Our Catholic Heritage in Texas
version and civilization in the new province. It was the comfortable and spacious Monastery of San Antonio, at old Isleta, where Father Salas had so faithfully worked for years, that the new Custodio chose for his headquarters; and it was in its vicinity, at Sandia, that he was to erect a similar church and monastery in the next few years.2 The Woman in Bltte. "On July 22, 1639," says Vetancourt, "there came to the convent of San Antonio at Isleta, where the Custodio was then [residing], about fifty Xumanas [Jumano Indians] to ask for mis- sionaries to instruct them in the law of the Gospel." As stated before, this was not the first time they had solicited religious for their nation, but this was the largest delegation that had ever come for this purpose. Impressed by their strange mission and still stranger request, the new custodio inquired of them what had moved them to this action. "They replied," continues the narrator, "that a woman wearing a habit had ordered them to go [in quest of missionaries]." More astonished than ever, the good Padres showed the Indians a picture of Mother Luisa de Carrion, a saintly sister who lived in Mexico and was famous for her piety and zeal, and asked them if their visitor looked like her. They all agreed that the woman who had come to them wore a similar habit, but that the person who visited the Jumanos was younger and more beautiful. They declared that she taught each one of the nations in its own language, that she commanded them to go in search of missionaries to preach to them and baptize them, and that she urged them not to be indifferent but to carry out her command. 3 More than half a century later, the memory of the saintly visitor lingered sweetly in the mind of the chief of the Tejas Indians, who told Father Massanet how his people, too, had seen the Lady in Blue. "In times past," he declared to Father Massanet, "they had been visited frequently by a very beautiful woman , who used to come down from the hills, dressed in blue garments . .. On my asking if that had been long since, the governor said it had been before his time, but his mother, who was aged, had seen that woman, as had also the other old people."' Who was the Woman in Bltte, who miraculously appeared to the simple children of the great plains and the Tejas to teach them with love a nd kindness to seek the Truth? By a significant coincidence, the Archbishop %Ayer Memorial, 202; Propaganda Fide ilfemorial, MS. 25. 3Vetancourt, Chronica de la Provincia de! Santo Evangelio ( 1697 edition) , 96; Ayer Memorial, 158-169. 4 1\fassanet, Carla. translated by Lilia M. Casis, in Tlte Quarterly, II, 311.
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