James E. Officer

In the spring of 1687, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, a forty-one-year-old Jesuit priest from the town of Segno in the Italian Alps, began his work among the Indians of northwestern Sonora. The most numerous inhabitants of this region were speakers of the Pima language, and Spaniards referred to the area as the Pimería Alta, land of the Upper or Northern Pimas.

For more than half a century before Kino's arrival, other Jesuits had labored among the Mayos, Yaquis, Opatas, and Lower (Southern) Pimas, Sonoran tribes to the south and east. When the missionaries first contacted them, these Indians were practicing a rudimentary agriculture. Their principal food crops were corn, beans, and squash, and many grew cotton. They had neither domesticated fruit trees nor livestock of any kind. Most of them lived in scattered, kin-based settlements that the Spaniards called rancherías. The Mayo and Yaqui Indians depended upon the annual flooding of the rivers to provide moisture and to bring them fertile sediments in which to plant their crops. Farther north, the Opatas and Lower Pimas -- whom the early Jesuits called Pima Bajos -- practiced various forms of ditch irrigation.

As a consequence of the missionaries' influence, the Indians of the Sonoran Desert increased their inventory of crops, adopted new methods of utilizing the limited available water, and began to raise livestock. [1] While a few of these innovations may have penetrated the Pimería Alta by the late 1600s, it was Father Kino, more than any other individual, who finally introduced the people to Christianity -- and to new livestock, crops, and husbandry.

On March 4, 1687, in company with two other priests, Kino departed from the frontier mission community of Cucurpe and traveled to the Pima town of Cósari, also known as Bamotze. He favored this village with the spiritual patronage of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (Our Lady of Sorrows). The following day, he and Joseph de Aguilar, missionary to the Opatas of Cucurpe, traveled northwestward to another ranchería, which the Pimas called Cabórica, and endowed it with the patronage of San Ignacio de Loyola (St. Ignatius of Loyola), founder of the Jesuit order. They went next to the village of Ymuris, placing it under the care and protection of San José (St. Joseph), and, from there, to a site called Doágibubig, which they honored with the patronage of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies). [2]

On March 26 the two priests returned to Cósari (Dolores), which Kino designated as the headquarters, or cabecera, of his mission. Because this village was only five leagues from Cucurpe, where Jesuits had been working since 1662, we might reasonably expect it to have benefited from some of the new European agricultural practices that the neighboring Opatas had adopted. [3] If such were the case, however, Kino failed to tell us about it. He did comment on the presence .of melons, especially watermelons, in other villages that he visited, and seven years later one of his traveling companions, Lieutenant Juan Matheo Mange, saw flax growing near the village of Tupo when he went there with Kino. [4]

Herbert Eugene Bolton, Kino's most famous biographer, believed that the Indians of the San Pedro, Santa Cruz, and Altar valleys were growing wheat when the Jesuit priest arrived in the Pimería Alta. Bolton was, unfortunately, vague about his sources for such a conclusion. Nevertheless, ethnobotanists Edward F. Castetter and Willis H. Bell, in their treatises on Indian agriculture in the region, apparently accepted it without question. [5]

However, anthropologist Paul Ezell, who studied Spanish influences on the Gila River Pimas, was satisfied that wheat reached them after, not before, the arrival of the missionaries. According to him, "The acquisition of wheat from the Spaniards was the most significant development in Gila Pima agriculture .... Unlike melons, however, it did not, apparently, precede the Spanish advance, but followed it." Ezell's 1961 viewpoint is consistent with the late-seventeenth-century observations of Father Luis Velarde, successor to Kino at Dolores. Of the Indians of the Pimería Alta, he said, "Since they were contacted by the Spaniards and the priests came in, they harvest wheat." [6]

