haller,
Montesquieu, Robertson, Mackintosh, Howitt, Marshall, Muratori,
Charlevoix, Schirmbeck, Grasset, Kobler, du Graty, Gothain, and even
Voltaire. The most recent eulogist of all is Cunninghame-Graham in his
"Vanished Arcadia." The villages in which these converted Indians lived
were called "reductions," because the natives had been brought back
(_re, ducir_) from the wilds and forests by the preaching of the
missionaries to live there in organized communities under Christian
laws.
The first reduction was begun in 1609, in the province of Guayará,
approximately the present Brazilian territory of Paraná. In 1610 another
was inaugurated on the Rio Paranapanema; in 1611 the Reduction of San
Ignacio-miní, and, between that year and 1630, eleven others with a
total population of about 10,000 Indians. The savages flocked to them
from all quarters, for these reservations afforded the only protection
from the organized bands of man-hunters who scoured the country--the
Mamelukes, as they were called because of their relentless ferocity.
They were also described as "Paulistas," probably because they generally
foregathered in the district of lower Brazil, known as St. Paul. These
wretches, half-breeds or the offscourings of every race, made light of
royal decrees or the angry fulminations of helpless governors, and when
they could find no victims in the forests, did not hesitate to attack
the Reductions themselves. These raids began in 1618. In 1630 alone,
according to Huonder (in the Catholic Encyclopedia) no less than 30,000
Indians were either murdered or carried off into slavery in what is now
the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
This led to the great exodus. Father Simon Maceta abandoned the northern
or Guayará mission altogether, and taking the survivors of the
massacres, along with the Indians who were every day hurrying in from
the forests, led them to the stations on the Paraná and Uruguay. It was
a difficult journey, and only 12,000 reached their destination, but
they served to reinforce the population already there, and in 1648 the
Governor of Buenos Aires reported that in nineteen Reductions there was
a population of 30,548; by 1677 it had risen to 58,118. He found also
that they had determined to live no longer as sheep, waiting to be
devoured by the first human wolves that might descend on them, but were
fully armed and disciplined by their Jesuit preceptors. Indeed, in 1640
ten years after the Guaraní massacre, they could put a well-trained army
in the field, not only against the Mamelukes, but against the
Portuguese, who, from time to time, attempted an invasion of Spanish
territory from Brazil. This military formation was not only permitted
but encouraged by the king. He repeatedly sent the Indians muskets and
ammunition, and later they built an armory themselves, and made their
own powder. They had their regular drills and sham battles, with both
infantry and cavalry, which did splendid service year after year in
repelling invasions and suppressing rebellions. Nor did they ever cost
the crown a penny for such services. Loyalty to the king was inculcated,
and Philip V declared in a famous decree that he had no more faithful
subjects than the Indians of Paraguay.
The Indians of the Reductions were taught all the trades, and became
carpenters, joiners, painters, sculptors, masons, goldsmiths, tailors,
weavers, dyers, bakers, butchers, tanners etc., and their artistic
ability is still seen in the ruins of the missions. They were also
cultivators and herdsmen, and some of the stations could count as many
as 30,000 sheep and 100,000 head of cattle. They built fine roads
leading to the other Reductions, and, on the great waterways of the
Paraná alone, as many as 2000 boats were employed transporting the
merchandise of the various centres. They were, above all, taught their
religion, and their morals were so pure that the Bishop of Buenos Aires
wrote to the king that he thought no mortal sin was ever committed in
the Reductions. The churches occupied the central place in the villages,
and their ruins show what architectural works these men of the forest
were capable of accomplishing. The streets were laid out in parallel
lines, and the principal ones were paved. In course of time the
primitive huts were replaced by solid stone houses with tiled roofs, and
were so constructed that connecting verandas enabled the people to walk
from house to house, under shelter, from one end to the other of the
settlement.
The Reductions extended as far as Bolivia on one side, and to northern
Patagonia on the other, and from the Atlantic to the Andes. Altogether
there were about a hundred of them, and as their formation required the
subduing and transforming of the wildest type of savage into a civilized
man, it is not surprising that in effecting this stupendous result as
many as twenty-nine Jesuits suffered death by martyrdom.
In 1598 the Jesuits Medrano and Figuero were in Nueva Granada or what is
now called The United States of Colombia. They also buried themselves in
the forests, after having done their best to reform the morals of the
colonists at Bogotá. Not that they had abandoned the city; on the
contrary, they established a college there in 1604, and others later in
Pamplona, Mérida and Honda. At first the natives fled from them in
terror, but little by little, the presents which these strange white men
pressed on them won their confidence, and helped to persuade them to
settle in Reductions. Three of the Fathers lost their lives in that
work, devoured by cougars or stung by venomous serpents. Unfortunately,
the bishop was persuaded that the Indian settlements were merely
mercantile establishments gotten up by the Jesuits for money-making,
and all the fruit of many years of dangers and hardships was taken out
of their hands and given to others.
There was no one, however, to covet the place of Peter Claver, who was
devoting himself to the care of the filthy, diseased, and brutalized
negroes who were being literally dumped by tens of thousands in
Cartagena, to be sold into slavery to the colonists. He had come out
from Spain in 1610, after the old lay-brother, Alfonso Rodriguez, had
led him to the heights of sanctity and determined his vocation in the
New World. His work was revolting, but Claver loved it, and as soon as a
vessel arrived he was on hand with his interpreters. They hurried down
into the fetid holds with food, clothing and cordials, which had been
begged from the people in the town. It did not worry Claver that the
poor wretches were sick with small pox or malignant fevers; he would
carry them out on his back, nurse them into health, and even bury them
with his own hands when they died. The unfortunate blacks had never seen
anything like that before, and they eagerly listened to all he had to
say about God, and made no difficulty about being baptized, striving as
well as they could to shape their lives along the lines of conduct he
traced out for them.
He was on his feet night and day, going from bed to bed in the rude
hospitals, with supplies of fruit and wine for the sick. He even brought
bands of music to play for them, and showed them pictures of holy scenes
in the life of Christ to help their dull intellects to grasp the meaning
of his words. No wonder that often when he was among the lepers, who
were his especial pets, people saw a bright light shine round him. His
biographers tell us that he did not find these ordinary sufferings
enough for him, and though he wore a hair-shirt and an iron cross with
sharp points all day long, he was scourging himself to blood at night
and praying for hours for his negroes. He died on September 8, 1654, and
is now ranked among the saints, like his old master, Brother Alfonso.
To the long line of islands, alternately French and English, which form,
as it were, the eastern wall of the Caribbean Sea, and are known as the
Lesser Antilles, the French Jesuits were sent in 1638. They are
respectively Trinidad, Grenada, Saint-Vincent, Martinique, Guadeloupe,
and near the northern extremity of the line, one that is of peculiarly
pathetic interest, Saint Christopher, or, as it is sometimes popularly
called, Saint Kitts. When the French expedition under d'Esnambuc landed
at Saint Kitts in 1625, they found the English already in possession,
but like sensible men, instead of cutting each other's throats, the two
nationalities divided the island between them and settled down quietly,
each one attending to its own affairs. In 1635 the French annexed
Guadeloupe and Martinique, and, later still, Saint-Croix, Saint-Martin
and a few others.
The population of these islands consisted of white settlers and their
negro and Indian slaves. They were cared for spiritually by two
Dominicans, one of whom, Tertre, has written a history of the islands.
