Note 6 — THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN IN BLUE

And Shea asserts that “the Franciscan writers all from this time [when Benavides published his account] speak of this marvelous conversion of the Xumanos by her instrumentality as a settled fact.”6 The legend must have had wide acceptance in the Southwest in the last half of the seventeenth century. Among the important historians who take account of it are Bolton, Chapman, and Hodge. Bolton calls the story a “classic in the lore of the Southwest”;7 Chapman refers to Maria Agreda as “the celebrated ‘Blue Lady’ of the American Southwest”;8 and Hodge as editor of the translation of the Benavides Memorial gives a full account of the story in his excellent notes.9