On some of his journeys, Father Kino visited Upper Pima villages whose inhabitants were practicing irrigation. The technology was, of course, limited to communities near streams. Surprisingly, Kino did not count the Gila River Indians among the irrigators when he first traveled in the region. He and his associates saw great irrigation canals along the Gila, but they did not mention any use of these ditches by the Indians residing nearby. [7] Ezell, although noting that "the first Spanish reference to irrigation being practiced on the Gila River was that of [Father] Sedelmayr for the year 1744," refused to accept its presence there as a Spanish innovation. Rather, he speculated that the Pimas knew about irrigation, but either they were not using it when Kino first visited the area, or the priest and his associates did not observe its use. Ezell concluded, "for the Pimas to have accepted irrigation on such a wholesale scale as to have created in one generation the system Sedelmayr found in operation is incongruent with the speed of acculturation without direction. [8]

'The Indians of the Pimería Alta were not raising livestock when Kino first contacted them. However, many of them must have been aware of domesticated animals either through contacts with Spaniards passing through their territory, or through visits to the settlements of other Indians or Spaniards who did have livestock.

The introduction of stock raising is often mentioned as one of Kino's outstanding accomplishments. Some writers have gone so far as to declare him the founder of Sonora's important cattle industry. [9] However, his Jesuit predecessors, well before Kino entered the region, established herds of such size that they could round up large numbers of animals and drive them to Mexico City. They collected 4,000 head in the first of these drives, a majority of them from the missions of Cucurpe and Tuape, only a few miles from Kino's headquarters at Dolores. [10] These nearby missions were likely an important source of the first livestock that Kino introduced into the Pimería Alta. [11] Nonetheless, although other Spaniards preceded him, Kino deserves great credit for disseminating domesticated animals throughout much of southern Arizona and northwestern Sonora.

He carried out this effort with the aid of Indian helpers trained at his large ranch at Dolores. He also chose other locations where the assistants could instruct local Indians in how to breed and care for livestock intended for their use, for transfer to other destinations, and for Kino's own sustenance during his long expeditions.

Among the most important of the outlying ranches were those at the villages of San Simón y San Judás del Síboda (Cíbuta) and San Luis Bacoancos -- both located in the vicinity of modern Nogales, Sonora -- and San Marcelo de Sonoydag (Sonoyta or Sonoita), south of Ajo on the present U.S.-Mexico border. Kino also sponsored livestock operations at San Xavier del Bac, Santa Ana de Quíburi, San Pedro y San Pablo de Tubutama, Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera, San Ignacio del Cabórica, San Jose de Ymuris, San Cayetano de Tumacácori, San Gabriel de Guevavi, San Ambrosio del Búsanic, Santa Gertrudis del Sáric, San Lazaro, Santa Bárbara, Santa Eulalia (modern Pozo Verde), and La Purísima Concepcíon de Caborca. [12]

Except for Dolores, the largest of the stock ranches was the one at Síboda (Cíbuta), south of Nogales in a fertile valley watered by one of the branches of the Magdalena or San Ignacio River. Its location was ideal. From there, Kino could send livestock over established Indian trails to other missions and outlying ranches. In March of 1701, when he passed through Síboda, he helped brand seven droves of mares and instructed his Indian cowboys to brand more than 1,000 cattle. Noting the presence of a large herd of horses, the priest provided himself with twenty-five good mounts.

The ranch at San Luis Bacoancos was smaller than the one at Síboda, but its location was equally strategic. Kino placed sixty cattle there in January of 1697. Four years later, the herd had grown to 300 animals. [13]

Livestock operations at San Xavier and Tumacácori began in 1695 with animals driven up from Caborca following the assassination of Father Francisco Xavier Saeta, whom Kino had installed shortly before. [14] Two years later, Kino increased the San Xavier herd with cattle from his home mission of Dolores. By 1700, when he laid the foundation for a church at Bac, the cattle herd there numbered 300. A drove of mares and more than forty sheep and goats were also grazing in the vicinity. A month after starting work on the church, Kino directed his cowboys at Dolores to drive another 700 head of cattle to San Xavier, swelling the herd to 1,000 animals. [15]

During the spring of 1697, Kino installed Father Pedro Ruiz de Contreras as the missionary at Cocóspera. In order to ensure the success of the enterprise, he had his helpers round up 500 head of cattle and an equal number of sheep and goats for delivery to the new ranch. He also provided two droves of mares, several stallions, and some oxen. No other missionary in Kino's district began a livestock operation with so many animals.

