Among the few known methodological texts that provide insights into missionary practices characteristic of this movement is Book Eight of Kino's "Vida del F. X. Saeta." In it Kino stressed that for the missionary to excel in conversion, he must nurture the virtue of patience and tolerance.

From the text, its is clear the Kino admonished the missionary that preached from a position of authority, but rather advised that the missionary should work to maintain closed personal contact with the Natives, often sitting among them on the dirt floor or on a rock.

Eric A. Schroeder
"Hegemony and Mission Practices in Colonial New Spain"
in "Evangelization and Cultural Conflict in Colonial Mexico" 2014

No simple hagiography, the "Life of Javier Saeta" was a passionate defense of the Pimería Alta mission that listed Spanish errors and defended Pima innocence in the face of abuse. Through historical evidence the missionary identified the material causes behind not only Saeta's murder, but also the wider violence that led to the Pima Revolt of 1695, including the indiscriminate massacre of 48 Pimas at El Tupo. Thus the missionary not only modeled careful scholarship, but also intercultural understanding and social justice.

Dr. Brandon Bayne
Recalling Kino: Remembering a Pimería Past,  Reimanging an Arizona Present
SMRC Revista Winter 2010

To view Brandon Bayne’s dissertation “A Passionate Pacification: Sacrifice and Suffering in the Jesuit Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1594 – 1767”, click
https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37367448

The grandeurs, the glories, the crowns and the kingdom of heaven have been especially prepared for the poor, the destitute, the abandoned, the insignificant, and those little esteemed in this life. But the greatness of new missions will shine not only in the eternity of heaven, but also in the most desolate and remote regions of the world.
Eusebio Francisco Kino

Kino Defending O'odham People Before Viceroy of  New Spain

Missionary Kino
"Cycles of Conquest" 
Edward H. Spicer

Kino began the work of missionization of the Upper Pimas [O'odham] and thus had the advantage of a long period of almost singlehanded building of social relationships between them and the Spaniards of the region. He built his own personality into these relationships.  
 
Typical of Kino's finding of good will on the part of the Pimas wherever he went is the statement in a letter of 1687 describing his first tour of duty: "In all places they received with love the word of God for the sake of their eternal salvation." But this was not merely an expression of first enthusiasm in a new task, for in the following year he was even more enthusiastic: "God willing, hundreds, and later thousands will be gathered into the bosom of our sweet, most holy Mother Church, for about five thousand of the neighboring Indians have come asking at this time with most ardent pleading for holy baptism. They envy the happy lot of those in the three new settlements."

And again five years after the first, of a visit to the Sobaipuris on the San Pedro River, he wrote "Captain Coro and the rest of them received me with all kindness." Two years later of a trip to the Gila Pimas, he wrote: "All were affable and docile people." In 1696 with nearly ten years of missionary work behind him and after previous visits to and work with the Sobaipuris of the Santa Cruz Valley, he wrote that at Bac he was "received with all love by the many inhabitants of the great ranchería and by many other principal men, who had gathered from various parts adjacent."

In 1698 he again wrote after a trip through the whole Papago country that he was "grateful for the great affability and cheerfulness of everybody whom we met." And so it went throughout his life until he died in Pima country at Magdalena. Wherever he went, according to his accounts, among Pimas or Yumans, his reception was warm and hearty and he came away with feelings of great friendliness. He apparently was able to charm and to be charmed by all the Indians, whether on first visits or in the missions where they knew him well.  
 
At the bottom of Kino's pleasant and easy relations with the Indians seems to have been a tolerant spirit. Not only has he left no record whatever of suppression of Indian ceremony, but in his writings there is no particular concern with Indian ways as evil. He does not inveigh against drunkenness, which was a common ceremonial practice among the Upper Pimas, as it was among the Tarahumaras. He spends no words on condemnation even of Pima witches.

One would think that somehow he managed to remain blandly unaware of the existence of Indian ceremonial life away from the missions, if it were not for the fact that there are accounts  of all-night dances and other ceremonies which took place at villages where be spent the night or visited for a period. Many such all-night gatherings with dances and music he evidently felt honored by, believing (probably correctly in some instances) that they were given in his honor.  
 
Moreover, he gives a one-paragraph account of a scalp dance among the Sobaipuris, saying: "We found the Pima natives of Quiburi very jovial and friendly. They were dancing over the scalps and the spoils of fifteen enemies, Hocomes and Janos; whom they had killed a few days before. This was so pleasing to us that Captain …. Bernal, the Alferez, the Sergeant and many others entered the circle and danced merrily in company with the natives." This of course was a situation in which the Spaniards were delighted to celebrate a victory over mutual enemies, the eastern tribes associated with the Apaches, but it is also characteristic of the pleasant and noncritical way in which Kino took note of and sat in the midst of so many native ceremonials.

He almost never permitted himself to be even mildly critical of native practices, if indeed it actually bothered him. Such tolerance must have made him welcome everywhere and caused him to be viewed only as a constructive bringer of new good tidings and never as one who was prepared to destroy what the people already had.  
 
There was also a certain amount of give and take in his relations with the headmen of the many Pima villages which he visited. Repeatedly he describes how he sat and talked for hours in such villages. What he said must have had a great deal of interest; an example is the following - describing his visit to Bac in 1692 - which shows his teaching methods very clearly:

"I spoke to them of the word of God, and on the map of the world I showed them the lands, the rivers, and the seas over which we fathers had come from afar to bring them the saving knowledge of our Holy Faith. I told them also how in ancient times the Spaniards were not Christian, how Santiago came to teach them the faith, and how the first fourteen years he was able to baptize only a few, because of which the Holy Apostle was discouraged, but that the Holy Virgin appeared to him and consoled him, promising that the Spaniards would convert the rest of the people of the world. "
 
"And I showed them on the map of the world how the Spaniards and the Faith had come by sea to Vera Cruz and had gone into Puebla and to Mexico, Guadalajara, Sinaloa, Sonora and now to ... Dolores del Cosari, in the land of the Pimas ... that they could go and see it all, and even ask at once their relatives, my servants, who were with me. They listened with pleasure to these and other talks concerning God, heaven, and hell, told me that they wished to be Christians, and gave me some infants to baptize."   

This was, of course, the general method of teaching and preaching of the Jesuits. Certainly Kino was merely one of many capable missionary teachers who knew how to employ concrete demonstration, in this case maps and charts, and to spice the doctrine with history, and even to meet the skeptics with reference to Christianized Indians who could be questioned right there in their own tongue about it all. These merely show that Kino was capable in the missionary teaching tradition.  

 
His special genius was his capacity to sit down immediately afterwards and listen to the Pima headmen. Over and over again in his accounts, he tells how he was invited to sit through a night or even two days and nights in which be must have done as much listening as talking, Thus in 1700 on one of his trips among the Yumas, he was persuaded to stay, even though he had wanted to push on, because people wished to hear him. He preached in his usual way. Then, he says, "These talks, ours and theirs, lasted almost the whole afternoon and afterward till midnight, with very great pleasure to all." He was not annoyed by having been put off schedule; rather he relaxed and enjoyed a day of mutual give and take.

How much he understood, even though he always had interpreters with him, we shall never know, nor are we sure of his attitude about the content of the long talks of the Indian spokesmen. He never mentions the content unless it had some direct bearing on his mapping interests or the building of the mission chain. But at any rate he behaved in a way, at very great cost in time, which was regarded as courteous and must have made him a delightful guest. He behaved in this respect. in fact, in the way that any visiting headman among the Indians was expected to behave. Long talks by all parties were the rule, but they must not be one-sided - and this Kino seemed instinctively to understand.  
 
Another of Kino's qualities, which was not by any means unique among the missionaries, but most abundantly developed in him, was that of organizing ability. He believed in gathering people together for particular and dramatic purposes. He showed his ability for this when Chief Coxi was baptized at Dolores shortly after the founding of that mission. Kino made it the occasion for inviting other Pima headmen from far to the west where he had made a beginning at contacts ­ and five attended. He also brought "Spanish gentlemen" from the mining town of Bacanuche to the ceremony.

This sort of thing he continued to do on a grander scale as time went on. He brought hundreds of people from all over the Upper Pima country to the dedication of the church when it was finished at Dolores. He brought a large group of Pima headmen from the Santa Cruz and San Pedro valleys and elsewhere to Dolores and then had them go on a pilgrimage through the northern Opata country to have an audience with the Father Visitor at Bacerac and ask for missionaries to be sent to their villages.

He called meetings at Bac and other Pima villages to discuss his interest in the problem of whether California was an island or not. His accounts indicate that he got great responses in such meetings and that he participated in the discussions rather than addressed the groups. He had some sort of genius for getting people to do things together and this must have been an important factor in establishing communication among Upper Pimas who had been isolated from one another before.  
 
It would seem, however, that it was Kino's personal characteristics - his enthusiasm, his warmth of feeling for individuals such as Captain Coro, Coxi, and others with whom he became associated, his tolerance of ways not in accord with European, his delight in big and ceremonial gatherings - rather than any inclination or ability to understand other ways and reconcile them that lay at the bottom of his successes in the Pima country.  
 
Edward H. Spicer
The Spanish Program
"Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest 1533-1960" 1962
Pages 315 - 317 

To download excerpt about Kino's missionary work, click
Missionary Kino - Spicer document (text)

Padre Kino's Missionary Teaching
Charles W. Polzer, S.J.

In working on the history of the Society of Jesus and especially its early missions, I have learned that its missionaries were not preoccupied with questions of orthodoxy and refinements of the Magisterium. They were much more radical; they were really doing what Christ asked us to do - that is, to teach the Way, to teach Christian living. They were not worried about making certain that their neophytes were doctrinally precise. As a matter of fact most converts had no clue about what they were being taught-at least in the beginning.

These observations compel one to become critical about what the mission of a missionary is, what the mission of the Church is, what the mission that Christ has given is - to those who were to follow Him and teach as He did. When I look at the life of Padre Kino and the other missionaries with him, this is precisely what I see.  .... For Saint John, it was not a question of what they thought; it was a question of what they did. It was a question of interpersonal conduct. It was a question of outreach in a sense of giving, in a sense of community, in a sense of sharing. In fact, in the earliest days of the Church, its members were not known as "Christians," but as "Followers of the Way."  ....

Put yourselves in the shoes, boots perhaps, of a man like Padre Kino, who was young, vital, and a dreamer of almost impossible dreams, somewhat like Don Quixote - well, not exactly, because Kino came from the Italian Tyrol and not La Mancha.  ....

[T]he task of the missionary was not, and is not, that of communicating knowledge alone. The missionary's task is one of sharing knowledge, the basic appraisal of nature, and the fundamental appreciation of peoples, their interaction, and their relationships. A "metanoia" is an interchange, a complete transformation of the person. When we look at the teachings of the Church, when we review the paradigms of doctrine, they are only valid as metaphors that reinforce, that communicate some richer, higher notion to people who are on a quest for truth, understanding, and ultimately love. …..

That is the faith we find in Padre Kino. This is why I titled this essay, "Kino: On People and Places." I could have recounted his expeditions, his mapmaking, his church-building, with an impressive array of historical statistics. One might then have misunderstood in thinking he came to do these things. No, Kino came to all these places and recorded them because of people. And in finding people in the places he visited and explored and in doing the brave things he did, he found God. He found God in the people he served, and together they joined in the quest of the re-creation of the world, which we like to call salvation.

Charles W. Polzer, S.J.
"Kino: On People and Places"
In "The Jesuit Tradition in Education and Missions: A 450 Year Perspective" 1993

To download Kino's missionary teaching's, click
Missionary Kino - Polzer document (text)

Kino's Hand-drawn Map of the Pimeria Alta Was Part of His Saeta Biography

"Kino Biography's of Father Saeta, S.J."
"Vida del P. Francisco J. Saeta, S.J. -   Sangre Misionera En Sonora"
Eusebio Francisco Kino
Online in English and Spanish

"Kino Biography's of Father Saeta, S.J." 1971
by Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J. 1696
Original Spanish text translated and edited by Dr. Ernest J. Burrus, S.J. with introduction and notes
Epilogue by Charles W. Polzer, S.J 

For text of entire book, click
Kino Saeta Biography doucument (pdf)
Kino Saeta Biography document (text)

For Kino Saeta Biography Footnotes, click
Kino Saeta Biography Footnotes document (pdf)
Kino Saeta Biography Footnotes document (text)

"Vida del P. Francisco J. Saeta, S.J. - Sangre Misionera En Sonora"
by Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J 1696 (1961)
Orginal Spanish text translated and edited by Dr. Ernest J. Burrus, S.J with introduction in Spanish and English.  