But these priests had no intercourse with the savages, whose languages
they did not understand, and hence to fill the gap, three Jesuits, one
of them a lay-brother, were sent to Martinique, arriving there on Good
Friday, 1638. They began in the usual way, namely by martyrdom. Two of
them were promptly killed by the savages. Others hurried to carry on
their work but many succumbed to the climate, and others to the
hardships inseparable from that kind of apostolate. An interesting
arrival, though as late as 1674, was that of Father Joseph-Antoine
Poncet, one of the apostles of Canada, who is remembered for having
brought the great Ursuline, Marie de l'Incarnation, to Quebec, and also
for having been tortured by New York Mohawks at the very place where
Isaac Jogues had suffered martyrdom a few years before. Poncet was old
when he went to Martinique and he died there the following year. The
names of de la Barre, Martinière, de Tracy and Iberville, all of them
familiar to students of Canadian history, occur in the chronicles of the
Antilles.
For people of Irish blood these islands, especially Saint Kitts and
Montserrat, are of a thrilling interest. On both of them were found
numbers of exiled Irish Catholics held as slaves. As early as 1632
Father White on his way to Maryland saw them at Saint Kitts. He tells us
in his "Narrative" that he "stopped there ten days, being invited to do
so in a friendly way by the English Governor and two Catholic captains.
The Governor of the French colony on the same island treated me with the
most marked kindness." He does not inform us whether or not he did any
ministerial work with them but in all likelihood he did. He is equally
reticent about Montserrat, and contents himself with saying that "it is
inhabited by Irishmen who were expelled from Virginia, on account of
their Catholic Faith." He remained at Saint Kitts only a day, and on
this point his "Relation" is very disappointing. In 1638 the Bishop of
Tuam sent out a priest to the island, but he died soon after. He was
probably a secular priest, for in the following year the bishop was
authorized by Propaganda to send out some religious. But there is no
information available about what was done until 1652, when an Irish
Jesuit was secured for them. In the "Documents inédits" of Carayon he is
called Destriches, which may have been Stritch, but there is no mention
of either name in any of the menologies; Hughes, in his "History of the
Society of Jesus in North America" (I, 470), calls him Christopher
Bathe. He was not, however, the first choice. A Father Henry Malajon had
been proposed, but the General did not allow him to go. A Welshman named
Buckley was then suggested, but though his application was ratified he
never left Europe. Next a Father Maloney offered himself, but was kept
in Belgium; finally, however, Father Christopher Bathe or Stritch
arrived.
The missionary found there a very great multitude of enslaved Irish
exiles, for on April 1, 1653, the London Council gave "license to Sir
John Clotworthie to transport to America 500 _natural_ Irishmen." On
September 6, 1653, he asked leave to transport 400 Irish children. Ten
days later liberty was granted to Richard Netherway of Bristol to
transport from Ireland one hundred _Irish tories_. When Jamaica was
captured by the English in 1655, one thousand Irish girls and a like
number of Irish boys were sent there. The earlier throngs had been sent
first to Virginia, but had been driven over to the islands, as we learn
from White's "Narrative." The English authorities in Ireland wrote to
Lord Thurlow: "Although we must use force in taking them up, yet it
being so much for their own good and likely to be of great advantage to
the public, it is not the least doubted but that you may have as many as
you wish." He offers to send 1500 or 2000 boys. "They will thus," he
said, "be made good Christians." The first of these "good Christians"
were found by Father Bathe when he arrived in Saint Kitts in 1652 and
they eagerly came to the little chapel which he built on the dividing
line between the English and French settlements. For three months he was
busy from dawn till nightfall saying Mass, hearing confessions,
baptizing babies and preaching. After that he started for Montserrat
which was entirely under English control and hence he was compelled to
go there disguised as a lumber merchant who was looking for timber. As
soon as he landed he passed the word to the first Irishman he met and
the news spread like wildfire. A place of meeting was chosen in the
woods where every day Mass was said and the people went to confession
and communion. That took up the whole morning, and in the afternoon they
began chopping down the trees so as to carry out the deception.
Unfortunately, the Caribs found them one day, and killed some of them,
but we have no more details of the extent of the disaster.
By the time Father Bathe got back to Saint Kitts, the English had taken
alarm and had forbidden their Irish slaves ever to set foot on the
French territory. But there must have been disobedience to the order,
for one night, after they had returned home, a descent was made upon
their houses, and one hundred and twenty-five of the most notable among
them were flung into a ship and cast on Crab Island, two hundred leagues
away, where they were left to starve, while those who remained behind at
Saint Kitts were treated with the most frightful inhumanity. One
instance is cited of a young girl who, for having refused to go to the
Protestant church, was dragged by the hair of her head along the road,
and treated with such brutality that some of the more timid of the
victims were terrified and obeyed the order about keeping away from the
chapel. The greater number, however, came to Mass secretly, walking all
night through dense forests and at the edge of precipices, so as to
escape the sentries posted along the ordinary road. Two very old men
were conspicuous in this display of faith.
The castaways on Crab Island kept life in their bodies for a few days by
eating what grass or roots they could find or by gathering the
shell-fish on the beach. At last to their great delight a ship was
sighted in the distance and when they hailed it, came to take them off.
Unfortunately, however, it was too small for such a crowd, and only as
many as it was safe to receive were allowed on board. The rest had to be
abandoned to their fate. What became of them nobody ever knew. It is
supposed that they made a raft and were lost somewhere out on the ocean.
Even those who sailed away came to grief. When they reached Santo
Domingo, they were not permitted to land, because they came from Saint
Christopher, which made the Spaniards in the fort suspect a trick. Then
they were caught by a tornado and carried four hundred leagues away. At
one time hunger had brought them so low that they were on the point of
casting lots to see who should be killed and eaten, but fortunately they
caught some fish and that sustained them till they reached the land.
What land it was we do not know.
A characteristic example of Irish feminine virtue is recorded in this
very interesting account, which is worth repeating here. A young girl,
for her better protection, had been disguised as a boy by her father
when both were exiled. After he died, she obtained work in the household
of a respectable family where her efficiency so charmed the mistress of
the household that the husband grew jealous of the friendship of his
wife for this estimable man-servant. To avert a domestic disaster, the
good girl had to make known her identity and she was then more esteemed
than ever. What became of her ultimately is not recorded. Meantime,
Father Bathe had gathered what was left of his poor people and carried
them off to Guadeloupe, where there were no English. God spared him for
five years more, and he went from island to island under all sorts of
disguises, if there was danger of meeting the English. He even succeeded
in converting not a few of the persecutors.
Hughes informs us further that in 1667 an Irish priest named John Grace
returned to Europe from the islands, and reported on the deplorable
condition of his compatriots in the Caribbean. Passing through
Martinique, Guadeloupe and Antigua he heard the confessions of more than
three hundred of them. He related, also, that fifty of the three hundred
had died while he was there. In Barbadoes there were many thousands who
had no priests and were conforming to Protestantism. In St. Bartholomew,
there were four hundred Irish Catholics who had never seen a priest. At
Montserrat, however, Governor Stapleton was an Irishman and a Catholic,
and consequently there was no difficulty in having a priest go there.
There were as many as four hundred Catholics at that place and they
formed six to one of the population. These islands of the Caribbean were
the favorite hiding places of the "filibusteros," a set of abandoned men
of various nationalities, French, Dutch and English, who were lying in
wait for the rich galleons of Spain, on their way from the silver mines
of Peru to the palaces of Madrid. Their life was a continued series of
daring adventures, robberies, massacres and wild debauchery. They were
ready for any expedition and against any foe. With them nothing could be
done, but with the great numbers of negro slaves who were sold at
Martinique and elsewhere there was ample opportunity for apostolic work.
It was a most revolting task; the whites, regarded them as devils, but
the Fathers took care of them and sent many of them to heaven.
It was from the Antilles that the French Jesuits went to Guiana. Its
conversion had been attempted in 1560 by two Dominicans, but they were
both martyred almost on their arrival. No other effort was made until
late in the following century, when in 1643 two Capuchins essayed it,
only to be killed. Four years before that, however, the Jesuits Meland
and Pelliprat entered the country at another point and succeeded in
subduing the savage Galibis, who were particularly noted for ferocity.
