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Show CORONADO AND PADILLA Early Missionaries Hospitably Received by ' the Indians Story of First Invasion of Territory of Quivira, Now Kansas Martyrdom Mar-tyrdom of Father Padilla, the First West of Missouri River Adventures of Early Days Leading to the Establishment of ' the Church in Utah. The official Bcport of Fray Marcos Do Nizza. his wonderful exploit, the lands he had seen and the tribes with whom he tarried stimulated the ambi-lion ambi-lion and aroused the enthusiasm of the Spaniards )iii Mexico, and initiated the famous expedition of , Coronado in 1.140. , When Coronado began his march for the fabu- us Seven Cities of Cibolo there went with him JJ V- ihree Franciscan priests and a lay brother to teach J -Christianity to the natives. Happily the names of V-A ihcse zealous missionaries have been preserved to j v , ns, and we owe" it to our admiration for disinterest- J- ed courage and zeal to see to it that these names y "iH livfl ft" 'dl time. ' Best known of these was Father Marcos of Xizza. le accompanied the expedition to the Zuni towns ihe Zune Cibolo of Xew Mexico which he had al- ' ready seen and of which he had written. His health !, failing him. he returned to Mexico City, where he I died March 25, l.VS. The priest Juan do la Cruz was of French de- , scent and was ageing rapidly when he volunteered to j: accompany Coronado. lie was a man of great piety and was reverenced by Coronado's men for his ster- ! ling qualities of head and heart. When Coronado I retired from Xew Mexico late in l."41 the aged I priest stayed with ihe Indians at Tigua, now Ber- I nalillo. on the Bio Grande, -flinch cuts New' Mexico from north to south. As he was never again heard f of, and no positive statement in regard to his fate I. i found in the earlv wrrtors. we mav onlv conclude that he was murdered by the Tiguans. I ' Fray Luis iJesoalona. the lav brother, selected i . ' ! for his field of labor after the Spaniards left the j country the village f Pecos, on the left bank of j and high up on the Pecos river, northern Xew i Mexico. When Coronado was leaving; for Mexico j he presented to Fray Luis five or six sheep. These I the lonely man drove before him into the Zuni coun- try. pausing- many times in ihe day to let them browse, and at night lying down to rest with his sheep sleeping around him. When he entered the Pecos with his little flock j, ' he was hospitably welcomed by the Indians of the .1 great pueblo and told he might settle among them. He now built himself n rough cabin on the prairie ' outside the village and gathered the little children T around him for instruction in the catechism. How long the venerable man lived here, or what became ' of his sheep, we do not know. He may have died in his little hut or he may have been murdered by one of the sorcerers r medicine ipen, jealous of his v popularity with ihe tribe. When Espejo passed by the Zuni villages forty years after Cornado's ex- pedition he heard nothing of the fate of Fray Luis. f V Father Juan do Padilla. who seems to have been - a confidential friend of Coronado, was compara-i compara-i tirely a young and vigorous man when he volun- ' leered to join his Provincial Fray Marcos on Coro- liado's exploration. Whtn Coronado advanced some days ahead of his army toward Zune-Cibolo all the Franciscans accompanied him. While he camped for a time among ihe Zunis he dispatched Pedro de Tobar. his lieutenant, and twelve men to escort Father Padilla on his visit to Tusoayr.n and the Moqui pueblos. He was the first white man who ever saw or entered a Moaui village or spoke to a "snake man." Hemming He-mming to CoronadoV enmp at Cibolo he joined an exploring expedition of Hernando de Alvarado to Pecos. It was on this journey the Spaniards saw i for the first time the famous rock pueblo of Ji Acorua and heard of Quivira. In the Report re- mitted lo Mexico and signed jointly, by Padilla and yT Alvarado (Third Vol. Documentor de Indian). Qui-" Qui-" vira (Kansas) was represented as a very rich coun- 1ry' " On the return of Alvarado to Cibolo, Coronado, taking with him Father Padilla and twenty-nine mounted men, started on his now famous journey to Quivira. The party crossed the Canadian river, entered, the lands of the warlike Apaches and rode into the great buffalo herds of the plains. After sixty-seven days of tortuous travel they crossed the Arkansas ntar old Fort Dodge and entered the region re-gion called Quivira. in northeastern Kansas, not far from the botindary of Nebraska. They were now in the land of the Teton Sioux known afterwards to the Canadian trappers and hunters as the ''Gens des Prairies.' This was in 1541. The priest re- ; i .1 turned to the Rio Grande with Coronado. and when the adventurous Spaniard went back to Mexico with his disheartened men. Father Padilla and Father Juan de la Cruz remained to instruct the tribes in Christianity. With them stayed a Portuguese soldier, sol-dier, Andres Docampo, a Mestizo boy, two Spanish assistants. Lucas and Sebastian, known as "Donados," "Dona-dos," or mission volunteers, and two Aztec