The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-12-21
Goodnight, dear heart,
Goodnight, goodnight"
HEROISM OF THE JESUITS.

1
In former letter l copied from LIE Monde, NJ
| Pascal Felicien's explanation of the missionar
success of the Jesuits If, like NJ. Fehcien, the
had no hope of immortality expectation of
judgment to come, of the heroic self-denial o
Salvatiera and the other evangeizers of the "Dig
ger Indians" would be to us sublime examples O.
folly, if not of insanity, developed by religious ia
natlcism But, perverted ingenuity itself has
never brought charge of religious imbecility
against the members of the great Order and Eu-
gene Sue but popularized the expression of Car
rler de Nantes when he wrote: "The sons of
Loyla too wise for superstition and too DELHI
crate for, fanaticism."
When, last September, | was on my way to
Guaymas to sail for La Paz, [ laid over at Los
Angeles expressly to call on Charles F. Lummis
the editor of "Out West" and the author of the
Spanish Pioneers" With the possible exception
of Rudofe Bandelier Mr.. Lummis is the best in
formed and most reliable living authority on the
tribes of the southwest and the early missions of
California. In answer to my request for his opin-
ION on the manhood and sincerity of the priests
who fought the wilderness and evangelical the
tribes of the Pacific coast, Mr.. Lummis took from
a shelf his Spanish Pioneers" and placing his
finger on passage, asked me to read it, and this
IS what | read: Their zeal and their heroism was
infinite. No desert was too frightful for them no
danger too appalling. Alone, unarmed they tray
ersed the most forbidding lands, braved the most
deadly savages, and left on the minds of the In
dams such proud monument as mailed explorers
and conquering armies never made"
Before the "break up" of the Lower California
m Nv
among the tribes and civil wars. the Catholic
church had established fourteen missions or par
lshes for the Indians, extending from Tia Juana
at the north, to Cape Panas of the south No
tlce that mention disease as contributory to the
reduction of the missions. The passage of a. saw
age people to civilization. is like in its effects on
human systems, to the influence of an entirely new
and unaccusto1ned climate and is generally fol-
lowed by decrease in numbers during transit
ton period of more or less duration What this
transition costs may estimate by analogy from
lower organic kingdoms. For instance spring
wheat has been changed into winter wheat but the
experiment entailed loss of nearly three harvests
Wheat has been forced to accommodate itself to
the soil and climateaof Sierra Leone but only af-
ter an enormous loss and years of effort. Cochin
China hens were introduced into the state of
Colombia South America, and it was twenty years
before they we're accmatized. So that practically
twenty generations persisted before. the few which
survived chickenhood could adapt themselves to
conditions and increase in numbers. Something
analogous happens when members of the human
family try to conform to altered conditions or en-
ter upon period of transition 1t may end in
complete disappearance as in the case of the Tas-
manians and Maoris, or be followed by revival
In vitality under new conditions as among the
Mexicans and Filipinos. When the missionary
priests entered California they met a decompos-
ing race, whose excuses and prolonged physical
suffering from exposure and frequent starvation
had reduced them to degeneracy. Their extinction
in their wild and brutalzed state was sure to oc-
cur in, ethnologically, very short time. No doubt
the restraints of civilization and the new condi-
tons to which they we're asked to conform has
tened the inevitable
There is left today out of a population com
puted in 1898 to be six thousand, scattered rem
nant of, perhaps, fifteen hundred. Before the ex-
pulsion of the fathers and the consequent aban-
donment of the missions, almost the entire PENN
sula redeemed and its population Chrstianized
and civilized. Today the unorganized remnant
the hills of Khada-Kham retaining a few
Christian practices wrapt up in the rags of pagan
superstition. When they disappear forever, there
will be no Cooper to perpetuate their memory, or
write romance on "The Last of the Digger In
dians."