In 1653 Pelliprat published a grammar and a dictionary of their
language; in the following year Aubergeon and Gueimu were killed; then
the Dutch took possession of the country, expelled the Jesuits and
obliterated every vestige of Catholicity. Nevertheless, the missionaries
returned later and renewed their work with the intractable natives. In
1674 Grillet and Béchamel started for the interior, and were followed
later by Lombard, who, after fifteen years of heroic toil, erected a
church at the mouth of the River Kourou to the northwest of Cayenne.
There he labored for twenty-three years, and in 1733 was able to report
to his fellow missionary, de la Neuville: "Acquainted as you are with
the fickleness of our Indians, you will no doubt be surprised to hear
that their inconstancy has been overcome. The horror with which they now
regard their former superstitions, their regularity in frequently
approaching the sacraments, their assiduity in assisting at the Divine
service, the profound sentiments of piety which they manifest at the
hour of death, are effectual proofs of a sincere and lasting
conversion."
Father Grillet's story of the capture of the French fort in Guiana makes
interesting reading. He went out with the garrison to meet the English
who were landing from their ships, but the French commander was killed
and his men fled. Grillet, with some others, made his way to the forests
and swamps of the interior, but was finally captured at the point of the
pistol. He was ordered to hand over his money, but as he had none, he
would probably have been killed had not a party of English officers
recognized him as the priest who had rendered them some service over in
the Antilles some time before. They led him to Lord Willoughby the
governor, who showed him every attention. It will be of interest to know
that these gentlemen carried on their conversation with the priest, in
French and Latin. When the ship arrived at Barbadoes, Grillet was lodged
with a Scotch gentleman whose son-in-law was a Protestant minister; "a
clever man, a good philosopher and well up in his theology," says
Grillet. They discussed religious questions amicably, and on Sunday the
priest had the satisfaction to hear that the parson told his
congregation how he "wished they had the same sorrow for their sins as
Catholics have when they go to confession."
Grillet remained a month with his Protestant friends, Lord Willoughby
coming occasionally to visit him. From Barbadoes he was conducted to
Montserrat, where "Milord, after celebrating Christmas ten days later
than we do," notes Grillet, "for the English did not accept the
Gregorian Calendar," then handed him over to a Catholic colonel of a
Yorkshire regiment, who finally delivered him safe and sound to the
French Governor de la Barre. This was the de la Barre who was afterwards
to figure in Canadian history. Grillet then returned to his old mission
work at Cayenne, for the English had abandoned it, and with Father
Béchamel set out to explore the interior, with a view to future
missionary establishments. With no other provision than a little cassava
bread, and no other escort than a negro and a few Indians, they began a
journey of 1920 miles, through forests and swamps and across mountains
and down rivers which were continually broken by cataracts merely to
find where the Indians were living, so as to send them missionaries
later. They had started from Cayenne on January 25, 1674, and returned
there on June 27. Both died shortly after.
Along both banks of the Oyapoch, throughout its whole course, missions
were established by other valiant apostles who, as a French historian
relates, had formed the gigantic project of uniting by a chain of
stations both extremities of Guiana. Indeed, the church on the Kourou
was only an incident in this work. Eleven years before that, Arnaud
d'Ayma had fought his way to the Pirioux, the remotest of all the known
tribes. There he lived like the savages in a miserable hut, spending
every moment among them in studying their language and teaching them in
turn the truths of salvation. He then founded a mission on the Oyapoch
where he collected the entire tribe of the Caranes. Meantime, D'Ausillac
looked after the Toeoyenes, the Maowrioux, and the Maraxones on the
Ouanari. Up to the time when de Choiseul, minister of Louis XV, drove
the Jesuits out of Guiana, one hundred and eleven of them had devoted
their lives to the evangelization of that country.
Bandelier, writing in "The Catholic Encyclopedia" (IV-123), tells us
that in the district in which Cartagena was situated, "the religious of
the Society of Jesus were the first during the Colonial period to found
colleges for secondary instruction; eight or ten colleges were opened in
which the youth of the country and the sons of Spaniards were educated.
In the Jesuit College of Bogotá the first instruction in physics and
mathematics was given. In the expulsion of the Jesuits by Charles III
the Church in New Granada lost her principal and most efficacious aid to
the civilization of the country.... To this day the traveller may see
the effects of this arbitrary act, in the immense plains of the regions
of Casanare, converted in the space of one century into pasture lands
for cattle, but which were once a source of great wealth, and which
would have been even more so. It is only within the last ten years that
the Catholic Church, owing to the peace and liberty which she now
enjoys, has turned her eyes once more to Casanare; a vicariate Apostolic
has been erected there, governed by a bishop of the Order of St.
Augustine, who with the members of his order labours among the savages
and semi-savages of these plains."
The first Jesuits, as we have already said, arrived in Mexico in
September, 1572. They were sent out at the expense of the king, but as
he did nothing more, a wealthy benefactor immediately put his money at
their disposal and gave them a site for a college and church. The latter
was erected with amazing expedition at a trifling expense, for three
thousand Indians who had heard that the Fathers were going to take care
of their spiritual welfare worked at it for three months. The structure
was declared to be _muy hermoso por dentro_, but as much could not be
said of the exterior. It was simply a thatched structure and was long
known by the name of Japalteopan. Their college, which took more time,
was called St. Ildefonso. Guadalajara, Zacatecas and Oaxaca also became
Jesuit centres, while Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Sonora, and, later Lower
California were their fields of labor among the savages. It may be noted
here that Father Sánchez was one of the presiding engineers in the work
of the Nochistongo tunnel on which 471,154 men were employed. The
purpose of the work was to drain the valley of Mexico.
Among the very early missionaries of Mexico was an Irish Jesuit named
Michael Wadding, though he was known among the Spaniards as Miguel
Godinez. He was born at Waterford in 1501, but his mother was a
Frenchwoman, named Marie Valois. He made his studies in Salamanca and
entering the Society April 15, 1609 was sent to Mexico in the following
year. He labored for a long time in the rude missions of Sinaloa and won
to the Faith the whole tribe of the Basirvas, and then taught for
several years in the colleges. He was famous as a director of souls, and
wrote a "Teologia mística" which, was not published until forty years
after his death; however, it made up for the delay by going through ten
editions. His editor, Manuel La Reguera, S. J., says that he also wrote
a "Life of Sister Mary of Jesus," a holy religious whom he was directing
in the way of perfection.
The Jesuit mission work in Mexico which has attracted most attention is
that of Fathers Kino, Salvatierra, Ugarte and their associates. They
were engaged mostly in the evangelization of the Peninsula of Lower
California and the vast northern district of Mexico, known as the
Pimería, or land of the Pima Indians, which extended into what is now
the State of Arizona. The success achieved there and the resources of
the "Pious Fund" which Salvatierra had gathered made the work of
Junípero Serra and the Franciscans in Upper California possible in later
days.
Gilmary Shea (Colonial Days, p. 527) maintains that Eusebio Kino is one
of the greatest of American missionaries. Many historians claim that he
was a German and say that his name "Kino" was an adaptation of Kühn.
That such is not the case is shown by Alegre in his history of the
Jesuits in Mexico; by Sommervogel in his "Bibliothèque des écrivains"
and by Bolton, who has just published Kino's long lost "Autobiography."
