Part 14 (2/2)

When the American Government took over Arizona, San Xavier went under the diocese of New Mexico. From Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Tucson was 600 miles across desert mountains and canons, every foot of the way infested by Apache warriors; and the heroism of that trail was marked by the same courage and constancy as signalized the founding and maintenance of the other early Spanish Missions.

It would be a mistake to say that San Xavier has been restored.

Restoration implies innovation; and San Xavier stands to-day as it stood in the sixteen hundreds, when Father Kino, the famous mathematician and Jesuit from Bavaria, came wandering up from the Missions of Lower California, preaching to the Yumas and Pimas of the hot, smoking hot, Gila Desert, and held ma.s.s in Casa Grande, the Great House or Garden of Eden of the Indian's Morning Glow. A lucky thing it is that restoration did not imply change in San Xavier; for the Mission floats in the s.h.i.+mmering desert air, unearthly, eerie, unreal, a thing of beauty and dreams rather than latter day life, white as marble, twin-towered, roof domed and so dazzling in the sunlight to the unaccustomed eye that you somehow know why rows of restful, drowsy palms were planted in line along the front of the wall.

Perhaps it is that it comes on you as such a complete surprise. Perhaps it is the desert atmosphere in this cup of the mountains; but all the other missions of the Southwest are adobe gray, or earth color showing through a veneer of drab whitewash.

There is the giant, century-old desert cactus twisted and gnarled with age like the trees in Dante's Inferno, but with bird nests in the pillared trunks, where little wrens peck through the bark for water. You look again. A horseman has just dismounted beneath the shade of a fine old twisted oak; but beyond the oak the vision is there, glare, dazzling, white, twin-towered and arched, floating in mid-air, a vision of beauty and dreams.

Life seems to sleep at San Xavier. The mountains hemming in the valley seem to sleep. The s.h.i.+mmering blue valley sleeps. The sunlight sleeps against the glare white walls. The huge old mortised door to the church stands open, all silent and asleep. The door of the Mission parlor stands open--sunlight asleep on a checkered floor. You enter. Your footsteps have an echo of startling impudence--modern life jumping back into past centuries! You ring the gong. The sound stabs the sleeping silence, and you almost expect to see ghosts of Franciscan friar and Jesuit priest come walking along the arcaded pavement of the inner courtyard to ask you what all this modern noise is about; but no ghosts come. In fact, no one comes. San Xavier is all asleep. You cross through the parlor to the inner patio or courtyard, arched all around three sides with the fourth side looking through a wonderfully high arched gateway out to the far mountains. Polly turns on her perch in her cage, and goes back to sleep. The white Persian kitten frisks his white-plumed tail; and also turns over and goes to sleep. Two collie dogs don't even emit a ”woof.” They arch their pointed noses with the fine old aristocratic air of the unspoken question: what are you of the Twenty Century doing wandering back into the mystery and mysticism and quietude of the religious sixteen hundred? But if you keep on going, you will find the gentle-voiced sisterhood teaching the little Pimas and Papagoes in the schoolrooms.

San Xavier, architecturally, is sheer delight to the eye. The style is almost pure Moorish. The yard walls are arched in harmony with the arched outline of the roof; and in the inner courtyard you will notice the Spanish lion at the intersection of all the roof arches. In front of the Mission buildings is a walled s.p.a.ce of some sixty by forty feet, where the Indians used to a.s.semble for discussion of secular matters before wors.h.i.+p. On the front wall in high relief are placed the arms of St. Francis of a.s.sisi, and in the sacristry to the right of the altar you will find mural drawings and a painting of Saint Ignatius. Thus San Xavier claims as her founders and patrons both Franciscan and Jesuit.

This is easily explained. The Franciscans came up overland across the Desert from the City of Mexico. The Jesuits came up inland from their Mission on the Gulf of California. Father Kino, the Jesuit, from a Bavarian university, was the first missionary to hold services among the Pimas and Papagoes, and if he did not lay the foundations of San Xavier, then they were laid by his immediate successors. The escutcheon of the Franciscans on the wall is a twisted cord and a cross on which are nailed the arms of the Christ and the arm of St. Francis. The Christ arm is bare. The Franciscan's arm is covered.

Unlike other Missions built of adobe, San Xavier is of stone and brick.

It is 100 by thirty feet. The transept on each side of the nave runs out twenty-one feet square. The roof above the nave is supported by groined arches from door to altar. The cupola above the altar is fifty feet to the dome. The other vaults are only thirty feet high. The windows are high in the clearstory and set so deeply in the cas.e.m.e.nt that the light falling on the mural paintings and fresco work is sifted and softened.

Practically all the walls, cupola, dome, transept, nave, are covered with mural paintings. There is the coming of the Spirit to the Disciples. There is the Last Supper. There is the Conception. There is the Rosary. There is the Hidden Life of the Lord.

The main altar has evidently been constructed by the Jesuits; for the statue of St. Francis Xavier stands below the Virgin between figures of St. Peter and St. Paul and G.o.d, the Creator. On the groined arches of the dome are figures of the Wise Men, the Flight to Egypt, the Shepherds, the Annunciation. Gilded arabesques colored in Moorish sh.e.l.l tints adorn the main altar. Statues of the saints stand in the alcoves and niches of the pillars and vaults. Two small doors lead up to the towers from the main door. Look well at these doors and stairways. Not a nail has been driven. The doors are mortised of solid pieces. The first flight of stairs leads to the choir. Around the choir are more mural paintings. Two more twists of the winding stair; and you are in the belfry. Twenty-two more steps bring you to the summit of the tower--a galleried cupola, seventy-five feet above the ground, where you may look out on the whole world.