Unfortunately, the effort came to naught in February of 1698, when a large number of Apaches and their allies attacked the village, burned it to the ground, and carried off much of the livestock. Shortly afterward, the Pimas abandoned the area and stayed away for two years. [16]

In June 1700, Kino donated 200 animals from his cattle herd at Dolores to the newly established missions of Baja California. His contribution compared favorably with those made by other Jesuit missions in the same year. For example, the Oposura Mission -- one of Sonora's largest -- donated 100 head of cattle and 1,000 sheep and goats. Cucurpe, the mission nearest Kino's headquarters, contributed 100 cattle; Huépac, in the Sonora River Valley, sixty head of cattle and some horses; and Arizpe, also in the Sonora River Valley, fifty cattle.[17]

In 1701, when four new Jesuits entered the Pimería Alta, Kino gave them 700 cattle to begin or expand herds. Early in the spring of the following year, he wrote Father Antonio Leal about the distribution, reporting that the ranches he had established -- including the most distant one at San Marcelo de Sonoydag -- now boasted more than 3,500 head, not counting those animals he had sent to the new priests. [18]

Kino's accomplishments in bringing livestock to the Indians of the Pimería Alta are impressive, but of equal import are his successful efforts to instruct them in the planting and harvesting of European crops and fruit trees. As mentioned earlier, melons, particularly watermelons, were already present and widely distributed when Kino arrived. The Yumas were growing them in their villages along the Colorado River, as were the Pimas of the Santa Cruz and even the desert-dwelling Papagos. [19]

By Kino's day, most Sonoran Indians had accepted wheat as a major food item, and he wasted no time in sowing a crop at Dolores. Within five years the fields there were extensive. In August of 1692, when he paid his first visit to San Xavier del Bac, Kino invited the Indians from that large community to visit his headquarters so that they might see with their own eyes "many food items, among them wheat and corn, as well as large numbers of cattle and horses."[20]

Kino's first trip to Caborca came in December of 1693. He may have instructed the Indians of the village in planting wheat then, although Mange did not see any fields when he accompanied the priest to Caborca two months later. However, by the end of the following June; after the missionary and his companion had visited Caborca two additional times, Kino reported to his superiors that the Indians had sown wheat and corn "for the father they were asking for and hoped to obtain." [21] The priest had apparently convinced the Indians of his district that they could enhance their chances of securing resident missionaries by planting European crops and raising livestock.

In the fall of 1694, Kino introduced Father Francisco Xavier Saeta to his new post, Caborca, and to the Indians there. During the following six months, with seed provided by Kino, Saeta directed the sowing of another wheat crop. He also worked with the Indians in planting a vegetable garden and an orchard, as well as in establishing a stock ranch with more than 200 head of cattle, sheep, and goats. [22] By April of 1695, the new mission was in excellent condition.

But that month Caborca fell victim to attack by a group of rebellious Pimas from other communities. Father Saeta was martyred in the onslaught, which ultimately delayed the development of a Jesuit mission at Caborca, although it resulted in the first transmission of livestock to San Xavier del Bac and Tumacácori. [23]

Two months later, when Spanish soldiers reached Caborca, they cut all the ripe wheat in a large field, then pastured their 300 horses on the stubble. They also destroyed wheat fields, orchards, and vegetable gardens in other Indian villages. Such drastic action, they rationalized, would force the Pimas to the brink of starvation, persuading some of the hungry ones to reveal the names of those responsible for the uprising. [24]

Two years later, Kino mentioned wheat at San Xavier del Bac in connection with a visit he made there on January 13, 1697. "I was received with great affection by the many sons and daughters of this great ranchería," he wrote, "and by others who had come from elsewhere ... the word of God was delivered to them, children were baptized, and there were the beginnings of good sowings and harvests of wheat and corn for the father minister whom they have asked for and are waiting to welcome." When Kino returned in November of the same year, he ate bread made from the wheat sown during his previous visit. [25]

