Part 1 — THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. A RETROSPECT.

The astonishing growth of our hierarchy, with the multiplied divisions which such growth calls for—overrunning, as they do, and intersecting the boundaries of ancient mission-fields—seems to make the renowned past of missionary labor on this continent recede more and more into indistinctness. We propose to make some brief mention of prominent incidents in the history of those missions, and to do so not only that we may awaken in a generation of superficial readers an interest in the achievements of the great pioneers of our faith on this soil of America, but that we may base thereupon some suggestions we wish to make to the future historian of those times and those men. We trust that the day will come when a taste for studies of this kind will have spread from the few to the many, and create a necessity for some work more extended than a sketch or a compend. Meanwhile, of such historical materials as we have, which are accessible to the ordinary reader, we propose to make mention, for the benefit of those who may now desire to know what materials we possess; nay, more, that they may be encouraged to appreciate these materials at their value, we shall reproduce from them alone all the statements we have to present to the reader.

The period of time embraced by these early missionary enterprises comprehends no less than eight and a half centuries, dating from the first mention in history of the Norse missions, in the tenth century, to the establishment of the last of the missions of California in 1823. In the chronological order of their inception, they range as follows:

I. The missions to the adventurous Norsemen, whose settlements in the middle ages extended from Labrador to the southern coast of New England. Although the light of faith gleamed but for a time on our shores, leaving us only the memory of the Bishop of Garda—so happily embalmed in the pages of Mr. R. H. Clarke’s Deceased Bishops—the Norse missions did not entirely die out on the eastern coast of Greenland until 1540. At this date, the intrepid missionaries of Spain had already advanced from Mexico into the borders of our present Southern territory. The extinction of the Catholic settlements at the north was due to the physical revolution caused by a change in the course of the Gulf Stream. Thereupon, that once smiling and fertile shore became the bleak and inhospitable region that it has ever since continued to be, and no race of Europeans now disputes with the rugged Esquimaux a foothold on the land.

II. The Spanish missions alluded to above. The history of these missionary enterprises, in their alternating successes and defeats, is one that renders the soil of Florida, Texas, and New Mexico a land of sacred memories. In New Mexico, the Christian settlements under our American Bishop of Santa Fé perpetuate these ancient missions. In the other states named they exist only in the material monuments they have left behind them.

III. The French missions. These were the vast Christian enterprises which, from New France, sent into New York and the states west of it so many apostles and martyrs. The present Christian Indians of Canada owe their faith, and indeed their continued existence, to these missions, which have also bequeathed to us within our own limits the Abnakis of Maine and the Christian Indians who within a few years have been removed from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, etc., to the Indian Territory.

IV. The missions of Maryland. These missions carried the light of faith to the aborigines of that colony, and if the latter have ceased to exist, the Jesuits still subsist, and inhabit the ancient manors where their brethren of old gathered around them the docile children of the forest, ere the torch of religious and political persecution was lighted by stranger hands in the “Land of the Sanctuary.” Yet, even the missions of Maryland are not without a living succession, for the Jesuits of Maryland planted a colony of their brethren in the West, and have carried the Gospel to vast multitudes of new subjects among the Indian tribes, and have besides aided to sustain the faith of those expatriated from the former limits of other mission fields. Perhaps the most serious blow to the perpetuity of some of these missions is threatened in the government’s plan of “improvement” in its Indian policy. While the measures comprehended under this new policy aim at eradicating some abuses, the plan is also ingeniously aimed to operate in a direction where no abuses can be alleged, and to substitute among Catholic Indians the “Evangelical” preacher for the “Black-gown,” whom the Indians feel to be their best and most disinterested friend, at whose feet they have learned the rudiments of Christianity, and at whose feet alone they will condescend to sit for instruction in the way of eternal life.

V. The missions of Louisiana. Within the former limits of these missions, the area of the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi was embraced. By the removal of the native tribes, the missions of Louisiana have become practically merged in those which now embrace the Western States. Nevertheless, some Christian Indians still linger on the soil of Louisiana proper.

VI. The missions of California. In so far as the hostility of the whites has permitted the Indians to live in peace, these missions may be said still to subsist. Such remains of them as Mexican rapacity had spared descended to us at least on the cession of California to the United States.

