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Show CATHOLIC CHURCH IN UTAH j Missionaries and Explorers Padre Esca-lante Esca-lante Arrives in the New World His La-bors La-bors Among the Indians. Invited by the "Cliff Dwellers" Fray Grace's Journey from Yuma Discovered the Grand Canyon Escalante's Failure to Cross the Grand Canyon. It is much to be deplored that research in the national library, Mexico, and among the archives o fthe Episcopal library. Santa Fe, has not rewarded reward-ed us with more satisfactory information on the lives of Frs. Escalante and Dominguez. Of Do- 1 minguez very little is on record and we have no data from which a short biography might be compiled. com-piled. Let us hope that some future historian, who can bring to his Avork the time, the patience and the means, will succeed where we have failed. His brother priest and companion on the Moqui "En-trada" "En-trada" or Santa Fe expedition, fills a more conspicuous conspic-uous place in the annals of Xew Mexico. Silvestre Velez de Escalante was a Spanish priest and a member f the teaching and missionary mission-ary order founded by St. Francis of Assisi. Italy, in the twelfth century. He was one of the congregation congre-gation of fourteen priests who in lTtS sailed from the Port of San Bias, Spain, and after a tempestuous tempest-uous voyage reached the Puerto de Guaymas, Gulf of California. From here he went to the town of Horeasitas, on the San Miguel, the headquarters of the Spanish governor and of the missions of So- nora and Sinoloa. In the distribution of the missionaries mis-sionaries made by the governor and the local superior su-perior of the Franciscans, Padre Escalante was as- ; signed to Terrenate one of the five Sonorian presidios presi-dios and in time was appointed resident missionary at La gun a. northeastern Xew Mexico. From here he visited and instructed many of the sedentary v tribes in and around Cebilita and El Moro. Early in January, 1775, he is with the Zunis at S Ojo del Peseado preaching to the adults, teaching the little boys and girls how to pray and, inciden- t tally, imparting to the Indians a knowledge of im- I proved tillage and of domestic cleanliness. Ilia zeal f and devotion to the children won the admiration of the Zunis. All the neighboring pueblos generated him as a superior man and his fame traveled to the Moqui towns north of the Colorado Chiquito, to whom he had sent greeting and a message of good will. The "Cliff Dwellers" sent a deputation of their elders to invite him to their villages, an invitation invi-tation which he accepted. He passed eight days with the Moquis, holding councils with the headmen head-men and 'explaining to the mysterious people the principal articles of Christian belief. When he returned re-turned to his zuni mission he wrote. August 18, 1775, to Father Francisco Garces. who was then exploring the Colorado and visiting the regional tribes. Fray Garees was the first white man to make t the journey from Yuma to the Mojave and on to the Los Angeles of today. He discovered the Mo- jave river, traveled on foot the unexplored region J and explored the Tulare valley. According to Arri- civita he was the first white man who ever saw and f crossed the Grand Canyon from east to west and gave to this gorge, one of the natural wonders of the world, a specific name. In 1774 he piloted Cap- . I tain Juan B. Ansa and his party from the Pima village of Tubac on the Rio Santa Cruz to Monte- f rey, California, and opened the oldest of the Span- j ish trails. s In his letter to Father Garces, Escalante called j the Colorado, the Rio Grande de los Cosninos, after j a sub-tribe of the Havasupai, then settled in a deep depression of Cataract river in northwestern Ari- f zona. He mentioned, on representations made to s him by the Indians, that the Colorado wa3 impas- ' . sable, and that no one knew if any people lived on f the other side of the, Great Gorge. In this letter he gives currency to a report that white men, prob- f ably shipwrecked Spaniards, were met by Indiana I in the far west, before Monterey was founded, thus j reviving the myth of the Northern mystery. The letter of Padre Escalante was nearly thir- j teen months hunting the wandering priest, and j caught up with him at last, at his mission of San Xavier del Bac, near the modern city of Tucson, 1 Ariz. y j In the report of his expeditions, Garces, writing October 17, 177G, says: "About a month, after I I returned from my journey I received a letter from the Rev. Father Silvestre Velez de Escalante, dated from New Mexico, August, of the above mentioned year (1775) which, though they dispatched it to me ( XConturaed on Page 5.). j i j CATHOLIC CHURCH IN UTAH (Continued from page 1.) to the Rio Colorado, they (the Indian runners) had to bring back, for I had already departed. I read with deep interest this letter; now as to the statement state-ment made by the Cosnina Indian to the reverend father, I assert that what he calls the Rio de los Misterios is the Colorado river. The protestation that the river was impassable and that the Cosinos did not know if there were people on the other side was an exaggeration of the Indian, for it is certain cer-tain that there are people and friends of theirs on the other side of the river. It is true, the river may be difficult to cross, for as I have already wit-ten, wit-ten, from