In 1702, the animosities of the European war of the Spanish succession extended hither, and war aggravated the hostility of the English colonists. In that year they made an attack on St. Augustine, but without capturing its fort, and fell upon the “Indian converts of the Spanish priests,” on Flint River, killing or capturing six hundred of them; and all captives of the English at this time suffered the hard fate of being sold as slaves in Charleston and other ports. The principal mission of the Appalaches at St. Mark’s was destroyed, and three Franciscans taken there were put to a cruel death. This tribe, in fact, was reduced within four years from seven thousand to four hundred. The Atimucas on the Appalachicola were invaded, and driven east of the St. John’s River. In short, ruin and desolation were spread on every side.
In 1730, the Yemassees turned upon their recent allies, the English, and were joined by the Creeks, Cherokees, and other tribes. They were defeated, as the Tuscaroras had been the year before; but while the latter were driven north and united themselves with the Five Nations, the former were compelled to take refuge in the peninsula. The treaty of Utrecht, the same year, at the close of the war of the Spanish succession, while it contracted the limits of the Spanish possessions in Florida, had also its effect in lessening the acts of hostility from which they had suffered. But the missions remained a mere shadow of what they had formerly been, and Spain was too feeble to guarantee the complete protection even of those that subsisted. Finally, the cession of Florida to England by the treaty of Paris in 1763 proved the death-blow of all of them. Most of the Spanish settlers left, and the Franciscans departed with them. England restored the country to Spain twenty years after; but, meanwhile, the Christian Indians had been expelled from the two towns they occupied under the walls of St. Augustine, and deprived of the soil they had cultivated and the church they had erected. They became Seminoles, which in their language signifies “wanderers.” Under Catholic influence, they had become a quiet, orderly, industrious race, living side by side with the Spaniards in peace and comfort. The English drove them back into barbarism and paganism. Even in their everglades they were not left in peace, for the government of the United States, which acquired Florida by purchase in 1821, expelled them from their wretched patrimony, but at a cost to the country of a thousand lives and fifteen millions of dollars. Its troops have, ever since the acquisition of Florida, made use of the ancient convent of St. Helena, at St. Augustine, as barracks. A remnant of the Indians is still left, and measures have been recently taken by the Bishop of St. Augustine, whose see was erected only in 1870, to revive the faith among them.
As in Florida, so in New Mexico, the missionaries were chiefly if not entirely Franciscans. We have already referred to the expedition of Coronado, and to the two missionaries, F. Padillo, and the lay-brother, his companion, who were left behind at their own request, and who became the first martyrs of the missions of New Mexico (1541). Little inducement presented itself for sending new missionaries in the field, but in 1581 the solicitations of a pious lay-brother, Augustin Rodriguez, engaged in the Mexican missions, caused the formation of a party consisting of Fathers Francis Lopez and John de Santa Maria, and himself, attended by ten soldiers and six Mexican Indians. After proceeding seven hundred miles, they found themselves among the tribe of Tehuas, who, unlike the Indians of the plains, lived in houses and dressed in cotton mantles. The soldiers now persisted in returning, but their departure seemed a less serious misfortune since the mission gave promise of success. So much so, indeed, that F. de Santa Maria was despatched to Mexico for auxiliaries, but on the third day out was surprised and killed by roving Indians. In an attack made on the Tehuas by their enemies not long after, F. Lopez fell by the hand of the assailants. Brother Rodriguez, left alone, subsequently fell a victim to his zeal in inveighing against the vices of those for whose conversion he was laboring; growing weary of his reproaches, they put him to death. Two other Franciscans in attendance on a subsequent expedition suffered the fate of martyrs, and thus the foundations of the New Mexican missions were laid in blood.
In 1597, Juan de Oñate led a colony to the Northern Rio Grande. Several Franciscans accompanied him, and the first Spanish post in this region, that of San Gabriel, was established. After a year, the commander sent a favorable report by the hands of two fathers and a lay-brother, who were returning to Mexico to solicit additional missionaries. One of the three, F. Christopher Salazar, died on the way, and was buried in the wilderness. The missionaries asked for were sent, five or six at one time, and six at another. So great was the success subsequently achieved that by the year 1608 eight thousand of the Indians of New Mexico had been baptized, and many of them were taught to read and write, before the Puritans set foot in New England (1620).