For digitized copy by Princeton Theological Seminary Library, click
https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/vidadelpfrancisc00kino

Historical Background
"Kino's Biography of Francisco Javier Saeta"
Editor Note

Padre Kino organized a peace conference between the Native People and the Spanish military in August 1695 that ended six months of warfare in the Altar Valley. In the following 2 months Kino wrote a book about the life of martyred Father Saeta who was killed at the mission of Caborca on Holy Saturday in the beginning hours of the violence. The book is now referred to as "Kino's Biography of Francisco Javier Saeta" and provides a very early description of modern missionary methods.

The purpose of the book was to explain why the violence erupted so that the Native People would be protected from any further reprisals based on false rumors circulated by powerful interests who coveted the mission lands and Native labor.

The book  describes the life of the Father Saeta, a young Italian missionary, and the events surrounding his death. Also the book contains Padre Kino's missiology or philosophy about conducting missionary work. Although Father Saeta served as a missionary for only six months, Kino presents his own philosophy as if it  they were Saeta's opinions by constantly writing "Father Saeta used to say."

The book was used as part of Kino's defense of his beloved Native People and his own missionary career against the powerful interests who opposed him . After riding 1,500 miles in seven weeks from his mission headquarters to Mexico City, Kino appeared in January 1696 before the highest of officials and successfully advocated for his return to the Pimería Alta.

After Kino returned to the missions, his work was further supported by the head of the Jesuit order, Father General Gonzales, who wrote from Rome to Kino's New World superior  "I am convinced that Kino is a chosen instrument of Our Lord for His cause in those missions."

Writing throught the book about the causes of the violence, Kino concludes:
"[The] cause that has contributed to these deaths, riots and outbreaks has been the constant opposition to the Pimas which in turn has been founded on sinister suspicions and false testimony as well as on rash judgments because of which many unjust killings have been perpetrated in various parts of the Pimeria. ... The Pimas have been viciously and unjustly blamed for the thefts of the livestock and the plunder of the frontiers. ....it is evident that the treatment of the natives in the Pimeria has been very unjust — leading as it has to mistreatment, torture and murder." 

To view and download historical background of the Saeta Biography, click
Saeta Biography Background History - Polzer document (text)

"Teatro de Los Trabajos"
Kino's Map with His Biography of Saeta

Introduction
"Kino's Biography of Francisco J. Saeta, S.J."
Ernest J. Burrus
Summary and Synopsis

The reader finds in Kino's monograph on Saeta both less than the term "life" or "biography" indicates and also very much more than the word implies. It is less than the traditional biography inasmuch as it omits those details of Saeta's life that would usually find a prominent place in such a literary genre. This is even more true of the manuscript as left us by Kino. In presenting chronologically sixteen vignettes of as many Jesuit missionaries who met with violent death at the hands of the natives of northern Mexico, Kino logically reserves the last and most prominent place for Saeta. But he never came around to filling in the blank page ­ other duties and other interests claimed his time and attention.

In the present edition, appearing on the 276th anniversary of Saeta's death and of the composition of the biography, we have endeavored to supply as far as possible the details omitted by the author. This we strive to do both in this Introduction and more briefly in the series of vignettes just alluded to.

But Kino's biography of Saeta, despite its brevity, is also very much more than just another life of another missionary. It is the detailed and fully documented history of one of the most significant religious expansions in the Americas, with the consequent enlargement politically and culturally of the same vast territory. When Kino reached Pimería Alta (present northern Sonora and the State of Arizona), the northernmost rim of Christendom (the chain of established missions as also Spanish military and civil control) ran from Batepito through Chuchuta (just south of the site of the historic presidio of Fronteras to be erected a few years later), Bacoache and [5] Bacanuche, and then southward to Cucurpe on the route to Tuape and Opodepe.

In the years that Kino evangelized and explored Pimería Alta, he added an extensive region to New Spain: westward to the Gulf of California, northwestward to and beyond the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers, northward to Casa Grande and even beyond as far as the Río Azul, eastward along the Río San Jose de Terrenate (later called the San Pedro River). As Saeta was assassinated in 1695 and Kino composed the bulk of the biography in the course of the same year, the span of time dealt with is necessarily a brief one - 1687 to 1695, with an exceptional wealth of details for the years 1694 and 1695.

The life of Saeta is Kino's only serious attempt at biography, and after the "Favores Celestiales" his longest composition. It shows greater unity and degree of completion than the latter work. The biography taught Kino a decisive lesson in historical composition, namely the preservation und use of primary sources. A considerable portion of the book is the reproduction of correspondence of Saeta, and of religious and military leaders with Kino. The preservation of such documentation became with Kino a life-long habit; and later, when he came to prepare the "Favores Celestiales" for the press, he had at hand his own archive of precious source material.

In the Saeta biography, turbulent and confused events are disengaged and presented clearly, with sufficient background, evident cause and affect. The few guilty are clearly distinguished from the numerous innocent, an important distinction that had its practical consequences in the treatment meted out by military officials and in the ultimate pacification of the region, as well as in the decision of the highest ecclesiastical authorities to step up rather than abandon the evangelization of the area.

To help the reader follow his narrative more closely, Kino drew two very accurate maps of the entire region which in themselves are important landmarks in the cartography of Mexico: 1) the "Teatro de los Trabajos Apostólicos" (the superb original in colors is preserved in the Jesuit Central Archives in Rome and is reproduced in black and white in Bolton, [7 ] "Rim of Christendom," 272; and, in the original colors, by Burrus, KC, Plate VIII); and 2) the "Muerte del Venerable Padre Francisco Xavier Saeta" (the original, likewise in colors. is preserved in the same Jesuit Archives, and has also been reproduced in black and white in Bolton, "Rim", 290; and, in the original colors, by Burrus, KC, Plate IX. We have chosen from this map the death scene of Saeta for the Frontispiece of the present volume).

The biography deals with the following topics, listed according to the seven extant books:

1) The coming of Saeta to Caborca.
2) The second period of his work in the same mission.
3) His assassination.
4) An important series of original documents reproduced verbatim, on the optimistic outlook for the future of the region despite the violent death of Saeta, and 15 biographical sketches of earlier missionaries who met a like fate at the hands of the natives without necessitating abandoning the missions. The 16th biographical sketch is that of Saeta.
5) The military efforts to pacify the rebellious natives and the effective cooperation of the friendly natives, but also a tragic mistake with disastrous consequences.
6) The present prosperous state of the missions in Pimería Alta; the historical background; Kino's arrival in the area, his work and success. Special emphasis is given to the objections urged by many against continuance of the missions in the area.
7) The last book is unique in the history of Mexico. It is a presentation of the missionary methods employed by Saeta and still more by Kino and a penetrating analysis of the mental and emotional world of the Pima Indians and their reactions to the teachings and demands of Christianity.

A brief word about each of these topics.

In the First Book Kino develops the narrative by an exact historical account of events, specifying dates, places, distances, and actors in the moving drama of which he himself is the most important. We are given an accurate and detailed explanation of the economic status; the number of cattle donated to the mission of Caborca, even what grains and vegetables were planted and thrived there; what buildings were [9] erected; what expeditions had been undertaken. So specific and circumstantial are the data furnished that one can only conclude that Kino kept an exact diary on which he later drew to compose his biography of Saeta.

In the Second Book Kino relies on a series of letters from Saeta to furnish him with a detailed and reliable account of the events in the second period of the missionary's work at Caborca. In this book we are already given some of the missionary methods employed by Saeta that will be developed at length in the last book.

Book Three is more than a mere recital of the assassination of Saeta; it is a penetrating analysis of the causes that brought it about, with practical suggestions for remedying the situation and preventing its repetition in the future. Kino rejects the false accusation that all the Indians are involved. He proves from numerous sources that the main motive was the injustice and cruelty inflicted on the Indians of San Pedro de Tubutama, particularly the treatment meted out by the Opata overseers; the Pimas were unjustly accused of theft - Kino will often return to the theme - with consequent vexations, cruelty, and deaths caused among them by the invading Spanish troops; further, the Indians of San Antonio de Oquitoa joined in the raid on Caborca because they felt deceived and insulted by the numerous false promises made to them and never kept, particularly that missionaries would be sent to them. Saeta's own charges - children (hijos) Kino calls them - were not guilty of his death, nor were they involved in the rebellion, but rather victims of it.

Book Four, despite its unfinished stage of composition, is one of the most carefully worked out of all Kino's writings. He not only cites countless letters from military and religious officials to prove that he is correct in holding that only a few of the Indians participated in the raid on Caborca - and then only after they were induced by the injustice and cruelty committed against them - but he shows that all these officials were optimistic about the future. To give solid historical basis to his contention, Kino dips deep into Mexican history, drawing vignettes of 15 other missionaries who gave their lives [11] for the same cause and yet their missions were not abandonded but were flourishing today. Why, then, he asks, should anyone want to follow a different policy in regard to Saeta and his missions?

Book Five is a clear account of the campaigns to pacify the rebellious natives and to punish the guilty. He devotes a chapter to the cooperation of the friendly Indians. Kino manfully relates the tragic mistakes of some of the Spanish soldiers and their Indian allies resulting in the massacre of innocent natives and consequent raids on other missions. This frankness may account for the fact that the Saeta biography did not find its way into print during Kino's lifetime.

Book Six is a minute account of the state of the missions and of the area in general. He devotes most of this part of the volume to facing squarely the objections raised against the continuance and extension of the missions in the north. Kino realized that the future of the entire region was at stake. Let us remember that he wrote on this topic on the very eve of his departure for Mexico City, where, as he knew, everyone there from the Viceroy and the Provincial of the Jesuits down would urge these objections against him when he came to beg for funds and more manpower.

To come to the objections. It was claimed that Pimería Alta had no native population or at best a few scattered Indians. Kino answers that the region had more than 10,000; and then goes into specific figures for various localities.

But, insisted the opponents, if there are a few wretched natives, the whole region is one interminable desert. To answer this objection, Kino has the written testimony of Spanish officials; he has exact statistics on the amount and kind of produce; and concludes with the triumphant boast: "This Pimería of ours is in the category of the most fertile and productive lands in all of New Spain - Esta Pimería es de las más fértiles y pingues tierras que tiene toda la Nueva España".

Enemies and opponents of the Pimería enterprise had spread the claim that the natives were incurably lazy and could never be taught to work. For those who insisted on certified and notarized documents, Kino has a supply of them; for those who clamored for visible proof of the natives' ability to work, he pointed to what they had already accomplished at Dolores [13] and other mission centers in constructing houses and churches and in planting fields and harvesting the abundant crops.

But, surely, insisted the opponents, the Indians of the province are born thieves, and work is at best only an occasion al necessity with them. This calumny Kino must thoroughly refute; and in order to do so, he uses a three-fold argument: first, despite all the surprise forays of the Spanish military forces into Pima territory, not the least indication of theft was ever found; secondly, the Generals Juan Fernandez de la Fuente and Domingo Teran de los Ríos during the month of June 1695 did uncover stolen property in possession of the Hojomes at Cerro de Chiricahui, but these Indians are the enemies not the allies of the Pimas; thirdly, the Pimas cultivate their fields and live off the produce, whereas the Hojomes, the Janos and the Sumas are nomadic tribes unaccustomed to work, who find it more agreeable to loot and steal horses, mules, and cattle.

The last objection is an economic one: namely, that the missions and the settling of the North were a heavy strain on the royal treasury. This is an objection, answered Kino, that could be used against any region; what are we to do, stop colonizing and evangelizing in order to save a few pesos? I'll cite in full, says Kino, the royal decree that states that the advantages of establishing missions far outweigh the expenses involved. Who would dare doubt the King's word?

Kino now comes to the last [Book 8] and by far most valuable book for the student of the history of Mexico and the American Southwest for it furnishes him with the key to Kino's methods of winning over the natives, of his being able to travel among them even unescorted when he so chose, of securing their cooperation in evangelizing the area far beyond the limits its of his own mission, of securing their confidence, allegiance, loyalty, trust, and devotion to a degree unparalleled in the mission annals of Mexico.

As I think is evident, the biography of Saeta by Kino is more than the life story of one man. It is the detailed and documented history of the entire region with the political, economic, ethnological, military, geographical, and ecclesiastical phases minutely presented and analyzed. 

Excerpts from  "Kino's Biography of Francisco Javier Saeta"
Eusebio Francisco Kino 1696

"As Venerable Father Francisco Javier Saeta used to say that a  missionary among new peoples needed special talents, temperament and vocation. There is no doubt that a keen sense of charity is worth more here than anything else. The missionary must conduct himself toward these poor natives wholly in and through Christ. He must handle new conversions with a genuine knack, being capable of accepting suffering while he works hard and maintains a sense of tolerance.These qualities are more valuable than other human talents, skills, sophistication, eloquence, ingenuity or advanced and subtle science...

In our opinion the very origin of new conversions springs from where there exists a strong and loving concern for the temporal and spiritual welfare of impoverished and destitute people, even though they may be downtrodden, misguided, and persecuted outcasts.

