Contents
Foreword
Preface
Jesuit Foundations
Gray Robes for Black 1767-68
The Archreformer Backs Down 1768-72
Tumacácori or Troy? 1772-74
The Course of Empire 1774-76
The Promise and Default of the Provincias Internas 1776-81
The Challenge of a Reforming Bishop 1781-95
A Quarrel Among Friars 1795-1808
"Corruption Has Come Among Us" 1808-20
A Trampled Guarantee 1820-28
Hanging On 1828-56
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
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EVER SINCE 1701 when the Jesuit explorer Eusebio
Francisco Kino crossed the lower Colorado in a man-sized Indian storage
basket lashed to a raft and spent the night on the opposite bank,
overland communication and supply between Sonora and California had been
a goal of frontier promoters and imperial strategists. A generation
later Captain Juan Bautista de Anza the elder pledged to explore the
Colorado and beyond. In the 1740s Father Jacobo Sedelmayr had exchanged
gifts with the Yumas. But not until Russians and Englishmen supplied the
requisite threat did the Spanish government move.
In 1768 José de Gálvez had arrived on
the scene convinced that he could transform barren Baja California into
a base for the occupation of Alta California. But the peninsula beat
him. To nourish San Diego and Monterey would require supply by sea more
than a thousand miles up the Pacific coast against prevailing
currentsor a road overland from Sonora. [1]
On their march north to San Diego soldiers of Gaspar
de Portolá's contingent had startled some Indians. Word of the
encounter, of "white men with long clothing and a wooden thing also long
with iron on top," passed from tribe to tribe eastward across the
desert. Anza the younger heard about it at Tubac and Father
Garcés while trekking westward from San Xavier. [2] Both the captain and the friar recognized the
importby retracing the route this news had traveled one could
intersect the trail of Portolá's men and link Nueva California
with Sonora. The friar took the initiative.
Anza thought Garcés a fool to wander alone and
unprotected among the heathens. Worse, this simple rustic from Spain who
had such confidence in his ability to get along with Indians could
inadvertently stir up the tribes or get himself killed. Anza had enough
to worry about without a roving apostle.
The veteran captain of Tubac further resented the
friar's constant meddling in military affairs, his recommendations
concerning presidial locations and strategy. Move the Tubac and
Terrenate garrisons forward, urged Garcés, carry the war to the
Apaches and stop hiding behind the missions, open the Gila route to
California and New México, drive off Englishman and Russian. The
missionary defended himself. It was not so strange, he averred in a
letter to Viceroy Bucareli, "that a poor friar should involve himself in
these matters, since they all pertain to the preservation of my pueblos
and to the service of both Majesties which we all should promote."
The way Anza felt about the missions, or professed to
feel late in 1772 when he branded them useless, prejudicial, and
tyrannical, must have affected his relations with Garcés and the
other friars. Even the two soldiers stationed at San Xavier proved a
source of friction. Fray Francisco thought the military, not his poor
mission, should provision them. Anza disagreed and threatened to recall
them. Garcés complained to Bucareli. [3]
At the same time, the road to California drew them
together. It stirred Captain Anza's family pride and offered him a
dramatic opportunity to serve the crown and win promotion. Father
Garcés, by his well-publicized wanderings, had shown the way to
the Colorado: the Indians on its banks were friendly, the river
fordable, Monterey only days beyond. It was the lonely labor of
Garcés, the Franciscans proclaimed, that inspired Anza to propose
an expedition. [4] Viceroy Bucareli took a
personal interest. He fussed when copies of the Garcés diaries
did not reach him promptly. High-level hearings, reports, and more
reports followed, and finally viceregal approval. Anza and Garcés
with a small pilot expedition would attempt to open the road. [5]
Anza had no trouble filling his quota of twenty
volunteers from the Tubac garrison. In December, 1773, the proud,
Sonora-born frontier officer rode to the mining boomtown of Cieneguilla
to meet the Spaniard who had been appointed interim governor of the
province, Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Antonio Crespo. To cover for the
men he was taking with him Anza wanted twenty replacements, presidials,
not raw recruits. Crespo complied. He had orders from the viceroy.
