Our Cat/1olic Heritage in Texas
Of over six hundred who landed in Florida in 1539, a scant three hundred reached New Spain. They were kindly and hospitably received by the dwellers of Panuco and many courtesies were shown to them by the viceroy himself. The gaunt and lean survivors had traversed thou- sands of miles over regions which no European had trodden before. In their wanderings they had explored a vast area of the present State of Texas from the Sabine to the Trinity and west as far as the headwaters of the Brazos, coming within a hundred miles, more or less, of the farthest point reached by Coronado and his men, who had entered Texas a year before from an opposite direction. Fate of the missionaries. Meager indeed are the details concerning the holy men that accompanied the expedition, to whose unselfish lives and untiring efforts may be attributed the free conversion of over five hundred Indians; men, women, and children, who were left at Aminoya on the Mississippi, when the survivors set sail for New Spain. Two of the clerics, Father Dionisio of Paris and Father Diego de Banuelos of Cordova, as well as Fray Francisco de la Rocha, of the Order of the Holy Trinity died, it seems, before De Soto returned to the Mississippi in the summer of 1542. Garcilaso, our only source, declares the three died natural deaths, having taken ill as the result of their great hardships and privations. 47 When Moscoso traveled west in search of New Spain, five missionaries went with him: Fathers Rodrigo de Gallegos, a native of Seville, and Francisco de] Pozo, a native of Cordova; the two Dominicans, Fray Juan Gallegos, a native of Seville, and Fray Luis de Soto, a native of Villa- nueva de Barcarrota, a relative of De Soto; and Fray Juan de Torres, also of Seville, a Franciscan. One by one they sickened and died in the endless wanderings over the vast wastes of eastern and northern Texas. Just when and where each of them died was not recorded. We know only that when the survivors boarded the seven ships on the Mississippi, there was not a priest or religious among them. Had there been, it is most likely he would have chosen to stay with the five hundred baptized Indians who stood by the banks and wept as they saw the Spaniards, their fellow Christians, leave them to the mercy of the other Indians who hated them as much as they hated the Spaniards for having embraced the new faith and having helped the strangers. In simple words, Garcilaso has paid a reverent tribute to these heroic
47 Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida del Inca, 267.
Powered by FlippingBook