Kino dedicated special attention to both the crops and livestock of the ranchería of San Marcelo de Sonoydag. He believed that this location could serve as a provisioning center for his expeditions to the Colorado River and as a supply point for the missions of Lower California. He visited it for the first time in 1698 and the following year established a stock ranch there. He may also have instructed the Indians in planting wheat. In October of 1700, when he returned to San Marcelo, "The people ... , their governor and many others, came out more than three leagues to meet us," he wrote. "They carried arches and crosses and had provided a ramada, as well as plentiful supplies of food-meat, wheat, corn, beans, squashes. All these things which they grow here are for the father minister they have requested and are waiting to receive."[26]

From San Marcelo, also, in the fall of 1702, Kino provided wheat for the Indians of the lower Colorado River. "With the captain of Comac I sent wheat to sow at the Colorado River and among the Yuma and Quiquima nations -- grain and seed they had not previously seen or known," the priest commented. "I wanted to determine whether It would yield well in those fertile new lands; and it did yield and does yield very well indeed. [27]

Although Kino provided us with considerable information about the introduction of wheat to the Upper Pimas, he was less helpful with respect to the planting of other European crops, vineyards, and orchards. In January of 1704, when he was preparing to install Father Gerónimo Minutuli at Tubutama, Kino "ordered repairs to the priest's house, a wheat field sown, and a garden planted with grape vines and various small Castilian fruit trees -- peaches, pomegranates, figs, and pears as well as with all kinds of vegetables."[28]

Other villages also apparently benefited from fruits introduced by Kino and his assistants. During the Lenten season of 1706, the priest left Dolores to say mass and hear confessions at various communities within his jurisdiction. He went first to Remedios and Cocóspera, rancherías that belonged to his own mission. He spent three days in each. "I delivered to these sons and daughters the customary teachings of Christian doctrine, listened to some confessions, and performed a few baptisms," he noted in his diary. "Meanwhile, my servants planted in each village a good garden filled with quinces, pomegranates and figs, several varieties of peaches, and grape vines to produce the wine needed for mass -- all this in addition to many different kinds of vegetables. The garden at Dolores produces all these things in abundance." [29]

Father Kino supplied a list of livestock, crops, and trees available to the people of the Pimería Alta between 1706 and 1708. Regrettably, he wrote of the region as a whole, which does not help determine which items were present in which communities. He also lumped together native and imported items without distinguishing between them. [30]

Kino mentioned the domesticated animals -- horses, mules, sheep, and goats. He listed wheat and sugar cane as important non-native crops. The non-native garden vegetables and herbs he described were chick-peas, lentils, bastard chick-peas, cabbages, melons, watermelons, lettuce, onions, leeks, garlic, cilantro, anise, and, possibly, mint. He also wrote of chile. Although this item did not come from Europe, neither was it native to northwestern Sonora. In fact, Kino may have provided the Upper Pimas with their first chile peppers. However, they were probably already flavoring their foods with chiltepines. [31]

Kino's roster of fruits is impressive -- grapes, figs, quinces. oranges, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, pears, and apples. He also included mulberries but did not indicate whether they were native or foreign varieties. The only edible nut he mentioned was the nogal, probably the native walnut (Juglans major).

Kino's most surprising entry, under "trees providing wood for building and other purposes," was the tarai (usually taray). Although this name in Mexican Spanish may refer to a number of different trees, the most common English referent is the tamarisk or salt cedar, a shrub popularly believed to have been brought to the American Southwest sometime in the nineteenth century. The term appears in other Spanish documents relating to northwestern Mexico in the Spanish colonial period. Furthermore, contemporary Sonorans employ the word when, without any doubt whatsoever, they are referring to the salt cedar. It is outside the scope of the present article to argue for or against Spanish introduction of the tamarisk. However, the possibility that these shrubs may be old-timers in the Southwest should not be lightly dismissed. [32]

Kino's list of native and introduced plants is not so well defined as we might wish it to be, but he dearly reveals that his Indian assistants were of inestimable value in showing the Upper Pimas how to plant and harvest new crops and to care for domesticated animals. In a few cases, his instruction may have involved the introduction of such unfamiliar practices as plowing, a technology that the Indians did not seem to embrace. [33]

