Joseph Garrucho

Guevavi

By

Ginny Sphar

Father Joseph was born Guiseppe Garruchio at Castel Aragonese on the Island of Sardinia on March 27, 1712. He entered the Society of Jesus on January 6, 1731, and sailed from the port of Alghero, Sardinia, bound for Spain on October 23, 1740. On a day in February 1744 he looked for the last time at the port of Cádiz, gateway to Spain’s New World. For three years he had been waiting to sail for America. He had black hair and light skin. His eyes were blue and his beard sparse. At long last he was sailing on the San Francisco, alias La Peregrina.[1]

No voyage across the Atlantic was without risk. In 1744, in the wake of the naval war with England, it was even riskier and also uncomfortable. With their names now conveniently Hispanicized, Father Garrucho and his nearly 20 fellow Jesuits might well have echoed Sedelmayr’s bid to his ship: “May she stoutly defend her Americans against the English!”[2]

Just as the captain had sailed the San Francisco across the Atlantic and they were in coastal waters, his ship was set upon and boarded by Englishmen. The English captain, deciding that there were too many mouths to feed, put the excess passengers ashore.

News of their arrival preceded the two castaways inland to Puerto del Príncipe, today Camagüey, where certain leading citizens had been requesting the services of Jesuits. Fathers Garrucho and Juan Cubedo rested and then engaged in a “fervent and very fruitful” 20-day ministry, after which they set out for Havana, and there booked passage to the mainland. Thanks in part to the reports of two Sardinians, Garrucho and Cubedo, the people of Puerto del Príncipe in Cuba soon boasted a Jesuit College.[3]

To his superiors in Mexico City, Joseph Garrucho appeared “zealous and healthy” enough for assignment to the Pimería. Early in 1745 he arrived there and met the “severe and difficult” Father Keller. As they approached the mission of Guevavi, Father Joseph must have been disappointed. There were signs of life all along the river but he could see nothing that resembled a mission. Suddenly they were there. Without the cross and bells and Pimas, it might have been a rancho. The Padre’s adobe house was apparently the same one that Captain Anza had begun for Father Grazhoffer. The church was nothing more than a brush roof over posts, which his predecessors may have ordered walled with adobes. The mission at best was crude—quite a challenge for Father Garrucho.

Once Father Keller’s scribe[4] had entered in the book of burials the seven people who had died since Christmas, Joseph Garrucho, on May 5, 1745, made his first entry as resident Padre.

Almost before Father Joseph got to know his Indians, they subjected him to an initiation they had practiced before. They deserted him. In response to the Padre’s plea, Captain Pedro Vicente de Tagle Bustamente and a detachment of soldiers came north from the presidio of San Felipe at Terrenate, founded not only to chastise Apaches but also “to curb such recurring restlessness among the Pimas.”[5] Father Keller rode with them. Reining up at Guevavi, they found Garrucho with only two houseboys and a vecino. The Captain was all for bringing the Indians down from the hills and punishing them. Garrucho and Keller protested. Without resorting to bloodshed they succeeded in getting the Indians and livestock back to the mission.[6]

Father Garrucho soon learned that even when the Indians stayed at the mission, their numbers decreased. Measles and smallpox, more than the Apaches, were the scourge of the Pimería. During his six years at Guevavi, there were at least three killing epidemics.[7]

To replace those who died, Father Joseph needed to bring in new blood from native rancherías. He was very successful, as the mission books reflected and his superiors noted.[8] The mission population grew, even though the number of Pimas diminished. Long before the end of the mission period in Pimería Alta, the Padres found themselves caring for more and more gente de razón and fewer Indians. The need for military assistance to bring the Pimas out of the barancas was there, but reduction (uprooting and transplanting) cannot have been pleasant for the Indians or Garrucho.

Most of Guevavi’s population, Father Stiger later admitted, was reduced by force.[9] Luis Oacpicagigua, soon to become the most infamous Pima of all, listed among his good works the reduction of two rancherías of his brethren to Guevavi and two more to the visita at Arivaca.[10]

As Father Segesser had observed, “Indians do not come to Christian service when they do not see the pot boiling.”[11] Upon the Padre’s ability to supply food for his Indians, depended the expansion of his mission. As a provider, Garrucho was very successful. He employed a division of labor. The King had decreed that the Indians work no more than three days a week in the mission fields. Depending on the job, sometimes they worked more and sometimes less, after all the King was far away.

