The Log Chapel On The Rappahannock.
Erected A.D. 1570—The First Christian Shrine In The Old Dominion.
Virginia is proud of her antiquity. She assumes the title of Old Dominion; she was long styled the Mother of Presidents. But really her antiquity is greater than many know. Before the English settlers landed on the shores of the James, Stephen Gomez and other Spanish navigators had entered the waters of the Chesapeake and consecrated that noble sheet of water to the Virgin daughter of David's line, as the Bay of St. Mary, or the Bay of the Mother of God.
The soldier of the cross followed hard on the steps of the explorer. As early as in 1536 St. Mary's Bay is laid down on Spanish maps. Oviedo mentions it in 1537, and from that time pilots ranged the coast, David Glavid, an Irishman, being recorded as one who knew it best. All agree as to its latitude, its two capes, the direction of the bay, and the rivers entering into it, identifying beyond all peradventure our modern Chesapeake with the St. Mary's Bay of the early Spanish explorers. Though his attention was called to it, the latest historian of Virginia, misled by a somewhat careless guide, robs his State of the glory which we claim for her. The sons of S. Dominic first planted the cross on the shores of the Chesapeake, and bore away to civilized shores the brother of the chief of Axacan or Jacan, a district not far from the Potomac. Reaching Mexico, this chief attracted the notice of Don Luis de Velasco, the just, upright, disinterested Viceroy of New Spain—one of those model rulers who, amid a population spurred on by a fierce craving for wealth, never bent the knee to Mammon, but lived so poor that he died actually in debt. This good man had the Virginian chief instructed in the Christian faith, and, when his dispositions seemed to justify the belief in his sincerity and faith, the chieftain of the Rappahannock was baptized, amid all the pomp and splendor [pg 848] of Mexico, in the cathedral of that city, the viceroy being his god-father, and bestowing upon him his own name, Don Luis de Velasco, by which the Virginia chief is always styled in Spanish annals.
Meanwhile, Coligny's French Huguenots attempted to settle Florida, but their colony, which was doomed to early extinction from its very material and utter want of religious organization or any tie but a mere spirit of adventure, was crushed with ruthless cruelty by Pedro Melendez, a brave but stern Spanish navigator and warrior, in whose eyes every Frenchman on the sea was a pirate. Soon after accomplishing his bloody work, which left Spain in full possession of the southern Atlantic coast, Melendez, who had sent out vessels to explore the coast, began his preparations for occupying St. Mary's Bay. The form of the northern continent was not then known; much indeed of the eastern coast had been explored, but so little was the line of the western coast understood that on maps and globes the Pacific was shown as running nearly into the Atlantic coast, as may be seen in a curious copper globe possessed by the New York Historical Society, but which once belonged to Pope Marcellus II. Believing that the Chesapeake, by the rivers running into it, would easily lead to the western ocean, Melendez spent the winter of 1565 studying out the subject with the aid of Don Luis de Velasco and Father Urdaneta, a missionary just arrived from China by the overland route across Mexico. Combining all the information, he was led to believe that, by ascending for eighty leagues a river flowing into the bay, it was necessary only to cross a mountain range to find two arms of the sea, one leading to the French at Newfoundland, the other to the Pacific. To many this will seem wild; but it is evident that Don Luis referred to the great trail leading from the Huron country through the territory of the Five Nations to the land of the Andastes on the Susquehanna, by which the last-named tribe sold furs on the upper lakes, which went down to the French at Brest on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, while the upper lakes were the arm of the sea stretching westward, as was supposed, to China. An adventurous Frenchman, Stephen Brulé, some few years later followed this trail from the St. Lawrence to the Susquehanna. Melendez, however, misinterpreted it. To his mind the upper waters of the Chesapeake, the Potomac and Susquehanna, then known as the Espiritu Santo and Salado, were to be the great carrying place of eastern trade.
