Here four sisters of St. Joseph conduct a school for the little Papagoes; and what a school it is! It might do honor to the Alhambra. Palms line the esplanade in front of the arched, walled entrance. Collie dogs rise lazily under the deep embrasures of the arched plazas. A parrot calls out some Spanish gibberish of bygone days. A snow-white Persian kitten frisks its plumy tail across the brick-paved walk of the inner patio; and across the courtyard I catch a glimpse of two Shetland ponies nosing for notice over a fence beside an ancient Don Quixote nag that evidently does duty for dignitaries above Shetland ponies. An air of repose, of antiquity, of apartness, rests on the marble white Mission, as of oriental dreams and splendor or European antiquity and culture.
I ring the bell of the reception room to the right of the church entrance. Not a sound but the echo of my own ring! I enter, cross through the parlor and come on the Spanish patio or central courtyard. What a place for prayers and meditation and the soul's repose! Arched promenades line both sides of the inner court. Here Jesuit and Franciscan monks have walked and prayed and meditated since the Sixteenth Century. By the hum as of busy bees to the right, I locate the schoolrooms, and come on the office of the Mother Superior Aquinias.
What a pity so many of us have an early impress of religion as of vinegar aspect and harsh duty hard as flint and unhuman as a block of wood. This Mother Superior is merry-faced and red-blooded and human and dear. She evidently believes that goodness should be warmer, dearer, truer, more attractive and kindly than evil; and all the little Indian wards of the four schoolrooms look happy and human and red-blooded as the Mother Superior.
A collie pup flounders round us up and down the court walk where the old missionary monks suffered cruel martyrdom. Poll, the parrot, utters sententious comment; and the Shetland ponies whinny greetings to their mistress. All this does not sound like vinegar goodness, does it?
But it is when you enter the church that you get the real surprise. Three times, the desertion of this Mission was forced by massacre and pillage. Twice it was abandoned owing to the expulsion of Jesuit and Franciscan by temporal power. For seventy years, the only inhabitants of a temple stately as the Alhambra were the night bats, the Indian herders, the border outlaws of the United States and Mexico. Yet, when you enter, the walls are covered with wonderful mural painting. Saints' statues stand about the altar, and grouped about the dome of the groined ceiling are such paintings as would do honor to a European Cathedral.
The brick and adobe walls are from two to six feet thick. Not a nail has ever been driven in the adobe edifice. The doors are of old wood in huge panels mortised and dovetailed together. The latch is an iron bar carved like a Damascus sword. The altar is a mass of gilding and purple. To be sure, the saints' fingers have been hacked off by wandering cowboy and outlaw and Indian; but you find that sort of vandalism in the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. The British Museum had careful custodians. For over seventy years, this ancient Mission stood open to the winds of heaven and the torrential rains and the midnight bats. Only the faithfulness of an old Indian chief kept the sacred vessels from desecration. When the fathers were expelled for political reasons, old José, of the Papagoes, carried off the sacred chalices and candles till the padres should return, when he brought them from hiding.
Gothic temples are usually built in one long, clear arch. The roof of San Xavier del Bac is a series of the most perfect groined domes, with the deep embrasures of the windows on each side colored shell tints in wave-lines. Because of the height and depth of the windows, the light is wonderfully clear and soft. The church is used now only by Indian children; and did Indian children ever have such a magnificent temple in which to worship? To the left of the entrance is a wonderful old baptismal font of pure copper, which has been the envy of all collectors. One wonders looking at the ancient vessel whether it was baptized with the blood of all the martyrs who died for San Xavier—Francesca Garcez, for instance? There is a window in this baptistry, too, that is the envy of critics and collectors. It is set more deeply in the wall than any window in the Tower of London, with pointed Gothic top that sends shafts of sunlight clear across the earthen floor.
From the baptistry I ascended to the upper towers. The stairs are old timber set in adobe and brick, through solid walls of a thickness of six feet. The view from the belfries above is wonderful. You see the mountains shimmering in the haze. You see the little square adobe matchbox houses of Papago Indians, with the red chile hanging against the wall, and the women coming from the spring, and the men husking the corn. You wonder if when San Xavier was besieged and besieged and besieged yet again by Apache and Navajo and Pima, the beleaguered priests took refuge in these towers, and came down to die, only to save their Mission. Against Indian arms, it may be said, San Xavier would be an impregnable fortress. Yet the priests of San Xavier were three times utterly destroyed by Indians.
When you come to seek the history of San Xavier, you will find it as difficult to get, as a guide out to the Mission. As a purely tourist resort, leaving out all piety and history, it should be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to Tucson. Yet it took me the better part of a day to find out that San Xavier is only nine miles and not eighteen from Tucson.
And this is typical of the difficulty of getting the real history of the place. Jesuit Relations of New France have been published in every kind of edition, cheap and dear. Jesuit Relations of New Spain, who knows? The Franciscans succeeded the Jesuits; and the Franciscans do not read the history of the Jesuits. It comes as a shock to know that Spanish padres were on the Colorado and Santa Cruz at the time Jacques Cartier was exploring the St. Lawrence. We have always believed that Spanish conquistadores slaughtered the Indians most ruthlessly. Study the mission records and you get another impression, an impression of penniless, friendless, unprotected friars "footing" it 600, 700, 900 miles from Old Mexico to the inmost recesses of the Desert cañons. In late days, when a friar set out on his journey, twenty mounted men acted as his escort; and that did not always save him from death; for there were stretches of the journey ninety miles without water, infested every mile of the way by Apaches; and these stretches were known as the Journeys of Death. When you think of the ruthless slaughter of the conquistadores, think also of the friars tramping the parched sand plains for 900 miles.