Should the full history of these missions come to be written, the more perspicuous arrangement—we beg to suggest to the historian—would be to divide the whole into epochs. Thus, the Norse missions would constitute an epoch by itself, to be designated, let us say, as the Ante-Columbian—missions before the discovery by Columbus. When the Catholic Historical Society shall be formed (even if it owe its origin to this suggestion for its formation), its first care, after gathering into its fire-proof cabinets the books, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines, manuscripts, charts, portraits, sketches, and other memorials or illustrations of the Catholic history of America, should be to draw from Northern Europe materials for a more extended history than we now possess of an epoch so full of interest to the antiquary and the Catholic. Until recently, indeed, the Norse missions bid fair to be reckoned as among myths. If they are no longer so regarded, this result is due to the investigations of a few scholars only.

The second, or Post-Columbian, epoch should commence with the history of the missionary efforts which succeeded the discovery by Columbus. This epoch, after displaying the inception and progress of these great religious enterprises, might terminate appropriately with the establishment of one of the last series of missions, that of San Francisco, erected on the site of the present city of that name in 1776, seven days before the date of our Declaration of Independence.

For the third epoch, no event could form a more appropriate initial point than that which freed our country from the domination of England. From this point, a new era opens for our church, for the charter of our national independence was the charter of our liberties as well. In the epoch just elapsed, the spirit of British legislation and the spirit of British bigotry harassed or defeated at every step the apostolical laborers within the mission-fields embraced in the limits of the American colonies. Now, over all the territory of the new Republic, shortly to be enlarged by the addition of Louisiana and Florida with their sacred memories of the past, the old colonial legislation against Catholics began to disappear from the statute-books of the states; and, if at the present writing there be a state where these discriminating laws still linger, her apologists are obliged to claim that they are practically inoperative.[134] Early in this epoch, our present hierarchy had its beginning in the appointment of John Carroll as first bishop—John Carroll whose efforts, in conjunction with Franklin, Chase, and Charles Carroll, to enlist the sympathies of the Canadians in our national cause, were rendered abortive by the anti-Catholic manifesto which had been issued by the colonial congress of 1774.[135] The era of the great prelate’s labors was shortly rendered memorable by the arrival upon our shores of those devoted men whom persecution or revolution abroad had driven hither. Through them, with here and there the assistance of the few clergyman already on the spot, religion began to make glad the desert places. The centres of population, no less than the scattered settlements of the interior—the mountains of Pennsylvania equally with the forests of Kentucky—rejoiced in the spreading light of gospel truth. In short, the seventy years succeeding the Declaration of Independence—within which period we propose to limit this third epoch—form an era filled with the chronicles of devoted missionary labor, and the history of humble and painful foundations which have since expanded into vast and even magnificent proportions.

For the commencement of the fourth epoch, embracing the era in which we live, and terminating when it may please the historian to close it, the year 1846 is suggested for several reasons. If the assignment of this date seems to terminate the preceding epoch at a period disproportionally early, compared with the epoch before it, it must be remembered that these seventy years, embracing as they do the period of the formation and first growth of our present hierarchy, would probably require as voluminous a treatment at the hands of the historian as the whole long period of the second epoch. In 1846, the partition of dioceses into ecclesiastical provinces began by the erection of the Province of Oregon in that year. Prior to this time the whole United States had formed but one Province, under the Archbishop of Baltimore. The Province of St. Louis was erected in 1847, those of New Orleans, Cincinnati, and New York in 1850, and the Province of San Francisco in 1853. The year 1846 is also the date of the accession to the Pontifical throne of the great and good Pius IX., still happily reigning, whose Pontificate is the most remarkable of modern times, if not of all times, as it has certainly been the longest, and, in its relations to the American church, the most momentous. The Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore was held in 1846, and the same year was signalized by the opening of the Mexican War, which was followed in 1848 by the acquisition of California and New Mexico, classic lands in the history of the American Missions. The annexation of Texas in 1845, with all her legacies of missionary heroism, forms the closing political event of the preceding epoch. Thus, many reasons concur for selecting 1846 as the period of a new departure in our ecclesiastical annals. The thread of narrative connecting the history of the old missions with our own day may be said to terminate at the beginning of this epoch, by the admission of California and New Mexico into the Federal Union. Nor need this thread be afterwards resumed. The fourth epoch, judging from its energetic beginnings and the triumphant progress the church in this country has made in the interval, is destined to fill a glorious place in ecclesiastical history.

