Coronado and La Gran Quivira, 1537-1544
III
they wanted to stay in the land. The good Padre explained that it was his intention to return to Quivira, where he was sure that his efforts would bear copious fruit in the conversion of the natives. Brother Luis de Escalona, an old and saintly man, wished to remain in Cicuye. He declared that with a chisel and an adze he would erect crosses and baptize the children on their deathbeds in order to send them to heaven . The three Franciscans pointed out that they had the consent of their provincial to stay and labor among the natives. 71 There were others who desired to keep the friars company. The faithful Indians of Michoacan, Lucas and Sebastian , the do11ados who had been brought up by Fray Juan de Padilla, also chose to stay, together with two negroes named Sebastian and Melchor Perez, the latter with his wife and children. A young negro slave of Jaramillo named Cristobal, a Tarascan Indian called Andres, a Portuguese soldier named Andres de Campo, a _mestizo, and several Indians from the monastery of Capotlan, (Tzapotlan ?) in New Spain where Father Padilla had been guardian, likewise volunteered to remain in the new land. 72 Fray Juan de Padilla. It is appropriate here that we should give a short sketch of the life of Fray Juan de Padilla, destined to become the first martyr of Texas. He came originally from Andalucia, where it seems he had been a soldier before taking the religious vows and joining the Franciscans. It was as a friar that he came to Mexico. Here, he served as the first guardian of the monastery at Tulancingo and later of Zapotlan in J alisco, laboring constantly among the natives and win- ning their everlasting attachment, as shown by the two donados, Lucas and Sebastian, who followed him to Cibola and chose to stay with him, when the Spaniards prepared to leave New Mexico. He was a man of singular energy and courage, and the habit or robe of the Franciscans · had not quite extinguished in him the fires of his early training, which still showed themselves in an impulsive disposition, not unmixed, perhaps, with some elements of hastiness in judgment. Thus when he went to the Moqui villages with Pedro de Tovar, impatient with the hesitating attitude of the captain, the good friar remarked: "Really, I do not 71Jaramillo, "Relacion," in Docume11tos /11editos, XIV, 3 I 6; Castaneda, "Narra- tive," in Winship, op. cit., 534. 72 Jaramillo, op. cit., XIV, 316; Castaneda, op cit., 457, 461; "Relacion del Suceso" in Col. Doc. Flor., 1 54.
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