the village of the Jamajabo upwards the banks are very steep and the sides exceedingly rough." During his visit to the Moquis Escalante attempted at-tempted to cross the. Grand Canyon of the Colorado and failed. In his "Informe y Diario que in Junio de 1TT" hizo en la Provincia de Moqui" his diary kept while among the Moquis he recounts the obstacles ob-stacles he encountered when he essayed the crossing cross-ing of the tremendous chasm, lie describes the iloqui pueblos, adding there were seven of them perched on three mesas, carrying a population of 7,o00 souls. That Oraibe was the largest town and held almost two-thirds of the people. His journal dated Oct. 28, 1775, is full of interesting details; he recounts incidents of his long and perilous trip from Zuni, what occurred during his eight days' stay among the Moquis, the difficulty of converting them to the faith owing to the opposition of the Shamans and the possible necessity of the Spaniards Span-iards being compelled to use force to subdue them. He says the Moquis or Moquinos as they were then spokeu of. were well disposed towards Christianity, and the Spaniards, but the medicine men or sor-corers, sor-corers, fearing their power and influence would be impaired or lost altogether if the missionaries were permitted to dwell permanently in their villages, were bitterly hostile. This Moqui Diario gives us an insight into the tribal life of the occult race, and is full of curious and interesting information. Accompanying the Diario was a map of the routes he had taken and a delineation of the features fea-tures of the land and the general lay of the country. coun-try. His map he finished at Santa Fe, to which place he was summoned by the viceroy of New Mexico, Pedro Firmin de Mindinueta, to enter with Father Atanasio Dominguez upon a tour of exploration explo-ration toward the Pacific ocean. Returning from his now famous expedition, Escalante Es-calante completed from his voluminous notes his Diario and Itinerary, now translated and given to the public in this history. A map of the route followed fol-lowed by the explorers from Santa Fe to the Colorado Colo-rado and the Moqui pueblo was attached to the original Diario, but it is presumedly lost or destroyed, de-stroyed, for the assistant librarian of the national library, Mexico City, writes us that he has not succeeded suc-ceeded in finding any trace of it. That this map existed in 3777 we know from the letter written by the Marques de Croix, from Mexico City to the viceroy of New Mexico, Mindinueta. The Marques dates his letter 30th July, 1777, and thanks Mindinueta Mindin-ueta for having forwarded to him the journals and map (Diarios y Mapa) of the two priests. ' Scarcely giving himself time to recover from the exhaustion of his wanderings over mountains and deserts the tireless missionary sets out on foot for the pueblo of Santa Anna of the Beneme, high up near the headwaters of the Rio Grande, where a mission had been opened some years before by Fathr Jose Oronso. We next hear of him in the Zuni mission village vil-lage of San Ildefonso, where ho dweljs four months catechizing and instructing the Indians. From the Zuni country he is called by his provincial pro-vincial or religious superior, Juan Morfi, to collect and examine the documents and archives found in Santa Fe, and codify them. Unfortunately the most important records and manuscripts were destroyed in the uprising and massacre of 16S0. The issue of his-researches, begun be-gun in April, 177S, and extending over a period of some years, resulted in the publication in Spanish of his "Carta" or epistle and his "Archivio de Neu-evo Neu-evo Mexico." These invaluable works are printed in the third series of the Documentary History of Mexico and the original manuscripts are to be found among the general archives of Mexico. In the Carta or letter to his ecclesiastical superior, su-perior, Father Escalante says that the Navajo-Apaches Navajo-Apaches came to Santa Fe in the month of July every year from their hunting grounds on the upper Chama to barter dried meat, skins and captives ta--' i r ken in battle. If they failed to sell or exchange their prisoners for grain or provisions they led them aside and slaughtered them. When the King of Spain was told of this atrocious custom he gave orders that at the expense of Ids majesty all unsold un-sold or unredeemed prisoners were ta be purchased. In the same letter he mentions that in the autumn of 1696 the French Huguenots, who lived on the distant frontier of the province, were reported to have exterminated 4,000 Apaches who attacked the friendly tribes the Huguenots had taken under their protection. After completing the annals of New Mexico the heroic priest retired to the Franciscan college at Queretaro, Mexico. Of him we may repeat what Elliott Coues writes of Father Garces in the introduction intro-duction to his work, "On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer:" "He was a true soldier of the cross, neither greater nor lesser than thousands of other children of Holy Church. Poor, like Jesus, he so loved his fellow man that he was ready to die for him. What more could a man do?" We have searched through the '"Croniea Serafica y Apostolica del Colegio de Propoganda Fide de la Santa Cruz de Queretaro en la Nueva Espana" but have not found any mention of his name or the year of his death. |