Mission 2000 Database

Notes: The baptisms for the year of [17]52 are in the other traveling book because this book was not available due to my absence during my passage to Mexico [City], where I was dispatched by my superiors to inform them of the happenings of this province concerning the uprising of the Pimería Alta that began on November 19 (sic.), 1751, with the deaths of Father Tomás Tello in Caborca, Father Enrique Ruehn at San Marcelo de Sonoita, and 119 persons of both sexes and all ages. They eased off Father Visitor Jacobo Sedelmayer and Father Nentvig, who diverted them [the Pimas] with an adobe they threw. The Fathers were of the Company of Jesus. They burned churches and houses and sacrilegiously profaned the sacred vessels, ornaments, paintings of the saints, and the statuary. They destroyed property in homes and in the fields. The head of the uprising was a Pima, Luis, of the village of Saric. It is unspeakable what happened in this uprising. It was caused by the Governor and Captain General, Don Diego Ortiz Parilla, who gave the cane of authority of Captain General (never before used in the Pimería Alta) to his puppet, the said Luis, forming his company of Pimas and patronizing the Indian's pride to such excess that the Royal Arms were trampled when the war hit and was promoted against the loyal subjects of the Crown with the contempt that Luis and his chiefs brought about, protecting the insurgents and telling them that killing Spanish Fathers, burning and robbing churches, etc., was not a crime. Indeed, the Lord Governor promoted and rewarded him so much that he, himself, succeeded in approving the uprising, and though he was discreet, added to what has been said. Furthermore, the said Lord Governor not only helped the insurrection by supporting his companion, Luis, with the cane of Captain General, but he honored and courted him and handed the Pimería over to his discretion, leaving the dead unburied, the chalices defiled, and making cigar holders of the consecrated oil vials and sweat room trinkets of the ornaments and saints. Finally, he was in San Ignacio, situated on the frontier of the Pimería Alta, with more than 300 armed men but, although he pardoned his companion, Luis, and provided sanctuary for the fugitive in the house of the Father, he had no intentions of leaving for the front as Governor and Captain General of the armed soldiers, rather dedicating his valor only to the rear guard. For these truths I sign on May 30, 1753. Ignacio Xavier Keller