WHERE ANGELS SING’ . . . The Mysterious Bells of the Tumacacori Mission

To most the desert appears lifeless, deserted, void, its’ arid mountains etched in emptiness by the engulfing shadows of the scorching sun. Mesas of mesquite and cactus are ripped apart by boulder laden arroyos and stillness covers the sunbaked horizons. It is seemingly history-less and hostile. No place for an ordinary man much less those with such grand dreams.

This may be how the desert appears to those who have never stepped deep inside its realities, for it is alive and filled with the dreams and ambitions of those who created real history here. It is a paradox and has been for centuries, a home for the strong, for those with faith and passion. A place where life means more because it is set against the backdrop of raw untouched nature.

We present here a story of those who knew the paradox of the desert, who spent their lives among the backward desert peoples turning river banks into farms, dirt into dwellings and churches and dreams into living realities, one who respected the land and its native peoples and miraculously matched its strength. Padre Eusebio Kino the Jesuit priest and missionary to the Pimería Alta wrote into the sand a history as strongly etched in time as the mountain mesas that witnessed it.

There are those who have been here and made history… Cabeza de Baca, Coronado, Onate, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza and Friar Francisco Garces. But to many, none have equaled the achievements or had the visions of this dedicated man for his were not simply of this world but of the spiritual world where his true heart Lies….

THE PRIEST IN THE DOORWAY

It was 6:00 a.m. on a cold November morning when I entered San Jose de Tumacacori Mission in Southern Arizona, which is where our story begins. I stood alone in the doorway as a gust of wind whistled past me. A strange feeling came over me as I stepped inside the cavernous chapel where a solitary stream of light engulfed the once beautiful alter at the far end of the room. Suddenly, the sound of a guitar and a voice singing in a language I couldn’t quite discern emanated from an archway at the top of the crumbling wall.

Straining to see just how this could be I saw a figure in a grey monks’ robe, his face hidden inside the pointed hood. I really didn’t know what to do. I suddenly felt like an intruder but also that I was meant to be there… that this had been staged just for me.

I knew right then and there that I had been given a mission to retell this beautiful story, one that has been sorely neglected. I snapped a photo so I wouldn’t forget. By the way, this really happened and the monk in the chapel turned out to be the park ranger who was Basque, thus the strange language. He was also the historian and author of a four-volume thesis on the life of Capt. Juan Battista de Anza, one of the featured actors in our story. However, I know for certain he was put there just for me.

Maria Sharylen

PADRE EUSEBIO KINO . . . From His Diary

Today I journeyed into the darkness for questions fire my blood and I shall not rest so long as I have the strength to go on. I must climb these jagged peaks and walk this sand that burns with the fires of hell. I must come to know the extraordinary diverseness of the gnarled forest of cacti and the seas of sage. I must feel its terrors, its beauty, its peacefulness, the ferocity of its winds and the stillness of its starry nights… but most importantly, I must come to know its people, those who know nothing of the blessings of Christianity and of civilization. If the native peoples are more than a step from the stone age, they are not stupid… if they are ignorant of our ways, they are willing to learn… if they are to be reborn with the faith of God, they must first know that our God has faith in them.

Only where there are thorns and thistles of adversity will we find assurance of an abundant harvest of souls. Sometimes the virtue of confidence in God can be so powerful, so wondrous that, in the midst of this adversity and persecution we can carry on joyfully saying… MORE, OH LORD.

For He lived among us, He suffered and died for love of us, thus we were come to know, love and serve Him for all eternity.

With joy the pains of rebirth are endured as new children are born in Christ wherever and whenever this may be… for His is the power and glory forever.

AMEN

CHIEF MANGUS COLORADOS “RED SLEEVES”

By The Man Who Knew Him Best

In truth, he was a wonderful man. His sagacious counsels partook more of the character of statesmanship than those of any other Indian of modern times. His intellect united the three principal tribes of Arizona and New Mexico in one common cause. He quieted and allayed all disagreements between them and taught them to comprehend the value of unity and collective strength.

Crafty and skilled in human nature, he laid plans and devised schemes remarkable for their shrewdness on conception and success in execution. He exercised an influence never equaled by any savage of our time. The life of Mangus Colorado is a tissue of the most extensive, afflicting revelations, the most atrocious cruelties, the most vindictive revenges and widespread injuries ever perpetrated by an American Indian. We read with sensations of horror the dreadful massacres accomplished by the Indians of history, but they sink into absolute insignificance beside the acts of this man, running through a series of fifty years for he was fully seventy when sent to his last account.

The northern portions of Chihuahua and Sonora, large areas of Durango, the whole of Arizona and parts of New Mexico were laid waste, ravished, destroyed Land rendered almost houseless, unproductive, uninhabitable by his uncompromising hostility.

His name produced waves of terror to many. He combined attributes of real greatness with the ferocity and brutality of the most savage savage. I dismiss him with disgust and loathing, not unmingled with an immense degree of respect for his abilities of himself as a great man of his people.

–Captain John C. Cremory

CAPTAIN JUAN BAUTISTA de ANZA. . . “A Star is Born”

Tall and straight as an arrow with muscles of steel, he was a soldier, a man of action; the greatest Indian fighter of his day . . . A legend in the New Spanish Frontier… the American Southwest.

With Anza’s aristocratic, military family background, he was the ultimate Spanish soldier, a picture sitting upon his purebred black stallion, ‘Diablo’, dressed in tight fitting leather plantoons and his highly polished silver buttons and buckles that gleamed in the warm desert sun.

