– OSV News / Jeremy Beer
Enthusiasm for missions was a phenomenon that spread throughout Europe during the pious 17th century.
Eusebio Kino was born eight years after his colleague, the priest and explorer Jacques Marquette, in the Italian Tyrol. Like the famous Father Marquette, he joined the Jesuit order at a young age and soon felt a strong desire to become a missionary. Sent to Mexico City in 1681, this energetic, handsome, and charming priest went on to found two dozen missions in Baja California, Sonora, and present-day Arizona before his death in 1711. He was declared “venerable” in 2020.
But Kino, who spent little time within the borders of what is now the United States, is not the protagonist of this story; rather, it is his most capable successor at the remote mission of San Xavier del Bac: a Franciscan friar named Francisco Garcés.
A native of the Spanish province of Aragón, Father Garcés arrived in 1768 at San Xavier, located a few miles south of Tucson. Over the next eight years, he would undertake a series of incredible journeys—which the Spanish called “entradas”—into the unknown lands (at least to Europeans) to the north and west.
Like Father Marquette, he left behind a valuable documentary record of the lands he discovered and the indigenous peoples he encountered. Like Father Marquette, he also left a legacy of peaceful relations and deep respect for the indigenous peoples of the Southwest.
Collaboration with Saint Junípero Serra
Father Garcés’s first two “expeditions” took him north to the Gila River. As he continued westward, he discovered—thanks to the friendly peoples living there —tribes known today as the O’odham and the Piipaash—that there were trade and communication ties with the indigenous peoples living along the California coast, where his acquaintance and fellow Franciscan friar, Junípero Serra, had recently begun founding missions.
This was important because the Spanish did not know of a land route to Upper California from the northwestern border of New Spain—present-day Sonora and Arizona.
For this reason, Father Garcés set out to find one. In the summer of 1771, traveling with meager provisions, without any other Spaniards, and with indigenous guides whom he hired along the way, he made his way on the back of a mule through the scorching, arid Sonoran Desert until he reached the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers.
He was greeted by a man known to the Spaniards as Salvador Palma, a powerful chief of the Quechua Indians who controlled the area. Against the advice of his hospitable hosts, Father Garcés continued westward through even more inhospitable territory until he caught sight of the mountain range that he correctly surmised stood between him and the coast.
Three years later, Father Garcés repeated the feat, this time as the lead guide on an official expedition that included 20 soldiers led by a frontier military officer named Juan Bautista de Anza.
Barely surviving, thanks mainly to water found in remote mountain jars, Anza’s expedition managed to make its way from the Spanish presidio at Tubac, Arizona, to Yuma, and from there to the Mission of San Gabriel, on the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles, where those emaciated, dirty, and ragged men were joyfully welcomed by four friars dressed in rags. Father Garcés celebrated Easter in 1774 with St. Junípero Serra at the San Diego Mission before returning to San Xavier del Bac.
Solo Exploration
The success of Anza’s expedition led Spain to organize another one in 1775. This time, Anza would lead nearly 300 men, women, and children to Monterrey and San Francisco to become the first true European settlers of Alta California. Father Garcés left that expedition at Yuma. From there, he undertook a truly extraordinary solo exploratory journey that, for the first time, revealed to European eyes much of what we now know as the American Southwest.
His goal was to identify a better route both from Sonora to Monterrey and from Monterrey to New Mexico. Over the next 10 months, he traveled down the Colorado River to its mouth, then traveled upriver to the vicinity of present-day Laughlin, Nevada (the first European to set foot in that state), then crossed the unforgiving Mojave Desert to the Mission of San Gabriel, entered California’s great Central Valley via present-day Bakersfield, returned through the Mojave and northwestern Arizona to the Grand Canyon (where he made a terrifying descent to visit the Havasupai, who lived—then as now—near the famous waterfalls that bear their name) and continued further east to the Hopi village of Oraibi, before finally returning to San Xavier del Bac.
In general, Father Garcés found both a receptiveness to the Gospel (he discovered that a banner depicting the Virgin and Child on one side and a man suffering the torments of hell on the other worked wonders in conveying his fundamental message) and a hospitality that saved souls (he often carried very little or no food in his luggage).
The locals“ hospitality wasn’t even reserved exclusively for human beings. One day, his mule got stuck in a muddy patch. The Cocopah Indians with whom he was staying ”all rushed to help him, carried the mule out in their arms, and took it to the fire so it could warm up.”.
Exchanging a horse for the freedom of female slaves
Father Garcés’s diary is full of heartening incidents like this one. However, there was also much darkness. Along the Colorado River, for example, Father Garcés encountered a group of Chemehuevi who were carrying two Halchidhoma girls captured as slaves. Slavery was practiced throughout the Native American world, and although it was illegal, the Spaniards on the frontier encouraged this trade by frequently buying and keeping slaves—a practice that religious figures like Father Garcés devoted much time and ink to denouncing and criticizing. As for the Halchidhoma girls, Father Garcés gave a horse in exchange for their freedom.
Intertribal warfare was as endemic as slavery among tribes. As humble as he was resilient, Father Garcés had a special talent for winning the trust and friendship of the natives (one of his fellow friars said that Father Garcés was “so well-suited to getting along with the Indians and moving among them that he seems very much like an Indian himself”), and wherever he went, he tried—sometimes successfully—to negotiate peace agreements. He dreamed of founding a dozen or more new missions in what is now Arizona and southern California, not only to save Native souls but also to spread what he saw as the manifest blessings of Spanish civilization, primarily civil peace.
It was not meant to be that way. Spain’s failure to keep its promises, reckless military leadership, and the Quechua people’s mistrust led to an uprising in Yuma in July 1781, during which Father Garcés and three other friars, along with 127 other Spaniards, were killed.
The monument to Father Garcés that stands today along the Colorado River, across from the San Tomás Indigenous Mission, is more impressive than the one honoring Father Marquette in St. Ignace, Michigan. However, it receives even fewer visitors.
This article was first published in English on OSV News. We are reprinting it on Omnes with permission. You can read the original article HERE.
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