These suggestions in regard to the method of dealing with our Catholic history would be superfluous, except upon the supposition that such a history as the subject calls for has yet to be written. We have no doubt it will be. It is the purpose of this paper to promote such a consummation, both by arousing an interest in the subject on the part of readers, and stimulating the zeal of writers. Without this interest on the part of readers, the zeal, learning, and ability of authors will never be called into play on this field. Whatever meed of praise we must assign to the few authors who have made our missions or our Catholic history their theme, it cannot be contended that they have largely developed it: but, if they have not done more, it is because the taste of the public—the Catholic public, at least—did not demand more. Here, then, is need for reformation.

Catholics might take a lesson from the conduct of people of the world. When a family of high origin rises again into distinction from a condition of temporary depression, it reverts with fondness to the ancestry by which it was distinguished in the past, as well as to that which achieved its return to greatness: it justifies its present position by the long roll it exhibits of its genealogical worthies. So should American Catholics of the present day act and feel as a religious family, but with a pride that is commendable, since the object of it is the church of God, and all the glory it acquires is due to the humility, the sacrifices, the self-devotion of the truest heroes that ever lived, the saints and servants of God. Such were our religious ancestors on this continent, and such they were long before in the vista of centuries. It is something to possess a mere antiquity in a land where all is new save the race that is dying out towards the setting sun, and no lineage can dispute for antiquity with that of the Catholic Church on this soil.

If her history were better known, we should not be so often met by the assertions that this is a “Protestant country”—an assertion which, though provoking, would be harmless but for some social or legal ostracism which is attempted under color of it. The preponderance of numbers, the only tenable ground upon which the assertion can be made, is a mere temporary condition of things, and is so rapidly disappearing that a mathematical calculation is alone sufficient to fix its period of termination. But, last as long it may, this preponderance avails nothing so long as the law of the land knows neither Protestant nor Catholic as such. This impartiality of the law, by the bye, will never be disturbed by Catholics even when the preponderance of numbers shall be in their favor. They venerate too deeply the example of the Catholic Pilgrims of Maryland ever to descend from the high standard they have left behind.

Again, this is not a Protestant country by virtue of early discovery or possession, nor by reason of early settlement or religious foundation, nor even by the establishment of an earlier hierarchy, as some Protestant churchmen contend. Much less is it Protestant by the conversion of either native or foreign races within its confines. With one only exception, as a class, that may be reckoned considerable, Protestantism is only an heirloom in families that were Protestant at the time of their immigration. Nor has it, with these, held its own; for the statistics supplied by our Catholic bishops show that, among those confirmed by them, a proportion, varying in different dioceses, but forming an average of probably twelve per cent., is composed of converts from Protestantism. The considerable exception we note is formed of the descendants of Irish Catholics who long since emigrated to these shores or were transported hither in large numbers by Oliver Cromwell. Their children, deprived of religious instruction and left without priests and sacraments, have been gradually absorbed into the ranks of the sects around them. Hence the number of unmistakably celtic names we find borne by many who are now Protestants. This exception, however, goes very little way towards establishing the general assertion that the Protestantism of the country is due to the conversions it has made. The blacks have naturally followed the religion of the masters in whose families they were domesticated while slaves. As to the Indians, Protestantism has done little or nothing that it can point to with any pride, and it employs itself in their regard, as it does in all other parts of the world where it encounters the Catholic missionary, in marring or obstructing his work, thus leaving the poor Indian in a more wretched condition than he had been before he heard of Christianity at all.

Under whatever auspices certain colonies of Protestants were established, long after the first occupation of American soil by Catholics, the constitution, which is the charter of our general liberties, and which these colonies, or the states representing these colonies, united in adopting, is silent on the subject of religion. Its equilibrium on this point is perfect. Nor will it be disturbed, even though a judge of the Supreme Court heard the little knot of superserviceable Protestants who advocate the apparently innocent project of introducing “God in the constitution.” Even if it were possible that these gentlemen should succeed in their effort, an internecine warfare would ensue among Protestants themselves for the possession by one or the other of the different sects of the power to direct the “appropriate legislation” contemplated in the proposed amendment to the constitution. In this scramble, the opportunity of wielding this new engine against the Catholics would be lost, and hence much of the animus that directs the movement now would prove a waste of zeal. Our general laws are, therefore, no more Protestant than Catholic, and even court-preachers who claim that their “church” is a “power in the land” are unable to wrest them from their tenor, though they may fill the public offices with the adherents of their conventicle.