Besides, detaching men from existing garrisons saved the crown the
additional cost of recruits. [6]
Even with Governor Crespo's support Captain Anza had
to forage for provisions and animalspinole, flour, beans, tools,
ammunition (to be used only in self-defense), glass beads and tobacco
for the heathens, 65 beef cattle, 140 riding horses, and enough pack
mules. The plan was to proceed north to San Xavier and leave from there
with Father Garcés and his Gila Pima friends leading the way over
a route he had already traveled. It miscarried.
On January 2, 1774, four days before the date set for
departure, a large Apache raiding party with an unerring scent for
horseflesh galloped down on the Tubac caballada. "Even though the guard
defended it with the utmost vigor and courage," wrote Anza, "they could
not prevent them from stealing some one hundred and thirty animals."
If the friars were discreet, they kept their
sarcastic observations to themselves. Anza was in no mood. The plan had
to be changed. The column, mounted on what animals were left, would head
southwest for the Altar Valley in hopes of recouping the lost animals on
the way. [7] That, Garcés pointed out,
meant a detour of fifty-two leagues, some one hundred and thirty-five
miles.
Saturday, January 8, swearing mingled with blessings,
friars with muleteers. Dogs, children, and chickens scurried, keeping
barely out from under foot. They were about to set forth. That morning
all the participants jammed into the Tubac church: Anza and his twenty
presidials, looking as much like regulars in His Majesty's service as
they ever would, one California soldier sent by Bucareli to show the way
from San Diego to Monterey, an interpreter who knew Piman, an Indian
carpenter, five muleteers, two of Anza's servants, and two friars. As a
companion for Garcés, Father President Ramos had chosen gritty
Fray Juan Díaz, survivor of almost six years among the unruly
natives of Caborca. Moreover, Díaz' hand was legible, he knew
something of astronomical observation, and he could draw a map. The
thirty-fourth member of the expedition, Sebastián Tarabal, an
Indian runaway from San Gabriel in California, who had just made the
crossing from west to east, would join them at Altar, "one of those rare
occurrences that Providence bestows."
Three more friars assisted at Mass that morning,
Tumacácori's Clemente and Moreno, and another member of the
mission of 1769, Fray Juan Gorgoll, who since 1772 had served as
compañero to Díaz at Caborca. Tall, red-faced, with a
small wart on his nose, Gorgoll would fill in for Garcés at San
Xavier.
The congregation heard the Holy Trinity and the
Blessed Virgin Mary in her Immaculate Conception proclaimed as guardians
of the expedition. After Mass, Tubac resembled a mob scene. By one
o'clock the column had formed up. According to Father Díaz, "a
vigorous volley and repeated 'Vivas' well manifested the joy at the
auspicious beginning of a journey which may yield such glory to God,
happiness to souls, and honor, merit, and luster to our Catholic
monarch." [8]
They camped that first night almost within sight of
the presidio, a league north at the ford where the road to San Xavier
crossed the meandering river. Next day, skirting round the craggy
Tumacácoris they struck southwest for Arivaca, site of the visita
destroyed in the Pima revolt of 1751.
Twenty weeks later they were back. They had seen the
Pacific. They had done it, linked Sonora with California overland. In
Mexico City, Viceroy Bucareli exulted.
Although don Juan Bautista de Anza, father of the
present Anza. . . suggested the plan, its execution was reserved by
Providence for his son. ... I consider the merit of this officer
deserving of a reward.
He recommended a lieutenant-colonelcy, and for "each
of the soldiers who so faithfully accompanied him in this prodigious
undertaking" a life-long monthly pay raise. [9]
Ex-Texas governor Hugo O'Conor, "capitán
colorado" the Indians called him because of his ruddy Irish face and
his red hair, was not that interested in a link between Sonora and
California. More important to the defense-minded
comandante-inspector of all the presidios was the location of
Tubac's garrison.
The royal presidial Reglamento of 1772, a
result of the Marqués de Rubi's general inspection of 1766-1768,
called for a realignment of the cordon from the Gulf of Mexico to the
Gulf of California. The invading barbariansmainly
Apachesmust be turned back. That task absorbed O'Conor, as well it
might have, but in the opinion of expansionists it limited his vision.
If he moved a presidio, it was to place it and the line in a more
effective defensive posture, not to expand the empire. That he left to
Viceroy Bucareli. [10]
The red captain applied himself first to the central
and eastern sectors of the frontier, reforming the line and chasing
hostiles. [11] In 1774 from his headquarters
in Chihuahua he sent an advance man to Sonora, Deputy Inspector Antonio
de Bonilla, who reached Tubac in May just before Captain Anza was due in
from California.