Kino's Biography of Javier Francisco Saeta
Book 8 Chapter 2

"And we must remember, especially for new missionary works, that it was said: "Go among the rejected peoples" (Isaiah 15:2), so that the missionaries will take up the strenuous task of instructing, teaching, and training in spiritual as well as temporal matters.Such work calls for hardiness, patience, and tolerance; if the missionary is to succeed in fashioning any decent, skillful, gentle, and affable children, these virtues are demanded.

But this is neither well nor sufficiently achieved when one sits perched on his chair ordering subordinates or Indian officials to do what we should be doing personally by sitting down time and again with them on earthen floors or on a rock."

Kino's Biography of Javier Francisco Saeta
Book 8 Chapter 1

"Indians in a new mission are great newsmongers. Whatever good or evil they learn is immediately spread far and wide.

Indians who live far away, even in the more remote sectors, inquire about the missionary priest. They want to know what he does, what he says, what he gives, what he wears and carries, what he teaches, how he speaks, etc. Very many Indians who live a great distance from the Fathers know who they are.

They know whatever they do and say, and they form their own opinions and ideas about them. They will say that a certain Father is good, another is liberal, or that this is the style of this one and that one. "I will take my sons to be baptized by him," etc.

I have traveled deep within the Indian territory where I have met Indians who claim that they have already come to know me in places still farther away, although we certainly have never seen one another before."

Kino's Biography of Javier Francisco Saeta
Book 8 Chapter 4

Support of Saeta Biography by Jesuit Father General In Rome

Al Padre Juan de Palacios,
Provincial, México. P. C.

EI Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino me dice que iba escribiendo la vida del venerable Padre Francisco Javier Saeta, últimamente martirizadoen la misión de los Pimas, y que añadiría también las de los demás que en esa Provincia han tenido el mismo dichoso fin. Luego, que acabe esa obra, Vuestra Reverencia hará que se revea, y revista y aprobada, dará licencia para que se imprima; porque tales noticias son de mucha gloria de Nuestra Señor, de la Compañía, y de los apostólicos empleos de esa Provincia.

Roma, 28 de julio de 1696.

De vuestra Reverencia, siervo en Cristo,
Tirso González

Editor Note: Ernest Burrus writes Kino's Saeta Biography was never published because Kino's account of the Tubutama Uprising and Kino's defense was a matter highly sensitive matter to the New Spain authorities.

Articles on Kino's Missionary Philosophy and Missiology

Missionary Kino - Spicer document (text)
Edward H. Spicer

Padre Kino's Missionary Teaching - Polzer document (text)
Charles W. Polzer, S.J.

Missiology of Kino - O'Neil document (text)
Charles E. O'Neil, S.J.

Kino's Method of Evangelization - Polzer
Charles W. Polzer, S.J.

Overview of Missionary Efforts in the Spanish New World
"The Missionary Enterprise: An Overview"
Luke Clossey 

The missionary effort in the Spanish New World was one of the greatest religious and humanitarian endeavors for the times. Dr. Luke Clossey discusses the challenges and the historical context in his article  "The Missionary Enterprise: An Overview"

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Missionary Enterprise - Clossey

"Rules and Precepts of The Jesuit Missions of Northwest Spain"
Charles W. Polzer

Rules and Precepts is a valuable research tool for scholars and for those who are interested in the "anthropology" of Jesuit missionaries. Polzer's authoritative commentary and his translation of the rules and precepts decreed by New Spain's Jesuit provinical make this work literally a "manual on the missions." and gives valuable insights into religious and civil life on the far mission frontier in the 1600s and 1700s. 
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Rules and Precepts - Polzer

Medicine Man Kino Providing
Physical and Spiritual Care
Detail of Painting by Artist Jose Cirilo Rios Ramo

Missionary Doctor and Pharmacist
Medicine Man 

In the relative absence of pre-Columbian epidemics, native cultures in the northwestern Mexico and Paraguay had few elaborated behaviors and beliefs to deal with unprecedented diseases wrought by maladies such as small pox. … The fact that the Jesuits coupled prayer with clinical care of the sick also empowered them …

Dr. Daniel T. Reff
"The Jesuit Mission Frontier: The Reductions of the Río de la Plata and the Missions of Northwestern Mexico 1588-1700" in "Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire"

To view Dr. Reff's entire chapter article online, click →
The Jesuit Mission Frontier - Reff

"The Jesuit Missionary in the Role of Physician"
Theodore E. Treutlien

Perhaps more important than any of the Jesuit missionary's other non- religious functions was his performance in the role of physician to the Spaniards and Indians who resided in his mission district. Father Pfefferkorn's observations about the care of the sick and about the sicknesses found among Sonorans, reveal him to have been a man who ombined in varying proportions a pseudo-scientific knowledge of illnesses and their cures with an eminently "common sense" practicality.

The plant and mineral kingdoms of Sonora were believed to contain countless healing materials and antidotes for a wide variety of maladies and poisons. There is at least the implication in Pfefferkorn's description or these medicaments that in Sonora God had been particularly beneficent in compensating for the lack of "doctors, surgeons, and apothecaries" with a plentiful supply of health promoting agencies.

'I'he juice of mescal leaves was considered an infallible antiscorbutic: the root of the same plant healed wounds, while spirits distilled from the root were used as a stormach tonic. With mescal spirits Pfefferkorn cured his own stomach which had been unsettled for six months. Spaniards who had the equipment for the distIllation of mescal spirits charged an exorbitant price for the liquid. …..

Theodore E. Treutlien
The Jesuit Missionaries in the Role of Physician
"Mid-America"  22, no. 2 (April 1940) pg. 120–41. 

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Jesuit As Physician - Treutlien

"Healing on the Edge: The Construction of Medicine
  on the Jesuit Frontier of Northern New Spain"
  Rebecca Crocker

This article examines historical, ethnographic, and archival records to portray how medicine and healing were constructed in this frontier region during the Jesuit period (1617-1767), and the influence of Jesuit philosophy and practice on local medicinal practice. Chambers and Gillespie (2000:228) argue that a geographic region can constitute a "scientific locality" when there exists "a local frame of reference in which we may usefully examine the role of knowledge construction and inculcation." I maintain that colonial Sonora during the Jesuit period constitutes its own scientific, and specifically medical, locality due to three primary factors: ( 1 ) the influence and healing perspective of the erudite and scientifically minded Jesuit missionaries, (2) the area's geographical isolation, and (3) the biopharmaceutical composition of the arid northwest. The available historical record reveals that these three factors interacted to necessitate and encourage the continued use of regional healing substances and practices in concert with imported modalities. Due to the dearth of medical informants from the era, much of the information in this article comes from the broader region of Sonora rather than O'odham territories specifically. Nonetheless, the regional experience of fusing medical techniques and theories is applicable to the O'odham, and the second section of this article will employ a modern ethnographic resource (Bahr et al. 1974) to focus the discussion more specifically on what we can glean about the O'odham historical experience. If we take as true Porter's (1985:192) statement that "health is the backbone of social history," the hypothesis forwarded here is not just important in the realm of healing, but also in the field of regional processes of cultural change and continuity.

The Interaction of Culture Contact, Geography, and Biology

The isolation and apparent desolation of Sonora spelled cultural isolation from the colonial core for a long period following initial exploration of the region by Spanish military parties during the 1540s and 1560s. When European penetration of the area was reinitiated, it took place largely under the auspices of Spain's newest religious order, the Society of Jesus. Whereas the church and state served as "dual columns of royal authority" on the frontier (Radding 1997:11), the institution of the Jesuit mission was the primary foreign influence on local cultural order (see also Sheridan 1992; Valdés Aguilar 2009). The Jesuits distinguished themselves from their fellow religious brethren by refusing tithes, declining to wear the habit, applying themselves to learning the languages of their converts, and educating themselves in the sciences. Many Jesuits on the northern frontier became prolific chroniclers of American natural history, including Manuel Aguirre, Juan de Esteyneffer, Juan Nentvig, Joseph Och, Ignaz Pfefferkorn, Andrés Pérez de Ribas, Hernando de Santarén, Luis Xavier Velarde, and Miguel Venegas, several of whom ministered to or traveled through O'odham territory.

In response to widespread interest in botanical cures, the Jesuits developed what Anagnostou (2007) refers to as a "worldwide drug transfer," in which missionaries from China, India, Japan, the Philippines, and Spanish America interchanged knowledge and materia medica. They took inspiration particularly in natural history, not only for its practical applications to knowledge expansion and healing, but because, on a higher scale, they believed that God's love was embodied in nature's bounty (Acosta 1962). Anagnostou (2007:294) maintains that, "according to Jesuit philosophy and spirituality, nature reflected God's omnipotence and divine providence. To describe and explore nature was, therefore, one way of worshipping God." According to Harris (2005), this predilection to see God in nature opened the minds of Jesuits throughout the world to more readily incorporate and accept the healing traditions they encountered. What is more, as the most educated of the European religious orders, many Jesuits took seriously the mandate to learn indigenous languages as a means to decipher how the order in language reflects the order in customs and culture, a process that then forced them to "contemplate alternative truths" (Reff 1999:36).

Jesuit interest in healing knowledge was compounded by a firmly held belief that "the bodies of their spiritual charges should be aided along with their souls" (Kay 1996:25). The Jesuits held an "activist" approach to missionization, in which the role of healing or witnessing illness was deemed more important than a night spent in isolated prayer (Reff 1999). Jesuit preoccupation with illness and remedy was evidenced in the essays on missionary life they left behind, which addressed sickness, doctoring, and specifically their own roles as physicians. Ignaz Pfefferkorn (1949:178), for example, in his Sonora: A Description of the Province, wrote of his missionary years that "the vigilant care of the sick was one of the most important concerns of the missionary." Missionary chroniclers report having traveled long distances in harsh and uncertain conditions to attend to the sick and baptize the terminally ill lest they be left to take their last breath as "sinners." The report of Captain Juan Mateo Manje (1701), who accompanied Father Eusebio Francisco Kino on many missions of discovery through O'odham territory, noted such activities, stating that "the father rector was confessing the sick and catechizing others in order to baptize them, for they are currently [suffering] from the epidemic commonly called "pitiflor". A sick man died the following night without baptism, [causing] the father great sorrow because he had not counseled him. ...."

Rebecca Crocker
Healing on the Edge
The Construction of Medicine on the Jesuit Frontier of Northern New Spain
Journal of the Southwest
July 1, 2014

To read entire article online, click →
http://www.readperiodicals.com/201407/3449174271.html#ixzz3qGsPGWDP

Forilegio Medicinal
By Kino Co-worker Brother Esteyneffer
Medical Guide for Missionaries And 300 Years of Folk Medicine

"Florilegio Medicinal"
Three Books: Medicine, Surgery and Drugs 

One of the most important daily non-religious work of the missionary was the missionary's role as a medical doctor. So great was Jesuit involvement in "care of the sick" in the missions that the Jesuits sought and received a papal exemption from the ban on clerics serving in medical roles. Jesuits who assisted the sick and dying were called "Father Operarios." Dr. Treutline identifies Jesuit Brother Juan de Esteyneffer, the author of the Florilegio Medicinal, by his European name - Johann Steinefer. Brother Juan's last name also is recorded as Steinhoffer..

The Florilegio Medicinal is one of the most influential medical guides in Latin America. Jesuit Brother Juan de Esteyneffer was a co-worker of Kino's in Sonora. Brother Juan joined Kino on the trail and helped with the preparations for the arrival at Tubutama of the new missionary Padre Minutuli in 1704. For many years afterwards, Brother Juan traveled to other Sonoran missions teaching the indigenous people herbal medicine.

Florilegio Medicinal was an instructional medical guide combining European medical knowledge with knowledge of Native herbs and other medicinals of Mexico. Written in an understandable and accessible language, it is composed of three sections: Medicine, Surgery, and Drugs. 

Florilegio Medicinal was first published in 1712, the year following Kino's death. It's popularity resulted in its reprinting four times during the 18th century and again in the 19th and 20th century. It was still being used as late as the 1970's by some folk healers in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. To view the guide, click Forilegio Medicinal.

Brother Esteyneffer was born in Europe. He was assigned to the Pimería Alta and ministered at Tubutama in 1703. He also served in other missions in today's Sonoran towns of  Vecora, Matape, Tecoripa, Arizpe and Sinoquipe. He died in Tecóra in 1716.

The Jesuit contribution of new medicines and drugs to the world's pharmacy are legendary. The most famous was  "Jesuit's Bark" (cinchona bark or quinine) which was the first effective drug to treat malaria.  The Jesuit missionaries in Peru were taught the healing power of the bark by Native people between 1620 and 1630. The Jesuits then synthesized the bark and distributed the medicine throughout the world. Jesuit bark was used as the primary treatment for malaria up to the 1940s.  For more information, click Jesuit Bark.

