When Bernardo, Conde de Gálvez, succeeded his father as viceroy of New Spain in 1785, he brought to the office an unprecedented firsthand knowledge of the northern frontier. In recognition of that fact—and because don Bernardo was José de Gálvez' nephew—the king placed him over the commandant general, even in military matters. Drawing on his experiences as comandante de armas of the Apache frontier before Hugo O'Conor, a post he had assumed at the age of twenty-two, and as governor-general of Louisiana during the American Revolution, Viceroy Gálvez composed for Ugarte y Loyola a 216-paragraph Instrucción dated August 26, 1786. With the Reglamento of 1772 it became the fundamental charter of the Provincias Internas. [44]

A combination of the mailed fist and the olive branch, Bernardo de Gálvez' instructions regarding the hostiles were a model of synthesis. The harsh spirit of relentless warfare, personified by Captain Allande, and the friendly persuasion invoked by the royal order of 1779—both clearly spelled out and vigorously applied—gave the Indians a choice. If they continued to raid they could be sure of retaliation from presidial patrols constantly in the field. If on the other hand they made peace they would be given land to settle, rations, gifts, even inferior guns and liquor, which Gálvez had seen work to control tribes in Louisiana. Every effort would be made to win allies and turn tribe on tribe, band on band, brother on brother.

Had the Spanish military in the Provincias Internas been uniformly strong enough to exterminate the raiders and culturally castrate the allies, the choice for the Indian would have been clearly one of evils. But it was never so clear. If pressured by presidials, other Indians, drought, or epidemic, the hostile could sue for peace and accept handouts. Sometimes he did become a pitiful, sodden hanger-on at a presidio, dependent for his dole of maize and liquor and enough black powder to fire his poor musket once in a while. More often he came and went as it suited him. The important difference was that he did not have to raid. Even though peace did not descend all at once, from the late 1780s for a quarter-century, war on the Sonora frontier wound down. [45]

To Baltazar Carrillo at Tumacácori the decline in hostilities may not have been so apparent. No one could blame him for being skeptical. He had heard about the bands of Apaches mansos, the tame ones, settling down in peace camps near the presidios. In September of 1786 some Chiricahuas had come in and made camp in the shadow of the Ópata presidio of Bacoachi, ninety miles southeast of Tumacácori. [46] On October 1 some other Apaches showed up at his visita of Calabazas "without weapons, saying that they came in peace and to see what lands might suit them to settle down."

It was a trick. When the visiting Apaches noticed the careless disregard of the Calabazas Indians working their fields they jumped them, killing two and wounding one. Again a rider made for Tucson—the Pimas of San Rafael had not yet moved in at Tubac. Captain Pablo Romero, who had in just replaced the ailing Allande, readied a column posthaste and set off October 2. On the fifth in the Sierra de la Arizona he threw his fifty-man force against a larger body of Apaches. "Our troops and their commander fought with such gallantry that they drove them to abandon their ranchería, killing four, seized their booty, and pursued them, wounding many, until men and horses were exhausted." [47] Nevertheless, very soon after, Calabazas lay deserted.

To the south Bishop Reyes and Vice Custodian Barbastro struggled on. Reyes had not returned to dismal Arizpe, the designated see of his new diocese, but had chosen instead to reside in Álamos below the Río Mayo two hundred and fifty miles farther south. From there he attempted to put the sprawling diocese in order by episcopal edict. A staunch proponent of primary education, the bishop had provided for an elementary school at Potam for children of the Yaqui nation. He had forbidden the use of fireworks and skyrockets in the pueblos of the diocese. And on December 15, 1784, he had decreed the expulsion from Indian pueblos of "all mulattos, negros, and other castes" so as to avoid "their union with the natives," an edict denounced by the general command.

The reforming bishop had lamented the death in August, 1784, of Commandant General Felipe de Neve, whom he considered an ally. Acting Commandant General Joseph Antonio Rengel, who feared the ill effects of expelling negros and mixbloods from Indian pueblos in Sonora, had strenuously opposed Reyes' edict. The bishop tried to intimidate him.

