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Tlie Beginnings of Missionary Activity, 1670-1676
each one separately, they said unanimously and in agreement that they were heathen; that in their lives they [never] had seen Spaniards; and had lived as heathens without knowledge that there was a God, or who He was, and without knowledge of the true way to salvation, and in the dark regarding it; that they wished to be Christians and be baptized, with their children and wives, and to live as such in a pueblo or pueblos ... and that at once they were rendering and did render obedience to His Majesty the King or Lord Don Carlos II; and that they would be friends of the Spaniards. Thereupon they shouted: 'Viva, viva, viva, the king our lord.' " After having administered the oath of allegiance to them in the name of the king, "their people approached, and both men and women devotedly kissed the sleeves of the habits of the fathers, the commissary, Fray Juan Larios, and Chaplain Fray Dionisio de San Buenaventura; and they asked permission to give them as alms something of what they pos- sessed, as a mark of gratitude to God for having opened to them the way to the truth. And at once they began throwing things upon the ground, some a piece of tallow, others hides or skins of animals, or the kind with which they clothe themselves or cover themselves, and in which they sleep." The first authentic report of the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on Texas soil is found in this diary. Though the expedition · crossed the Rio Grande on the fifth of May, there is no mention of the celebration of Mass until the sixteenth. On this day the party was still at a place which they called San Ysidro and which must have been on one of the branches of the Nueces River, called by the Indians Ona. "I, said Lieutenant Alcalde Jltl ayor, certify that this day there was erected in said post a portable altar, and that it was prepared to say Mass; and at a signal made with a small bell the people came to hear it. It was chanted by the Father Commissary Missionary, Fray Juan de Larios, and was attended by all the people. After it was concluded, they asked the said father to baptize them; and when they were given to understand by him through an interpreter that he could not baptize them until they knew their prayers, to console them he baptized fifty-five infants, the Spaniards acting as their godfathers. They were instructed in the doctrine and counted, and the people of the four chiefs named in the preceding a1'to were found to comprise four hundred and twenty-five warriors and seven hundred and forty-seven women, boys, and girls, of all ages, making in all eleven hundred and seventy-two persons."
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