More about Esteynefer's "Florilegio Medicinal" at the U.S. National Library of Medicine website sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH). Click and scroll to bottom of the page at →
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/exvotos/guides.html

Jesuit Father General Sends Esteyneffer to Help Kino

"La facilidad que se ofrece, y veo en las cartas de los padres Kino y Salvatierra, del tránsito a las Califomias me obliga a instar de nuevo el que se procure la entrada de todas veras y calor ...

Considero que a los que hubieren de entrar les será de grande alivio el llevar consigo al hermano. Y sé que el hermano Juan Steinefer [Esteyneffer], irá con gusto. Vuestra Reverencia le envíe luego a los pimas para que allí le ayude al padre Francisco Kino. Y esto Vuestra Reverencia lo ejecute, ahora se disponga la entrada alas Califomias, ahora no. Pues estoy seguro que es un muy buen operario catequizando e instruyendo.

Roma
21 de mayo de 1695
De Vuestra Reverencia siervo en Cristo
Tirso González." 

Editor Note: Letter from Jesuit Father General Tirso González, Rome, to Provincial of New Spain Diego de Almonacir, México City dated May 21, 1695.

Kino Receives A Mother's Thanks on the Colorado River
"Favores Celestiales" 1702
Eusebio Franicsco Kino

"And in this journey inland, as in my preceding one of the past month of November, they received the word of God with so much appreciation that they gave me many infants to baptize. Of the two little ones whom I had baptized in the preceding journey inland, this time the mother of one, called Thyrso Gonzales, brought him to me, for, having recovered, he was fat and healthy. Many other mothers also brought me their children, asking me to baptize them …."

Eusebio Franicsco Kino
March 2, 1702
Kino's Historical Memoirs
Volume I, page 349

Editor Note: Kino's many diary entries describe his taking detours from his planned routes to baptize and care for the sick and dying. A mother expressed her gratitude to Kino for healing her infant son on his fourth and final trip to the Colorado, On this trip four thousand Native people from the various Colorado River tribes came to see Kino near today's San Luis - many swimming across the Colorado River at its high spring flow. The next day Kino would travel to the Colorado River Delta and prove his hypotheisis that California was not an island as commonly then believed. His proof of an overland route to the recently revived California missions could have made Kino's supply of them easier. 

Kino's Drawing of Our Lady of Guadalupe
From His Sky Map of the Comet's Path
Exposición Astronómica del Cometa  

The Missionary Guadalupano

"Padre Kino’s Devotion to the Virgen de Guadalupe"
Raul E Ramirez

Kino’s relationship to the Virgen de Guadalupe began prior to this arrival to Mexico City. While waiting in Spain to embark to the New World, he wrote to the Duchess of Aviero and Arcos, Maria de Guadalupe de Lencastre. The Duchess was named for her patron saint, the Virgen de Guadalupe, the Spanish Dark Madonna (enshrined in Estremadura) and was known for her generosity to missionaries, especially those assigned to missions in the Marianas, Philippines, and China. Kino wrote to the Duchess expressing his interest in serving in the Orient, but noted that as he was assigned to the New World, he was bound by his vow of obedience to his Jesuit superiors.

Padre Kino arrived in Mexico City on June 1, 1681. While he waited for his first assignment in New Spain, he was encouraged by fellow priests and colleagues to write about a comet that he had studied in Europe in 1680 and still visible in Mexico City in 1681. This comet was called the Great Comet of 1680 and also Heaven’s Chariot. Kino published a short thesis on the comet titled "Exposición Astronómica de el Cometa."

On the booklet’s cover, Kino used the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe de Tepeyac, and in the introduction he describes her image. Regarding the miraculous image of the Virgen on Juan Diego’s tilma, he stated, “We have so close (to us) a copy of that divine lady, Mother of God, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, who bestows protection on Mexico. She is surrounded by the sun, embellished by the stars, with the moon as her carpet and uplifted by a Cherub. There is nothing in the heavens, commanding as the moon may be, that does not serve as adornment to her image. What would the original be (to behold)?” Padre Kino sent several copies of his thesis to the Duchess in Spain so that she could distribute to acquaintances with an interest in the topic.

In his letters to the Duchess from Mexico City he shared his views on the comet and noted that he celebrated Mass weekly at the Capilla of the Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe at Tepeyac. On July 4, 1681, he wrote to the Duchess that he still hoped to go to China if it was God’s will and that he celebrated mass every week at the sacred shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He also prayed for his intention and for the Duchess’ family including her three children, Joaquin, Gabriel and Isabel. Kino stated that he was sending images of Our Lady of Guadalupe for her family which he “placed against the sacred picture itself of Our Lady of Guadalupe….. I kept all five images on the altar, on the very corporal where the sacrifice of the Mass under the species of bread and wine takes place--- the price of our redemption” (Burrus, p.111).

Later, on June 3, 1682, enroute to his first assignment to establish missions in Baja California, Kino wrote to the Duchess averring that “The City which by God’s favor and that of the Blessed Virgin we shall found in California within the next three to five months, will be called, by God’s grace, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de las California.” (Burrus, p.122).

In communications with Padre Francisco de Castro, a fellow Jesuit, Kino related that they arrived in La Paz in Baja California and went ashore on April 2, 1683. Kino reported that he and Padre Matias Goñi, engage the native people, expressing their peaceful intentions and showing them religious images. “We showed them a crucifix and on another day and image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but they gave no sign of actually having or ever having had any acquaintance with these objects or with matters concerning the Catholic religion” (Burrus, p.130). At that time, Kino was trying to determine if previous expeditions had contact with the native people in the area. Kino states that on Palm Sunday palms were distributed and work continued on the small church and fort which was called the Real de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. They shared food with the natives and taught them to make the sign of the cross. Kino commented that “Within a few months we can begin to administer baptism, since these Indians seem to me to be the most tractable, affable, cheerful and jovial in all America” (Burrus, p.131). Unfortunately , on July 3, 1683 the peace was broken by soldiers in the Spanish Garrison who fearing a plot against them, fired a cannon on sixteen unarmed Guaycuros warriors, killing ten of them; a week later, Kino was forces to abandon his first mission in Baja California as the Spanish soldiers withdraw.

Kino wrote to the Duchess on December 15, 1683 and reported as of October a new mission was started at San Bruno, Baja California. He shared that a lovely picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe was placed on the main altar. Ten months later he wrote to the Duchess once again, thanking her for the incense figures that she sent, adding that they were used them on the altar of Guadalupe for his solemn final religious profession as a Jesuit on August 15, 1684.

Yet by May of 1685, this venture also failed when the site was abandoned due shortage of water and provisions. Nevertheless, it may be said that Kino’s foray into this region was successful in part, as he was the first European to cross the peninsula from one side to the other. At that time, Baja California was thought to be an island but after Kino was establishing his missions in the Pimería Alta, he was able to show that Baja California was in fact a peninsula and not an island.

Kino’s letters to the Duchess stopped with his arrival into the Primería Alta, and while he did not name any of his new missions after the Virgen de Guadalupe, his Marian devotion continued. Other missions were named after Our Lady including Nuestra Señora de los Dolores (1687); Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (1687); Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera (1689); Santa Maria Suamca (1693); La Purisima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de Caborca (1693); Nuestra Señora de Loreto y San Marcelo de Sonayta (1693), and Nuestra Señora de la Ascension de Opodepe (1704).

Kino Dedicates His Life To Our Lady of Guadalupe
In His Comet Treatise
"Exposición Astronómica del Cometa" 1681
Eusebio Franciso Kino, S.J.

Señora de ambos Orbes María, Madre de Dios del Titulo Advocación, y Renombre del Mexicano Guadalupe, a quien consagro mis suceíos, y sucesos, y pongo la contingencia que puedo correr con los demas mortales, para que con su poderosissimo Patrocinio seguro de las comunes azechanzas de este mundo, llegue a conseguir la celeste patria donde se lleva quando  a y de delicia, menos la mudanca, y alternada sucesion de las cosas, Omnia ad majorem Dei, Dei pareque honorem amorem, et gloriam.

Eusebio Franciso Kino, S.J.
"Exposición Astronómica del Cometa" 1681
Mexico City

Editor Note: Written in 1681 - These are the last words of Kino's astronomical treatise written immediately before he leaves to begin his 30 years of mission work on and beyond the Spanish frontier. Kino names his first two missions of his 26 missions and visting stations. In Baja California he honored of Our Lady of Guadalupe by naming in Her honor his missions at  La Paz and San Bruno (north of Loretto).  Kino writes that he made his final vows to become a fully professed Jesuit priiest on August 10, 1683, in front of a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the altar of Mission Our Lady of Guadalupe at San Bruno.

Duchess de Abeiro y Arcos and Family

Kino Writes The Duchess About His Devotion
Letter to María Guadalupe de Lancaster 1681
Eusebio Francisco Kino

Your Excellency
The Peace of Christ Jesus and the Love of Our Lord be with you!

A month ago, within the first days of my arrival in Mexico City, I wrote to your excellency, giving you an account of our entire trip and voyage to the missions. Quite likely, that letter will reach you at the same time as this one. I entrusted all my letters to Reverend Father Baltasar de Mansilla, Procurator of the Philippines and Marianas, to put them in a mail pouch sent from Mexico to the Spanish court in Madrid.
 
Reverend Father Baltasar de Mansilla is favorably interested in the eastern missions, especially the Marianas. When in the preceding month of March he sent those missionaries who had arrived here in the fleet ten months previously, he wrote to the Reverend Father Superior of the Mariana Islands to keep for that mission as many as he wished. He will write to the same effect regarding the other missionaries (who two months ago came here with me on the dispatch boat), when he sends them, God willing, to the Orient. As is evident, he makes every effort to help the Marianas.
 
Reverend Father Baltasar is also trying to get me to China. Accordingly, a few days ago, he spoke about the matter to Reverend Father Provincial of the Mexican Province in the endeavor to secure me for his own eastern missions. Reverend Father Provincial, who is planning on sending me to California in the company of a veteran missionary, when within a few months (if God so wishes) ships, soldiers and a goodly contingent set out to explore more carefully than heretofore that extensive island or peninsula, has not yet given his final decision to Reverend Father Baltasar. He will probably do so when Father Antonio Cereso comes here from Puebla in some two or three weeks.
 
Although he is the one designated for the Philippines, he will quite likely remain in the Mexican Province because of the great difficulties which he experienced during the voyage; and so, perhaps, I can manage to be sent to the Orient in his place.
 
In the meanwhile, I dare not prefer, ask for or desire one mission rather than another, lest I be reminded: "You know not what you are asking for." But until then, I am earnestly commending every day this intention to Our Lady of Guadalupe, so that superiors decide what is most pleasing to the all good Lord. And when for this purpose I go every week to say Mass at the sacred shrine of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, I am careful to commend, as well as I can, the intentions of your Excellency, of your husband and of your three dear children, Joaquin, Gabriel and Isabel.
 
I am writing this letter on her feast; and, hence, I am sending her an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and a pious chain; I would have the latter be a symbol of her close attachment to Our Lord. The other four images I should like to give to the other four members of your devoted family, namely, your Excellency, his Excellency, and Joaquin and Gabriel, so dear to me in Our Lord. All five images were placed against the sacred picture itself of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I acquired them when I went out of the city to say Mass in the shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary. While I said Mass on the altar of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, I kept all five images on the altar, on the very corporal where the sacrifice of the Mass under the species of bread and wine takes place - the price of our redemption.  

For several days now I have not seen the "Virreina" [the friend of the Duchess, wife of the Viceroy of Mexico] but soon I shall be seeing her, God willing. Just a few days ago, when we celebrated in our church the feast of Saints Peter and Paul apostles, his Excellency, the Viceroy, deigned to add to the solemnity by his presence.
 
On June 23rd, at six o'clock in the evening, we experienced a severe earthquake. Many public processions with prayers have taken place to secure rain. I suspect that the exceptional drought is one of the results of the comet; torrential rains occasionally follow a drought. May the divine clemency in its compassion protect us and ever keep us from harm!

We are awaiting the return soon of Reverend Father José Vidal from Puebla, where he conducted a mission. To his exquisite kindness and goodness I am deeply indebted, as also to Reverend Father Baltasar de Mansilla.  

If your Excellency has sent to Cadiz the Caravacan crosses which I humbly requested while I was still in that city, our devoted Brother Marcos de Sotomayor will reimburse you. He went to Madrid as the companion of the two Reverend Fathers Procurator now on their way to Rome. I earnestly commend all of them to your Excellency and myself to them, wishing them a safe trip.

