Return of Rabago and tlie Founding of Caiion Jlfissions
181
Fray Arricivita has summed up in a fitting manner the spirit that animated the missionaries of El Canon. When after seven years of incredible hardships and superhuman efforts, the devoted friars were forced to abandon the enterprise: "The missionaries left," says Arricivita, "without having to abandon the fruit of their labors. The total result of eight years of work were eighty baptisms in artic11lo mortis and a few children who were freely offered to them during the first years of the two missions. But they departed with flaming candles in their hand, with charity burning in their soul, with piety in their heart, with undaunted zeal in their work. In their face there shone a new hope, iri, their dress, their poverty, in their cruel adversities, their patient suffering. This alone crowned their labors in their long sufferance of the ungrateful, treacherous, ambitious, and selfish barbarians, whom they could find no means of redeeming even to the rank of neophytes."" It was the Apaches them- selves who brought down upon their heads the renewed attacks of their traditional enemies. Hardly had they settled down in the new missions at El Cafi6n, than feeling secure in the secluded canyons of the Frio and the upper Nueces, they began to plan and to carry out successive raids upon the Comanches. After each semiannual expedition, they dispatched the old men and the women back to the missions with the fruits of their hunt, while all the able-bodied men went into the lands of the Comanches to taunt them and take revenge. After a rapid descent upon their enemies, they hurried back to the security of the hilly country beyond the Frio and the upper Nueces. As soon as they reached the Canon de las Lechugas, Frio Canyon, just above present Sabinal, they felt per- fectly safe and foolishly abandoned all caution. For two or three years their very daring surprised the Comanches, who would pursue them to the outskirts of the hilly country and turn back, fearful of ambush in the forbidding territory beyond the Frio. But repetition of the raids eventually forced the Comanches in desperation to follow the Lipans to their headquarters. Comanclie attacks on San Saba, 1764-1767. The Padres had often warned their unruly wards to desist from hostile attacks on the Comanches. In vain they tried to reason with them that their enemies would pursue them to the missions themselves and destroy them. In vain they pleaded with them, pointing out it was un-Christian to taunt the Comanches and take revenge upon them. They threatened their wards with refusal of permission to go on the semiannual buffalo
44 Arrlcivita, Croni&a, 393.
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