From the outset of his service in Sonora, Kino depended heavily upon two Lower Pima Indians from the village of Ures. One, whom Kino called Francisco Cantor, served him as interpreter. Cantor's brother, although blind, was a famous teacher (temastián), and he, too, became one of Kino's most valued assistants. However, he had the misfortune to accompany Father Saeta to Caborca and, there, lost his life in the uprising. Three other native helpers at Caborca suffered a similar fate. José was an Opata from the settlement of Chinapa in the Sonora River Valley. Another, Francisco, was an Opata from Cumpas; the third was a Lower Pima from Ures whose baptismal name was Fernando. [34]

The Indian foreman at Tubutama, where the 1695 uprising began, was an Opata named Antonio. His closest associates, Martin and Fernando, were fellow tribesmen who helped him show the Pimas how to care for the cattle that the missionaries had given them. These foreign Indians -- Antonio, at least -- often mistreated the local Pimas. The subsequent rebellion was a manifestation of the anger of the Tubutama natives toward the foreman and his companions. [35]'

While Kino and his native helpers deserve much of the credit for introducing European crops and livestock into the Pimería Alta, other priests contributed. Father Agustin Campos came to San Ignacio del Cabórica in 1693 and ministered to the Indian villages of that vicinity until Kino's death and twenty-five years beyond. Beginning in January of 1691, a sequence of priests served Tubutama and its associated villages for at least a dozen of the following twenty years. Priests were in the Cocóspera-Soamca area for a total of about five years between 1694 and 1706. Also, Jesuits served for lesser periods at Caborca, Guevavi, Bac, Ymuris, and, possibly, Sáric. [36]

Following Kino's death in 1711), Agustin Campos was alone in the Pimería Alta until Father Juan de Avendaño reached Dolores in 1713. Replacing him on May 8, 1714, was Father Velarde, who remained at Kino's old headquarters until his death in 1737. Velarde and Campos shared responsibility for the entire region until 1720, when two new priests came into the area. Father Luis María Marciano was assigned to Tubutama and worked there until 1726, except for a year when he filled in for Father Campos at San Ignacio. Luis María Gallardi took charge at Caborca in 1720, but moved to Magdalena in 1722, then to San Ignacio in 1725. He replaced Marciano at Tubutama in 1727 and stayed there until he died on January 1,1736. For at least a score of years after Kino's death, Father Campos made occasional visits to villages outside the jurisdiction of his mission. But his preoccupation was with the souls of the Indians -- not with their stomachs. [37]

Even without the presence and intervention of missionaries, some of the Indians continued to cultivate melons, wheat, fruit trees, and garden vegetables, and to raise livestock. They also apparently passed certain of the European innovations on to others. Wheat probably reached the Gila River sometime between 1697, when it was reported at Bac, and 1744, when Father Sedelmayr found it growing at the Pima village of Sudac-sson. Thirty years later, the Gila River wheat fields were immense. [38]

The first priest at San Xavier after Kino's death was Father Felipe Segesser, who arrived in May 1732 and served only a short time at that location. He said that the Indians of Bac knew nothing of God, of heaven, or of hell. On the other hand, they knew a great deal about raising cattle and horses, and about cultivating wheat, mulberries, and a variety of garden vegetables. [39]

Just as the European innovations introduced by Eusebio Francisco Kino and his fellow Jesuits persisted at some locations, and even spread, they apparently died out at others. One village upon which Kino had lavished a great deal of attention, but where no priest ever lived in early Jesuit times, was San Marcelo de Sonoydag (Sonoyta). In 1751, forty years after Kino's demise, when a Jesuit named Enrique Ruhen became the first missionary to reside in the community, Father Joseph Garrucho had to send cattle to him from Guevavi. The herd that Kino had established at Sonoyta fifty years earlier, to feed the local people and supply the missions of Lower California, had not survived. [40]

Kino and Agriculture in the Pimería Alta
James E. Officer
The Journal of Arizona History
Vol. 34, No. 3; 287 - 306; 1993 

Dr. Officer was professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Arizona.
He wrote the acclaimed book "Hispanic Arizona, 1536-1856."