A report made to the crown in 1626 enumerates twenty-seven missions that had been established up to that time, six convents or residences, and four sumptuous churches built. Many of of these missions and residences, and three of the churches (those at Santa Fé, Pecos, and Jemez), are recognizable in the account of the diocese furnished in Sadliers’ Catholic Almanac for 1872. One of the missions was among the Zuñi, over against whose town of Cibola Friar Mark had planted his prophetic cross in 1539. The missionary at this post, F. John Letrado, lost his life in endeavoring to evangelize a neighboring tribe. F. Martin de Arbide perished in a like attempt.
Heaven itself seemed to come to the assistance of the missionaries by a miraculous intervention,[200] for a tribe which none of the fathers had previously met or visited was found fully instructed in Christian doctrine.
Some reverses occurred, owing to causes not clearly stated by Mr. Shea. They were probably due to the persistent hostility of the pagan portion of the population. In 1680, great devastations were committed by them, many missionaries were killed, and some churches destroyed which were never after rebuilt; but a period of comparative peace succeeded, which was disturbed finally only by the incursions of the Apaches. A mission was established among the latter in 1733, but without fruit. Nine years afterwards, some converts were made among the Moquis and Navojoes. A report among the United States Executive documents of 1854—and which corresponds with the statements published by Villaseñor, so long ago as 1748—bears testimony to the happy moral and industrial condition of the Christian Indians of New Mexico. The Puebla Indians, as they are now called, number in the diocese of Santa Fé 12,000.
The history of the missions of Texas need not greatly prolong our narrative. Shortly after the discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi by La Salle in 1691, who made no permanent settlement in Texas, the Spanish authorities sent thither a number of Franciscans. By them, eight missions were established, which prospered until a failure occurred in the crops which the Indians had been taught to raise. The cattle with which the missions had been stocked died at the same time, and moreover the soldiers, of whom there was a small guard at each post, had rendered themselves obnoxious to the natives. In consequence, the missions fell into decay. Their restoration began in 1717, and by 1746 they embraced posts among five different tribes. Visits were also made to the Osages and Missouris, in one of which expeditions a father lost his life and another was long retained as a prisoner.
The missions subsisted and flourished until 1812, when they were suppressed by the Spanish government. Even then, the Indians, though deprived of spiritual succor, remained faithful to the religious teachings they had received. Father Diaz was sent to them by the Bishop of Monterey, in 1832, and after laboring for a year at Nacogdoches, was killed by wandering Indians. Soon after this the whites began to pour into Texas, and by 1836 grew powerful enough to declare and to maintain the independence of the state. The demoralization and dispersion of the Indians followed, as a natural consequence. Father Timon, afterwards Bishop of Buffalo, was appointed in 1840 Prefect Apostolic of Texas, and, despatching thither Father Odin as Vice-Prefect, followed him shortly after. By an act of justice, of which modern governments rarely afford so striking an example, the old ecclesiastical property was restored to the church by the Texan legislature. Father Odin was made bishop in 1842, and his see became the diocese of Galveston in 1847, two years after the annexation of Texas to the United States. The biography of this eminent prelate (who subsequently became Archbishop of New Orleans), in Clarke’s Deceased Bishops, furnishes much interesting matter regarding the history of the church in Texas. The report of the diocese for 1871 supplies no information in regard to the Indian population, if indeed any Christians are still to be found among them within the limits of the state. Many relics remain of the churches, aqueducts, and other public works erected by the Franciscans and their neophytes during the prosperous period of the missions.
The first expedition to any portion of California, which was accompanied by missionaries, was that under Vizcaino, in 1596, to the peninsula, but no permanent footing was made at the time. In 1601, three Carmelite fathers visited that portion now included in the United States, and made a temporary stay, and no more, at what are now Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco. The Jesuits began their missions south of the Gila in 1642, and gradually extended them north, until, in 1697, they had entered the limits of our present territory. The success characteristic of their missions everywhere—for their failure in Florida was something abnormal—followed them here. All was proceeding well, when that extensive conspiracy arose in Europe against the Society which the history of the age subsequently shows to have been directed quite as much against the church as against the Jesuits. The King of Spain, having been drawn into the plot as other sovereigns were, ordered the Jesuits to be torn in a single day from all their missions throughout his wide domains. On the 3d of February, 1768, every Jesuit was carried off from California a prisoner. Accused of no crime, condemned without a trial, the missionaries were dragged from amid their neophytes, who in grief and consternation deplored their loss.