Pause for a moment, and look out. The mountains s.h.i.+mmer in their pink mists. The sunlight sleeps against the adobe walls of the scattered Indian house. You can hear the drone of the children from the schoolrooms behind the Mission. You can see the mortuary chapel down to the right and the lions supporting the arches of the Mission roof.

Father Kino was a famous European scholar and gentleman. He threw aside scholars.h.i.+p. He threw aside comfort. He threw aside fame; and he came to found a Mission amid arabs of the American Desert. The hands that wrought these paintings on the walls were not the hands of bunglers.

They were the hands of artists, who wrought in love and devotion. Three times, San Xavier was dyed in martyr blood by Indian revolt.

Priests, whose names even have been lost in the chronicles, were murdered on the altars here, thrown down the stairs, cut to pieces in their own Mission yard. Before a death which they coveted as glory, what a life they must have led. To Tucson Mission was nine miles; but to Tumacacori was eighty; to Old Mexico, 900. Occasionally, they had escort of twelve soldiers for these long trips; but the soldiers' vices made so much trouble for the holy fathers that the missionaries preferred to travel alone, or with only a lay brother. Sandaled missionaries tramped the cactus desert in June, when the heat was at its height; and they traversed the mountains when winter snows filled all the pa.s.ses. They have not even left annals of their hards.h.i.+ps. You know that in such a year, Father Kino tramped from the Gulf of California to the Gila, and from the Gila to the Rio Grande. You know in such another year, nineteen priests were slain in one day. On such another date, a missionary was thrown over a precipice; or slain on the high altar of San Xavier. And always, the priests opposed the outrages of the soldiery, the injustice of the ruling rings. Father Kino pet.i.tions the royal house of Spain in 1686 that converts be not forcibly seized and ”dragged off to slavery in the mines, where they were buried alive and seldom survived the abuse.”

He gets a respite from the King for all converts for twenty years. He does not permit converts to be taken as slaves in the mines or slaves in the pearl fisheries; so the ruling rings of Old Mexico obstruct his enterprises, lie about his Missions, slander him to the patrons who supply him with money, and often reduce his missions to desperate straits; but wherever there is a Mission, Father Kino sees to it that there are a few goats. The goats supply milk and meat.

The fathers weave their own clothing, grow their own food, and hold the fort against the enemy as against the subtle designs of the Devil. These fathers mix their own mortar, make their own bricks, cut their own beams, lay the plaster with their own hands. Now, remember that the priests who did all this were men who had been artists, who had been scholars, who had been court favorites of Europe. Father Kino was, himself, of the royal house of Bavaria. But jealousy left the Missions unprotected by the soldiers. Soldier vices roused the Indians to fury; and the priests were the first to fall victims. Go across the Moki Desert. You will find peach orchards planted by the friars; but you cannot find the graves of the dead priests. We considered the Apaches a dangerous lot as late as 1880. In 1686, in 1687, in 1690, Father Kino crossed Apache land alone. I cannot find any record of the Spanish Missions at this period ever receiving more than $15,000 a year for their support. Ordinarily, a missionary's salary was about $150 a year.

Out of that, if he employed soldiers, he must pay their wages and keep.

Well, by and by, the jealousy of the governing ring, kept from abusing the Indians by the priests, brought about the expulsion of the Jesuits.

The Franciscans took up the work where the Jesuits left off. Came another political upheaval. The Franciscans were driven out. San Xavier's broken windows blew to the rains and winds of the seven heavens. Cowboys, outlaws, sheep herders, housed beneath mural paintings and frescoes that would have been the pride of a European palace. Came American occupation; and San Xavier was--not restored--but redeemed. It was completely cleaned out and taken over by the church as a Mission for the Indians.

To-day, no one wors.h.i.+ps in San Xavier but the little Indian scholars.

Look at the drawings of Christ, of the Virgin, of the Wise Men! Look at the dreams of faith wrought into the aged and beautiful walls!

Frankly--let us be brutally frank and truthful, was it all worth while?

Wouldn't Kino have done better to have continued to grace the courts of Bavaria?

In the old days, Pima and Papago roped their wives as in a hunt, and if the fancy prompted, abused them to death. On the walls of San Xavier is the Annunciation to the Virgin, another view of birth and womanhood. In the old days, the Indians killed a child at birth, if they didn't want it. On the walls of San Xavier are pictured the wise men adoring a Child. Spanish rings and trusts wanted little slaves of industry as American rings and trusts want them to-day. Behold a Christ upon the walls setting free the slaves! Was it all worth while? It depends on your point of view and what you want. Though the winds of the seven heavens blew through San Xavier for seventy years and bats habited the frescoed arches, it stands to-day as it stood two centuries ago, a thing unearthly, of visions and dreams; pointing the way, not to gain, but to goodness; making for a little s.p.a.ce of time on a little s.p.a.ce of Desert earth what a peaceful heaven life might be.

THE END

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