Eager to get on with his business, the widely
traveled young staff officer sent a half dozen Tubac soldiers to
intercept Anza. At Tucson before daylight on May 26 they handed their
captain an order to report immediately. What was so urgent? They could
not say. So Anza, the six soldiers, and Father Díaz, who assured
them that he could keep up, rode light for Tubac, fifty miles, and
reined up in front of the captain's quarters at sunset. The rest of the
weary caravan made its appearance amid vivas, dust, and tears next day
at noon. Whether the officious Bonilla joined them in the church for a
Mass of thanksgiving no one said.
A spit-and-polish regular army man, Bonilla deplored
the unmilitary disarray he found on the Sonora frontier. In his general
report, which Governor Crespo labeled a pack of extreme exaggerations,
he painted a uniformly dismal picture. He degraded the troops and
depreciated the enemy. How could the ragged presidial, ill-armed,
ill-trained, abused by his officers, hope to defeat the Apache? Only by
discipline, subordination, and training. After all, an army was only as
good as its discipline.
Deployment, too, exercised the deputy inspector.
Though the Reglamento left the site for Tubac's garrison open to
further study, the Marqués de Rubí had suggested the
valley of Arivaca, scene of Bernardo de Urrea's great victory over the
Pima rebels in 1752. Bonilla disagreed. He described the valley eight
leagues west of Tubac as "large but marshy and unhealthful," better for
horses than men. The only advantage he saw was that the silver mines in
the area, "La Longoreña, La Dura, etc.," could be worked again.
On the other hand, "the Tubac settlement and the mission of
Tumacácori will be utterly helpless and without a prayer, and
they will be depopulated as soon as the presidio is transferred to
Arivaca."
Captain Anza gave Bonilla something more to think
about. To protect the newly opened route to Alta California the western
anchor of the presidial cordon should be set at the junction of the
Colorado and Gila Rivers, well above the Rubí line. Therefore, to
keep the new line from sagging, Tubac too should move north. Though
Bonilla would recommend Santa Cruz, site of an abandoned
Sobáipuri ranchería in the San Pedro Valley near
present-day Fairbank, he left the ultimate decision to
Comandante-Inspector O'Conor. [12]
Anza was impatient. Bonilla's presence galled him. He
knew a hero's welcome awaited him in Mexico City. While the deputy
inspector counted lances and shields and muskets, Anza set Fray Juan
Díaz to drawing a map, a graphic record of "what we have
accomplished." He meant to present it and the diaries to Bucareli in
person, as the viceroy had ordered. Finally Bonilla left. Thank God. But
a few days later, a courier rode in with "an urgent and secret order"
for Captain Anza. He could scarcely believe it. The inspector was
summoning him to Terrenate. Now what?
Taking none of his papers, Anza rode the forty-five
miles to Terrenate only to find himself placed in temporary command. The
unruly Joseph Antonio de Vildósola had been sacked. Bonilla
instructed Anza to maintain proper military order until a replacement
could be sent. Did he have any idea what the road to California meant to
Viceroy Bucareli? But it was no use. On June 8, 1774, a dejected Anza
wrote the viceroy from Terrenate. [13] For
two months he would be stranded there.
Bucareli fumed. How dare they? At once he wrote
Commandant-Inspector O'Conor and the governor of Sonora. Let Captain
Anza go immediately. "There is no project of greater importance in this
province today than the one Anza has just executed with such care." [14] The viceroy had ordered him to Mexico City
and come he would. Who did Bonilla think he was? By the end of August,
at the height of the rainy season when travel was worst, Anza finally
hit the road south. That same month Father
Garcés had shown up at Tumacácori to ask a favor. Would
Fathers Clemente and Moreno mind copying in a legible hand the last
section of his diary? They agreed, dividing the task between them even
though Moreno was the better penman. Garcés had problems enough
trying to make out his own notes.
