CHAPTER VII
MARi."- DE AGREDA, THE JuMANO, AND THE TEJAS, 1620-1665
Strange stories of fabulous kingdoms and wealth had lured Ofiate to the country beyond the great plains of Texas only to meet with disappoint- ment. The tireless and zealous missionaries had since that time settled down to the conversion of the pueblo Indians. At old Isleta, near present day Albuquerque, Father Fray Juan de Salas had worked patiently and hopefully since 1622. By 1629 his labors had been crowned by success. In the middle of the large group of Teoas pueblos that extended along the Rio Grande on both banks of the river, he had built a "very costly and beautiful" church and monastery. The Indians, who were hostile and given to witchcraft, had been civilized, and "today," says Fray Alonso de Benavides writing in 1634, "they [the Padres] have domesticated them and baptized them after giving them [instruction] in the doctrina, in self-government, and the arts ... in the schools they founded. Here they learn to read, to write, and to sing through the great industry of the religious . . . These missionaries are great teachers and know the language of that nation." 1 Repeatedly during this time, groups of Jumano Indians had come to invite the good Padre to visit their country and to live among them, but their laudable request had been refused because of the lack of missionaries. In 1628, Father Fray Estevan de Perea, the newly appointed C1utodio of New Mexico, brought thirty missionaries to extend the work of con- 1 Benavldes, Memorial of Fray Alonso . • . 1630, translated by Mrs. Edward E . Ayer and annotated by Hodge and Lummis, 19, 221-222. An unknown l,lemorial writ- ten four years later in 1634, and addressed to His Holiness Urban VIII, was discov- ered by the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Peter Guilday, of the Catholic University of America, in Rome in the Propaganda Fide Arcliive. It is from this document that the quotation is taken. Dr. Guilday, in comparing the Memorial of 1634 with that of 1630, which is addressed to the king and is the one translated by Mrs. Ayer, says: "This is a printed copy very probably abridged or mutilated by the publisher or some one else, of a report presented by Benavides to Philip IV of Spain, on the occasion of his visit there in 1630. It has not the systematic treatment of the later memorial; it omits the names of the missionaries, and contains only incidental references to their work. It is more of a physical geography than a history of New Mexico. It contains considerable information about the natural resources of the land that is not in the later work, but on the whole it is much briefer, less clear, and less valuable for the historian." Due acknowledgment is made to Dr. Guilday for the use of this precious manuscript, a copy of which is in the Catholic Archives of Texas, St. Edward's University. [ 195]
Powered by FlippingBook