Hubert Bancroft pronounces for Kühn, but he publishes an autograph map
which is signed "carta autoptica a Patre Eusebio Chino;" Huonder, in
"The Catholic Encyclopedia," declares him to be a German of Welch Tyrol,
but the "Welch" Tyrol is precisely that part of the country where there
are no Germans. The Chino family still exists, near Trent and has never
spoken anything but Italian. The change from _Ch_ to _K_ had to be made
to prevent the Spaniards from thinking he was a Chinaman; furthermore
the _ch_ in Spanish being always soft would not represent the Italian
letters when they are pronounced _k_.
Kino was born on August 10, 1644, and entered the Society of Jesus in
Bavaria on November 20, 1665. He subsequently taught mathematics at
Ingolstadt, and while occupying that post applied for the foreign
missions. He left the university in 1678, but did not reach Mexico until
late in 1681. The reason of the delay was his assignment as an observer
of the famous comet of 1680 and 1681. During that time, he lived in
Cadiz, but he did not publish the result of his observations until after
his arrival in Mexico. The book has a very portentous title and is
listed in Sommervogel as: "Exposicion Astronomica de el Cometa, que el
año de 1680, por los meses de Noviembre y Diziembre, y este año de 1681
por los meses de Enero y Febrero, se ha visto en todo el mondo, y le ha
observado en Ciudad de Cadiz el P. Eusebio Francisco Kino, de la Compañi
de Jesus, con licencia en Mexico por Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio,
1681." Possibly this pompous announcement was intended as an apology for
Kino's audacity in questioning the findings of a famous astronomer of
the period who rejoiced in the name and title Don Carlos de Sigüenza y
Gongora, Cosmógrafo y Mathemático Regio en la Academia Mexicana.
The settlement of Lower California had been attempted as early as 1535
by a Franciscan who landed with Cortes at Santa Cruz Bay near the
present La Paz. "After a year of privations", says Engelhardt, "which
had cost the famous conqueror $300,000, the project had to be abandoned.
Another effort was made in 1596, but the mission did not last a single
year. Almost a century later, namely in 1683, the Jesuit Fathers Kino
and Goni, along with Fray José Guijosa of the Order of St. John of God,
accompanied Admiral Otondo on an expedition to that unhappy country."
They embarked on the "Limpia Concepción" and the "San José y San
Francisco Javier" and set sail on January 18. A sloop with provisions
was to accompany them, but it never left port. The voyage lasted until
March 30, and on that day they entered the harbor of La Paz, but not
until April 5 did the admiral set foot on shore to take solemn
possession of the land. The mission, however, lasted only a short time;
and thus Spain failed for the third time to establish a post in desolate
Lower California. Kino then applied for work among the Pima Indians. His
offer was welcomed by the provincial, who would have sent him thither
immediately, if a government permission as well as a royal assignment of
funds had not been prerequisites. Neither difficulty dismayed Kino; he
immediately interviewed the viceroy and was so eloquent in his plea that
he received not only permission and financial aid to work in the new
field, but authorization for whatever post he might choose among the
Seris of Sonora. When that much was accomplished, he set off for
Guadalajara, where the royal audiencia was in session, to address it on
another matter which was very close to his heart, namely the abrogation
of the stupid policy of imposing labor on the convert Indians in the
mines and haciendas, while the others who refused to be Christians were
allowed to go scot free. It was putting a premium on paganism. All that
he could get, however, from the audiencia was a five-year exemption, in
spite of the fact that as far back as 1607 Philip III had ruled that for
ten years after baptism every convert should be exempt from compulsory
labor. The same royal order had been renewed in 1618, and was most
faithfully observed where there were no mines or haciendas to put the
converts at work.
In 1764 the Pimería was the northern limit of Spain's possessions, about
400 leagues from the city of Mexico and about 130 from Sinaloa. On the
east a mountain range separated it from Taurumara, and on the west the
Gulf of California bathed its shores from the Yaqui River to the
Colorado. Its northern boundary was the Hila, Gila, or Xila River, and
its southern, the Yaqui. According to Alegre "the soil is rich, there is
no end of game, such as lions, tigers, bears, deer, boars, rabbits and
squirrels. The woods are full of serpents, poisonous or otherwise, but
there are herbs and plants innumerable," which possessed most wonderful
healing powers. The birds were numerous and "two-headed eagles," the
reader is assured, "were not rare." Kino, as far as we can find, makes
no mention of "two-headed eagles."
The people were robust and lived to an extreme old age, except where the
fogs of the lowland prevailed. There all sorts of ailments occur. The
Pimas were composed of a number of tribes such as the Opas,
Cocomaricopas, Hudcoacanes, and the Yumas. They lived on both sides of
the Gila River in rancherias, which the missionaries united into
pueblos. They numbered in all about 30,000. The Seris who were found
along the Gulf coast were mostly identified with the Giuamas. To the
north were the savage Apaches.
None of these people had any means of recording the doings of the past,
such as the hieroglyphics of the Mexicans, but they made much of certain
traditions which they refused to impart to strangers. As far as could
be ascertained, they had no sacrifice or idols, no land of worship and
no priests except the wizards, whom they regarded with abject terror.
Tatooing around the eyes was universal, even for children. At birth a
sort of sponsor for the child was summoned, and he was given more
authority than the parent. At death all the trappings and household
belongings of the departed were buried with him. They believed in
divinations like the ancient Greeks and Romans, with the difference that
the creature inspected was not a bird but a lobster. Statues and emblems
were placed on the roadsides, before which every passer-by had to leave
an offering. Alegre gives a long list of their superstitions, some of
which Bancroft denounces as hideously obscene. The initiation of the
warrior resembled the horrible ritual common among the northern Mandans,
and the torture of captives, even of little children, by old squaws, was
as fiendish as similar practices among the Iroquois.
The Jesuit missions among these people were inaugurated as early as 1637
or 1638, by Father Castano, who had been trained in the Sonora district
by Méndez, but the Pima section to which Kino betook himself was a new
field. He called his first post Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, and it
may be found on the map just north of Cucurpé at the source of the river
called Horcasitas or San Miguel. From there he developed dependent
stations, and before 1691, he had three at San Ignacio, Remedios, and
San José, in each of which he built a fine church.
"The work which Father Kino did as a ranchman or stockman," says Bolton,
"would alone stamp him as an unusual business man and make him worthy of
remembrance. He was easily the cattle king of his day and region. The
stock raising industry of nearly 20 places on the modern map owes its
beginnings to this indefatigable man. And it must not be supposed that
he did this for private gain for he did not own a single animal. It was
to furnish a food supply for the Indians of the missions established and
to be established and to give these missions a basis of economic
prosperity and independence. Thus we find Saeta thanking him for the
gift of 115 head of cattle, and as many sheep to begin a ranch at
Caborca. In 1700 when San Xavier was founded, Kino rounded up 1400 head
of cattle on the ranch of his own mission at Dolores, and dividing them
into droves, sent one of them under his Indian overseer to San Xavier.
In the same year he took 700 cattle from his own ranch, and sent them to
Salvatierra, across the Gulf at Loreto--a transaction which was several
times repeated."
Kino had often spoken to Salvatierra about the failure of the attempt to
evangelize Lower California, to which his heart still clung, and he
suggested to his companion that in his capacity of official visitor he
might make another effort to redeem the unfortunate people who lived
there. It was true, he admitted, that the country was so barren that it
could not be self-sustaining, but he was convinced that it would be an
easy matter to convey provisions from fertile Pimería to the starving
Californians if a ship could be constructed to transport to the other
side of the Gulf whatever the future missionaries and people might need.
Salvatierra took fire at the idea, and, before they parted, ordered Kino
to build the barque at any point he might select along the west coast of
Mexico and assured him that he himself would further the project with
all the power at his disposal.