Anza had left Garcés May 21 in a Cocomaricopa
ranchería. Because the viceroy had asked the college to
investigate the possibility of direct communications between New Mexico
and California, Garcés intended to send a letter to the friars of
New Mexico from the Gila via intervening tribes. When the Indians on the
Gila who were warring with the Yavapais refused to take the letter, he
had ridden alone and trusting northwest to the Halchidhomas. These
people lived above the Yumas on the Colorado and maintained friendly
intercourse with both Yavapais and Hopis. He ascended the river for
several days, gave the letter to an old Halchidhoma, and headed back
convinced that the best route to Monterey lay well north of Anza's. [15]
The captain would present the diary to Bucareli. But
because Garcés did not trust Anza he wrote the viceroy himself
from Tumacácori, August 17, 1774. Anza had assured him in front
of witnesses that he favored founding at least seven or eight new
missions. What story he would tell at court though, Garcés did
not know, since he says something different in different company." [16]
The people of Tubac and Tumacácori could
scarcely believe it. The governor of the province here? Not likely. The
Seri wars, administration, and roaming Apaches had long kept the Spanish
governors of Sonora in the south. But Lieutenant Colonel Francisco
Antonio Crespo, career officer of the infantry regiment of Granada, was
of a different stripe. He would see the northern Pimería and the
Río Gila for himself. He would teach the barbaric Apaches a
lesson, by God.
While the redoubtable governor chased shadows to the
north with half the Tubac garrison, a reported two hundred and fifty to
three hundred Apaches attacked the presidial caballada at dawn November
18, 1774, taking fifty-five head and gravely wounding an Indian
auxiliary. That night they came again, but to no avail. The herd had
been driven inside the walls of the presidio and the twenty-six soldiers
reinforced by settlers. [17]
A week later, while Captain Anza belatedly relished
the adulation reserved for heroes at the court of México,
Governor Crespo addressed Comandante Inspector O'Conor from the crude
adobe presidio of Tubac.
Desirous of acquiring a clear knowledge of this
frontier and its environs, and of punishing the enemy in some
rancherías which I was told are near the confluence of the San
Pedro and Gila Rivers, I decided to set out for those places the 13th of
this month. Even though I did not succeed in the second objective
through the bad luck of being seen before I arrived by some Indians who
were out hunting, I consider it imperative to report to Your Lordship my
thoughts about that country and the new discovery of Monterey which
might necessitate changing the placement of . . . presidios.
Father Garcés had briefed the governor
thoroughly. The Tubac garrison should be transferred north a hundred
miles to the confluence of the San Pedro and the Gila, near today's
Winkelman, right on the Apaches' doorstep. If the hostiles tried to pass
to the west, the Gila Pimas and the Pápagos would pick them
upthe Gila Pima governor had in fact led a delegation to Tubac to
boast of recently having killed twenty of the enemy.
Terrenate should move north thirty-five miles down
the San Pedro Valley to Santa Cruz, Bonilla's choice for Tubac.
Fronteras, farther east, would be placed just where the
Reglamento prescribed, at San Bernardino within sight of the
Chiricahua Mountains. All needed bigger garrisons. Placed thus they
could block three major Apache raiding trails and eventually harry the
enemy out of the land. The governor felt obliged to report his thoughts
to O'Conor "before the physical construction of presidios is begun." [18]
At Altar in mid-December Crespo set down for Viceroy
Bucareli his feelings about the second, larger overland expedition to
California being planned at court. He favored the more northerly route
crossing the Colorado above the Yumas and thence directly to Monterey,
the route Garcés thought best. His talk with the Gila Pimas had
convinced him that they should have two missions immediately. He agreed
that the Yuma crossing and the port of San Francisco had to be secured,
but before taking settlers. So much for the road to California opened by
Juan Bautista de Anza. Governor Crespo now made his own bid for
glory.
From the Río Colorado, "according to reports
and to conjectures of the Reverend Father Garcés," by traveling
north and east one could follow the route of Indian trade goods to the
Hopi pueblos and to New Mexico. "I think it desirable that on the return
from Monterey these new explorations should be undertaken . . . even if
the results we hope for are not realized, a great deal of knowledge of
those countries will result." Soldiers, an engineer or two, a surgeon,
and of course Father Garcés, should go. Though modesty prevented
him from requesting command of the enterprise for himself, he made it
clear to the viceroy that he, Francisco Antonio Crespo, stood ready. [19]
The ruddy Gaspar de Clemente and his shorter, pale,
and pock-marked compañero Joseph Matías Moreno kept up
their ministry at Tumacácori and Tubac throughout the eventful
year of 1774. They made do on a single three hundred and fifty-peso
stipend. Fortunately the harvests were better. Between them that year
they baptized twenty-nine personsPimas and Pápagos in the
two surviving pueblos, gente de razón from Tubac, several of the
Indian slaves known as Níjoras traded in the Pimería by
the natives of the Gila or Colorado, even a couple of Apache children
taken earlier "in just war" by Captain Anza. [20] By early 1775 both friars had left
Tumacácori.