Unless the fleet leaves from Vera Cruz earlier than scheduled I shall attempt to soon let your Excellency know in another letter to what mission my superiors are assigning me. Whether they are sending me to the Orient or whether they are keeping me for the missions here in New Spain or California, I shall always remain most deferentially devoted to your Excellency, ever mindful of you in my prayers and sacrifice of the Mass. The very presence of the sacred image of the Blessed Virgin Mary signed by you, which you so kindly sent to me in Cadiz from Madrid and which I now carry in my breviary, will readily remind me to give you a daily intention.
 
To the fervent prayers of your Excellency, of your dear children and of your entire devoted family, I earnestly commend myself and the missions of the oriental and western worlds, especially those of limitless China.

Mexico City, July 4, 1681
Most devotedly yours in Christ,
Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J.

Kino addresses the letter envelop:
"A la Exc.ma Señora Duquesa de Abeiro y Arcos, que Dios guarde muchos años en Madrid. M.R."

Editor Note: The Duchess of Aveiro y Arcos, María Guadalupe de Lancaster, (1630 - 1715) was from a noble and wealthy Portuguese family. She was a great patron of charities and of the missions in all parts of the world especially Jesuit foreign mission. She was called "The Mother of The Missions." She was an accomplished linguist, patroness of letters and famous painter who my have been a pupil of Velasquez. She was a person of great influence in the courts in Madrid, Lisbon and Rome.

The Duchess and Kino began their correspondence during Kino's 2 year stay in Spain while waiting to take ship to the New World. Their correspondence continued while Kino worked in New Spain. The Duchess and Kino never met in person. Kino's letters to the Duchess totaling over 30 give great insight into Kino's hopes and ideas. Most of Kino's original letters that are known to exist are owned by the Huntington Library.

Letter Summary by Ernest Burrus: Kino writes to the Duchess from Mexico City, July 4, 1681. Father Mansilla dispatched all of Kino's letters by diplomatic pouch. Unless the fleet sails sooner than planned, Kino will Let the Duchess know to what mission he has been assigned - the Orient, Mexico or California. Favorable attitude of Father Mansilla and Vidal towards the missions. Mansilla is trying to effect Kino's passage to China, but the California expedition may need him. The one hope is for Kerschpamer to remain in Mexico and for Kino to take his place in the Orient. At the shrine of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Earthquake in Mexico. 

The Missionary Guadalupano
Composite Drawings by Artist Ettore ("Ted") DeGrazia

"Eusebio Kino: Misionero Infatigable, Ferviente Guadalupano"
Enciclopedia Guadalupana
Xavier Escalada

Kino, Eusebio Francisco
(1645-1711)

El insigne misionero y sabio jesuita nació en Segno, Tirol y murió en Magdalena, Sonora. Fue el primer apóstol de las Californias, Sonora y Arizona; al llegar a México en junio de 1681, desconocía el lugar a donde sus superiores le enviarian a misionar. En carta del 4 de julio dirigida a la duquesa de Aveito y Arcos, entusiasta protectora de las misiones de los padres jesuitas, le dice: " ... cada día procuro encomendarme con toda devoción a la bienaventurada Virgen de Guadalupe, para que mis superiores hagan lo que más agrade a Dios, y a este fin voy cada semana a celebrar misa en el sagrado templo extramuros, dedicado a la tres veces admirable Madre de Dios, la Virgen María de Guadalupe".

A dicha duquesa y a sus hijos envió estampas guadalupanas, tocadas al sagrado lienzo. En carta del 3 de junio de 1682, le comunica a la misma duquesa la grata noticia de que su destino será las Californias, aceptando la voluntad divina, ya que mucho había deseado ir a China. Le dice que en unos meses fundarán, en lo que él llama la mayor isla, la ciudad de Ntra. Sra. de Guadalupe de las Californias. El 20 de abril de 1683, en la relación enviada al P. Ximénez, asienta que "a 31 de marzo, entramos en la gran Bahía de Ntra. Sra. de la Paz, que tiene su entrada en 24 grados 55 minutos de altura ... el lunes, empezamos a fabricar una pequeña iglesia y fuertecito, o Real de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe ... "
 
En carta del 27 de julio de 1683, dirigida al mismo padre le dice, refiriéndose a los indios: "Nos vienen aver muy a menudo a este Real de Guadalupe, trayéndonos regalos ... y una vez también unas perlitas que ellos no las estiman mucho, no hacen mucho caso de ellas, no se aplican a pescarlas, aunque verdaderamente las hay y muchas de buen oriente en toda la bahía, y se han sacado muchas de ellas que son más de doscientas las que han dado de limosna a la Virgen Santísima ... " En todas estas cartas irradia el apóstol guadalupano de las Californias, su amor a la Virgen del Tepeyac, devoción que supo sembrar en aquellos dóciles y buenos indios del Real de Guadalupe.
 
Gran matemático y cosmógrafo, de indomable espíritu explorador, organizó las misiones de la Pimería Alta (Sonora y Arizona), trazando los primeros mapas, y recorriéndola incansablemente en cuarenta expediciones. Escribió vocabularios de las lenguas indígenas y muchas monografías sobre sus viajes y experiencias misioneras.
 
Vino a México por amor a la Guadalupana y se entregó a la evangelizacion con tal talento y vigor que el gobierno |492| de Estados Unidos le ha exaltado como fundador de las misiones y poblaciones en los desiertos de Arizona. Su estatua se encuentra en el Statuary Home de Washington, entre los fundadores de América.
 
El presidente Alvaro Obregón hizo publicar el diario de sus increíbles correrías y descubrimientos. Entre tantas iglesias o misiones que fundó destaca la de San Xavier del Bac, donde aún se conserva la imagen de la Guadalupana que él mismo allí colocara; y en la obra "Delineación y Dibujo de las Partes del Cielo" trazó de su propia mana una copia de la Virgen para la portada.
 
Xavier Escalada
"Kino, Eusebio Francisco "
Enciclopedia Guadalupana: Temática, Histórica, Onomástica 1995

Last Page of Kino's  "Breve Relación" with His Signatures

Writings about Kino's Work

Breve relación de la entrada que desde 13 de marzo de 1687 se hizo a la nación y gentilidad de los indios Gentiles Pimas y buenos principios de su conversión a nuestra Santa Fe Católica. Escrita por el Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino de la Compañía de Jesús, que de sus superiores fue enviado por misionero a dicha conversión.

Desde que, en veinte de noviembre de 1686 años, por orden del Padre Bernabé de Soto, salí de México para venir a la conversión de estos indios gentiles pimas en esta América Septentrional, en 16 de diciembre, al pasar por la ciudad de Guadalajara, alcancé de la Real Audiencia un mandamiento que con la nueva Real Cédula que tiene inserta, tanto favorece a las nuevas conversiones cuanto quizás hasta ahora no se habrá oído. La fecha de la nueva real cédula es en la finca del Buen Retiro de Madrid, el 14 de mayo del mismo año de 1686, y contiene entre otras acostumbradas, las siguientes muy católicas palabras:

"Por cumplir con tan precisa obligación de evangelizar a los indios y aplicar todos los medios, esfuerzos y recursos que fueren posibles para que se fomente causa que es tan del servicio de Dios Nuestro Señor - quien con su gran providencia retribuye siempre generosísimamente a mi real monarquía - y deseando cumplir con esta obligación, que la considero por la más principal y de mi mayor deseo, he acordado dar la presente, por la cual ordeno y mando a mi virrey de la Nueva España y a los presidentes y oidores de mis audiencias reales de México, Guadalajara, Guatemala ya los gobernadores de la Nueva Vizcaya y Yucatán, que luego que reciban <134> esta mi Cédula pongan especialísimo cuidado en que se vayan congregando en pueblos y convirtiendo a nuestra Santa Fe Católica todas las naciones de indios gentiles que hubiere en el distrito y jurisdicción, que comprende la gobernación de cada audiencia y gobierno" .

Hasta aquí la catoliquisima Real Cédula que tambíen, para facilitar más dichas conversiones, concede veinte años de privilegio a los indios que de aquí adelante se fueren convirtiendo a nuestra Santa Fe Católica, para que de ninguna manera puedan ser obligados a los trabajos de minas o haciendas, ni aunque se presenten órdenes con mi sello real.

Con este Real mandamiento de la Audiencia de Guadalajara y la Real Cédula, llegué a las misíones de Sinaloa a principios de febrero de 1687, y pocos días después, al nuevo real de las nuevas riquísimas minas que llaman de Los Frailes, que bien se reconoce que son el premio que Nuestro Señor ( según dice la dicha Real Cédula) siempre retribuye a la Católica monarquía. Ya principios de marzo, llegué a las misíones de Sonora.

Y pasando a Oposura y Cumpas a verme con el nuevo Padre visitador Manuel Gonzáles. Le hallé tan bien dispuesto a atender esta nueva conversión de estos Pimas, que quiso en medio de sus muchas ocupaciones, venir a ella en persona el camino de más de 50 leguas. Al pasar por el real de minas de San Juan dio el obedecimiento al Real mandamiento de la Audiencia y a la Real Cédula el alcalde mayor Don Antonio Barba de Figueroa. <135>

En 8 de marzo pasamos por Guépaca, misión del valle de Sonora, que está a cargo del Padre rector Juan Muños de Burgos, el cual tambíen estaba dispuesto para entrar en persona a esta nueva conversión.

Dos días después, el Padre visitador y yo llegamos a Cucurpe donde el Padre José de Aguilar nos recibió con muchos arcos y con muchas cruces y con linda música. Enviamos a avisar a los indios Pimas (pues sus primeras rancherías ya no distan de Cucurpe sino 5 leguas) que de ahí a dos días, iríamos a verlos; pero recibimos la desconsoladora noticia que su gobernador no estaba allí; pues pocos días antes se había ido a tierra muy adentro. No obstante, por cuanto tambíen nos pedía mucho un topil de una de estas rancherías, gravemente enfermo, que antes que se muriera por sus largos ya peligrosos achaques, le fuéramos a bautizar, en 13 de marzo, entramos a estas rancherías el Padre visitador, el Padre José de Aguilar y yo, con el gobernador y alcalde de Cucurpe. Al llegar a la ranchería donde estaba el topil enfermo, después de catequizado, le bautizó solemnemente el Padre visitador: llamose Ignacio y le casó por la iglesia. Quedó dicho topil con este bautismo consoladísimo y de allí a dos días, después de 6 meses de enfermedad, se fue muy gozoso, como esperamos, a gozar de la dichosa eterna bienaventuranza.

Y entrando a la principal ranchería llamada el Bamotze (que después se llamó y se llama nuestra Señora de los Dolores), fuimos recibidos con grandísima alegría de todos los naturales, con cruces y arcos puestos; y nos tenían prevenida una buena ramada en que pudiéramos <136> decentemente decir misa, además de una de sus mejores casitas en que pudiéramos dormir. Desde luego dijeron estaban muy deseosos de bautizarse y ser cristianos y habían enviado a llamar a su gobernador y se esperaba su venida cuanto antes.

El Padre visitador con sus muchas ocupaciones determinó volverse el día siguiente a su santa misión de Oposura donde los jesuitas tenían un colegio y dejándonos en la pacífica posesíon de este pueblo, dejó tambíen el que a nuestra elección entrásemos o no entrásemos en la tierra más adentro, a ver si había gente y sitio o rancherías a propósito y sin demasiada distancia de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores.

Luego, al punto que el Padre visitador se fue para Oposura y Cumpas, el Padre José de Aguilar y yo - con el gobernador y alcalde de Cucurpe y con otros cinco o seis pajes o criados del Padre y con dos guías de este pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores - habíendonos informado de las rancherías de los alrededores, nos pusimos a caballo. Y caminando hacia el Noroeste como siete u ocho leguas en un muy lindo y grande valle, hallamos una ranchería llamada Caborica, que por orden que teníamos del Padre visitador de que el siguiente pueblo de esta misión se llamase San Ignacio, la llamamos y hasta hoy se llama San Ignacio de Caborica. Sus naturales nos recibieron con mucha alegría y contento y - siendo así que solo dos o tres horas antes que llegáramos a su ranchería, habíamos enviado a avisar de nuestra venida - nos recibieron con una muy linda cruz puesta en el medio de su ranchería con un lindo arco <137> ornado, como tambíen la cruz estaba ornada de muy lindas rosas y flores, y nos desocuparon la mejor casa de la ranchería, que era de barro y terrado, para nuestra habitacíon. Tambíen su gobernador que estaba tierra adentro ya le habían ido a avisar y vino a media noche, en medio del común consuelo de todos. Hubo una india que estuvo llorando muy mucho y con mucho desconsuelo; le pregunté por medio del interprete de la causa de su triste llanto, y respondío estaba tan sumamente triste y desconsolada porque los Padres no habían venido a esta ranchería tres o cuatro meses antes; que en este tiempo se le habían muerto dos hermanas sin bautismo y sin el remedio de su eterna salvacíon. Todos dijeron que estaban muy deseosos de recibir el santo bautismo.En esta ranchería o pueblo de San Ignacio, hay un lindo río, más grande que el de Cucurpe y Sonora, con mucho pescado, con muchas y muy lindas tierras de riego, con muy grandes, muy vistosos y frescos álamos; sale este río de los Hímeres, y del Noreste corre al Sureste hacia el brazo de mar de la California, que está a la distancia de 40 o 50 leguas.