Anxious to secure for his own country so important a pass, Melendez, in 1566, despatched to St. Mary's Bay a vessel bearing thirty soldiers and two Dominican Fathers to begin a station in Axacan or Jacan, near the Chesapeake. These pioneers of the faith were escorted or guided by Don Luis de Velasco. Of these missionaries we seek in vain the names. Perhaps their fellow-religious now laboring on the banks of the Potomac will be stimulated to trace up these early labors of the sons of S. Dominic; though we must admit that Spanish chronicles do not speak of them with praise. In fact, they assert that these missionaries, corrupted by an easy life in Peru, had no taste for a laborious mission in Virginia, though perhaps they learned the real state of affairs in that land, and, taught by Father Cancer's fate, felt that the attempt would be fatal [pg 849] to all. Certain it is that the whole party took alarm. They forced the captain to weigh anchor, and, leaving the capes on either hand, steer straight to Spain. The Dominican missions in Spanish Florida, which began with the glorious epic of Father Cancer's devoted heroism, closed with this feeble effort to plant the Gospel on the shores of the Chesapeake; yet they, too, like the earlier discoverers, undoubtedly consecrated to Mary and the Rosary the land which in its names, Virginia and Maryland, yet recalls the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the bay was first consecrated.
Four years later saw Melendez himself in Spain, full of his projects, and bent on carrying them out. The sons of S. Ignatius Loyola, full of the early vigor of their institute, were in Florida. The new mission, begun in 1566, had already a martyr in Father Peter Martinez, of Celda, in the Diocese of Saragossa, who was shipwrecked on the coast, and put to death by the Indians not far from St. Augustine. It had its devoted laborers in Father John Rogel, of Pamplona, Father Sedeño, and Brother Villareal, who sought to win to Christ the Indians near St. Augustine and Port Royal, and who had established an Indian school at Havana to help the great work, Brother Baez being the first to compile a grammar. To extend these missions as far as the Chesapeake was a subject which Melendez laid before S. Francis Borgia, then recently made general of the order, after having acted as commissary of the Spanish missions. A letter of S. Pius V. encouraged Melendez, and with the co-operation of these two saints the projected mission to the Chesapeake took form at last. Perhaps some of the clergy in Maryland and Virginia remember the personal interest of these saints in the field where they are now laboring; but we fear that the fact has been forgotten. Let us trust that more than one church of S. Pius V. will be monuments of his interest in the land where the next pope that bore his name established the first episcopal see on the coast—that of Baltimore—and religion has taken such gigantic steps under the fostering care of Popes Pius VII. and Pius IX.
When the founder of Florida was thus earnestly engaged in Spain in promoting the spiritual welfare of the colony, Don Luis de Velasco, the Virginian chief, was still beyond the Atlantic, a grave, intelligent man of fifty, well versed in Spanish affairs, to all appearance a sincere and correct Christian and a friend of the Spaniards. With every mark of joy he offered to return to his native land of Axacan, and there do all in his power to further the labors of the missionaries who should be sent to instruct his brother's tribe. So powerful a coadjutor was welcomed by all, and ere long Don Luis stood on the deck of a staunch Spanish ship, with a band of Jesuits destined to reinforce those already laboring on the Florida mission. This pious party consisted of Father Luis de Quiros, a native of Xerez de la Frontera, in Andalusia, with Brothers Gabriel Gomez, of Granada, and Sancho de Zevallos, of Medina de Rio Seco, all selected for the great work by S. Francis Borgia himself. In November the vessel anchored before the Spanish fort Santa Elena, which stood on the island of South Carolina's famous Port Royal, that still bears the name of the sainted mother of Constantine.
The Jesuit mission of Florida had been erected into a vice-province [pg 850] under Father John Baptist Segura. This estimable religious was a native of Toledo, who had, while pursuing his theological course of study, entered the Society of Jesus at Alcalà on the 9th of April, 1566. S. Francis, who knew him well, entertained the highest esteem for Segura's virtues and personal merit, and took him from the rectorship of the College of Vallisoleta in 1568 to assume the direction of the vice-province of Florida. For two years had he labored with sad discouragement in the forbidding field among the Floridian tribes, cheered by letters of his superiors rather than by any hope of success that as yet seemed to dawn on his exertions.
He was at Santa Elena when Father Quiros arrived, bearing the instructions for the establishment of the new mission on the shores of the Chesapeake.