It was not until 1694 that Kino attempted to build the ship. He was then
among the Sobas on the Gulf, and with him were Father Campo and Captain
Manje, the latter of whom has left a diary of that journey. He began to
cut his timber on March 16, 1694, but he was informed that Lower
California was not an island, but a peninsula, and he then inaugurated a
series of amazing overland journeys to reach the head of the Gulf. His
companion Captain Manje had told him of the wonderful structures on the
Gila River and thither he directed his steps. He is said to have
celebrated Mass in the largest of those ruined buildings, the famous
Casa Grande. It was quadrilateral in form and four stories high. The
rafters were of cedar and the walls of solid cement and masonry. It was
divided into various compartments, some of them spacious enough for a
considerable assembly. The tradition among the people was that
Montezuma's predecessors built it on the way from the north to the
southern countries where they ultimately settled.
At a distance of three leagues from this Casa and on the other side of
the river are the ruins of another edifice, which appears to have been
still more sumptuous. Indeed the ruins at that place would indicate that
at one time there had been not merely a palace but a whole city, and the
natives assured the missionaries that there were other buildings further
north which were marvelous for their symmetry and arrangements. Among
them was a labyrinth which appears to have been a pleasure house of some
great king. Excavators have discovered in various places, sometimes
leagues away from these great buildings, shapely and variously colored
slabs, and two leagues from the Casa Grande there was found the basin of
a reservoir large enough to supply a populous city and to irrigate the
fertile plains around for great distances; while to the west was a
lagoon which was emptied by a narrow sluice. The regularity of the
circular form of this lagoon and its rather contracted dimensions would
suggest that it was the work of men were it not for its extraordinary
depth. Holes had been cut into the solid rock which subsequently were
found large enough to be used as storehouses for provisions for troops.
These ruins, however, do not appear to have interested Kino to any great
extent. There were other ruins that worried him about that time. His own
missions seemed to be facing universal destruction. He himself was being
denounced in Mexico as conveying false information to the government
about his Indians; they were accused of being in secret alliance with
the Apaches, who were destroying the country and defying the Spaniards.
Kino again and again had denied the truth of these charges, but he was
not only not believed but was held up as a deliberate liar.
On March 29, 1695, the Pimas of Tubutama burned the priest's house and
church, profaned the sacred vessels and then, starting down the river to
Caborca, had, after murdering Father Saeta and desecrating the church,
killed four servants of the mission. An armed force was quickly sent
after them and succeeded in killing a certain number in the battle that
ensued. Fifty of them then gave themselves up on a promise of immunity,
but on arriving in camp they were brutally murdered. The troops then
hastened to Cocospera, fancying that they had restored peace, but they
were no sooner out of sight than the Pimas laid waste the whole Tubutama
Valley and destroyed every town on the San Ignacio River. Where was Kino
all this time? Quietly waiting to be killed at Dolores. He had concealed
the sacred vessels in a cave and was kneeling in prayer, expecting the
tomahawk or a poisoned arrow. But no one came. He was too much beloved
by all the Indians to be injured in the least, even in their wildest
excess of fury.
Of course the Spaniards ultimately won. They ravaged the whole country
and slaughtered the savages until the entire tribe was terror-stricken
and forced by hunger or fear of annihilation to sue for peace. Through
the influence of the missionaries, a general pardon was granted, and
then the work of reconciling the red men to the terrible whites had to
be begun all over again. When Kino returned to Dolores, he was received
with the utmost enthusiasm by his people. Not only the Pimas, but the
Sobas and Sobaipuris came out to welcome him. They loaded him with gifts
and made all sorts of promises of future good behavior, and he then set
himself to the task of rebuilding the devastated rancherias.
Notwithstanding this return, however, to normal conditions and the great
increase of his influence over the Indians, Kino still longed to devote
himself to the regeneration of the degraded Californians, and he asked
to be associated with Salvatierra, who had gone thither in 1697, but
owing to the protest of the Pimas, the Mexican government positively
refused to permit him to leave the district where his presence was so
essential for peace.
After endless journeys up and down the country, providing for the
material and spiritual wants of his own flock, but ever keeping in his
mind the great project of reaching Lower California by land, Kino at
last climbed the mountain of Santa Brigida and saw quite near to him the
Gulf of California with a port or bay which, because it was in latitude
about 31° 36' must have been what the old cosmographers called the Santa
Clara range. "From its summit," says Kino himself, "I clearly descried
the beach at the mouth of the Colorado, but as there was a fog on the
sea I could not make out the California coast." On another occasion,
however, namely in 1694, he and Juan Mates had seen the other side from
Mt. Nazarene de Caborca, lower down the coast. A point of
identification left by Kino was that the mountain on which he stood in
1698, had been once a volcano. The marks of it were all around him.
Kino could not then pursue his exploration to the mouth of the river.
His guides and companions refused to go any farther, so he had to turn
homeward. On the way back, however, he was consoled by discovering more
than "4,000 souls," to use Alegre's expression, "in rancherias which
were until then unknown to him. He baptized about four hundred babies
and sent little presents to his Indian friends along the Colorado and
Gila," or, as Kino spells it, Hila. After making arrangements for future
explorations he set out for Dolores, which he reached on October 18
after a journey of three hundred leagues. In 1699 he was joined by his
friend Captain Manje, and they resolved to reach the Colorado itself and
go down the stream to the mouth. But they failed to find guides, for it
was an unfriendly country, and so the disappointed men again returned to
Dolores. Kino was seriously ill on his arrival, but was on his feet
again in October when the visitor, Father Leal, wanted to inspect the
country. The official got no farther than Bac, while Kino and Manje
started west, but they did not succeed in going far, and were at the
mission again in November.
On September 24, 1700, Kino attempted a new route. Striking the Gila
east of the bend, he followed its course down to the Yuma country. After
settling a quarrel between the Yumas and their neighbors, he climbed a
high hill to explore, but saw only land. He then crossed to the north
bank of the Gila with some Yumas and journeyed on to their principal
rancheria, which he called San Dionisio, because he arrived there on the
feast of that saint, October 9. There he ascended another mountain and
this time he was rewarded. The sun was setting as he reached the
summit, but he clearly saw the river running ten leagues west of San
Dionisio and, after a course of twenty leagues south, emptying into the
Gulf. From another hill to the south he saw before his eyes the sandy
stretches of Lower California. The wonderful old man, however, was not
yet satisfied. He would make one more attempt and with Father González,
a new arrival in the missions, he set his face to the west, reaching San
Dionisio by the way of Sonoito and from there went down to Santa Isabel.
"From this point," says Bancroft (XV, p. 500), "they were in new
territory. Going down the river they reached tide-water on March 5,
1702, and on the 7th, the very mouth of the river. Nothing but land
could be seen on the south, west and north. Surely, they thought there
can be no estrecho, and California is a part of America."
According to Clavigero these journeys totalled about twenty thousand
miles. It is almost incredible, but Bolton tells us that "Kino's
endurance in the saddle was worthy of a seasoned cowboy." Thus when he
went to the City of Mexico in 1695, he travelled on that single journey
no less than 1500 miles; and he accomplished it in fifty-three days. Two
years later, when he reached the Gila on the north, he did seven or
eight hundred miles in thirty days. In 1699, on his trip to and from the
Gila he made seven hundred and twenty miles in thirty nine days; in
1700, a thousand miles in twenty-six days; and in 1701, eleven hundred
miles in thirty-five days. He was then nearly sixty years of age.
