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Show UNIQUE CHURCH IN ARIZONA'S DESERT. The Most Wonderful Sacred Edifice "of United States San Xavier del Bac, Where the Papagoes Formerly WorshipedThree Wor-shipedThree Sisters of St. Joseph Educating Ed-ucating the Indian Children Their Solitary Sol-itary Lives Father Eusibio Francisco Kino, S. J., the First Explorer His Zealous Zeal-ous and Successful Missionary Work What He Witnessed Among the Savages Sav-ages In Eleven Years He Baptized 30,000 Indians The Franciscans Succeed Suc-ceed the Jesuits in 1768 Father Gar-ci's Gar-ci's Stupendous Work Murdered at Yuma, 1781 Faith and Practice of Shepherdless Indians. (Special Cor. Intermountain Catholic.) (Copyrighted.) I Among all the misison churches huilr by the i Spanish missionary fathers within the present lini- i I its of the l.'nited States, extending from the meri- dian f San Antonio. Tex., to the Presidio of Sau Francisco, and embracing such examples as San I Gabriel outside of Los Angeles and the mission t church of San Jose, near San Diego, built by Padre I Innipero Serra of whom Bret Hart and Helen j Jackson wrote so sympathetically there is not oik; f superior architecturally, and there are few equal r i I San Xavierdel Bac. the church of the gentle Pap- agoes. The drive from Tuseou to the mission is A f nine miles. To your left, within sound of its gurg- ' I ling waters, flows the Santa Cruz that for 400 years j I lias filled a prominent place in the. real and legend-ary legend-ary History of Arizona. Spiinjrvn;- frnvn ttwftoo. ot r f -1' the valley the Tuscon' range of mountains and,. LUis ' '' I rise majestically to the right and stretch southward , ' to an interminable distance. Far away to the south- ' ' west miles and miles away the "Twin Buttes," V inflated with copper, tower in imperial isolation. . c Five miles from Tuscon the road suddenly rises and at once the bell-shaped dome and the, Moorish tow- : ers of the church of the Papagoes break the sky line f to the south. Another mile and we enter the Teser- ' ration and are received with an infernal dissonance ' -of barks, snarls and growls from a yelping pack of unpedegreed curs of low estate. The road winds j through and around wikiups and cabins, past the j humble graveyard where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap and where a forest of plain wooden wood-en crosses records the sublime hope and faith of the vanishing Paoago. Before entering the church j I called to pay my respects arid tender the tribute I of my admiration to the three sisters of the community com-munity of St. Joseph, who for years have devoted their lives to the mental and spiritual uplifting of ' the Indian children of the reservation. I found the class rooms clean, a plentiful supply of blackboards : and mural tablets and the walls ornamented with , sacred and other pictures. The children were al- j 1 most as dark as negroes, their coal-black hair fall- ; ing over their shoulders and their snake-like eyes ; i piercing and searching me as if I were an enemy. . What clothes they wore were clean and I found ! j them as intelligent and as far advanced in their I ; elementary studies as the children of white parent. j , "Sister," I said, "how often do you have mass here ?' : j "Twice a month, sir.'' . J j "And in the meantime V "In the meantime we are alone- with the Blessed ' Sacrament." "Oh! the bishop then permits the 'Reservation' j I in your oratory." J "Yes, without the Blessed Sacrament we could I not live here. We three are alone. We have no ; amusements, no society and. outside of ourselves, no ' companionship. We do our own cooking, our own washing, our own scrubbing and teach these eighty- f five children six hours a day and give them an I f hour's religious instruction on Sunday. We all I teach some of them music and all of them singing." I shook hands with these heroic and estimable ' , ; ladies, thanked them for their courtesies and as T v passed across the "patio" to enter the church, some ' linos from the exquisite poem. "The Sister of Char- ity." hy my fellow countryman. Gerald Griffin, tin- jT bidden, visited my memory. I f , I "Behold her ye wordly. behold her ye va in. f Who shrink from the pathway of virtue and pain; j Who give up to pleasure your nights and your days, Forgetful of service, forgetful of praise." Before we enter the sacred and historic fame let . us go back some centuries and from the shadowey ' past evoke the dead that we may learn from them ! something of the early days of this holy place. The I first white man. of whom we have anv record, to visit and preach to the Pinias and Papagoes of Southern Arizona was the great Jesuit missionary ( and explorer. Father Ensibio Francisco Kino. Tn f 1691 he left the Yaquis of Souora on his wonderful missionary tour and on foot crossed the deserts, ! preaching to the Apaches. Yumas and Maricopa i on the way. Late in October of the sam.- year he I entered the tribal lands of the Pinias and Papasroes and from the Pima town on the Santa Cruz, now j St. Xavier del Bae. a deputation was dispatched to - escort him to their villiage. When the priest en- ! tered the village, Coro. chief of the Pimas and his 1 (Continued on Page 5.) f ' .M f . ; r L ' t v h UNIQUE CHURCH 'IN ARIZONA'S DESERT (Continued from Page 1.) warriors were parading and dancing around tlio scalps of Apaches, whom they had defeated in battle, bat-tle, and before whose dark and reekimr hair they were now shouting their paeans of victory. Mange, the historian of the Pimas of whom the Tapagoes pre a branch says that the morning after Kino's arrival Coro paraded before him 1.200 warriors in all the glory of war bonnets, bright blankets, head dresses of eagle feathers, scalp shirts, shields of deer hide, and gleaming lances. Father Kino remained re-mained here two or three weeks teaching and instructing in-structing ihe tribe in the Christian religion, and when about to leave marked on his chart the Tima valley and gave to it the name of San Francisco Xavier del Bac. perverted by local usage into "San Zavire del Bac." This intrepid missionary traveled j through Lower California, Sonera and Arizona instructing in-structing the desert Indians and baptising accord- i isg to Claviscro, 30,000 infants and adults. From J 4 |