El día siguiente 15 de marzo, dijimos misa en San Ignacio y como nuestros mozos nos dijeron que para volver a nuestro primer pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, había tambíen otro camino aún más llano y más ameno, aunque algo más largo que el por donde habíamos venido, determinamos ir por él, y a las cuatro o 5 leguas de amenísimo camino, hallamos la ranchería de los Hímeres; y su topil el principal, nos recibío con grandísimo contento con una cruz puesta; y por estos caminos a veces desde lejos nos daban voces, diciendo <138> con grande alegría: íPare, ni mama!, que quiere decir íOh Padre, mi querido Padre! Aquí le pusimos San José que es hoy el pueblo de San José de los Hímeres, el tercero de esta nueva misíon.

Habiendo echado la siesta en San José, pasamos como cuatro leguas más adelante a hacer noche en otra ranchería que le pusimos Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. Los naturales con su gobernador nos recibieron con mucho cariño y agasajo y dijeron que tambíen querían ser cristianos. Pusimos una linda Santa Cruz.

Y el día siguiente, 16 de marzo domingo de pasíon, como a las 5 leguas de buen camino, llegamos de vuelta a nuestro nuevo pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores donde tanto me insistieron pidiéndome el santo bautismo que, sin aguardar ya la venida del gobernador, les bauticé solemnemente diez párvulos. Y pasamos a Cucurpe para traer algunas cosas necesarias para seguir construyendo más esta nueva conversión etc.

Eusebio Francisco Kino
January 26, 1688 and February 25, 1688
"Breve Relación de la primera entrada a la gentilidad de los indios pima"
In "Kino de la semilla al arbol: primer año de Sonora”
Intrduction by Gabriel Gómez Padilla 2008 

Kino Writes About Reason for Conversions and
Preferential Option for the Poor 
"Kino's Biography of Father Saeta" 1696
Eusebio Francisco Kino

 |212| "The same spiritual motives and divine ends that God had in creating the universe and man, who was made in His image and likeness, God also had in coming down from heav­en to become man. He lived among us, He suffered and died for love of us. Thus we were to come to know, love and serve and enjoy Him for all eternity. And these same motives of God can and should be held by the missionary Father who enters into a new mission. He must want to achieve the eternal salvation of souls that have been lost. No motive on earth can excel these motives. They endow a new mission with such value and excellence that no other human |213| works offer or equal their advantages. New missions are great­er than the conquest of huge cities, citadels, or whole king­doms. They count more than distributing great haciendas and wealth among the poor; more than the founding of church­es, convents, and hospitals; more than mastering languages or curing the sick; more than working miracles or reviving the dead.

If anyone thinks that the distinguished chairs of famous universities or the celebrated pulpits of cathedrals amount, or even could amount, to more than these missionary works, let him attend to what Father Master Francisco de Florencia wrote in his printed Life of the distinguished apostolic mission­ary, Father Jerónimo de Figueroa.[1] That learned scholar of our holy Company, who himself was so well known as a preacher, and who had written outstanding books, showed how tenderly and affectionately he loved the work of new conver­sions. He told of Father Figueroa who went to Mexico City at the request of his superiors to take the chair of the arts. But on his arrival he proposed various reasons to his superiors for working in the missions - in imitation of Father Velasco, the evangelic missionary to Sinaloa who had done the same thing years before. [2] He proposed for the consideration of his superiors the grave harm that would result to the heavenly doctrine which the Son of God taught and which His apostles and disciples repeated if they ceased to teach or to repeat it to the needy Tepehuanes while they occupied their time, in­stead, in the worldly maxims of pagan philosophy. For him it would be a genuine mortification to leave the book of the Gospel for the works of Aristotle, or the preaching of Christ for the predicables of Porphyry.[3] He would not leave the ex­planation of the catechism with its solid and eternal truths for the categories of vain and futile sophistries. He asked them to consider before the eyes of God if it would be good to employ him in teaching subjects in the classrooms which many others in the Province could do as well. They should recall that he had learned Indian dialects which no one else had been able to learn as quickly and that he was able to uti­lize them in catechizing the heathen and in instructing the Christians. Would it not be for the spiritual ruin of count­less souls if he were occupied in doing what many others could do while there was no substitute for himself? After all he had |215| come from the missions not to abandon them, but to represent their need and his holy desires to return to them. But naturally he would be quick to do what obedience determined before God. Thus far the venerable Father Pedro Velasco.

If Christ, our Savior, would come down again, a second time, to this world and live among us, He would do what He did the first time. With particular care, He would employ himself in opening new missions among destitute and lost souls "so that he might save what was lost"(Luke 19:10). And when he would return to heaven, the very special command which he would leave behind would be: "Go into the whole universe and preach the Gospel to every creature"(Mark 16:15). Convert the whole world by means of new reductions for only in this way can there be one flock and one shepherd: "That there may be one shepherd and one flock"(John 10:6).

The missionary who deals with poor, uneducated, and timid savages does not lose the value accruing to a profound ministry. For God himself has assured us "That he who does something for the least of mine, does it for me"(Matt. 25:40). Whatever we do for his little ones, we do to God Himself; thus we serve and please God through his poor. As the Psalmist says "The poor and needy will praise your name"(Psalm 73:21). And according to Saint Augustine "The illiterate will rise up and seize the kingdom of heaven."[4] "His preaching will be to the simple"is what Scripture says. "If anyone is ignorant, let him come to me, and to those wanting in judgment I (Wisdom) say: Come! eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed for you"(Proverbs 9:45)! Thus speaks heavenly and eternal Wisdom, confirming the divine oracles that say that the grandeurs, the glories, the crowns and the kingdom of heaven have been especially prepared for the poor, the destitute, the abandoned, the insignificant, and those little esteemed in this life.

But the greatness of new missions will shine not only in the eternity of heaven, but also in the most desolate and remote regions of the world. It will live on in the splendid construction of temples, churches, buildings and houses. It will reflect in the solemnities of the saints, in gay fiestas, and in the treats of religious banquets; it will be heard in music and the choirs of singers. It will be seen in the bountiful, |217| spiritual and temporal wealth of opulent missions which, with reason, will be a source of pride. But it will be the target of gossip if in the abundance of the old and rich missions there is no holy, charitable assistance for the newer and needy missions.

Finally, let the blessed crown of a prolonged bloodless martyrdom be the distinguishing motive and special goal of these new missions wherever a sudden and bloody martyrdom like that of Father Francisco Javier Saeta is wanting. It was the pious letter of Father Provincial Diego de Almonacir which brought us such happy news of this glorious and more protracted martyrdom. And as this little work concerning the innocent and glorious death of Father Francisco Javier Saeta was begun with that letter, so I would close with that same letter. It should be noted at the same time that the devotees of Saint Francis Xavier ascribe to him the crown of a prolonged martyrdom in his apostolic ventures. Thus he added to his other two crowns — the golden one of a doctor and the lilies of virginity — a third crown of the roses of martyrdom. And the Sorrowful Mother, the special patron of the missions of this extensive Pimeria and of its first mission rectorate, entitled Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, can now take on the surname of Mary the Most Holy Queen of Martyrs, although no blood has been shed: "What was named before in the womb will be conceived"(Luke 2:21). That name was given even before these missions were founded.

This happy and bloodless martyrdom, although more protracted, consists for us missionaries in the continual risk of our lives, in the wearisome toil of service, in the instruction of countless peoples and in conforming ourselves to the massive undertakings of an apostolic life.

May this glorious and blessed crown be our most happy goal here in these sweet lands and in our heavenly country. May we be happily accompanied by the many, many souls who have come to the true knowledge, love, and worship of his Divine Majesty. May we worship and praise Him for the whole of eternity - for as long as God will be God. Amen. All to the greater honor and glory of God and the Mother of God and for the cult of the entire heavenly court and for the eternal salvation of all souls."

" Kino's Biography of Javier Francisco Saeta"
Book 8 Chapter 6
"Motives And Sublime Goals To Make New Evangelical Conquests
Among These New Conversions And Missions"  1696

Click to download
Saeta Biography Book 8 Chapter 6 document (text)

English Translation from
"Kino Biography's of Father Saeta, S.J" 1971
by Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J. 1696
Original Spanish text editied by Dr. Ernest J. Burrus, S.J. with introduction and notes
Epilogue by Charles W. Polzer, S.J

Notes

[1] Father Jeronimo de Figueroa: born in Toluca, Mexico; entered the Society in 1606 when he was 15 years of age. After the completion of his studies, he went to the missions. In 1638 he was in residence at Durango. Prior to 1653; when he was teaching among the Tarahumares, he was the rector and visitor of all the northern missions. The catalog of 1691 notes that he had been on the mission frontier for forty years; he died in Mexico City on March 21, 1683. See ABZ 2:466, n. 43; ABZ 3:471. See also SOMMERVOGEL, Bibliotheque, III, Col. 797: Vida admirable y dichosa del religioso P. Geronimo de Figueroa, professo de la Compania de Jesus, en la Provincia de Nueva Espaha, missionero quarenta anos entre los Indios Tarahumares y Tepehuanes de la Sierra Madre, y despues rector del colegio Maximo y preposito de la casa profesa de Mexico (Mexico, 1689).
[2]  Father Pedro Velasco: a native of Mexico City; born in 1581; entered the Society on March 6, 1597. He went to the missions of Sinaloa about 1605. He made his solemn profession on April 3, 1614. He was rector of the colleges of Valladolid (Morelia) and Tepotzotlan and Provincial (1646- 1649). He died on August 26, 1649. ABZ 3:179-80.
[3]  In logic each of the classes (genus, species, difference, individual and proper), to which everything that can be said about a subject can be reduced. See Kino’s Historical Memoir, 1:101 where Bolton apparently does not understand “predicables,” which is translated as “ teachings.”
[4]  St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 8, Chapter 8.

Kino Writes To Protect The O'odham People
"Kino's Biography of Father Saeta" 1696
Eusebio Francisco Kino

There has been a great variety of opinions spoken, written and reported about the circumstances and causes of these eight deaths.

These variations are founded either on the diversity of the individual events and motives, or from not having heard the facts or from living far away from the happenings. This was the situation of the informers who were, perhaps, badly informed — as when they reported that all the Pimeria (which has over ten thousand souls) was rising in rebellion and apostacy; [1] actually only seven or eight rancherías or locales were the delinquents and evildoers. The rebellion hardly involved more than two or three hundred malefactors and accomplices. If, at the start, there would not have been such mistaken and disgraceful leadership, many or all of the evils, which later befell San Ignacio and San José de Imuris, would have been avoided.

I will recount here the circumstances and causes which, before God and my conscience, I have witnessed at close range. Using these clear and very particular sources of facts, I desire in Our Lord to propose necessary and useful remedies for the future in matters which are so much for the service of the two Majesties and for the common good of so many souls. [2] I am convinced that, if evils are never manifest, they |81| remain unknown; if they are unknown, they are irremediable; if they are irremediable, we are left always with the same burdens, misfortunes, set-backs, and miseries. We lose time and, perhaps, the glory of eternity. Such matters elicit very serious concern.

  1.  Many would say that the circumstances and causes of these deaths have been simply the barbarity, ungratefulness, cruelty, and hate of the Faith by the natives. As this is an evil which is usually found in all new and barbarous nations, this cause would apply to the glory of the holy martyrdom of our venerable Father Francisco Javier Saeta.

  2.  The second circumstance or cause was that, days and months before these eight deaths occurred during Holy Week, there had been many various disorders, severities, and cruel and rigorous punishments in San Pedro del Tubutama; the Captain, Governor and the natives had given notice of these things.

  3.  The third, and most special, cause was the hotheaded temperament and the cruelty of a servant of the parish of San Pedro del Tubutama. This servant, named Antonio, was an alien from the Opata tribe; [3] he was very harsh and had dealt maliciously with the Pimas, often beating them severely. In particular, he left the foreman of the farm badly injured and half-dead on the day that eight killings were initiated, as will be related in the next chapter.

  4.  The fourth circumstance or cause that has contributed to these deaths, riots and outbreaks has been the constant opposition to the Pimas which in turn has been founded on sinister suspicions and false testimony as well as on rash judgments because of which many unjust killings have been perpetrated in various parts of the Pimeria.