I must tell Your Lordship that it is most painful and agonizing for a prelate who has not ceased to provide the general command with every indication of harmony, respect, and the peace that inspires the sacred character of his dignity to see himself accused of excesses of authority that, in the opinion of the asesor, could cause harmful restlessness and riots and lamentable consequences that would be difficult to remedy during the present critical state of these pueblos and provinces. [48]

Even more painful and agonizing to the new bishop were the reports of Vice Custodio Barbastro's disruptive opposition to mission reform. Reyes complained to the king, to Minister of the Indies José de Gálvez, and to Viceroys Matías and Bernardo de Gálvez. As a result another royal order forbidding opposition to the custodies had come through channels from Madrid to Mexico City to the Provincias Internas. The commandant general was supposed to bring Barbastro into line. Even that, the bishop protested, did not suffice. [49]

In an acrimonious letter to Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez, Reyes deplored "the tumultuous discord, scandals, and fatal consequences that threaten because of the pernicious despotism of the newly created vice custodio." The bishop had requested escorts and government aid so that he could go to the missions himself and restore peace among the friars, but the commandant general had not replied. Father Barbastro continued to foment schism while right-minded friars, according to Reyes, pleaded for help from their bishop. The vice custodio,

considering himself absolute and independent, declared himself against the subsistence of the custody and the good religious who wanted to live in accord with the new statutes; he condemned the instructions and measures his predecessor prescribed for this purpose; he split the missionaries into two factions; he dispossessed vicars; he granted licenses to six religious to retire from the missions; and finally with false reports he has sought to get his prelate and commissary general of the Indies to declare null and void the elections I held under the initial instructions by virtue of the faculties that Very Reverend Father delegated to me by his commissions.

At last Reyes had summoned his adversary to a conference at Camoa on the Río Mayo. It was to be a showdown.

But Barbastro stalled. Making a false show of compliance, alleged Reyes, the vice custodian dispatched his secretary to curry favor in Arizpe with Intendant-Governor Pedro Corbalán and in Chihuahua with Commandant General Rengel. The troubled bishop countered by suspending the insubordinate friar's authority to say Mass in the diocese. He had heard that Barbastro and a companion dared celebrate at Banámichi "a Mass of thanksgiving and victory over the bishop of Sonora." Because of this "and other affronts to my dignity" and because of "the undeserved favor the vice custodio has gained with the chiefs and government of these provinces," Bishop Reyes had laid his case before the high court of Guadalajara. [50]

Barbastro was not intimidated. He appealed directly to the bishop's patron in Spain, Minister of the Indies José de Gálvez. He insisted that he had been trying "with much loss of sleep" to put the paper custody on its feet. He had moved to Banámichi, summoned the members of the definitory, and on December 4, 1784, set in motion a religious community at the custody's headquarters. Sending word to all the clergy, he enjoined them to follow suit and observe scrupulously the statutes of the custody. Then, anticipating a grateful reply, he informed the bishop. Instead, "he answered me in certain terms exceedingly offensive to my person and defamatory of my conduct, as Your Excellency will see when this government reports all to the Supreme Council of the Indies."

Next Reyes had broken up the community at Banámichi. He had ordered Fathers Roque Monares and Francisco Jurado, his two pawns on the definitory, to leave, which they did. Keeping his calm, Barbastro had requested an explanation from Fray Andrés Crespo of Ures, where the two had gone. Instead he received from Crespo, another Reyes partisan, an incredibly disrespectful rebuff. As far as the vice custodio was concerned, the three friars were in open rebellion against his authority. Still, "not a loud word issued from my mouth." When the concerned superior sent his secretary with an appeal to the commandant general—vice patron of the church in the Provincias Internas—Bishop Reyes had charged the vice custodio to appear before him "to advise me how I should behave in the ministry!"

Convinced that Reyes was in the wrong but hoping to avoid further scandal, Barbastro had started south from Banámichi, hoping all the while that this act of compliance would cause the bishop to reconsider. It did not. At Onavas, where the vice custodio wrote the bishop that he had reached the limit of his jurisdiction and could proceed no farther without authorization from his Father Commissary General, Reyes had him arrested. Protesting that his immunity had been violated, the vice custodio was forced to resume his via dolorosa to the episcopal residence in Álamos.

