. Observations of a ranchwoman in New Mexico . itants. The Franciscan friars, while not investedwith authority to found missions, as were theJesuits in California, and acting simply asparish priests, swept, nevertheless, into thedrag-net of the Church hundreds of Indian4 converts. Following the usual custom of their order,they hurried from pueblo to pueblo, regard-less of personal labour or peril, and havingextracted by bribes, threats, or cajoleries,permission to baptize the children, proceededon their way entirely satisfied with what theyhad accomplished. Above all alluring to thegrown India
. Observations of a ranchwoman in New Mexico . itants. The Franciscan friars, while not investedwith authority to found missions, as were theJesuits in California, and acting simply asparish priests, swept, nevertheless, into thedrag-net of the Church hundreds of Indian4 converts. Following the usual custom of their order,they hurried from pueblo to pueblo, regard-less of personal labour or peril, and havingextracted by bribes, threats, or cajoleries,permission to baptize the children, proceededon their way entirely satisfied with what theyhad accomplished. Above all alluring to thegrown Indian was the prospect held out bythe Church of continually recurring feast-days and holidays ; and as time went on,and the natives became more and more sub-servient to Spanish rule, and the friars settleddown to preach, teach, and say prayers,these fiestas grew to be the strongest holdpossessed by Mother Church over an in-dolent, ease-loving people. And as it wasthen, so is it now. Mexicans and Indiansalike find in their religion much solace for. THE NORTHERN MYSTERY 243 muscles averse to toil, and ready at a momentsnotice to relax in slumber beneath the shadeof a cottonwood-tree, or to let their ownersflop in crumpled heaps against a sun-bakedwall. The old friars were wily, if not alwaysvery wise. Above everything, they had thecourage of their opinions. They carried theirlives in their hands, and yielded them un-complainingly should the mood of their flockset that way. Betwixt Franciscans and Jesuitsthere was, during Spanish rule, a perpetualrivalry—if rivalry it can be called, when oneside has distinctly the mastery ; but with theimportation by Bishop Lamy, in 1854, ofFrench priests and sisters, the Jesuits in theirturn won the ascendancy. When, in the course of years of inter-mittent struggle and warfare, New Mexicowas at last conquered by Spain, and Onate,the first Governor, was appointed, his routelay from what is now the border-city of ElPaso up the fertile Valley of Mesil
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1898