Clemente, not yet thirty, had lasted two years and
several months; he apparently went back to the college, his health
broken. For some fifteen or sixteen years he lived the ascetic,
disciplined routine within its walls, then dropped from the rolls.
Moreno, also listed as accidentado at one stage, stayed in the missions.
[21] He labored at Caborca, and with Fray
Pedro Font built the stocky, vaulted church at San Diego de Pitiquito.
[22] In 1780 he joined Fray Juan Díaz
on the Río Colorado. Less than a year later he, Díaz,
Garcés, and a fourth friar died in the Yuma massacre.
The two young missionaries who took over at
Tumacácori early in 1775 had both seen an Indian before. Fray
Pedro Antonio de Arriquibar had spent a year in Baja California, Fray
Tomás Eixarch about the same length of time in Texas.
Almost thirty, chunky and full in the face,
Arriquibar was a Basque born in the parish of Santa María
Ceánuri two or three hours' ride southeast of Bilbao on the
highroad to Vitoria. "The terrain . . . is hilly and broken with very
sparse meadows; in general it is of poor quality and would produce
little or nothing were it not for the unceasing labor of the
inhabitants." [23] Dense oak growth, clear
streams, wooden bridges, apples, rain and humidity, every shade of
greenthe scene of his youth could hardly have contrasted more with
the desert Pimería where Fray Pedro was destined to spend the
remainder of his lifeforty-five years.
Arriquibar had entered the Franciscan novitiate in
Bilbao at seventeen. Seven years later in Aránzazu he volunteered
for the missionary college of San Fernando in Mexico City. Since 1769 he
had traveled perhaps ten thousand milesfrom the north of Spain to
México, from there to Baja California with delays and
digressions, then in 1772 when the Dominicans took over, back to Mexico
City, in 1774 by transfer to the Querétaro college, and finally
to Tumacácori where he hung his broad-brimmed gray hat at least
as early as February, 1775. [24]
Tomás Eixarch, thirty-one, had black hair,
black eyes, and a sallow complexion. He stood no more than 5 feet 2
inches. His hometown, the villa of Liria northwest of the Mediterranean
port city of Valencia, reposed in a nearly flat agricultural belt. The
weather was temperate and generally clear. In 1759 fifteen-year-old
Tomás from "the delicious, happy, and fruitful countryside of
Liria" was received into the Order of Friars Minor in Valencia. Ten
years hence he sailed with the mission for the college of
Querétaro. By 1772 he was in Texas, compañero to a veteran
missionary at San Juan Capistrano in the San Antonio cluster. Later that
year when the Queretarans gave up their Texas missions he traveled back
to the college, only to set out again in 1774 for Sonora. At
Tumacácori he ranked his portly Basque compañero. [25]
In May, 1775, less than a year since his previous
inspection, Father Visitor Antonio Ramos dismounted once again at
Tumacácori. There were abrazos. Fray Antonio and Fray
Tomás had been neighbors in Texas. The new Franciscan commissary
general for New Spain, Fray Antonio Fernández, had called for a
progress report on the missions administered by the college of
Querétaro. What was their population now? Had there been any
spiritual progress among the Indians since the friars took over? Any
increase in temporalities?
Ninety-one Indians, Pimas and Pápagos, resided
at Tumacácori, down seven from the year before, as well as
twenty-six gente de razón, up seven. At Calabazas there were one
hundred forty-one Pimas and Pápagos. In that lone visita lived
"the Indians of Guevavi and Sonoita, desolated by the furious hostility
of the Apaches." According to Father Eixarch many Pápagos had
been guided to the mission through the apostolic labors of the friars.
All the Indians of both villages were well instructed in the Holy
Mysteries. "They also recite the catechism in Spanish, though they
understand little, for there is almost no comprehension of said language
(except in a few cases)."