Face to face, Reyes sought to humble Barbastro, subjecting him to an intense grilling. From whom had he secured travel funds for his secretary and escorts? What business did he have in Arizpe? Had he not been guilty of inciting schism? But the vice custodian did not break, and the bishop let him go. Why, Barbastro asked himself, had Reyes sent Father Jurado, the rebel friar, to Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Spain? "I deduce no other purpose than to defame me before everyone in the realm." [51]

Beneath the hurt and indignation Barbastro felt as Reyes let fly his arrows at the college, the missions, and him; beneath Reyes' reforming zeal, the two men were locked in a struggle as old as the Spanish presence in America—who was to prevail, the secular hierarchy of bishops and parish priests or the powerful New World regular clergy? Again and again they returned to the theme. Alleged affronts to his episcopal dignity sent Reyes into a rage. Just as fervently Barbastro proclaimed that "the Lord Bishop of Sonora is not my superior!"

Barbastro won, but only over Reyes' dead body. The weight of law and tradition lay with the vice custodio. The king had delegated the new bishop to set up the custody. When he had done that, his direct authority over its administration ceased. The custodio's superior was in fact the Franciscan commissary general in Madrid, not the bishop of Sonora. Therefore, asserted Barbastro, the episcopal interdiction against him applied only in the secular parishes of the diocese, not in the missions; the bishop could only consult him, not order him; and the bishop had intervened illegally in the affairs of the custody. [52]

As long as Fray Antonio, first bishop of Sonora, breathed, he conceded nothing. But he was sorely tired. During the night of February 26, 1787, a malign fever descended upon him. Despite "all the medicines available in this country," about noon on March 6 the prelate died. Two days later they buried him at Álamos. [53]

Now the voices in favor of a return to pre-Reyes normalcy rang out in chorus. As the bureaucrats considered the fate of the custody, the deaths of several key persons—Commissary General fray Manuel de la Vega, Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez, Minister of the Indies José de Gálvez, even the enlightened despot Charles III himself—helped decide the outcome. Writing to Father Barbastro from Madrid, Fray Manuel María Trujillo, the new commissary general, declared that the custody was now without friends. "All confess that it cannot last." He urged Barbastro to prepare a detailed report to the king and to solicit supporting statements from everyone who counted. Then, in the commissary's words, "I am convinced that we will deliver a death blow to that contrived custody." [54]

Bishop Joseph Joaquin Granados. From Villa, Bodas de Plata

The missionary needed no prodding. Compiling all his previous arguments, Barbastro laid the custody low in his lengthy report of July 9, 1788. A year later Commandant General Ugarte y Loyola and the new bishop of Sonora, Fray Joseph Joaquín Granados—a less ambitious Franciscan than his predecessor—endorsed Barbastro's condemnation. Finally, on August 17, 1791, Charles IV decreed an end to the sad custody and, for the time being, a restoration of the old order. Tumacácori was no longer an anexo, even on paper. [55]

After nearly a decade as governor of New Mexico, Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza came home to Arizpe early in 1788. Commandant General Ugarte, at headquarters in Chihuahua, had named the touted Indian fighter comandante de armas for Sonora. The viceroy made him captain of Tucson as well, and as such he began drawing the 2,400-peso annual salary on October 1. Anza had hoped for something better, another governorship or some position of comparable status. That fall it was decided that he should serve in Spain. Unfortunately he did not live that long. [56]

Colonel Anza noted some changes in the presidial line. His old deserted post at Tubac, for one, had been regarrisoned in 1787 by the eighty-man Pima Indian company of San Rafael de Buenavista. Commandant General Ugarte, observing Teodoro de Croix's canon of placing presidios near the settlements they were meant to protect, had also provided a permanent home for the oft-moved "presidio of Santa Cruz, formerly of Terrenate." After a careful survey by Captain Manuel de Echeagaray early in 1787, Ugarte relocated the garrison on the abandoned site of mission Santa María Soamca. In so doing he inadvertently named a river.

During the winter of 1775-1776 the Terrenate garrison had moved north to Santa Cruz de Quíburi, near today's Fairbank, Arizona. All but consumed by Apaches, the bloodied troop in 1780 had retreated on orders from Croix to a place known as Las Nutrias, just east of dilapidated Terrenate. About the only thing they brought back from the north was the name Santa Cruz. Seven years later when they transferred from makeshift quarters at Las Nutrias to Santa María Soamca they still considered themselves the compañía de Santa Cruz. Although Fray Juan Santiesteban of Cocóspera in 1788 referred to the new presidio of Santa María," the name Santa Cruz prevailed. The river flowing past the presidio and bending north to water Tumacácori, Tubac, and Tucson thus became the Santa Cruz. [57]

As military chief in Sonora, Colonel Anza presided during 1788 over the Apache war and peace. An acting viceroy, Manuel Antonio Flores, who still enjoyed his predecessor's authority over the commandant general, had dictated a tougher policy. Only Apaches who surrendered of their own free will were to be granted peace with material benefits. All others, including those who gave up under duress, must be treated as prisoners of war, that is enslaved and sometimes deported.