He was one of Spain’s most intelligent, energetic, adventurous young officers who blazed a trail through the ominous desert and over the California mountains beginning in the tiny garrison of Tubac, Arizona to San Francisco becoming the first white settlers there.

Anza was a tenacious, dedicated man with a single mission . . . to fulfill his father’s dream of finding a land route from Sonora, Mexico to Northern California. His father was killed while fighting the Apache’s when Anza was but three years old.

Proud almost to the point of arrogance, his military successes were compounded from sheer physical endurance and unlimited valor. He was deeply religious and had the love and respect of all.

He possessed all the qualities that mark a man for destiny and combined with the burning desire to fulfill his father’s dream enabled him to earn his place as one of the “Great Men” in the history of the Southwest.

The National Parks have dedicated “The Anza Trail” that begins in Tubac Arizona, (40 miles south of Tucson) to San Francisco, California in Anza’s honor.

FRIAR FRANCISCO GARCES: “The Legend Continues” . . .

It was a torrid summer day in 1781 and Padre Garces, the Franciscan Apostle, was celebrating Mass at the Mission Conception’ when a fierce band of disgruntled Yuma Indians struck and murdered the man no one thought the Indians would ever harm. Among the dead, four priests, ten soldiers, many women and children, all lost their lives that fateful day.

He had been a friend to all, their apostle, the gentle priest who traveled fearlessly among them… their greatest advocate. He truly loved his wards and his church, San Xavier de Bae Mission, the northernmost and least defended in the Kino chain, and gave all he had to give… his life, in the Yuma Indian massacre.

It was not unusual to find Garces sitting cross-legged on the ground eating Indian cooking, playing Indian games. He learned the Piman language and saw them as deprived human beings quite capable of understanding and receiving the blessings his most merciful God had to give…

A great explorer, who with but a Mojave guide and a horse, Garces discovered an overland route from the San Gabriel (California) Mission to the Hopi Villages in Northern Arizona and onto a dangerous path stretching to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. A close friend of Capt. Juan Bautista de Anza, Garces accompanied him on his first expedition to California.

CAPTAIN JOHN C. CREMORY: “The Man In His Own Words”

“I have lived through an unbroken series of tribulations and danger, hunger and thirst, severe cold and excessive heat with much personal peril.

I have seen but the outside, have witnessed but the hush, the kernel of the nut still remained untasted and unknown. I have flattered myself with having achieved a fair knowledge of the Indian character.
I believe my personal observations have been sufficient to instruct me on the subject for I was a captive among them for seven months… but I have been much in error.

Sufficient credit has not be given to their mental powers, their ability to calculate chances, to estimate and foresee the plans of others, to take precautions, to maneuver with skill, to insure concert of action by a recognized code of signals, to bring together formidable bodies from distant points without the aid of messengers.

There are those of you who are convinced that the eyes of these Indians are not upon you… the truth is, every move you make, every step you take, every camp you visit is seen and noted by them with the strictest scrutiny.

A careful party may travel through Arizona from one year’s end to the other without ever seeing an Apache or any trace of his existence and from this cause novice travelers frequently become careless and fall an easy prey to their sleepless watchfulness.’

Yes, much, very much has yet to be learned.”

-Capt. John C. Cremory California Volunteers

GERONIMO

There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the wind is listening to what we have to say . . . .

-Geronimo

To the Apache, Geronimo embodied the very essence of their values: Aggressiveness and courage in the face of difficulty. These qualities inspired fear in the settlers of the Southwest. When food was scarce, it was the custom to raid neighboring tribes and vengeance was an honorable way of life.

By the time American settlers began arriving in the Southwest, the Spanish had become entrenched in the area and were always looking for Indian slaves and Christian converts. When the Spanish raided and killed Geronimo’s wife and child it caused such a hatred of the whites that he vowed to kill as many as he could.

In 1876 the U.S. Army tried to move the Chiricahua’s onto a reservation, but he fled to Mexico eluding the troops for over a decade. Sensationalized press reports exaggerated his activities making him the most feared and infamous Apache. The last few months of the campaign required over 5000 soldiers and 500 scouts to track him down.

Geronimo finally surrendered when the Army promised that after a period of time, he would be able to return to Arizona, He and his followers were shipped to St. Augustine, Florida where many died from malaria or tuberculosis. He never again saw his beloved Arizona. He died a prisoner after, many years on a reservation in Oklahoma.

I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us.

-Geronimo

APACHE RAIDERS

SAN JOSE DE TUMACACORI

This austerely beautiful mission staggers under the weight of it’s 300+ years which has stripped the plaster and the crumbled walls. It has been ravished by the red man and white man alike . . .abandoned by the church and the native souls themselves who formed it from the earth.

Within its’ scarred walls remains a story so glorious it takes one breath away. It has been sorely neglected in its’ tenuous lifetime, but remains today as the oldest and largest in our country, a tribute to its almost supernatural endurance.

In the serene, surreal setting away from our modern madcap world it seems impossible to image the soil on which it stands is soaked with so much blood . . . holy men’s blood, white man’s blood and Indigenous blood.

A gentle breeze stirs the dust around the now silent church surrounding it in a soft blue haze. I watch as Jose’ Martinez, whose family been here over a hundred years, locks the heavy carved wooden doors and begins his short walk home.

To this day Kino’s inaudible presence steadfastly safeguards his legacy. Simply listen and you will hear the very soul of the Pimeria Alta Valley . . The Ghostly Bells of Tumacacori ringing out a call of love, of compassion and strife, it never changes.

It’s all still here . . . in the valley . . . in this place where there is a real sense of the physical and spiritual confrontation between what man has created and what will rightfully return to the dust from which it came.

Studio Note: This exhibition is a work in progress.