Under Garrucho, the mission ranch at Tubac began to produce. In the village of Guevavi, Father Joseph made it a practice to keep a supply of maize, most of the year, in the center of the plaza in a “tapestle,” a large open cage on stilts.[12] The Padre’s life was a very busy one.

The Jesuits looked forward to their annual spiritual exercises, eight days of disciplined re-dedication restored their zeal and perspective. On the eve of the feast day of Saint Ignatius Loyola in 1748, Father Garrucho evidently joined Father Keller at Suamca for the break.[13]

On December 10, 1748, Father Garrucho professed his final vows at the mission of Arizpe during the celebration of mass. He was now in the fullest sense, a Jesuit.[14] Father Visitor General of the Jesuits, Carlos de Roxas, had sent word that Father Joseph was ready to take his final vows.[15]

In 1749, Father Garrucho almost enrolled in the ranks of Jesuit explorers. First, however, he was called upon to calm a distraught brother. The natives at Caborca had all but unnerved Father Bartholomé Sáenz. Replaced by Father Tello, whom the Caborcans subsequently martyred, Sáenz was sent to Guevavi, where it was hoped that “being in the company of Father Garrucho, who has a light hearted disposition, he might put aside all of his apprehensions.”[16] Father Garrucho’s tonic seemed to work and he considered leaving Sáenz at Guevavi while he went to alter the course of the empire.

Since the days of Kino, the Padres had looked beyond the Pimería to the lands of the Yumas, the Gilenos, the Hopis, and farther. Father Sedelmayr resolved to return to the Yumas on the Colorado and he planned to take Garrucho with him. By early October 1749, the trip was arranged, only to have the acting Governor deny the necessary military escort, saying the soldiers were needed in the war against the Seris and Apaches.[17] Thus Father Sáenz was not left alone at Guevavi.

Common defense and isolation drew the Padre and the settlers together. Unlike his brothers farther south, Father Joseph got along well with the gente de razón he served. For him it was a matter of self-preservation. He occupied the most advanced position on the entire Jesuit frontier. Exposed to Apache raids and Pima restlessness, it behooved him and the settlers to cooperate.

The corrupting influence of the Spanish way of life, wanting Indian labor and mission lands, and bitter disputes with parish priests of mining towns, all of which were combined in the long-established southern missions, made the Jesuits’ life a constant battle. “Those were not yet such issues at Guevavi.”[18]

How the land was distributed between the gente de razón and the mission is a puzzle. The mission did not have a land grant as such. Black Robes’ enemies in Sonora claimed that the missionaries had turned the province into a private domain. Only the King and the Indians, they said, were the rightful owners of the lands, yet, in fact, the Jesuits controlled the best of it.[19]

Most of the settlers did not have legally granted land. As Spaniards and half-breeds preempted river bottom acres and good water holes, the Indians sulked. They resented the intruders.[20] So, behind the Padre’s back, certain of the natives plotted revenge.

Garrucho’s last months at Guevavi were the most eventful. Under him, the mission had prospered as never before. There was enough of a surplus to permit consideration of a long overdue proper church. Several times during 1751 he was gone from Guevavi, probably making arrangements for it.

Later in the summer of 1751, Don Joachín de Cásares, a master builder from Arizpe, arrived at Guevavi to take charge. Here at Guevavi, Father Joseph would leave, if nothing else, a house of God where none comparable had stood before.

Probably Cásares brought artisans and assistants. For the unskilled labor, he depended on the Indians. They would supply the muscle, at their own pace. Commenting on the native building crews, Father Sedelmayr once wrote, “Their manner of working was to gather between eight and nine and to quit about four. The ones who dug the earth did so seated. Those who carried two small balls of mud, did so then sat down to rest. The others also worked at this pace. But because there were so many of them, something was accomplished.”[21]

As part of the fall offensive in 1751, a contingent of Pimas was to join with the soldiers of the Presidio of San Felipe on a routine search and destroy campaign down the San Pedro and back through the Chiricahua mountains. From Sáric, on the upper Río Altar, Luis Oacpicagigua, Captain General of all the Pimas, set forth with a band of warriors. Their route took them through Guevavi. The Padre himself told how he welcomed the famous Luis, entertaining him in his own quarters. When they were ready to leave, Garrucho sent them on their way with 15 head of the mission’s cattle.[22]

At Suamca their reception was less cordial. Luis arrived dressed as a Spanish officer and may have been overbearing. Father Keller may have suggested that since Luis was more familiar with native weapons he would enjoy greater success with them.[23] Or as some witnesses later said, he called the proud Indian a Chichimec dog whose proper attire was a coyote skin and a loin cloth and whose proper pastime was chasing rabbits and rodents in the hills.[24] This offended Luis who now went home nursing black thoughts and abandoned the campaign.