Anza planned a large offensive operation with a twin purpose. Led by Captain Echeagaray of Santa Cruz, four hundred presidials from Sonora and Nueva Vizcaya joined forces in September to harry the Apaches out of the basin-and-range country of the upper Gila, especially those renegade Chiricahuas who had fled the peace camp at Bacoachi, and at the same time to explore a route to New Mexico via the Sierra de Mogollón and the Río de San Francisco. Thanks to his Chiricahua scouts, Captain Echeagaray succeeded admirably well. He reconnoitered as far as the mountain passes leading to the New Mexico pueblo of Zuñi, and he ran up a bodycount of 54 Apaches dead, 125 captured, and 55 enlisted—against the viceroy's orders—as friends and allies. [58]

A month after the elated, fifty-two-year-old Anza reported Echeagaray's successes to the commandant general, he was dead. On December 20, 1788, the day after his sudden demise, the body of Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza the younger, Sonora's most illustrious soldier of the century, was laid to rest in the church at Arizpe. [59]

The reoccupation of Tubac in 1787 by the Pimas of San Rafael and the nearly concurrent abandonment of Calabazas, Tumacácori' s last visita, made life safer for the fifty-four-year-old Father Baltazar Carrillo. Instead of two small and vulnerable mission pueblos—Tumacácori and Calabazas—ten miles apart on different sides of the river, he now ministered to two larger congregations—Tumacácori and Tubac—one a mission, the other a presidio, both predominantly Piman, on the same bank of the river less than three miles apart. One by one the mission's visitas, Guevavi, Sonoita, and Calabazas, had fallen away.

In the case of Calabazas the Apaches may not have been entirely to blame. On April 3, 1786—the last date he mentioned the visita in the Tumacácori books—Carrillo had recorded the death without sacraments of one José Yturbe. The body was buried at Calabazas where Yturbe had gone "the day before in order that their doctors (médicos) might cure him." Years later Carrillo's successor alluded to the flight of persons baptized at Calabazas. Evidently "heathenish ways" still prevailed in the visita beyond the friar's view.

Perhaps Father Carrillo did not lament the abandonment of Calabazas soon after the Apache ruse of October 1, 1786. The few families not previously recruited for the San Rafael company, not killed or driven away by Apaches or epidemics, not run away on their own to the Papaguería, moved in with relatives at Tumacácori and Tubac. [60] When they felt safe they would return to farm their old fields and graze stock in the hills nearby, but then they would call the place a "rancho."

Again Tumacácori and Tubac drew together. Carrillo, at once missionary and chaplain, served all as spiritual father. As they became godparents and compadres, mission and presidio families merged socially. Some were already related. Tumacácori Indians continued to enlist in the Tubac company for the standard ten-year hitch. Economics, too, brought them together. The presidial payroll of 13,098 pesos annually—only two-thirds of what it had been before 1776—and commodities available at Tubac generated trade. And again, to Fray Baltazar's consternation, the gambling, drinking, and wenching increased. [61]

As acting C.O., Ensign Nicolás de la Errán set the Pima soldiers to restoring roofs, patching walls and corrals, and clearing overgrown fields. Evidently it was he, not Lieutenant Pedro Villaescusa, who led the San Rafael company to Tubac. When Villaescusa wrote late in the spring of 1788 requesting a certificate of his son's baptism, Father Carrillo copied the original entry from the book begun at San Ignacio by Arriquibar. Errán notarized the document, signing himself "Veteran Ensign and present commander of the company of Pimas of San Rafael de Buenavista stationed at the old presidio of Tubac, Civil Magistrate of it and its district." A year later he would receive the royal commission promoting him to lieutenant and commander of the Indian garrison. [62]

Errán had induced civilians to settle at Tubac, a practice encouraged by the government. If a settlement grew up around the presidio, one day its citizens would be numerous enough to protect themselves, the garrison could move, and the process would begin anew, or so the theory went.