History, good sense, and common observation thus militate against a claim which is intended, in one way or another, to be injurious to American Catholics and their church. This subject may not be new to the readers of The Catholic World, but it is one which will bear repetition, in view of the necessity of presenting the truth as it is before right-minded Protestants who may otherwise be beguiled by the specious pretences of their less scrupulous brethren—in view of the still greater necessity of fortifying our own people against an allegation which is intended to discourage and demoralize them. We need our moral force, our Catholic spirit, our sense of equality with our neighbors, in order to accomplish much of the good that is before us in both the social and the religious sphere. It will help this spirit of noble independence to become familiar with the history of our church in this country and of its unique achievements.

The scattered memorials of early missions have been gathered with great labor by Mr. John G. Shea, and compressed in his History of the Catholic Missions (New York, 1854). His narrative needs digesting, but is of most interesting matter. The absence of maps, however, and the consequent difficulty of following the footsteps of the missionaries in their labors and journeys, often through unfamiliar localities, necessitate a reference to other books, and so detract from the value of the work as a handbook for ordinary readers. Even the works of Kip and Parkman, covering a more restricted ground, are illustrated by maps. The tables in Mr. Shea’s appendix, with the names of the missionaries, the date of their arrival, and that of their death, and also the list of authorities in print and manuscript illustrating his subject, are extremely valuable. We are indebted to Mr. Shea’s work for the principal portion of our materials.

T. D’Arcy McGee’s five lectures on the Catholic Church in the United States (Boston, 1855), written in a clear, brilliant, and forcible style, pass in review the history of the American church from the days of Columbus down to the period of the publication of the book.

The Catholic Church in the United States, by Henry de Courcy, translated and enlarged by John G. Shea (New York, 1856), is modestly designated by the author as a “sketch,” but can only be considered so because the ground covered by the work is so vast, and the period so extended, that it was found impossible to dwell at length on any particular point. Still, the work is neither hasty nor superficial, and comprehends a bulk of nearly 600 pages.

These three works by Catholic authors are the only publications we possess bearing upon the general ground, and adapted to popular use and reference. A lecture here or there, or Dr. White’s sketch attached to Darras’ General History of the Church, does not add materially to our resources. It will be observed from the date of their publication that these three works were published in three successive years about the period of the last “Know-Nothing” excitement. Are we to infer from this circumstance that our people can only be goaded by religious persecution into demanding such works? If so, we shall have the less reason for regret when the unprecedentedly long period of peace we are now enjoying shall come to a close, as it certainly must, sooner or later, in the providence of God.

Of biographies and local histories we have a growing collection, some of them of great value. The affairs of a diocese, a state, or a particular region of country will always command a special interest among those who dwell therein. Hence we may expect this class of works to appear in increasing numbers. They furnish important materials to the future general historian, and probably educate the taste of readers into a demand for more comprehensive works. Many details that would be useful to the historian would perish but for them, as many have doubtless perished already for the lack of timely chroniclers. An enumeration of these works is not essential in this place, but we trust that other hands will do justice to those who have bestowed their scanty time upon labors of this kind, for all these works have been written by men of busy lives, such men as the late Archbishop Spalding, for example, among the clergy, and the late Bernard U. Campbell, of Baltimore, among the laity. Mr. Campbell’s writings, to be sure, have not been reprinted from the magazine for which they were written; but had not the gates of death closed in the midst of his career on the author of the Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll, we might have expected from one possessed of his industrious research, his ardent mind, and genuine talents, contributions of the highest value to the history of the church in America. He was called hence just as a position of comparative distinction and emolument seemed about to compensate him for his long years of faithful duty in the inconspicuous but responsible post he had hitherto filled; and this tribute to the memory of one whose character was brightened by every Christian and every civic virtue will not seem out of place here to those who knew him—and who in his community did not know him? who did not love him?

When will our young men, beginning life with advantages of which Mr. Campbell could not boast, with wealth and family position and scholastic training, learn to emulate such an example, and devote their opportunities, their means, and the fruits of their studies to a task which would do them infinite honor, instead of devoting all these gifts to the service of a frivolous society?—a task upon which, in their default, strangers and aliens have entered, and gathered laurels to themselves at the expense of the church whose heroes they pretend to exalt.