The Pimas have been viciously and unjustly blamed for the thefts of the livestock and the plunder of the frontiers. Such was the widespread opinion particularly until last June when General Juan Fernández de la Fuente and General Domingo Terán discovered the booty among the Jocomes and Janos; it is evident that the treatment of the natives in the Pimeria has been very unjust — leading as it has to mistreatment, torture and murder. [4]

"Kino's Biography of Javier Francisco Saeta"
Book 3 Chapter 1
"The Circumstances And Causes Of The Death Of Venerable Father Francisco Javier Saeta And What Motivated The Deaths Of The Seven Other Christians, Servants Of The Fathers, The Pillage And Burning Of Their Houses And Even Of The Holy Images" 1696

To download, click
Book 3 Chapter 1 - Kino document (text)

English Translation from
"Kino Biography's of Father Saeta, S.J" 1971
by Eusebio Francisco Kino, S.J. 1696
Original Spanish text editied by Dr. Ernest J. Burrus, S.J. with introduction and notes
Epilogue by Charles W. Polzer, S.J.

Footnotes
[1]  See Informe del P. Kino, 1703: “This extensive Pimería numbers more than 17,000 souls.” ABZ 4:487; see also Bolton, "Rim," p. 248: “The Pimería Alta in Kino’s day had a population of perhaps 30,000.”
[2] The two Majesties to whom Father Kino refers are the Divine Majesty and the Spanish Imperial Majesty.
[3] The Opata Indians who inhabited the central part of the Sonora River Valley were won over early to Christianity. This tribe became wholly accul turated to Spanish life and are today unknown as a distinct Indian group. See Edward Spicer, "Cycles of Conquest," pp. 91-104.
[4]  For further information on General Juan Fernandez de la Fuente see Bolton, "Rim," p. 636; "Kino’s Historical Memoir," 2:307; "Historical Documents," 2:487. For information on General Domingo Teran de los Rios, see Bolton  "Rim," p. 643; "Kino’s Historical Memoir," 2:327.

Velarde Writes to Protect The O'odham People
Kino's Succesor at Misison Dolores Reports
"Relación of Pimería Alta, 1716"
Luis Velarde

There has been those who were moved falsely to suspect and even to declare that the Pimas were the real Apaches, who caused the harm that has occurred in the Province of Sonora. [74] This is believed so widely.

The truth of the matter is, in my opinion, that the devil sowed to impede in this manner the propagation of our Holy Faith, molesting the Indians as had been done in other parts by those who should promote the Faith, but who take advantage of the general feeling in order to gain parts of this Pimeria to advance their own interests, or because they missed the convenience of having servants free of cost, or to say better, slaves at a very low price--slaves whom the soldiers took in any manner possible in the entradas which they made on the pretext of looking for the enemies of the province, a practice which the padres always opposed. Since the soldiers entered this Pimeria, they have attempted to discredit the poor Indians with similar impostures; and in fact, at the request of the padres the alcalde [mayor] ordered restored to their nation eight Indians whom the soldiers had imprisoned. I affirm that if in the Pimeria there had been discovered rich mines, the Pimas [would have been] apportioned out to work [in them] with all the extortions that the rest of the Indians [have known] on the ranches and haciendas of the Spanish, as well as those of the "mulatos" and "coyotes" (for even these servile people wish to have servants in this land), [in the belief that the Indians] would be good, and would be friends of the Spanish and enemies of the Apaches. So much can blindness and passion originate from avarice, pride and personal interest.

Deadened already, but not altogether quieted, are these falsehoods; for there are still hundreds left in some of the few settlements, who would prefer to have the Pimas for enemies. Although without reason, and against all justice by their own good procedure of being satisfied, the captain of the presidio and the justice of the province did not fail to make his opposition to the advancement of Christianity, which others make public, although they should not, due to their profession, with the pretext of good zeal.

 Luis Velarde, S.J.
"Relación of Pimería Alta, 1716"

[74] Editor's Footnote
This complaint was frequent from Kino.

Top Jesuit Orders Kino Return To Missions
Letter from Jesuit Father General in Rome 1696
Tirso Gonzalez

Top Jesuit Authorizes Kino Return To California
Letter from Jesuit Father General in Rome 1698
Tirso Gonzalez

Your Reverence’s letter of June 3, 1697, brought me the extraordinary consolation with which I always read your messages, so replete with encouraging news. The Lord seconds your efforts in behalf of disseminating the holy faith among the Pimas. Evidence of this is seen in the seven churches rebuilt among the missions and the town established anew. God be praised for thus blessing your work!Although at the time of writing you were on the point of crossing over to the Californias with Father Juan María de Salvatierra, subsequent letters from Mexico City have informed me that you have not yet been able to go there because your presence was considered necessary to pacify the neighboring rebellious tribes and to hold in check the recently converted Pimas who might follow the bad example of the others. I hope that all is now peaceful and that you will soon have the opportunity of following in the footsteps of Father Salvatierra.

 I authorize you in the years to come to spend six months in the Californias and the other six among the Pimas, inasmuch as such an arrangement seems to me appropriate for the promotion of both groups of missions. I am also writing to Father Visitor Juan María de Salvatierra that, in general, whatever the two of you decide as best for the secure conservation of the California enterprise, this the two of you may do, inasmuch as I am certain that, in the light of your prudence and experience, both will undoubtedly determine what is best.Accompanying your letter was the map which shows the Pima region where the servant of God, Father Francisco Javier de Saeta, was put to death by the unconverted natives. I have not yet received the biography written by Your Reverence, nor the arrows and other objects. I have learned why they failed to reach me: inasmuch as Brother Simon de Castro’s trip to Spain was cancelled, the small box [containing these things] had to be returned from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. I hope that all will be sent to me at the very first opportunity. The map has been put aside, so that, if the biography is published, it can be included.Your Reverence said that three of the Pima chiefs or captains wanted to contribute towards the sepulcher of our Father Saint Ignatius. I am at a loss to know what to say except that Father Kino always thinks of doing good and that he has the honor of his Saint very much at heart. You will be happy to learn that the altar and tomb of our holy Father are now far along; they will be among the grandest of their kind in Rome. The expenses have been very considerable: thus far, more than a hundred thousand scudi. I am enclosing for you a sketch and a description of this work of art.

Rome, December 27, 1698,
Tirso Gonzalez

Kino Looks Back on His Work in the Pimería Alta
"Favores Celestiales" 1708
Eusebio Francisco Kino

"In general, in these twenty-one years, up to the present time, I have made from the first pueblo of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores  more than forty expeditions to the north, west, northwest, and southwest, of fifty, eighty, one hundred, two hundred, and more leagues, sometimes accompanied by other Fathers, but most of the time with only my servants and with the Governors, Captains, and Caciques of different rancherias or incipient pueblos from here and from the interior ....

With all these expeditions or missions which have been made to a distance of two hundred leagues in these new heathendoms in these twenty-one years, there have been brought to our friendship and to the desire of receiving our Holy Catholic faith, between Pimas, Cocomaricopas, Yumas, Quiquimas, etc., more than thirty thousand souls, there being sixteen thousand Pimas alone. I have solemnized more than four thousand baptisms, and I could have baptized ten or twelve thousand Indians more if the lack of Father Laborers had not rendered it impossible for us to catechise them and instruct them in advance. But if Our Lord sends, by means of his Royal Majesty and of the Superiors, the necessary Fathers for so great and so ripe a harvest of souls, it will not be difficult, God willing, to achieve the Holy Baptism of all these souls and of very many others, on the very populous Colorado River, as well as in California Alta, and at thirty-two degrees latitude and thereabouts, for this very great Colorado River has its origin at fifty-two degrees latitude."

Eusebio Fransico Kino, S. J.
Favores Celestiales
Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimeria Alta, II, pp. 243, 252
Written in 1708 - 3 years before his death in March 1711
Mission de Nuestra Senora del Dolores 

Kino Writes About The Opposition To The Missions, 1710

At the end and conclusion of the preceding Chapter Four of this Book One, of this Fourth Part of these Celestial Favors, [General Juan Retana] says very Christianlike in his most prudent letter, that it is very important to obviate chimeras which perturb the children, for, as his Grace in very Catholic fashion says, they are a detriment to their souls, and impede the coming of the ministers of the gospel. And it is the naked truth that in the midst of a thousand celestial favors which in other ways in these new conquests and new conversions our Lord has continually vouchsafed us, we have experienced this grievous hindrance that, because of these incorrect reports and because of their perfidious contradictions and very unjust opposition, there have not come to us now during these twenty-three years the missionary fathers who are so much needed, and whom so many times and so repeatedly the higher authorities have promised and even sent us, as I shall state:

I. First, by these chimeras, contradictions, and calumnious reports of feigned revolts which I have just related, and which the letters which I cite in these preceding chapters mention, they have grievously hindered the coming of the two fathers who were sent to us, and who, as the letter of the father visitor, Antonio Leal, mentions in Chapter III of this Book First, were on the way and were already in Juliacan [102] but none of whom arrived in the new conversions. |131|

II. It has been said, and it is true, that it is because of like contradictions and false reports and law-suits which the disaffected have brought against us, that all this extensive Pimeria, etc., is not already well settled with missionary fathers.

III. Very many fathers have been sent to us in the times of all the father provincials who have held office in these twenty-three years, but always the above-mentioned contradictions and the opposition, through the false reports of the disaffected, have hindered them. Thus the Father Provincial Diego de Almonazir sent us seven missionary fathers [103] for these new conversions, as his Reverence wrote to our Father General Thirso Gonzales of Rome, and his Reverence wrote me from Rome to these new conversions, but the fathers did not arrive here.

IV. When, thirteen years ago, [104] I went to Mexico to secure fathers for this Pimería, the father provincial, Juan de Palazios, assigned and gave me five fathers, and very good hopes that afterward he would send me others besides, as soon as they should finish taking orders and complete the third year of probation, etc. But we have remained without them and lack them to this day.

All the other father provincials have sent us missionary fathers and have named them for me in their holy letters, but they have not arrived here. A few years ago a father provincial sent me four new fathers at one time for these new conversions, [105] who came with good fortune as far as Sinaloa and Conicari. The accustomed opposition sent the false reports that Pimeria had revolted, as I was informed from Conicari. |132|

With regret for so great a misfortune at the time of the coming of four missionary fathers, I despatched to Conicari a messenger, an eye-witness, who had just made with me a journey of a hundred and seventy leagues, [106] to report that there had not been the least trace of the slightest revolt. But meanwhile the four fathers had already been assigned to other places there, and a report of it had been given to the father provincial; and, because of the accustomed false reports of the continual opposition, none of the four fathers whom the father provincial had sent us arrived at these new conversions, which need them so much.

Our Father General Miguel Anjel Tamvurini, in a very fine and most courteous letter, which I received within the last few months, tells me that for two years he has had fathers ready to send to these new conversions, but they are detained by the wars and dangers of the seas, etc. Notwithstanding, they tell me that some have now arrived in Mexico, where already there are persons to send, but that the outfit for them for the journey was lacking; and we are now arranging here to send some mules and some silver to help pay these expenses, for here we have missions begun, provided with houses, with wheat and maize, cattle, sheep, and goats, etc., and lands suitable for breadstuffs, and most fertile, etc.
And we hope in the very loving and great providence of our Lord that in view of the missionary fathers who have failed to come hitherto, and since our Lord is pleased lavishly to give us harvests so full, so copious, and so seasoned, and so ripe, of new nations so extensive, which spread over two hundred and more leagues of this North America, the greatest and most complete number will come in His own time. |133|

We were not far wrong, Father Visitor Manuel Gonzales and I, when, twenty-two years ago, we said that we were going to need fifty missionary father laborers for these very extensive fields of this North America, which we had then seen here; and now, thanks be to the lord, we have it very well subdued under our hands. ... |134|

Eusebio Kino
Favores Celestiales
Written in 1710 - one year before his death

"Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimería Alta; A contemporary Account of the
Beginnings of California, Sonora, and Arizona" [Vol. 2] 1919
Dr. Herbert E. Bolton, Translator and Editor

Part IV Book I Chapter VI.
Of The Very Great And Serious Hindrance To The Welfare Of Souls Which The Calumnious, Sinister Reports And False Testimony Have Caused In The New Conversion 

Footnotes
[102] Culicán
[103] See volume i, xx6.
[104] In 1695. See volume i, 158-160.
[105] See volume i, 30a.
[106] This was the journey made in September and October, 1700.

Planned Suppression of Kino and Other Jesuit Missionaries 1710
Herbert E. Bolton

To Kino's letter of September 16, 1709, the procurator replied with shocking news. Father Eusebio might not need the requested missionaries or the new bells! The bishop of Durango was demanding that all the missions of the Society in New Spain be suppressed. [1] What was worse, it was reported that the king had yielded to the demand. |583|

Moreover, the Father General had obediently ordered the Provincial, "that as soon as . . . he is informed of the suppression or that the king desires the alms, . . . at once all the missionary fathers of the Province shall retire and be placed in the colleges." How then, "can your Reverence expect to obtain what you request?" Indeed, how could he?  