Economically things could have been worse. No one
denied that Apache raiding over the past seven years had caused a
decline in Tumacácori's community property. Still, the livestock
count, thanks to constant vigilance, now stood at about a hundred head
of cattle, twelve mares and as many horses, and a thousand sheep. Enough
grain and produce were grown to feed the mission. Proceeds from the sale
of surplus seed went to clothe the Indians and furnish the churches. The
mission's business agent, or síndico, probably Interpreter
Ramírez or one of the other gente de razón, had in his
possession three hundred and fifty pesos from the sale of provisions to
the presidials and settlers at Tubac. That all this was true Fray
Tomás swore at Tumacácori, May 12, 1775. [26]
For the friars at Tumacácori, Tubac was both a
blessing and a burden. A settlement of three to five hundred persons so
close did serve as a deterrent to Apache annihilation and a market for
mission produce. On the other hand, the settlers and soldiers, with
their drinking, gambling, swearing, and wenching, set anything but a
good Christian example for the neophytes.
Fathers Eixarch and Arriquibar, who were supposed to
be missionaries entre infieles, now ministered to more non-Indians than
Indians. That year, 1775, of the eighteen baptisms they performed,
fourteen were for residents of Tubac.
For better or worse Tumacácori and Tubac were
one community. They shared the same ministers. Families from the
presidio mingled, licitly and otherwise, with the socially inferior
mission Indians. Many of them had Indian god children and compadres,
though by no means did that imply equality. Rather, it was a Christian
duty.
Tumacácori and Tubac shared the same river.
When its volume dwindled Captain Anza enforced irrigation control. One
week the Indians of Tumacácori diverted the flow into their
acequia madre, or main ditch, the next week they let it through
downstream to the presidio's dam. [27]
Mission and presidial herds grazed together. When the mission sold
maize, wheat, or livestock to the presidio, some small percentage of
Tubac's 20,670-peso annual military payroll ended up at
Tumacácori. Petty trade was almost constant, with transactions
mostly in goods, not cash. Unless the missionaries intervened, to hear
them tell it, the Indian nearly always got the bad end of the
bargain.
The specific duties of Tumacácori's minister
in his capacity as military chaplain had been spelled out in the
presidial Reglamento of 1772. In addition to administering the
sacraments to military personnel and civilians, keeping the records, and
going on campaign when requested to do so, the chaplain was to
provide
spiritual aid and comfort to the officers and
soldiers whenever they are sick or wounded, likewise gentle admonition
regarding defects of personal conduct in their homes toward their wives,
children, and family. If (after judicious inquiry) it should be found
that some person of the company is living in scandal or bringing in lewd
women, secretly or openly, he will inform the captain, or whomever is
commanding the company in his place, in order that the most prompt
remedy may be applied to prevent such abuses, punishing the guilty
according to the circumstances of the case and expelling such women
immediately with the warning that if they should again be found guilty
of the same offense in the company or presidio, they will be punished
more severely. [28]
The two friars continued to bury victims of the
unrestrained Apaches. That June, Lieutenant Oliva, commanding in Anza's
absence, lamented three such casualties that need not have been. The
presidial horses and mules had been grazing not far from Calabazas. The
corporal of the detachment guarding them had orders to fall back on that
pueblo at the first sign of a raid. He chose instead to be a hero.
When Apaches appeared over the hill he divided his
force and sent some of the men with the herd, which made Calabazas
safely. He and the others would kill a few savages. But there were too
many, and the corporal died for his bravado. Denied any animals, "their
main objective," the Apaches took off. Near Terrenate they reappeared,
killed a woman and child and later a soldier, but got no horses. They
would be back. [29]
In the hot, sticky month of August, 1775, Tubac was
astir. As chaplains of the garrison and vitally interested members of
the community, Fathers Eixarch and Arriquibar shared the anticipation.
Would the government really deactivate the presidio and transfer the
garrison? What provision was to be made for the protection of settlers
and mission? Soon they might know. The famous capitan colorado, don Hugo
O'Conor, commandant-inspector of all the presidios on the northern
frontier, was on his way from Altar.
For ten days O'Conor and his staff took stock of the
Tubac garrison. Their verdict, like Bonilla's, was harsh.