The author of a work to which we have already referred has snatched from the intervals of severe professional labors time for the production of two of the most important volumes contributed to our American Catholic literature in the department of biography, although their bulk and cost must render them inaccessible to many readers. But it is a work the perusal of which must quicken the desire for that full and connected history of the American church which awaits us in the future. Here, that history glitters in detached fragments, like prismatic hues reflected from some great signal-light, around each saintly and venerable figure whose life and labors the author has portrayed. There, in one luminous whole, it will irradiate our entire past. Again, a clergyman has found the opportunity, amid the cares of a parish and the distractions of frequent and painful illness, to prepare for publication a schedule of all the early issues of our American Catholic press—a most welcome adjunct to the labors of the Catholic historian. With these and many similar examples before them, how great a reproach must rest upon our Catholic young men of culture if their last and only contribution to the literature of their church and country be the fleeting amenities of a college address at graduation!

But, as we have already remarked, the field of our Catholic history has been entered upon by writers of another and an alien school. The wealth of incident, the picturesque entourage, the heroic action, which characterize the history of our Catholic missions have proven irresistible attractions to the Protestant scholar. Mr. Francis Parkman is especially conspicuous in this department, and we wish to say a few words in regard to his best-known work, The Jesuits in North America (Boston, 1867). We trust that to Catholic readers Mr. Shea’s elegant reprint of Father Charlevoix’s History of New France, fully and carefully annotated by Mr. Shea himself, will supply all the needs of a reference on this field of inquiry. None can fail to admire the graces of style which distinguish Mr. Parkman’s writings, but Protestants alone can make him a reference and commend him for the fidelity with which he adheres to their worn-out traditions and the readiness he exhibits to flatter their ingrained prejudices and prepossessions.

It is difficult to understand how an author could have written so fully and so eloquently of men, the dignity of whose aims he seems not to have formed the slightest conception of, or that he should have chosen this theme at all under the circumstances. We can only hope that a more profound feeling stirred him to the task than he is willing to acknowledge. But Mr. Parkman is a New Englander, and it befits not the Puritan traditions of his people to display any enthusiasm. On the ears of the auditory he undoubtedly in the main sets himself to address—an auditory dead to every supernatural impression except that which may be evoked by the practices of spiritism—words of enthusiasm would fall distastefully, and the reflex of an inner faith be simply repelling. Hence Mr. Parkman carefully avoids any suspicion of complicity with these unpopular emotions, and his heroes enact their grand parts like puppets put in action on a mimic stage by some inexplicable machinery. All the pith and marrow of their actions, such as Catholics know to have animated them, is eliminated, and nothing but a limp and imbecile counterfeit is left of the living, breathing man. Yet these men, these great missionaries so parodied, were they who undertook the most gigantic labors, endured the most severe hardships, and met even death itself, from the most exalted motive that can animate our kind—the love of souls for God’s sake! In Mr. Parkman’s hands, all that is great and ennobling about them shrinks into an unsubstantial figment: the impelling motive, if one is to be descried at all, is a barren sentimentalism, the action, left aimless and unsupported, a mere prettiness of behavior.

The following passage from The Jesuits in North America (page 97) will afford an example of the animus with which the book is written. It opens with the reiteration of a stale slander: “That equivocal morality, lashed by the withering satire of a Pascal—a morality built on the doctrine that all means are permissible for saving souls from perdition, and that sin itself is no sin when its object is the ‘greater glory of God’—found far less scope in the rude wilderness of the Hurons than among the interests, ambitions, and passions of civilized life. Nor were these men, chosen from among the purest of their order, personally well fitted to illustrate the capabilities of this elastic system. Yet, now and then, by the light of their own writings, we may observe that the teachings of the school of Loyola had not been wholly without effect in the formation of their ethics. But when we see them in the gloomy February of 1637, and the gloomier months that followed, toiling on foot from one infected town to another, wading through the sodden snow, under the bare and dripping forests, drenched with incessant rains, till they descried at length through the storm the clustered dwellings of some barbarous hamlet—when we see them entering, one after another, those wretched abodes of misery and darkness, and all for one sole end, the baptism of the sick and dying, we may smile at the futility of the object, but we must needs admire the self-sacrificing zeal with which it is pursued.” The futility of the object! And this is said in the nineteenth century of Christian enlightenment! Has the lettered paganism which held its head so high in the days of the early Roman Pontiffs indeed revived in all its impenetrable pride, and with all its scorn of the Christian faith and the Christian people? Has it only slept through all these centuries, to awaken again in our day and stalk among us with unblushing front as of old?

