The Old Franciscan Missions of California | Page 5

building a stone chapel in the mining
camp of San Antonio Real, situated near Ventana Bay.
The Dominicans now followed, and the Missions of El Rosario, Santo
Domingo, Descanso, San Vicenti Ferrer, San Miguel Fronteriza, Santo
Tomás de Aquino, San Pedro Mártir de Verona, El Mision Fronteriza
de Guadalupe, and finally, Santa Catarina de los Yumas were founded.
This last Mission was established in 1797, and this closed the active
epoch of Mission building in the peninsula, showing twenty-three fairly
flourishing establishments in all.
It is not my purpose here to speak of these Missions of Lower
California, except in-so-far as their history connects them with the

founding of the Alta California Missions. A later chapter will show the
relationship of the two.
The Mission activity that led to the founding of Missions in Lower
California had already long been in exercise in New Mexico. The
reports of Marcos de Nizza had fired the hearts of the zealous priests as
vigorously as they had excited the cupidity of the Conquistadores. Four
Franciscan priests, Marcos de Nizza, Antonio Victoria, Juan de Padilla
and Juan de la Cruz, together with a lay brother, Luis de Escalona,
accompanied Coronado on his expedition. On the third day out Fray
Antonio Victoria broke his leg, hence was compelled to return, and
Fray Marcos speedily left the expedition when Zuni was reached and
nothing was found to satisfy the cupidity of the Spaniards. He was
finally permitted to retire to Mexico, and there died, March 25, 1558.
For a time Mission activity in New Mexico remained dormant, not only
on account of intense preoccupation in other fields, but because the
political leaders seemed to see no purpose in attempting the further
subjugation of the country to the north (now New Mexico and Arizona).
But about forty years after Coronado, another explorer was filled with
adventurous zeal, and he applied for a charter or royal permission to
enter the country, conquer and colonize it for the honor and glory of the
king and his own financial reward and honorable renown. This leader
was Juan de Oñate, who, in 1597, set out for New Mexico accompanied
by ten missionary padres, and in September of that year established the
second church in what is now United States territory. Juan de Oñate
was the real colonizer of this new country. It was in 1595 that he made
a contract with the Viceroy of New Spain to colonize it at his own
expense. He was delayed, however, and could not set out until early in
1597, when he started with four hundred colonists, including two
hundred soldiers, women and children, and great herds of cattle and
flocks of sheep. In due time he reached what is now the village of
Chamita, calling it San Gabriel de los Españoles, a few miles north of
Santa Fé, and there established, in September, 1598, the first town of
New Mexico, and the second of the United States (St. Augustine, in
Florida, having been the first, established in 1560 by Aviles de
Menendez).

The work of Oñate and the epoch it represents is graphically,
sympathetically and understandingly treated, _from the Indian's
standpoint_, by Marah Ellis Ryan, in her fascinating and illuminating
novel, The Flute of the Gods, which every student of the Missions of
New Mexico and Arizona (as also of California) will do well to read.
New Mexico has seen some of the most devoted missionaries of the
world, one of these, Fray Geronimo de Zarate Salmeron, having left a
most interesting, instructive account of "the things that have been seen
and known in New Mexico, as well by sea as by land, from the year
1538 till that of 1626."
This account was written in 1626 to induce other missionaries to enter
the field in which he was so earnest a laborer. For eight years he
worked in New Mexico, more than 280 years ago. In 1618 he was
parish priest at Jemez, mastered the Indian language and baptized 6566
Indians, not counting those of Cia and Santa Ana. "He also,
single-handed and alone, pacified and converted the lofty pueblo of
Acoma, then hostile to the Spanish. He built churches and monasteries,
bore the fearful hardships and dangers of a missionary's life then in that
wilderness, and has left us a most valuable chronicle." This was
translated by Mr. Lummis and appeared in The Land of Sunshine.
The missionaries who accompanied Juan de Oñate in 1597 built a
chapel at San Gabriel, but no fragment of it remains, though in 1680 its
ruins were referred to. The second church in New Mexico was built
about 1606 in Santa Fé, the new city founded the year before by Oñate.
This church, however, did not last long, for it was soon outgrown, and
in 1622, Fray Alonzo