The height of this troop is substandard, as are its
state of health, fitness, and physical strength. Although skilled in
horsemanship, they lack the first rudiments of military discipline and
standard operational procedure, confining themselves to no more than
guarding the barracks and caballada. Even though there may be positive
reports that some of the enemy have entered the province, this troop
does not bestir itself to pursue them. The inhabitants of this country
complain of these proceedings with good reason because of the total lack
of protection afforded them by the military of the province.
That hardly seemed fair. Perhaps had Captain Anza
been present, instead of shaping up his second California expedition at
Horcasitas, O'Conor might have tempered his report. The Irishman did
laud sixty-year-old acting post commander Juan María de Oliva.
Eighteen years in rank, many times wounded, veteran of over a hundred
campaigns, the lieutenant was "a daring officer of courage and good
conduct, but he does not know how to read or write."
The commandant-inspector reserved his special ire for
Anza's incompetent and sickly twenty-five-year-old godson, Ensign Juan
Felipe Belderrain. Appointed by Anza in 1771 with no previous service,
Belderrain was the son of the captain who founded Tubac in 1753 and
thereby a member of Sonora's closely knit Basque community. Anza had
made him supply officer.
Don Felipe had proven a grafter, buying low and
selling high to the troops, a practice expressly forbidden by the
Reglamento. Without the captain to cover for him, the whole
company complained. An audit of the books convinced O'Conor that
Belderrain ought to be cashiered and forbidden ever to wear a military
insignia. "In addition to his bad conduct and faint-hearted cowardice he
possesses many other vices that justify his complete separation from the
royal service."
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The Tubac troop, their ranks, names,
ages, years of service, conduct, horses, and mules, August 13, 1775.
Courtesy Archivo General de Indias
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The Tubac troop, their uniforms,
weapons, and horse gear, August 12, 1775. Courtesy Archivo General de
Indias
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Service record of Ensign Juan Felipe
Belderrain. Courtesy Archivo General de Indias
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On review the Tubac troop was a sight. The full
fifty-six-man company including officers consisted of a criollo captain
(Anza's father was born in Spain), a "Spanish" lieutenant and ensign
(that is, descended from Spaniards), a sergeant (vacant), two Spanish
corporals, sixteen Spanish soldiers, fifteen coyote soldiers
(offspring of mestizos and Indians), eight mulatto soldiers, one mestizo
soldier, and ten Ópata Indian scouts. One trooper,
twenty-eight-year-old José Antonio Azedo, a veteran of Anza's
first California expedition, lay ill, completely unfit for service and
"without hope of regaining health." Seven others, five of whom had made
the California march, deserved honorable discharges because of fatigue
and sickness.
Instead of presenting a smart appearance in the
uniform specified by the Reglamentoshort blue jacket with
red collar, blue trousers and cape, sleeveless leather cuera,
cartridge-box, bandoleer with the name of the presidio, black
neckerchief, hat, shoes, and leggingsthe whole ragtag garrison
looked to O'Conor "practically naked."
Nor did their weapons measure up. The four worthless
carriage-mounted cannon noted eight years earlier by the Marqués
de Rubí were still there. [30] Except
for a few made in Barcelona, O'Conor considered the muskets,
manufactured in New Spain in a variety of calibers, all but useless. Of
lances and swords there was an assortment. Since he expected an arms
shipment for all the presidios of Sonora, the commandant-inspector
ordered the troop to make do awhile longer. Meantime they must round up
another sixty-nine horses and fourteen mules to bring the presidial herd
up to seven per man. Saddles and trappings he classed as serviceable,
except for the open wooden stirrups. The Reglamento stated closed
wooden stirrups.
Some strategists, including Rubí, expected the
civilian settlers clustered around Tubac, like those of much larger El
Paso del Norte on the Río Grande, to form militia units and
defend themselves after the garrison was moved away. One look
discouraged O'Conor.