In conclusion, on the subject of authors, Rev. W. I. Kip, afterwards made Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California, published, under the title of Early Jesuit Missions in North America, a translation of some letters written by the French Jesuits on the mission between 1696 and 1750. We see nothing to object to and much to commend in this work. We must except from our commendation a portion of the editor’s preface, as follows: “There is one thought, however, which has constantly occurred to us in the preparation of these letters, and which we cannot but suggest. Look over the world and read the history of the Jesuit Missions. After one or two generations, they have always come to naught.... Must there not have been something wrong in the whole system—some grievous errors mingled with their teachings, which thus denied them a measure of success proportioned to their efforts?” Considering that, after one or two generations, the insane jealousy of governments generally led to the persecution of the Jesuits, the rapacity of officials to the plunder of their missions, and that the whole society was suppressed and dispersed in the midst of some of its most prominent labors, the failure of most of the Jesuit missions may be easily accounted for. But these causes were all extrinsic, not intrinsic, as Mr. Kip suggests. In spite of these disintegrating causes, the vitality of the missions established by the Jesuits, as exemplified in this retrospect, is something remarkable. Nor was there ever, or, if ever, rarely, a failure where these extrinsic causes were not at work. Mr. Kip’s assertion that there is not a “recorded instance of their permanency” is unveracious in spirit, if it be not in fact. He might easily have known better. Probably, if he would “look over the world” through the medium of the Protestant authorities quoted by Dr. Marshall (and Dr. M. quotes no others) in his work on Christian Missions, Mr. Kip and others equally in need of enlightenment would know what they ought to believe of Jesuit and all other Catholic missions. Per contra, and as shown by the same Protestant authorities, it will be seen that the barrenness erroneously predicated of the Jesuit missions by Mr. Kip is the distinguishing mark of the Protestant missions everywhere and at all times, under the most favorable as under the most adverse circumstances, in their first stage equally as in their last.

When we consider that eight hundred or more years ago all that was Christian in our land was Catholic, we can bear with more equanimity the presumptuous offers of hospitality made to us by sectaries who claim as their own a soil wherein Catholicity was planted before their religion was heard of. In brief, the history of these first missions was as follows: When the light of Christianity spread from Ireland to Iceland, the adventurous natives of the latter country had already effected a lodgement on our continent through the colonies they had planted in Greenland and on the shores further south, extending to Narragansett Bay. They called this latter region Vinland from the great profusion of native vines they found there. In the year 1000, Catholic missionaries set forth from Iceland, and soon bade Greenland blossom with the fruits of faith, as it blossomed already with the material beauty and verdure that then crowned its valleys. In time missionaries were despatched hence to Vinland, with the same happy results. Thus, in what seems to us the night of ages, the voice of Christian prayer and the hymns of Christian praise resounded along our Northern shores. Greenland was already dotted over with institutions of piety and learning when Eric, now its bishop, with his see at Garda, came in 1121, for the second time, to visit his dear Vinlanders and their Indian neophytes; rounding the promontory of Cape Cod to the south, five hundred years before the grim Puritans rounded it to the north on their way to Plymouth Bay. He came this time to dwell with the chosen ones of his flock, and doubtless to die with them, for the curtain of history has fallen over his fate and that of his companions and spiritual children.

The old stone tower at Newport is, in the eyes of some respectable antiquaries, a relic of ancient Catholicity in New England that belonged to a church or monastery, but its mute walls reveal nothing of the sacred catastrophe which overwhelmed the Christian colony of Vinland. The soil of New England was therefore long since dedicated to the God of truth, and let us trust that he will again, in his own good time, claim his heritage.