Indians from Mexico. From Bernalillo, where they now were. Father Padilla set out on a missionary expedition to the Teton-Sioux, Quivira, or Kansas, in the autumn of 1542, leaving Fray Luis with the Pecos. He brought with him Docampo, the two Donados and the half-blood half-blood boy. He also took along all that was necessary neces-sary for offering up the Holy Sacrifice, one horse and some provisions for the journey. Xo accident marred the romance of the journey, and they safely arrived among the Teton-Sioux, by whom they were hospitably received. After instructing instruct-ing the Indians of Quivira in the rudiments of religion, re-ligion, Fray Padilla, in opposition to the advice of the chiefs of the tribe, resolved to visit and preach to the Guyas. who were no friends of ihe Tetons. His zeal overlapped his prudence ov his knowledge of Indian customs, for in those days a missionary who dwelt with and was regarded as a friend of a tribe could not leave their encampment to take up his abode with an unfriendly people without ex posing himself to suspicion and jealousy. The Tetons Te-tons held the friar in awesome reverence as a powerful pow-erful sorcerer, whose incantations, when friendly, meant prosperity to ihe tribe, and when malign, carried with them sickness and misfortune. The more popular the priest became, the more dangerous danger-ous it was for him to leave the wigwams of his friends. When the Spanish missionary, contrary to the pleadings of the Quiviras, entered upon the trail leading to the land of the Guyas a Pawnee sub-tribe sub-tribe he unconsciously shook hands with a messenger messen-ger of death, for his friends believed he was going over to their enemy, and the- Pawnees would look upon him as their foe. since he came from a tribe with whom they were at war. The Mexican historian Mota-Padilla. who claimed to have examined early documents bearing bear-ing upon the death of the faithful missionary, tells us in his "Historia de la Xeuva Galicia" that ''the friar left Quivira with a small escort, against the will of the Indians ofthat village, who loved him as their father. When he had traveled for nearly a day he saw coming toward him Indians in their war paint, and. divining their murderous intention, he advised the Portuguese, who was mounted, to gallop off and take with him the Donados and the boy. who, being young, could run away and escape. I As they were unarmed they all did as the father advised, ad-vised, but he, kneeling down, offered up his life, which he surrendered for the salvation of others. Thus he obtained his most ardent wish, the blessing of martyrdom, by the arrows of these savages, who, after murdering him, threw his body into a deep pit. The day of his death is not known, although it is considered certain that it occurred in the year 1542. Don Pedro de Tobar. in the documents he wrote with his own hand and left in the City of Culiacan. says that the Indians went out to kill this holy father in order to get possession of his ornaments. orna-ments. He also states that there was a tradition of wonderful signs accompanying his death, such as great floods, balls of fire and darkening of the sun." Such is ihe account given by Mota-Padilla of the end of the first martyr west of the Missouri. Eight or nine years after the murder of the priest Andrea Docampo, the two Donados Sebastian and Lucas and the half-caste boy, companions of Father Padilla Pa-dilla at Quivira, entered Tampico and announced the death of the priest. ' After their flight from Quivira they were captured cap-tured by the Coinanches and held as slaves. When they broke away from their captors they wandered aimlessly from place to place and from tribe to tribe. The tramp of these unarmed and half-starved men from northeastern Kansas to Tampico, Mexico, Mex-ico, would be incredible if it were not proved and certified to beyond denial. In all American history there is no parallel to this marvelous journey if we except the extraordinary extraor-dinary and continuous wanderings across the continent con-tinent from eastern Texas to the Pacific coast of Cabeza de Vaca and his miserable companions. Mal-donado Mal-donado and Dorantes, in 152S-3I3. What became of ihese companions of Father Padilla? The Portuguese soldier, Andres Docampo, Docam-po, is not mentioned again in history. He is heard of for the last time in Tampico, on the Gulf of Mexico; Sebastian, the Donado, who was a native of Meehuacah, "Mexico, went to Culiacau, Sinaloa, i and died there; Lucas, the other Donado. became a catechist with the Zaeateca Indians and lived to an advanced age. ) The grave of Father Padilla, like that of Moses, the Jewish law-giver, was never found. He Avas, with Pedro de Tobar. the first white man to enter the Zuni and Moqui villages and make known the existence of the Rock of Acoma and the Pecos towns. With Coronado he was the first of white men to see the Arkansas, which he crossed on June 2tf, 1541, and calletl.it the Ri ver of SS. Peter an,d I Paul, a name which it still bears on the old maps of Xueva Galicia, or north and northwestern Mexico, Mex-ico, j I 4 . |