This ominous letter was written in Mexico on February 1, 1710. [2] Kino died at Magdalena thirteen months later. It is perhaps too much to hope that the mails were so slow that he did not receive it, and therefore never learned the distressing news.  ... |584|

Herbert E. Bolton 
"Still in the Saddle" 
Excerpt from Chapter 150
"Rim of Christendom:
A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino: Pacific Coast Pioneer"

Footnotes

[1] Kino to Juan de Yturberoaga, Dolores, December 7, 1709. Original Spanish manuscript in the Stevens Collection.
[2] Yturberoaga to Kino, Mexico, Feb. 1, 1710. Draft of reply to Kino's letter of Sept. 16, 1709, written on the back. Original Spanish manuscript in the Steven Collection. The threatened suppression did not take place at this time.
Editor Note: Father Juan de Yturberoaga was the procurador of the Jesuit province of New Spain and from his Mexico City office was in charge of the centralized purchase and distribution of supplies to the missions throughout the province. The planned suppression of Kino and other Jesuit missionaries did not take place at this time. In 1767, all Jesuits were arrested and most were expelled from Spain and its colonies.

For more about the Jesuit Expulsion of 1767, click
Jesuit Father page
 

Related Web Page Topics

For information on the Tubutama uprsing and Kino's advocacy in defense of the O'odham in Mexico City in 1696.
click Kino Ride of Justice and Peace History page

For information about about Spanish attempts to provoke war between the Spanish and O'odham and its prevention by action of the Kino and the O'odham based on their mutual friendship and trust
click Kino Defender and Friend page

"The Devil in the Desert”
Paul Horgan
A Missionary's Last Ride

One summer morning almost a hundred years ago in the town of Brownsville, near the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Gulf of Mexico, Father Pierre awoke before dawn ....

Father Pierre knew there was grim joy in the world that morning for his friend and colleague, Father Louis Belefontaine. ...

He [Father Louis] knew that in is own work he was a great master - a master of the distance, the heat, the fatigue; the menace of the brush desert and the murderous Indian, who soul was within him, but not yet formed; the fears, hopes, and needs of the Christian families who lived so widely separated along the inland course of the Rio Grande. For thirty years Father Louis had ridden, mostly alone, and twice a year, on his journeys up the river.

He always undertook them with a sense not only of duty but of escape. Nowhere else did he feel so close to God as alone in the hard brush country riding to bring comfort, news, and the Sacraments to some family in a jacal hidden by solitude and open to the hot sky. The older he grew, the more Father Louis longed for his escapes from town and parish. The more infirm he became with the years, the stronger was his sense of mission. Father Pierre would see a glow of youth come back over that sunstung, seamed old face as time drew near for Father Louis to make his plans to go on his ride into the upriver country, which would, take him from two to three months. If his eyes were dim with age, not so the vision in his mind, which showed him so much of what people wanted of him, and of what he could bring to them. ...

And yet as he went downstairs and out to the courtyard, where a rosy day light seemed to emerge from the ocher limestone of the church wall and glow in the very air, Father Pierre was as never before conscious of the difference in years between him and the old man who was at this moment hauling at straps and buckles, with one knee raised against Pancho's belly to brace himself.

It was a picture, as Father Pierre could not help pausing to notice. The horse was laden, ready and patient. His summer coat was nicely brushed. His bridle was of woven horsehair. His saddle was bulky and tall, with some of the leather worn away so that the wooden forms of horn and cantle showed through. That saddle was chair and pillow, living room and cradle and crutch to Father Louis. To it he had attached many ingenious and cranky accessories, among which there was nowhere any provision for carrying a weapon. Father Louis was unarmed.

The old priest was dressed in a long homespun coat and heavy trousers. On his head was a woven-cane hat with a wide brim, under which his face peered around at Father Pierre like a crab apple underneath a shelf. His boots were high, the color of dried clay. Now, in the presence of the younger man, he redoubled his efforts at finishing his preparations. He made extra movements, to show how difficult the job was, and he completed them with a little flourish, to show how easily he overcame all. His breath went fast, making his voice dry and thin when he spoke. ...

After all these years he had a map in his head. The river came on a long diagonal, so. An old Indian trail went off northwestward at another angle, so. The farther inland, the farther apart they were from each other. There was one kind of country here by the seacoast. Presently it changed to something else. Finally, in the distance of weeks, where the map would have only faltering scratches of the pen, based on rumor and legend, lay the farthest wilderness of Father Louis' journeys. The natural limits of his endurance were determined by water. His private map had an X for the end of each stage of travel - a settlement, a farm, a creek, a spring, a water hole - and pray it was not dry.

For the first several days, on these journeys, he hardly seemed to have left home. The earth was still low and sandy, and he could read in it how epochs ago the sea itself was here, hauling and grinding the stuff of ocean bottoms where now he rode. The air was moist, and little clouds came to be and to vanish almost before his gaze. He could not closely follow the river, for it wandered and turned, in places doubling back upon itself. And so he followed the Indian trail, leaving it only to go to the isolated river farms in turn.

At such a one he might spend the night, or longer, depending upon what he found. Sometimes death approached in the family, and he gave the last Sacraments. Sometimes there were infants to baptize. In the morning, under a tree on rough-hewn planks set across a pair of hogsheads, he would say Mass and give Communion. ...

Days later, though the sky did not cool during the daytimes, the quality of the heat changed, and was dry, as the old seacoast plain gave way to a wilderness of rolling country thickly covered with thorny brush. When he encountered it as it wandered, the river bed was rocky, and rock showed through the hard prickly ground. Everywhere he looked he saw only that endless roll of empty land. Here, near to him, it was speckled with the colors of the olive, both green and ripe, but not with any of the. grace he remembered from long ago in Southern France, where the olive trees gave a silver sweetness to the landscape. Farther away in the distance, the land rolls swam in glassy heat. Way off at the horizon there was a stripe of hazy blue where the hot white sky met the earth. Nowhere could he see a mountain. either in Mexico or in Texas.

As he rode, the country tried to hold him back. The thorns of the mesquite dragged at his boots and tore his clothes. Pancho was clever at avoiding most of the hazards, but in places they were so thick that all they could do, man and horse, was go slowly and stoutly through them. But this was nothing new. Father Louis had persisted before against the thorns and had prevailed.

As for water, there was always too much or too little. Too little when, after years of drought, certain springs he looked forward to would, as he came upon them, reveal only dried white stones. Too much when, in hot spells so violent that they could be ended only with violence, there would be a cloudburst and the heavens would fall almost solid and bring the first water, which, as it struck the baked earth, actually hissed and made cracking sounds until the desert was slaked enough to receive the water in its fissures and let it run.

When it ran in such quantity, every fingerlike draw became a torrent in which a man and a horse could easily be drowned. If he crossed one in safely, another was waiting to engulf him beyond the next roll. There was no place for shelter. When the rain stopped, the sun came back and dried everything the same day except the running arroyos, which went dry the next day. All too soon there was bitter dust that sparkled in the light and rose with the hot wind. Against it Father Louis tied across his face his great bandanna, which came from New Orleans.

And they went on, making a small shadow of horse and man moving slowly yet certainly across that huge empty map where days apart, each from the other, little clusters of human life and need clung to being and shone in Father Louis' mind and purpose like lanterns in the darkness - which usually was the first image he saw of his destination, when, by his reckoning, he knew it was time to reach another of his families.

Was this a hard journey? Very well, then, it was a hard journey. But so was the life hard which he found at the end of each stage of his travels. He had seen men grow old and die in his visits here, and their sons with their wives bring new souls to this wilderness in turn. They learned severe lessons in isolation, heat, and the hostility of the animal and vegetable world. Everyone - the child, grandfather, the husband, the wife, the youth, the horse, the maiden - worked unceasingly against dust, thorn, ignorance, and scarcity from dawn to dark. The great world was but a rumor here, and, by the time it came to brush deserts, mostly wrong. But a world without limits of dimension dwelt behind the eyes of all those parched brown people obedient to the natural terms of their lives. It was the world of the human soul, in which could live promises so beautiful and satisfactions so full of ease that the hardships and the betrayals of impersonal Nature could be survived, if only someone came from time to time with the greatest news in all life.

For Father Louis knew in a simple flatness of fact - fact as hard as a rock, as mysterious as water, as dazzling as light - that without God the richest life in the world was more arid than the desert; and with Him the poorest life was, after all, complete in a harmony which composed all things. To be the agent of such a composition put upon him a duty in the light of which all peril on his journeys became at worst mere inconvenience. Everyone he toiled overland to see needed and deserved that which he, at the moment, under existing circumstances, alone could bring.

In a very practical way he was still awed by the mystery of his office. And as a human being he could never deny himself the joy it gave him to see in their faces what his coming meant to his people in the harsh wilderness. They knew what he had come through. They were proud to be thought worth such labor and danger. They loved him.

His mind was active in the solitude through which he crawled day after day, mounted on Pancho. One of his favorite fancies was this: that a great triangle existed between God in heaven, and any little ranch toward which he rode through the days, and himself. It was an always-changing triangle, for one of its points was not fixed: his own. As he came nearer and nearer to his goal of the moment, the great hypotenuse between himself and God grew shorter and shorter, until at the last, when he arrived, there was a straight line with all in achieved communion. He smiled over this idea, but he respected it, too; and sometimes he would take a piece of charcoal from a fire and draw a series of pictures of what he meant, explaining it to the people he was visiting, and they would murmur and nod, and consult one another, and enjoy the notion with him, marveling. ....

When he rode up in the arching twilight to the dwelling of the Guerras, almost the first thing they told him after their excited greeting was that Dona Luz had died early in the summer while sitting in the shade on her bench, holding her stick of ocotillo cactus which her hands had shined so smooth.

In the light of the candle lantern, the family looked at him and then at one another. They were shocked by how he had changed since last year. He was stooped, and he slowly trembled all the time. He had to peer at them to see them, even though he preserved a smile to make nothing of this. Burned by the wind and the sun, his face looked smaller. He breathed shallowly, with his mouth a little open. He seemed to them a very old man, all of a sudden. It was like a secret they must keep from him.

After their first start, they got busy to make his supper. The younger children lost their shyness and came from behind chairs and the edges of tables to see him, and at last climb upon him. He smelled dry and dusty to them, like the earth.

After supper he held lessons in catechism for the younger children, who tomorrow would receive their First Communions. The parents and the two older sons listened also.

After that, there was little time left for gossip. The family's news was all of the seasons. The priest's was boiled down out of letters and newspapers from France. ....

They were honored simply to have him here, and stared before his marvels and held their breath for tomorrow, when he would give them the Sacraments.

In the morning he visited the grave of Doña Luz. Everybody went with him. She was buried a little way off from the adobe house. When he saw how little earth she displaced, he nodded and smiled, as though meeting all over again her modest character which he knew so well. Guerra brought some water in an earthen vessel - not much, but enough. Father Louis took the jug and held it in both hands a moment, and gazed into it. They were all reminded of how precious water was on the earth, how it determined by its presence the very presence of life. Then he blessed it, and they all knew what this meant in terms of their daily struggle. Then, reciting prayers for the dead, he walked around the small mound of the grandmother and sprinkled the holy water up­ on it, and they knew he was keeping once again a promise made between heaven and earth a long time ago.

After that they returned to the house and he took them one by one and heard them confess their sins, of which, as they were contrite, he relieved them. Then, at an altar improvised against the wall where the old woman used to sit for so many hours, he said Mass, wearing his embroidered French silks and using the pewter chalice that came out of his saddlebag.

The family knelt on the ground in a straight line facing the altar. The famous triangle of Father Louis was brought into a straight line also. God and mankind were made one. As he recited the words during the offertory, "O God, who hast established the nature of man in wondrous dignity, and even more wondrously hast renewed it -" Father Louis felt behind him the bodily presences of that isolated family, and an almost bitter sense of the dearness of each of their souls humbled him at his altar. ...

Paul Horgan
"The Devil in the Desert”
The Saturday Evening Post
May 6, 1950
Excerpts from Horgan's novella.

[Kino] had traveled much during this time. But his chief labor had been that of a missionary, occupied in the daily  grind: saying Mass, teaching the Catechism, healing the sick, farming, branding cattle, equipping pack trains for market, building, entertaining Indian delegations from afar, visiting his sub-stations, assisting neighbor missionaries, and preparing the way for new missions farther and farther in the interior.

Herbert E. Bolton
Mother of Missions - Chapter 89
"Rim of Christendom - A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino: Pacific Coast Pioneer"