Turning our eyes to the other extreme of our national boundaries as they now exist, we find that the first Spanish missionaries set foot in Florida in 1528, in company with the expedition of Narvaez. The latter expected to find him an empire rivalling in wealth and extent that of Mexico, so recently subjected to the Spanish arms by the prowess of Cortez. The limits of the new empire were already marked out for a see, which took its title from the Rio de las Palmas, its southern boundary, a river in Mexico between Vera Cruz and Tampico, and extended to the Cape of Florida. The new bishop himself, Juan Juarez, headed the band of missionaries. As Father Juarez, he had been one of the twelve Franciscans who were invited to Mexico by Cortez to be its first apostles, and whom he received with great honor in 1524, five years after his landing. Father Juarez here distinguished himself by his zeal and his love and care for the Indians, and his appointment as the new bishop, which was made on the occasion of a subsequent visit to Spain, was therefore most fitting.

The expedition of Narvaez proved, however, a failure, and in its failure was involved that of the missionary scheme connected with it. No rich empire met the commander’s expectant gaze, no dusky monarch clad in barbaric splendor and surrounded by assiduous courtiers crossed his path to question his purposes or withstand his advance. He encountered only straggling Indians who treacherously led him on to his ruin. At last, weary, disappointed, pinched with want, and decimated by disease or the arrows of ambushed savages, the troops of Narvaez forced their way back through the jungle to the shore they had left. Narvaez had injudiciously, and against the advice of Bishop Juarez, ordered his ships elsewhere, and the only resource of the party was to escape to sea as best they might in the rude boats they constructed for the purpose. Four only remained behind, and these saved themselves by a perilous journey across the continent. The remainder were lost at sea, or were cast away to die a more lingering death by starvation, disease, or the attacks of the natives. Among the latter was the party of Bishop Juarez, which had been driven ashore on Dauphin Island, near the mouth of the Mississippi. Thus the fate of the second bishop who possessed jurisdiction over any portion of our soil is, like that of the first, wrapped in painful obscurity, and the fruits of his mission, if there were any, are equally left without living trace. All that is known of this devoted pioneer and martyr of the South has been recorded by Mr. Clarke in his Lives of the Deceased Bishops.

The four survivors of the expedition of Narvaez traversed Texas and New Mexico, and, reaching the shores of the Gulf of California, reappeared to the gaze of their astonished friends. The accounts they gave of the kingdoms and cities they had passed on their journey—accounts that were doubtless somewhat colored by their imagination—came to the ears of an Italian friar named Mark, and excited his zeal for the glorious spiritual conquest that seemed to lie before him. Placing himself under the guidance of Stephen, a negro, one of the four survivors alluded to, and attended by some friendly Indians, he boldly plunged into the wilderness which skirted the river Gila. Crossing it, he continued his march until he came within sight of Cibola, a city of the Zuñi tribe. Here he sent forward Stephen with a party of the Indian attendants to prepare the way, but the natives drove them back, and even killed Stephen and some of his companions. The friar could only look with longing eyes towards the city where he had hoped to garner a harvest of souls, and then sorrowfully began to retrace his steps. Ere descending the hill from which he bade farewell to the city, he, however, planted the cross, the object of his journey and the emblem of his mission.

The chieftain, Coronado, stimulated by the representations made of the supposed riches of Cibola, headed an expedition fitted out by the government to reduce it. He followed the route previously traversed by Friar Mark, who accompanied him, together with a number of other Franciscans. Cibola was reached, and soon yielded to the invader, but so barren was the prize, that Coronado resolved to press on to the conquest of another fabled empire in the interior, leaving the poor friar, overwhelmed with reproaches, to return home in shattered health. He ended his days shortly after. Coronado, in his researches, crossed to the valley of the Rio Grande, and even to that of the Arkansas, but without result, except in the discovery of the vast herds of bisons which swarmed the plains, and of which he was the first among Europeans to give an account. When Coronado, weary of his fruitless journey, resolved to return, Father John de Padilla, one of the Franciscans, in his younger days a soldier, begged to be allowed to remain at the Indian town of Quivira, west of the Rio Grande. Brother John of the Cross proffered a similar request in regard to the neighboring village of Cicuye, now Pecos. Bestowing upon them a supply of live stock, and some Mexican Indians as assistants, the expedition passed on and left them to their perilous posts. The Indians of New Mexico were, as a race, of morals more than ordinarily pure, and they possessed some familiarity with the arts. Notwithstanding these humanizing traits, the lives of the two devoted missionaries paid the forfeit of their courage and zeal, or they may both have perished by the hands of roving Indians. No tidings were ever heard of the lay brother, and the fate of the father was announced in Tampico by his companions, who fled thither with the news of his martyrdom.

