The Old Franciscan Missions of California | Page 4

uncurbed
amorous demands of Stephen had led to his death, and Marcos feared
lest a like fate befall himself, but he returned and gave a fairly accurate
account of what he saw. His story was not untruthful, but there are
those who think it was misleading in its pauses and in what he did not
tell. Those pauses and eloquent silences were construed by the vivid
imaginations of his listeners to indicate what the Conquistadores
desired, so a grand and glorious expedition was planned, to go forth
with great sound of trumpets, in glad acclaim and glowing colors, led
by his Superior Excellency and Most Nobly Glorious Potentate, Senyor
Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a native of Salamanca, Spain,
and now governor of the Mexican province of New Galicia.
It was a gay throng that started on that wonderful expedition from
Culiacan early in 1540. Their hopes were high, their expectations keen.
Many of them little dreamed of what was before them. Alarcon was
sent to sail up the Sea of Cortés (now the Gulf of California) to keep in
touch with the land expedition, and Melchior Diaz, of that sea party,
forced his way up what is now the Colorado River to the arid sands of
the Colorado Desert in Southern California, before death and disaster
overtook him.

Coronado himself crossed Arizona to Zuni--the pueblo of the Indians
that Fray Marcos had gazed upon from a hill, but had not dared
approach--and took it by storm, receiving a wound in the conflict which
laid him up for a while and made it necessary to send his lieutenant, the
Ensign Pedro de Tobar, to further conquests to the north and west.
Hence it was that Tobar, and not Coronado, discovered the pueblos of
the Hopi Indians. He also sent his sergeant, Cardenas, to report on the
stories told him of a mighty river also to the north, and this explains
why Cardenas was the first white man to behold that eloquent abyss
since known as the Grand Canyon. And because Cardenas was Tobar's
subordinate officer, the high authorities of the Santa Fé Railway--who
have yielded to a common-sense suggestion in the Mission architecture
of their railway stations, and romantic, historic naming of their
hotels--have called their Grand Canyon hotel, El Tovar, their hotel at
Las Vegas, Cardenas, and the one at Williams (the junction point of the
main line with the Grand Canyon branch), _Fray Marcos._
Poor Coronado, disappointed as to the finding and gaining of great
stores of wealth at Zuni, pushed on even to the eastern boundaries of
Kansas, but found nothing more valuable than great herds of buffalo
and many people, and returned crestfallen, broken-hearted and almost
disgraced by his own sense of failure, to Mexico. And there he drops
out of the story. But others followed him, and in due time this northern
portion of the country was annexed to Spanish possessions and became
known as New Mexico.
In the meantime the missionaries of the Church were active beyond the
conception of our modern minds in the newly conquered Mexican
countries.
The various orders of the Roman Catholic Church were indefatigable in
their determination to found cathedrals, churches, missions, convents
and schools. Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans vied with each other
in the fervor of their efforts, and Mexico was soon dotted over with
magnificent structures of their erection. Many of the churches of
Mexico are architectural gems of the first water that compare favorably
with the noted cathedrals of Europe, and he who forgets this overlooks

one of the most important factors in Mexican history and civilization.
The period of expansion and enlargement of their political and
ecclesiastical borders continued until, in 1697, Fathers Kino and
Salviaterra, of the Jesuits, with indomitable energy and unquenchable
zeal, started the conversion of the Indians of the peninsula of Lower
California.
In those early days, the name California was not applied, practically
speaking, to the country we know as California. The explorers of
Cortés had discovered what they imagined was an island, but
afterwards learned was a peninsula, and this was soon known as
California. In this California there were many Indians, and it was to
missionize these that the God-fearing, humanity-loving, self-sacrificing
Jesuits just named--not Franciscans--gave of their life, energy and love.
The names of Padres Kino and Salviaterra will long live in the annals
of Mission history for their devotion to the spiritual welfare of the
Indians of Lower California.
The results of their labors were soon seen in that within a few years
fourteen Missions were established, beginning with San Juan Londa in
1697, and the more famous Loreto in 1698.
When the Jesuits were expelled, in 1768, the Franciscans took charge
of the Lower California Missions and established one other, that of San
Fernando de Velicatá, besides