Meantime, Salvatierra had been painfully establishing missions all along
the barren peninsula, but was so woefully discouraged that he was on the
point of returning to Mexico. At this juncture Father Juan Ugarte
arrived on the scene. He had been Salvatierra's agent in Mexico for
collecting funds, but when he heard of the threatening condition of
things in California he had himself relieved of his rectorship in San
Gregorio and became a missionary. It was really he who saved the whole
enterprise from destruction. He was born in Honduras about the year
1660, and entered the Society at Tapozotclan. As soon as he set foot on
the Peninsula, he began a reorganization of the whole economic system of
the missions. With St. Paul, he believed that a man who did not work
should not eat, and consequently that Salvatierra's benignant method of
feeding every savage who would come to the "doctrina," or catechism, was
psychologically, religiously and economically wrong. Hence, when he
found himself fixed at San Javier, he taught the natives how to
cultivate the land, to dig ditches for irrigation, to plant trees, to
trim vines and to raise live stock.
Of course, the savages were surprised at the new system, but although
Ugarte was very kind, he was very positive and his bodily strength
astounded and appalled his neophytes. The result was that while other
missions were starving, San Javier had fields of corn, rich pastures and
great herds of cattle. It took a long time to make this system
acceptable everywhere on the Peninsula; when it was adopted it was
difficult to make it a success--even Ugarte's own fields were devastated
and his cattle stolen. Indeed, conditions grew so desperate in 1701,
that Salvatierra at last determined to abandon California and go back to
Mexico. Ugarte stood out against it and protested that he would never
give up until his superiors called him back. To show that he meant what
he said, he went to the church and laid a vow to that effect on the
altar.
Just when the sky was darkest, information came that Philip V had
ordered 6000 pesos a year to be allotted to the missions. The first
payment however, was made with extreme reluctance by the viceroy. But
the royal example stimulated the piety of others, with the result that
the Marquis of Villapuente gave an estate of 30,000 pesos for three
missions; Ortega and his wife came forward with 10,000; and other
friends hastened with their contributions. In 1704 Salvatierra went over
to Mexico to collect the usual subsidy. He was rejoiced at being told on
his arrival that not only would he receive the stipend, but that his
majesty had ordered that the churches should be supplied with whatever
was necessary for Divine services, that a seminary was to be founded in
California, that a presidial force of thirty men was to be stationed on
the coast to protect a galleon, a sort of mission ship for provisions
and exploration, and that 7000 pesos a year were to be added to the
former allowance. It was a splendid example of royal munificence;
however, not only were none of these royal orders carried out, but even
the original grant of 6000 pesos could not be collected. "It may be
fairly stated," says Bancroft (XV, 432) "that the missions of California
were from the first to the last founded and supported by private persons
whose combined gifts formed what is known as the Pious Fund."
Salvatierra was absent from California for a little over two years while
filling the office of provincial, "a flattering honor," says Bancroft,
"that would be gladly accepted by most Jesuits." Before the end of his
term, however, he hastened back to labor in the land of desolation to
which he had consecrated his life. He lasted only a short time, and died
in 1717 in Guadalajara. "His memory," says Bancroft, "needs no
panegyric; his deeds speak for themselves, and in the light of these,
the bitterest enemies of his religion or of his Order cannot deny the
beauty of his character and the disinterestedness of his devotion to
California. The whole city assembled at his funeral and his remains were
deposited amidst ceremonies rarely seen at the burial of a Jesuit."
Meantime, Ugarte's methods were being followed elsewhere than in San
Javier, and a new impetus was given to them when he succeeded
Salvatierra as general superior. It must have been hard to keep the pace
that he set; thus, for instance, he used 40,000 loads to make a road
from San Javier to one of the out-lying missions; he built a reservoir
there and carted to it 160,000 loads of earth to make a garden and
executed many similar works. He was also very eager to carry out
Salvatierra's purpose of exploring the coast, but he was not satisfied
with the antiquated ships which had been in use up to that time--"worn
out and rotten old hulks," he said, "only fit to drown Jesuits in." He
determined to have a ship of his own built in California and after his
own ideas. For that purpose he hired shipwrights from the other side of
the Gulf, where also he proposed to get his timber. But hearing of some
large trees thirty leagues above Mulege he went thither in 1718 to look
them over. He found the trees, but they were in such inaccessible
ravines that the shipbuilder declared it was impossible to get them.
Ugarte was not swayed from his purpose by this difficulty; he went down
to Loretto and returned with three mechanics and all the Indians he
could induce to follow him. After four months of hard work he not only
had all the trees felled and shaped, but he had opened a road for thirty
leagues over the mountains and with oxen and mules hauled his material
to the coast. He built his "Triumph of the Cross," as he called it, in
four months. The provincial was told meanwhile, that it was going to be
used for pearl fishing, and sent the supposed culprit a very sharp
letter in consequence. No doubt he made amends for this when he was
disabused. The "Triumph of the Cross" was not to carry a cargo of pearls
but was intended to explore the upper Gulf, so as to realize the dream
of Kino and Salvatierra.
The good ship left Loretto on May 15, 1721, with twenty men, six of whom
were Europeans, the captain being a William Stafford. It was followed by
the "Santa Barbara," a large open boat carrying five Californians, two
Chinese and a Yaqui. They made their first landing at Concepción Bay,
and then, after creeping along the shore northward, crossed the Gulf to
Santa Sabina and San Juan Bautista on the Seri coast. The sight of the
cross on the bow-sprit delighted the natives and assured the travellers
of a hearty welcome. Tiburon was the next stop, and while there Ugarte
felt his strength giving out; but despite his sixty-one years he
continued his voyage, and headed the "Triumph" for the mouth of the
Colorado, while the "Santa Barbara" hugged the shore. Meantime, a few
men were landed and made for the nearest mission. They found the trail
to Caborca and soon the Jesuits of that place and of San Ignacio hurried
down with provisions for the travellers.
While the "Santa Barbara" was being loaded, the "Triumph" was nearly
stranded at the mouth of the river, so it was decided to cross to the
other side, which they reached only after a hard three days' sail. There
the "Santa Barbara" met them and both ships pointed north, crossing and
recrossing the gulf until finally they anchored at the mouth of the
river on the Pimería side. There was some talk of going up the stream,
but the ship's position in the strong current was dangerous, the
weather was threatening, and besides, Ugarte had achieved his purpose;
he had seen the river from the Gulf and had added a convincing proof to
Kino's assertion that California was a peninsula. On July 16 they
started south; the storm they had feared broke over them and the sloop
nearly went to the bottom. The sailors, who were nearly all sick of the
scurvy, got confused in the Salsipuedes channel, and it was only on
August 18 that they cleared that passage so aptly called "Get out if you
can." But a triple rainbow in the sky that day comforted them, just as
they had been cheered when the St. Elmo's fire played around the mast
head during the gale. But they were not free yet. Another storm overtook
them and they had great difficulty in dodging a waterspout, but they
finally reached Loretto in the month of September.
Besides its original purpose, this voyage resulted in furnishing much
valuable information about the shores, ports, islands and currents of
the Upper Gulf. The original account of the journey with maps and a
journal kept by Stafford was sent to the viceroy for the king, but
Bancroft says they have not been traced. Ugarte lived only eight years
after this eventful journey. Picolo, Salvatierra's first companion had
preceded him to the grave, dying on February 22, 1729, at the age of 79,
whereas Ugarte's life-work did not cease till the following December 29.
Perhaps Lower California owes more to him than to the great Salvatierra.
A classic example of the influence of ignorance in the creation of many
of the false statements of history is furnished by a publication about
these missions in the "Montreal Gazette" of 1847, under the title of
"Memories of Mgr. Blanchet." "The failure of the Jesuits in Lower
California," he says, "must be attributed to their unwillingness to
establish a hierarchy in that country. Had they been so disposed, they
might have had a metropolitan and several suffragans on the Peninsula.