The expedition of Coronado occupied the years 1540-1, or a great portion of them. In the latter year De Soto, who had entered Florida in 1539, led on by the same delusive hopes with which the narrative of the survivors of the party of Narvaez inspired Coronado—stood beside the mighty Mississippi, its discoverer. The following year, its waters were to be at once the grave of the great leader and the haven of refuge for the remnant of his band in their escape from the country. De Soto had brought with him from Spain a number of ecclesiastics, secular and regular. It is not probable that they accomplished anything among the natives, but they at least sacrificed their lives in the attempt, for the last of them perished in the interval between the death of De Soto and the arrival in Tampico of the survivors of his expedition. The dark colors in which those who cater to popular prepossessions delight to paint the conduct of the Spanish invaders are seldom brightened by the testimony that should accompany the picture, of the religious purposes which were never entirely absent from their minds. With some of them religion was, indeed, a controlling motive. Coupled with dreams of worldly conquest, was always the hope and desire of spreading the knowledge of Christian truth throughout the empires that might be won. Let the conduct of our non-Catholic fellow-citizens in the first years of the American occupation of California, in all its characteristics of violence, irreligion, greed, and cruelty to the Indians, be compared with that of the Spaniards of three centuries before, and it may be found that the latter will gain by the comparison. Moreover, no scheme of benevolence in behalf of the poor Indians, no thought of extending God’s kingdom upon earth, ever entered the thoughts of our nineteenth-century adventurers.

In 1544, one solitary soldier of the cross, Father Andrew de Olmos, a Franciscan, acquired a success among the Indians of Texas which had been denied to all his predecessors on the same field. It was the wild race then known as the “Chichimecas,” among whom he fearlessly advanced. Strange to say, many hearkened to his words, and followed him to Tamaulipas, where he founded a reduction for them, and completed their instruction. In the missions of Mexico, Father Andrew had already acquired a knowledge of four Indian languages, of three of which he had prepared grammars and vocabularies, and in two of them had written religious works for the use of the Indians. He now became a proficient in the language of this tribe also, and prepared many books for his spiritual children. Father John de Mesa, a secular priest, a kindred spirit in zeal, and of like accomplishments as a linguist, joined him in his labors, and both of them devoted the remainder of their lives to the Indians of the reduction. Their mission was so fortunate as to be perpetuated by successors, under whom it was also enlarged by the accession of many new Indian converts.

An attempt equally intrepid in character and peaceful in its method, but still entirely ineffectual in result, was the expedition into Florida in 1547 under the direction of Father Cancer de Barbastro, a distinguished missionary of Mexico, attended by several other Dominicans. Fortified with a royal decree from Philip of Spain restoring to liberty all natives of Florida held in bondage in any portion of the Spanish possessions, and provided by that monarch with an unarmed vessel, the missionaries were received with some delusive demonstrations of friendship on the part of the Indians. Untouched by the peaceful character of the mission, however, they seized the first opportunity to massacre Father Diego de Peñalosa, who had entrusted his life in their hands, and not long after Father Cancer himself. The mission was thereupon abandoned by the others as hopeless.

Note.—In addition to the works devoted specifically to the subject, mentioned in the text of this article, we would refer the future historian to the following sources of information as indispensable to an exhaustive treatment of the theme. We offer the suggestion as a partial acknowledgment of the obligation which we, in common with our fellow-Catholics of the United States, are under to a pioneer in this field of investigation—an assiduous and successful student (so far, at least, as his readers are concerned) of early American Catholic annals:

Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley. By John Gilmary Shea. (Embracing the Relations of Fathers Marquette, Hennepin, Allouez, and others, and a fac-simile of the outline map of the region made by F. Marquette.)

Early Voyages up and down the Mississippi. By the same.

The Cramoisy Series of Memoirs and Relations concerning the French Colonies in North America. Edited and published from early MSS. By the same. 24 vols. (This includes Relations, Biography, Travels, Letters, Diplomatic Correspondence, etc., etc.)

The Library of American Linguistics: A Series of Grammars and Dictionaries of American Languages. Edited by the same. 13 vols.

“Our Convents,” in The Metropolitan, and “Our Martyrs,” in the United States Catholic Magazine. (The latter has been published in book-form in a German translation.)

TO BE CONTINUED.