The civilian population congregated at this presidio
is composed of forty-one families of gente de razón, two of
Ópata Indians, one of Piros [a tribe of the middle Río
Grande in New Mexico], and one of Apaches. Yet all are so wretched that
one cannot count on their permanence in this pueblo once the troop is
transferred to its new station at Tucson. It is to be expected that they
will follow since the members of the troop, their sons, nephews,
brothers, and relations, will be so close that they are inclined,
according to what they told me, to move to the new presidio. [31]
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Lance Points, the center one inscribed
Presidio de San Ignacio, Tubac. Coutesy Arizona Historical
Society
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A leather-jacketed presidial soldier of
the late colonial period. Translation of key: Regarding the state
of the troops who garrison the frontier line of the nine Interior
Provinces of New Spain, (N 1) Quilted leather jacket of seven-ply
buckskin. (N 2) Pommel and cantle of saddle. (N 3) Carbine. (N 4)
Saddlebags for carrying water and provisions. (N 5) Lance. (N 6)
Pistols hanging from hooks on saddle skirt. (N 7) Shield. (N 8) Boots
and spurs. (N 9) Wooden stirrups. (N 10) Cartridge box. Courtesy
Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla
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O'Conor wanted the presidios of Sonora to fall into a
neat line on his map. If he moved Tubac north to Tucson and Terrenate to
Santa Cruz, they would line up with Fronteras at San Bernardino. The
commandant-inspector had written off Arivaca. Not only was it too far
south but its only water, he reported, was a ciénaga that all but
evaporated during the dry season. [32]
Taking Lieutenant Oliva and twenty of the Tubac garrison with him as an
escort, O'Conor forded the river a league north of the presidio and
disappeared down the trail to San Xavier. He must see Tucson for
himself.
Two days later he walked the ground and was pleased.
Once a Pima field camp called San Agustín by the Jesuits, the
site lay east of the river across from the occupied visita of Tucson. It
was nearly flat, somewhat elevated, and open enough to see anyone
approaching. Wood, water, and pasturage could be had nearby. A presidio
here, O'Conor boasted, would result in "a perfect closing of the Apache
frontier." Father Garcés, who had ridden out from San Xavier with
the official party, agreed, but only because the comandante-inspector
insisted. [33]
O'Conor had no use for friars who meddled in military
affairs. He had in fact expressed himself on this point a couple of
weeks before, and thereby stuck his boot in his mouth. Earlier in the
year Garcés had set out for Mexico City to brief Viceroy Bucareli
firsthand on his explorations and the need for new missions. When the
itinerant friar fell ill at Ures he asked his compañero Fray Juan
Díaz to take down his thoughts on everything from New
Mexico-California communications to presidial locations. Garcés
had been begging since 1768 for a missionary for Tucson. He wanted the
presidio placed another fifty miles north at the confluence of the Gila
and the San Pedro. When Bucareli passed the Diaz-Garcés letter on
to O'Conor for comment, the comandante inspector, instead of taking
issue with specific points, impulsively attacked Father Díaz. [34]
I find that this religious disposed it all from the
sitting room, without ever having seen or reconnoitered the terrain he
treats in his report and map . . . as his own brothers testify. Although
not for that should his pretty thoughts be denied all regard. In order
to gain expertise in matters of such gravity it would have been normal
to have made the appropriate reconnaissance of the terrain before
drawing up the report and map. . . . It is certain that in these
Provincias Internas expertise is gained from experience not from theory
or the books with which some persons try to shine in the matters they
treat, matters too often foreign to their profession. [35]
At San Xavier that day, Father Garcés
evidently won don Hugo over. They reached an accord. Writing to
Bucareli, the friar laid on the blandishments. If only the gallant Irish
chief had reached these frontiers years before, surely Sonora would not
have fallen so low at the hand of the Apache. As for building a presidio
at Tucson, that was fine with Garcés, since O'Conor had affirmed
that both the Gila and the Colorado would be occupied "at no additional
cost to the royal treasury." The Colorado project now seemed assured.
But the friar worried about the Gila. He had submitted all the
particulars to Bucareli by various channels, "especially when Anza was
raising objections." [36]
While the commandant-inspector reconnoitered the new
sites for Terrenate and Fronteras with half the troop from Tubac,
chilling word came from the Gila. Vicente Gaspar, a hispanicized Yuma
who had escaped from his Apache captors, told how the hostiles were
massing, waiting only for more light from the moon to sweep into the
province. Their main objectives, he said, were Tubac and Terrenate,
which they intended to destroy completely, and then Cieneguilla.
On September 7 they struck. And this time on the
first try they overran the entire Tubac caballada. From Horcasitas the
furious Captain Anza had to send horses to mount the men he had summoned
as an escort. The Apaches, suddenly and happily encumbered by five
hundred head, forgot all about Terrenate and Cieneguilla. [37]
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