They failed to do so, until at last, in 1767, word came from generous
Spain to hand over their work to some one else." In the first place,
"generous Spain" had not the slightest desire to establish a hierarchy
on that barren neck of land when it expelled the Jesuits in 1767. Again
as "generous Spain" appointed even the sacristans in its remotest
colonies, the Society must be acquitted of all blame in not giving an
entire hierarchy to Lower California. Finally, one hundred and fifty-one
years have elapsed since the last Jesuits left both Mexico and Lower
California and there is nothing there yet, but the little Vicariate
Apostolic of La Paz down at the lower end of the Peninsula.
In describing the work of the Jesuits in Mexico, Bancroft (XI, 436)
writes as follows: "Without discussing the merits of the charges
preferred against them, it must be confessed that the service of God in
their churches was reverent and dignified. They spread education among
all classes, their libraries were open to all, and they incessantly
taught the natives religion in its true spirit, as well as the mode of
earning an honest living. Among the most notable in the support of this
last assertion are those of Nayarit, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and
lower California, where their efforts in the conversion of the natives
were marked by perseverance and disinterestedness, united with love for
humanity and prayer. Had the Jesuits been left alone, it is doubtful
whether the Spanish-American province would have revolted so soon, for
they were devoted servants of the crown and had great influence with all
classes--too great to suit royalty, but such as after all might have
saved royalty in these parts." Indeed, when the Society was
re-established in 1814, Spain had already lost nearly all of its
American colonies. The punishment had rapidly followed the crime.
Although Mexico and the Philippines are geographically far apart, yet
ecclesiastically one depended on the other. Legaspi, who took possession
of the islands in 1571, built his fleet in Mexico, and also drafted his
sailors there. Andrés de Urdaneta, the first apostle of the Philippines,
was an Augustinian friar in Mexico who accompanied Legaspi as his
chaplain. Twenty years after that expedition, the Jesuits built their
first house in Manila, and Father Sánchez, who was, as we have said, one
of the supervisors of the great tunnel, was sent as superior from Mexico
to Manila. One of his companions, Sedeño, had been a missionary in
Florida, and it was he who opened the first school in the Philippines
and founded colleges at Manila and Cebú. He taught the Filipinos to cut
stone and mix mortar, to weave cloth and make garments. He brought
artists from China to teach them to draw and paint, and he erected the
first stone building in the Philippines, namely the cathedral, dedicated
in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin. His
religious superior, Father Sánchez had meanwhile acquired such influence
in Manila as to be chosen in 1585, by a unanimous vote of all the
colonists, to go to arrange the affairs of the colony with Philip II and
the Pope. He brought with him to Europe a Filipino boy who, on his
return to his native land, entered the Society, and became thus the
first Filipino Jesuit.
The college and seminary of San José was established in Manila in 1595.
It still exists, though it is no longer in the hands of the Society;
being the oldest of the colleges of the Archipelago, it was given by
royal decree precedence over all other educational institutions. During
the first hundred years of its educational life, it counted among its
alumni, eight bishops and thirty-nine Jesuits, of whom four became
provincials. There were also on the benches eleven future Augustinians,
eighteen Franciscans, three Dominicans, and thirty-nine of the secular
clergy. The University of St. Ignatius, which opened its first classes
in 1587, was confirmed as a pontifical university in 1621 and as a royal
university in 1653. Besides these institutions, the Society had a
residence at Mecato and a college at Cavite, and also the famous
sanctuary of Antipole. They likewise established the parishes of Santa
Cruz and San Miguel in Manila.
France began its colonization in North America by the settlement of
Acadia in 1603. De Monts, who was in charge of it, was a Huguenot and,
strange to say, had been commissioned to advance the interests of
Catholicity in the colony. Half of the settlers were Calvinists, and the
other half Catholics more or less infected with heresy. A priest named
Josué Flesché was assigned to them; he baptized the Indians
indiscriminately, letting them remain as fervent polygamists as they
were before. The two Jesuit missionaries, Pierre Biard and Enemond
Massé, who were finally forced on the colonists, had to withdraw, and
they then betook themselves, in 1613, to what is now known as Mount
Desert, in the state of Maine, but that settlement was almost
immediately destroyed by an English pirate from Virginia. Two of the
Jesuits were sentenced to be hanged in the English colony there, but
thanks to a storm which drove them across the Atlantic, they were able,
after a series of romantic adventures, to reach France, where they were
accused of having prompted the English to destroy the French settlement
of Acadia.
Meantime, Champlain, who had established himself at Quebec in 1608,
brought over some Recollect Friars in 1615. It was not until 1625 that
Father Massé, who had been in Acadia, came to Canada proper with
Fathers de Brébeuf, Charles Lalemant, and two lay-brothers. With the
exception of Brébeuf, they all remained in Quebec, while he with the
Recollect La Roche d'Aillon went to the Huron country, in the region
bordering on what is now Georgian Bay, north of the present city of
Toronto. The Recollect returned home after a short stay, and Brébeuf
remained there alone until the fall of Quebec in 1629. As the English
were now in possession, all hope of pursuing their missionary work was
abandoned, and the priests and brother returned to France. Canada,
however, was restored to its original owners in 1632, and Le Jeune and
Daniel, soon to be followed by Brébeuf and many others, made their way
to the Huron country to evangelize the savages. The Hurons were chosen
because they lived in villages and could be more easily evangelized,
whereas the nomad Algonquins would be almost hopeless for the time
being.
The Huron missions lasted for sixteen years. In 1649 the tribe was
completely annihilated by their implacable foes, the Iroquois, a
disaster which would have inevitably occurred, even if no missionary had
ever visited them. The coming of the Jesuits at that particular time
seemed to be for nothing else than to assist at the death agonies of the
tribe. The terrible sufferings of those early missionaries have often
been told by Protestant as well as Catholic writers. At one time, when
expecting a general massacre, they sat in their cabin at night and wrote
a farewell letter to their brethren; but, for some reason or other, the
savages changed their minds, and the work of evangelization continued
for a little space. Meantime, Brébeuf and Chaumonot had gone down as far
as Lake Erie in mid-winter and, travelling all the distance from Niagara
Falls to the Detroit River, had mapped out sites for future missions.
Jogues and Raymbault, setting out in the other direction, had gone to
Lake Superior to meet some thousands of Ojibways who had assembled there
to hear about "the prayer."
The first great disaster occurred on August 3, 1642. Jogues was captured
near Three Rivers, when on his way up from Quebec with supplies for the
starving missionaries. He was horribly mutilated, and carried down to
the Iroquois country, where he remained a prisoner for thirteen months,
undergoing at every moment the most terrible spiritual and bodily
suffering. His companion, Goupil was murdered, but Jogues finally made
his escape by the help of the Dutch at Albany, and on reaching New York
was sent across the ocean in mid-winter, and finally made his way to
France. He returned, however, to Canada, and in 1644 was sent back as a
commissioner of peace to his old place of captivity. It was on this
journey that he gave the name of Lake of the Blessed Sacrament to what
is called Lake George. In 1646 he returned again to the same place as a
missionary, but he and his companion Lalande were slain; the reason of
the murder being that Jogues was a manitou who brought disaster on the
Mohawks. Two other Jesuits, Bressani and Poncet, were cruelly tortured
at the very place where Jogues had been slain, but were released.
In 1649 the Iroquois came in great numbers to Georgian Bay to make an
end of the Hurons. Daniel, Gamier and Chabanel were slain, and Brébeuf
and Lalemant were led to the stake and slowly burned to death. During
the torture, the Indians cut slices of flesh from the bodies of their
victims, poured scalding water on their heads in mockery of baptism, cut
the sign of the cross on their flesh, thrust red-hot rods into their
throats, placed live coals in their eyes, tore out their hearts, and ate
them, and then danced in glee around the charred remains. This double
tragedy of Brébeuf and Lalemant occurred on the 16th and 17th of March,
1649. After that the Hurons were scattered everywhere through the
country, and disappeared from history as a distinct tribe.