Most prominent among the settlers was don Toribio de Otero, twenty-eight years old and literate. Lieutenant Errán granted Otero a town lot and four farming lots north of the presidio near the river ford. The 1789 grant included the usual stipulations that the grantee maintain horses and weapons for militia duty, that he build his house on the land within two years, that he live on it for four years to become eligible for final title, that he plant fruit trees, and that he never sell to the Church. [63]

Don Ramón García Herreros, another literate Tubac settler, a bachelor, appeared before Father Carrillo at Tumacácori on April 5, 1792, with Lieutenant Errán and Toribio Otero. He wanted to get married. But first he had to have the proper legal testimony that he was free and unattached. The friar heard the sworn statements. Both Errán and Otero claimed to have known García Herreros for more than ten years. As far as they knew he had taken no vow of chastity, no religious vow; he was neither related to his intended in any way nor was he bound to marry another. But there was one impediment. Both witnesses had heard that because of it don Ramón could not marry without a dispensation from the bishop, a simple formality. Concluding the declarations, Carrillo disclosed the impediment, "having known carnally an aunt of the intended, though long before he considered marrying said intended, etc." With that the friar gave the document to don Ramón, accepted a fee he called alms, and bid the hopeful bachelor well. [64]

Even after his death, Bishop Reyes' legacy hung over the missions of Sonora. When a copy of his damning general report of September 15, 1784, was rediscovered five years later in the viceregal archives, the fiscal suggested to Acting Viceroy Flores that it be sent to don Pedro Garrido y Durán, interim intendant of Sonora, for his comment. Garrido submitted that the missions "do not present in all the horrible spectacle that that Most Illustrious Prelate tried to make out," but he preferred that the intendant-designate, don Enrique Grimarest, report in full. [65] Grimarest did so from Arizpe on August 16, 1790, addressing himself to a new viceroy, the second Conde de Revillagigedo.

Although the Jesuits had done it illegally and despotically, wrote Grimarest affirming the old José de Gálvez government line, they had made the missions of Sinaloa and Sonora prosper. After their expulsion the Sinaloa and Yaqui River establishments had been turned over to the secular clergy, those of Pimería Alta to the Querétaro college, and the rest to friars of the Jalisco province. Because of disjointed administration, the damage wrought by the floods of 1770, and a shortage of priests, most all the missions were in sad shape, with the notable exception of the eight in Pimería Alta.

The Queretaran Fathers have known how to keep those natives in good order and diligent, their churches in ordinary decency, and their respective properties properly managed. It seems to me, therefore, that it would be inadvisable to make a change. If indeed those missions have not prospered more, it has doubtless been because of the continual hostility of the Apache.

Those eight missions, Grimarest advised, should continue as before the nominal custody, with the friars in temporal as well as spiritual control. Father Barbastro should again be named president. [66]

The viceroy had Intendant Grimarest's report put in a bulging file labeled missions. The king had decreed back in 1784 that a detailed description of the ex-Jesuit missions in particular, and all the missions of New Spain in general, be prepared by Revillagigedo's predecessors. [67] They had done no more than amass documents, some cogent, others rambling and incomplete, and many out of date. Revillagigedo intended to comply with the royal order as best he could. To further clarify the situation in Sonora he sent copies of the Grimarest report to Bishop Granados and to the new commandant general, Pedro de Nava, for their commentary. Both upheld the intendant. Both praised the Queretarans of Pimería Alta and endorsed Father Barbastro for president. [68]

When the Conde de Revillagigedo finally put his signature to an admittedly prolix "Informe sobre las misiones" on December 27, 1793, he had reached a conclusion that would not have been acceptable a few years earlier. While the enlightened despot Charles III and José de Gálvez still lived, he would not have dared. But times had changed. King Louis' head had rolled in France. Surviving royalty wanted to hear of law and order, not of enlightened reforms tainted by the French connection. The missions of northwestern New Spain, concluded Revillagigedo, had been much better off under the Jesuits. He said nothing of illegality or despotism.

