The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-11-07

..On the 23d of August, 1898, writes URINARY
Sboo in his sketch of the Spanish missions IN the
Tinted States "the erection OF the hrst chureh ln
Nv, Mexico was begun, and on the 9TH OF Septem-
her was opened for divine service. Inc next day
~ Feast IF the Nativity of Our Lady, this church
voc dedicated under the name of ST. John tn.
po,,+;st the Father Commissary Aonzo MARITIME
h1ossiro, # and consecrating the affairs and cha=
zoos Father Christopher Salazar preached til.
,or,,oo and the day closed with a general reJolc
ing"
This humble church was the first temple conSe-
..otod 70 God within the present limits of the
rrn;tod States and marks an epoch in the mission
ary life of our country. But the date OF the De-
ginning of missionary labor among the tribes
opens with the visit of the two priests Juan de la
Ascuncion and Pedro Nadal, to the Marcopas on
the ella, southern Arizona, in 1888
The practical and permanent evangeIlzatlon o.
the tribes was now begun by the allotment OF the
fathers to the neighboring pueblos, and the sy--
tenatie organization of the priests into an active
missionary body, subject to the orders of the local
superior Father Alonzo MARTINEZ
On October I. 1904, Juan de Onate, general In
command and Fathers San Bueneventura and
Escobar, led an exploring and conciliatory expedI-
ton down the Colorado river. They paid friend
lv visit on the way to the Zuni towns, near the
headwaters of the Rio Grande, and, fordlng the
Puerco, passed into the Moqui pueblOs. Swinging
to the west they crossed the Colorado Chiquito at
place afterwards called the San Jose, and, con
tinuing their march, veered to the north, passing
near the site of the present city of Prescott, Ariz
through region traversed by Don Antonio Es-
peio and Fray Bernardino Beltram nearly quar-
ter of a century before
They now entered the lands of the Mohaves
and the Yuman tribes the ella. swan the
ella and, facing to the south, marched through
the delta of the Colorado and stopped the
shore of the South Sea, now the Gulf of Califor-
MIA. Here they raised a huge cross, hanging on
it the coat OF arms of Philip " of Spain, and
took possession of the country In the name of the
Spanish sovereign. This was on January 25th
1906 and as it happened to be marked in the Ro-
man calendar the feast of the Conversion of St.
Paul, they declared that the day should hencefortb
be commemorated as an annual and patronal fes-
tival for New Mexico.
Returning from his explorations, Onate, iB
1906 founded the city or Santa Fe-City of Our
Holy Falkland built the Church of San Miguel
afterwards destroyed in the Indian uprising of
1890
In 1915 missions had already been opened
schools built and churches erected in forty-sx
Christianized pueblo towns of New Mexico even
in 1911" writes Charles F. Lummis, in "The
Spanish Pioneers" "there were already eleven
churches in use in New Mexico. Santa Fe was
the only Spanish town; but there we're also
churches at the dangerous Indian puebIos of Gal
isteo and Pecos, two at Jemes San Ildefonso
t.
CO. 1t was wonderful achievement for each
lonely missionary, for they had neither civil nor
military assistance in their parishes to have in
duced his barbarous flock to build big stone
church and to worship the new white God"
The mission of Jemes, where dwelt solitary
priest, Alonzo de Lugo, was almost hundred
miles west of Santa Fe and was buried in desc
lation of solitude and sand. Taos, where Father
Zamora was stationed, was miserable collection
of adobe structures ON the Taos river, sixty-five
miles north by east of Santa Fe. At the time that
Father Zamora settled with the Tiguans, the
tribe at war with the Utes. Taos was the
mission of St. Geronimo; its handsome church was
burned and its priest slaughtered in the Indian
revolt of 1880
Of the forty-six Christian pueblos, mentioned
by Father Velez de Escalante in his report, pub
lished in Documentes para la historic de Mexico
and existing 1919, seven were destroyed by the
Apaches who surrounded New Mexico, except on
the northwest, which was held by the Yutes.
Reading the glowing reports of Culinary Shea
and T. W. Marshall on the prosperous state of the
New Mexican missions, one would be led to con
cude that these Indians were as docile as children
and as yielding clay in the hands of the potter
But, from the very beginning the fathers had TO
deal with stiff-necked, hayward and stubborn
people. Among them were many in every pueblo
on whom the preaching the self-devotion and ex-
empary lives of the missionaries had no effect.
The morality the fathers taught was too exacting.
it demanded self-denial and command of the
senses, even of their thoughts, opposed to their