St Josephs Academy - La Lumiere Yearbook (Prescott, AZ)

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■ PATRON AND GUARDIAN OF OUR SCHOOL

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 Quoted in Part from Father Eusebio Francisco Kino By DEAN F. C. LOCKWOOD, Ph.D. of the University of Arizona In his remarkable volumes, “Kino's Historical Memoirs of Primeria-Alta, Professor Herbert E. Bolton has disclosed in firm, clear outline one of the great characters in American history. The figure of Father Kino had loomed there in indistinct outline for two centuries; but it required the skill and devotion of a great modern scholar to reveal his truly monu- mental character. Father Kino now stands before us in solid reality as a religious genius, a saintly missionary, a mighty spiritual captain—most potent individual and one of the most worthy in the civilization of the Southwest. April 28. 1700, Father Kino writes: “On the twenty-eighth we began the foundations of a very large and capacious church and house of San Xavier del Bac, all the many people working with much pleasure and zeal, some in digging for the foundations, others in hauling many and very good stones of 'tezontle' from a little hill which was about a quarter of a league away. For the mortar for these foundations it was not necessary to haul water, because by means of the irrigation ditches we very easily conducted the water where we wished. And that house, with its great court and garden nearby, will be able to have throughout the year all the water it may need, running to any place or workroom one may please, and one of the greatest and best fields in all Nucva Biscaya.” Father Kino was a tireless traveler. For the most part, he made his journeys over those arid and savage deserts on horseback or muleback. Usually he was attended by a pack-train of forty, or fifty, or even a larger number of horses and mules from his own well-stocked ranches. Some- times he was given a smaller military escort—a captain or a lieutenant and a few soldiers: sometimes one or two of his fellow priests would go with him. Frequently, however, he had no other companions than his Indian servants. Often he took entirely untrodden routes and they sometimes led into very wild and dangerous places. The secret of successful travel on the parched deserts of southwestern Arizona is to know where the water holes are, and to be within striking distance of a new one before the old one is allowed to slip beyond reach. However urgent the journey may be, a good siesta for the servants in some spot where there is pasturage for the animals and water for both man and beast is a thing much to be desired. For example. Father Kino writes on a certain day—October the 11th— that he dispatched the servants with the relay “that they might go on to take their siesta and wait for me wherever they should come across good pasturage for the pack animals. We arrived before sunset at the Tank of La Luna and, because this watering-place is amongst some rocks so high that the pack animals can not ascend to drink water, we determined to eat a morsel of supper there and then travel, and we did travel three hours more by night, in order to reach the watering-place of Carrizal with more ease the following day. On the 12th, arising more than two hours before dawn, and setting out from the stopping-place at the rising of the morning star, after thirteen leagues of very good roads, we arrived at ten o’clock at the good watering-place of El Carrizal. ... I said Mass: we breakfasted, and after eating dinner we took a very good siesta: and after eight leagues journey farther we arrived at eight o’clock at night at the rancheria and ranch of San Marzelo.” It is Father Kino’s celerity and endurance that amaze one. On various expeditions, for a month or more at a time, he would average from twenty- Pape 22