In Sonora the cumulative effect of the expulsion, the rape of mission property by the interim commissaries, the premature secularization of some missions, and the Custodia de San Carlos had been devastating. Pimería Alta, where the Querétaro friars had striven to maintain law and order in their missions, was an exception. Revillagigedo thought that the Queretarans should continue their administration "always" and that the college should be granted "frequent and opportune assistance in the form of religious from that peninsula [Spain] endowed with virtue, knowledge, and true apostolic spirit." Father Barbastro could not have phrased it more aptly himself. [69]

Though he still had eighteen months or so to serve, Father President Barbastro composed his swan song late in 1793. It came in response to an order from Viceroy Revillagigedo asking for a full report on the missions of Sonora. Barbastro had written much during his career, including the historical compendium relied upon so heavily by Father Arricivita in the chronicle of the college just published in 1792, but this, the president claimed, "is the first time that I have picked up my pen to report on the missions, missionaries, sínodos, [numbers of] married couples, souls, etc." for the government. In the past such detailed information had been asked for only by his superiors within the order. Now the government was asking. Here was his chance to set straight the record so arrantly distorted by Reyes. He would make the most of it.

To no one's surprise the Barbastro apologia, which did not reach Revillagigedo until after he had already submitted his general mission report of 1793, vigorously defended the old method. The missionary must be unquestioned temporal and spiritual father to his mission children—his authority must not be challenged. At Tubutama in Pimería Alta, Barbastro had accomplished much with only a few disciplined Indians. At more populous, secularized Aconchi in Pimería Baja, where he had resided by permission of the bishop for the past half dozen years, and where his authority was limited to spiritual matters, he could hardly get an Indian to give him the time of day.

So what are we to say? This gaping disparity observed between these two missions, Tubutama and Aconchi, is it a matter of ministers? . .. No, for I conduct myself at Aconchi as I conducted myself at Tubutama; I am the same person here as I was there. It is precisely a matter of these Indians [of Aconchi] being given over to the perverse desires of the heart and of their administration under the new system, and those [of Tubutama] under the old.

It was not the Indians' fault, according to Barbastro. They showed more ability and learned more readily than the rest of the populace of Sonora. Therefore the onus was on the system. Despite the disadvantages of the more remote and vulnerable missions of Pimería Alta, the Queretarans, adhering to the traditional authoritarian system, had plainly achieved a record to be proud of. [70]

At Tumacácori Father Carrillo had less to brag about than the others. In no way had his mission prospered. Barbastro with seven families and itinerant Pápagos had built a fine church at Tubutama, thirty by six varas, of fired brick and mortar—a building innovation of the Franciscans in Pimería Alta—"with transept, dome, very tall tower, most harmonious facade, and adorned with silver lamp and eleven statues."

The builder-friar Velderrain had died at San Xavier spitting blood in 1790—Carrillo had reached him too late to administer the sacraments—but his replacement, Fray Juan Bautista Llorens, carried forward construction of a church "that everyone says is a wonder." Even at Sáric and Cocóspera, consistently shown on censuses with fewer residents than Tumacácori, new churches dominated the plazas. "I persist," Barbastro had written in 1792, "in the determination that in our missions all the churches be built with vaults." Yet at Tumacácori the "very cramped and flimsy" little adobe structure, inherited from the Jesuits a quarter-century before, continued to crumble. [71]

San Xavier del Bac. A sketch by H. M. T. Powell, 1849. Courtesy the Bancroft Library

Carrillo simply got by. He built no church. He set aside no construction fund. He lost Calabazas. For every two persons he baptized, he buried three. In fifteen years at Tumacácori, he apparently never learned Piman. But neither for that matter did most of the others. Father Barbastro recalled sending Francisco Garcés and Juan Díaz through the eight missions so that the Indians might hear preaching and might confess in their own language. More recently, in 1791, he had used Fray Francisco Moyano, one of the most promising friars who had come with Bishop Reyes, in the same capacity. [72] If Barbastro had not been so short of men, he would have sent a compañero to Tumacácori. He hated the thought of a lone friar settling into a lax routine without a religious brother to pull him up.

A close inspection of the Tumacácori books would have shown that Baltazar Carrillo baptized 96 persons, buried 164, and married 60 couples during his fifteen-year tenure. Sometimes in writing an entry he supplied racial or tribal designations; just as often he did not. A more detailed format prescribed in 1778 required him to use surnames even in the case of Indians. One would never have known from the 1787 baptismal entry for María Rita that her parents, Lorenzo Crespo and María Cartagena, were Pápagos if Carrillo had not happened to say so in a 1785 entry. Indians took or were given the surnames of neighbors, compadres, missionaries, or prominent officials. When on April 7, 1787, he needed a name for a fifteen-year-old Pápago boy, Baltazar Carrillo gave the lad his own. He never distinguished between Pimas and Pápagos. In fact he never used the word Pima. With the exception of an occasional Yaqui or Yuma, Carrillo called his charges Pápagos [73]

A successor, who seemed to stretch the point by including the offspring of some Christian Indians, claimed that Carrillo had baptized forty heathens, mostly Pápagos [74] He had reaped his biggest harvest on March 10, 1781, when he administered the saving water to nine. It was an extremely important point with the friars. So long as they could show that their missions were conversiones vivas, that they were actively attracting heathens, they could stave off the secular clergy. Conversion of the natives was strictly the business of missionaries.