As early as 1650 there was question of a bishop for Quebec. The queen
regent, Anne of Austria, the council of ecclesiastical affairs, and the
Company of New France all wrote to the Vicar-General of the Society
asking for the appointment of a Jesuit. The three Fathers most in
evidence were Ragueneau, Charles Lalemant and Le Jeune. All three had
refused the honor and Father Nickel wrote to the petitioners that it was
contrary to the rules of the Order to accept such ecclesiastical
dignities. The hackneyed accusation of the supposed Jesuit opposition to
the establishment of an episcopacy was to the fore even then in America.
The refutation is handled in a masterly fashion by Rochemonteix (Les
Jésuites et la Nouvelle France, I, 191). Incidentally the prevailing
suspicion that Jesuits are continually extolling each other will be
dispelled by reading the author's text and notes upon the
characteristics of the three nominees which unfitted them for the post.
"Le Jeune," he says, "would be unfit because he was a converted
Protestant who had never rid himself of the defects of his early
education." It was not until 1658 that Laval was named.
Meantime in 1654, through the efforts of Father Le Moyne to whom a
monument has been erected in the city of Syracuse, a line of missions
was established in the very country of the Iroquois. It extended all
along the Mohawk from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Many of the Iroquois were
converted such as Garagontia, Hot Ashes and others, the most notable of
whom was the Indian girl, Tegakwitha, who fled from the Mohawk to
Caughnawaga, a settlement on the St. Lawrence opposite Lachine which the
Fathers had established for the Iroquois converts. The record of her
life gives evidence that she was the recipient of wonderful supernatural
graces. These New York missions were finally ruined by the stupidity and
treachery of two governors of Quebec, de la Barre and de Denonville, and
also by the Protestant English who disputed the ownership of that
territory with the French. By the year 1710 there were no longer any
missionaries in New York, except an occasional one who stole in,
disguised as an Indian, to visit his scattered flock. There were three
Jesuits with Dongan, the English governor of New York during his short
tenure of office, but they never left Manhattan Island in search of the
Indians.
Attention was then turned to the Algonquins, and there are wonderful
records of heroic missionary endeavor all along the St. Lawrence from
the Gulf to Montreal, and up into the regions of the North. Albanel
reached Hudson Bay, and Buteux was murdered at the head-waters of the
St. Maurice above Three Rivers. The Ottawas in the West were also looked
after, and Garreau was shot to death back of Montreal on his way to
their country, which lay along the Ottawa and around Mackinac Island and
in the region of Green Bay. The heroic old Ménard perished in the
distant swamps of Wisconsin; Allouez and Dablon travelled everywhere
along the shores of Lake Superior; a great mission station was
established at Sault Ste. Marie, and Marquette with his companion Joliet
went down the Mississippi to the Arkansas, and assured the world that
the Great River emptied its waters in the Gulf of Mexico. A statue in
the Capitol of Washington commemorates this achievement and has been
duplicated elsewhere.
The beatification of Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemant, Daniel, Gamier, Chabanel
and the two _donnés_, Goupil and Lalande, is now under consideration at
Rome. Their heroic lives as well as those of their associates have given
rise to an extensive literature, even among Protestant writers, but the
most elaborate tribute to them is furnished by the monumental work
consisting of the letters sent by these apostles of the Faith to their
superior at Quebec and known the world over as "The Jesuit Relations."
It comprises seventy-three octavo volumes, the publication of which was
undertaken by a Protestant company in Cleveland. (See Campbell, Pioneer
Priests of North America.)
On March 25, 1634, the Jesuit Fathers White and Altham landed with
Leonard Calvert, the brother of Lord Baltimore, on St. Clement's Island
in Maryland. With them were twenty "gentlemen adventurers," all of whom,
with possibly one exception, were Catholics. They brought with them two
hundred and fifty mechanics, artisans and laborers who were in great
part Protestants. It took them four months to come from Southampton and,
on the way over, all religious discussions were prohibited. They were
kindly received by the Indians, and the wigwam of the chief was assigned
to the priests. A catechism in Patuxent was immediately begun by Father
White, and many of the tribe were converted to the Faith in course of
time, as were a number of the Protestant colonists. Beyond that, very
little missionary work was accomplished, as all efforts in that
direction were nullified by a certain Lewger, a former Protestant
minister who was Calvert's chief adviser. The adjoining colony of
Virginia, which was intensely bitter in its Protestantism, immediately
began to cause trouble. In 1644 Ingle and Claiborne made a descent on
the colony in a vessel, appropriately called the "Reformation." They
captured and burned St. Mary's, plundered and destroyed the houses and
chapels of the missionaries, and sent Father White in chains to England,
where he was to be put to death, on the charge of being "a returned
priest." As he was able to show that he had "returned" in spite of
himself, he was discharged.
Calvert recovered his possessions later, and then dissensions began
between him and the missionaries because of some land given to them by
the Indians. In 1645 it was estimated that the colonists numbered
between four and five thousand, three-fourths of whom were Catholics.
They were cared for by four Jesuits. In 1649 the famous General
Toleration Act was passed, ordaining that "no one believing in Jesus
Christ should be molested in his or her religion." As the reverse of
this obtained in Virginia, at that time, a number of Puritan
recalcitrants from that colony availed themselves of the hospitality of
Maryland, and almost immediately, namely in 1650, they repealed the Act
and ordered that "no one who professed and exercised the Papistic,
commonly known as the Roman Catholic religion, could be protected in the
Province." Three of the Jesuits were, in consequence, compelled to flee
to Virginia, where they kept in hiding for two or three years. In 1658
Lord Baltimore was again in control, and the Toleration Act was
re-enacted. In 1671 the population had increased to 20,000, but in 1676
there was another Protestant uprising and the English penal laws were
enforced against the Catholic population. In 1715 Charles, Lord
Baltimore, died. Previous to that, his son Benedict had apostatized and
was disinherited. He died a few months after his father. Benedict's son
Charles, who was also a turncoat, was named lord proprietor by Queen
Ann, and made the situation so intolerable for Catholics that they were
seriously considering the advisability of abandoning Maryland and
migrating in a body to the French colony of Louisiana. As a matter of
fact many went West and established themselves in Kentucky.
Of the Jesuits and their flock in Maryland, Bancroft writes: "A
convention of the associates for the defence of the Protestant religion
assumed the government, and in an address to King William denounced the
influence of the Jesuits, the prevalence of papist idolatry, the
connivances of the previous government at murders of Protestants and the
danger from plots with the French and Indians. The Roman Catholics in
the land which they had chosen with Catholic liberality, not as their
own asylum only, but as the asylum of every persecuted sect, long before
Locke had pleaded for toleration, or Penn for religious freedom, were
the sole victims of Protestant intolerance. Mass might not be said
publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice
of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child
of a Catholic would become an apostate the law wrested for him from his
parents a share of their property. The disfranchisement of the
Proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. Such were the
methods adopted to prevent the growth of Popery. Who shall say that the
faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the faith of the
common people? Who shall say that the many are fickle; that the chief is
firm? To recover the inheritance of authority Benedict, the son of the
Proprietary, renounced the Catholic Church for that of England, but the
persecution never crushed the faith of the humble colonists."
The extent of the Jesuit missions in what is now Canada and the United
States may be appreciated by a glance at the remarkable map recently
published by Frank F. Seaman of Cleveland, Ohio. On it is indicated
every mission site beginning with the Spanish posts in Florida, Georgia
and Virginia, as far back as 1566. The missions of the French Fathers
are more numerous, and extend from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay, and
west to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Not only are the mission
sites indicated, but the habitats of the various tribes, the portages
and the farthest advances of the tomahawk are there also. Lines starting
from Quebec show the source of all this stupendous labor.