The Queretaran friars were enjoined by their college to make "a demonstration of special rejoicing" when an adult received baptism or a baptized child died and its tiny soul was saved. Of the 164 persons Father Carrillo laid to rest, 35 had died between birth and age two, 29 from two to fifteen, and the remaining 100 from sixteen to eighty. Only once, on February 9, 1788, did the friar accord the honor of burial inside the small Tumacácori church, to two-month-old Andrés Durán, son of long-time gente de razón residents Juan Antonio Durán and María Guadalupe Ramírez. Infant mortality ran high. Of the newborn babies he baptized, fewer than one in three lived to the age of two years, only about half of these to adulthood.

Some families fared worse. In less than one year Indians Cristóbal Median and Juana Peciña lost José Dolores, four months (September 10, 1788); Juana de Dios, two years (October 2, 1788); María, five years (December 20, 1788); and Simón, six days (August 5, 1789). [75] Clusters of burials occurred in 1781, the late 1780s, and in 1793-1794. Carrillo identified the cause of only the first—a virulent smallpox epidemic. From the number of times—about one in three—that Tumacácori's missionary noted adults dying with out the last rites of the Church because no one notified him, it would appear that many of his wards could not have cared less about the final disposition of their souls, at least from the Christian point of view. What, he must have asked himself a hundred times, did he have to do to convince them?

Plainly Baltazar Carrillo needed help. In April, 1793, he lay on his bunk so ill that he could not even administer the sacraments to a man dying right in the pueblo. The friar recovered, but he was now sixty years old. Father President Barbastro recognized the problem, and when finally the college sent him some men, he assigned one as compañero to Carrillo.

Not yet thirty, Fray Narciso Gutiérrez rode into Tumacácori on July 10, 1794. For more than a year he worked with the old missionary, not always cheerfully. Then on the morning of October 10, 1795, he listened to Baltazar Carrillo's final confession. That afternoon he administered extreme unction. There was no time for viaticum. By three o'clock the veteran missionary was dead.

Next day, a Sunday, Father Gutiérrez presided at the funeral. A grave had been dug inside the crumbling church just at the top of the steps in the center before the main altar. [76] Though there is no record of who attended the service, surely the congregation that day included Lieutenant Errán, Toribio Otero, Ramón García Herreros and his wife, Father Llorens from San Xavier del Bac, and an assortment of mission Indians, Pima soldiers, and settlers. Some of them had known Padre Carrillo for half a generation.

The long ministry of Baltazar Carrillo had bridged two eras. When he took over mission Cucurpe from the complaining Fray Antonio de los Reyes in 1771, Viceroy Marqués de Croix and Visitor General José de Gálvez were actively imposing the reforms of enlightened despotism. The year Carrillo had moved north to Pimería Alta, Gálvez decreed the General Command of the Provincias Internas. At Tumacácori the friar had heard the first reports of the Yuma massacre. He had followed from a distance the rise and fall of Bishop Antonio of Sonora. He had seen the Custodia de San Carlos come, exist without grace, and die. José de Gálvez—titled in his last years the Marqués de Sonora—Charles III, and the era had died too.

The 1790s presaged another era, an era of revolution. No longer did the weighty pedestal of tradition uphold the absolute right of kings and bishops to impose or not to impose reforms from on high. The United States, born of a revolution in the previous decades, survived to broadcast the virtues of democracy. Napoleon washed up on the bloody tide of a revolution in France. The year Baltazar Carrillo died at Tumacácori the French strongman dictated a humbling peace to a corrupt Spanish monarchy. Even within the college of Querétaro the dawning revolutionary era brought change and dissension.

The young religious who buried Carrillo would live through the turmoil of revolutions and constitutions, to the very eve of a reactionary Mexican independence.