This Luis, the Padres concluded, was a bad sort. Even worse he was a creature of Sonora’s new Governor, Diego Ortiz Parilla and, as such, enjoyed civil and military protection. Ortiz Parilla had also elevated Luis to the rank of captain general without consulting the Padres. For months the Jesuits had expressed their concern over Ortiz Parilla’s dealings with the Pimas. The Governor, during the Seri campaign, flattered them and now they returned haughty and averse to the Padres.[25]

The fiesta at Guevavi in honor of the Feast of San Miguel, September 29, 1751, promised to be the best ever. If construction proceeded well, San Miguel’s new church would be filled to overflowing. The celebration was in full swing when a local native known as Pedro Chihuahua came looking for the Padre. He was Luis’ right-hand man and was carrying the baton of sergeant major of the Pima Nation, apparently granted to him by the Governor of Sonora without the missionary’s knowledge. A dispute arose. Either Garrucho suggested that Pedro was not authorized to parade around Guevavi with his baton[26] or he grabbed the baton and ridiculed the Indian in front of the crowd. Pedro went away unhappy, not even pausing to watch the bullfights.[27]

In November, Garrucho heard that natives had stolen mission horses at Arivaca; the thieves were apprehended and taken into custody. On the way back tempers flared and a scuffle resulted and some were wounded. By the time the prisoners were delivered to Guevavi and put to work on the church, Luis knew of the incident and Garrucho suspected that he was up to no good. These episodes in the fall of 1751 were typical of an active mission frontier. These details vary greatly depending on whom the reporter wished to blame for the shocking event that followed.

Sunday, November 21, 1751, began peacefully at Guevavi. With little warning the routine Sunday activities of the mission came to an abrupt halt. Near panic ensued. The mission foreman at Tubac, Juan de Figueroa, stumbled into the village, beaten and bloody. He said the Indians there had gone crazy and tried to club him to death. Arivaca, rumor had it, was a smoldering ruin. The natives of Guevavi grabbed their weapons and fled. On the advice of the native governor at Bac, Father Pauer and a small escort made a dash to Guevavi and Garrucho. A warning had reached Father Keller and he had passed it on to San Ignacio.

Without the natives, Guevavi could not defend itself. Preparations were underway to abandon Guevavi. The stock was rounded up and most of the santos and church furnishings were loaded onto pack animals. On Wednesday, November 24, 1751, the retreat began. Garrucho apparently never returned to Guevavi.[28]

From Guevavi Father Garrucho went to Oposura, 150 miles southeast of Guevavi to serve the Ópatas. From Oposura in 1763 he sent orders to have the ailing Father Pfefferkorn removed from Guevavi and sent to Oposura to recuperate, sending the last Jesuit [29] named Custodio Ximeno to Guevavi.

Already Diego Ortiz Parrilla had begun to lay the blame on the Jesuits.[30] His initial report of the revolt sent to the Viceroy December 1, 1751, from San Ignacio, intimated that Garrucho’s foreman, Juan María Romero, and José Naba precipitated the whole thing. The report was sent to the King. Now the name Guevavi was heard in a very unfavorable context.[31]

By the time Diego Ortiz Parrilla completed his investigation, the charges against Garrucho ranged from wanton whipping of loyal Pimas to kidnapping of native children. It remained for following pro-Jesuit investigators to demonstrate that the administration of Father Garrucho had been, in reality, an exemplary one.[32]

Father Garrucho was perfectly capable of defending himself, although he might not have done so if the Father Visitor General had not ordered it. Father Garrucho’s long letter began on the feast day of the Presentation of the blessed Virgin Mary, November 21, and concluded on December 6, 1754. To no one’s surprise it was a strongly worded indictment of Governor Ortiz Parrilla.

Once they learned their Padre was not coming back to Guevavi, the people split up. Some joined Luis, others went into the mountains. Within a week after Father Joseph’s departure, a band of rebels held a native rally and “unhinging the doors of the Father’s house, they ransacked it, then began in the church, tearing, throwing down, and abusing the few santos that remained.”[33] At San Xavier del Bac, the “capilla o enramada” and the Padre’s house were totally demolished. Nothing movable at either Bac or Guevavi was spared.

Because they were more substantial, the church at Guevavi and the Padre’s house survived to serve another day.[34] For the time being, Luis held sway and defied any Padre to return.

At the invitation of Father Stiger, the mission of San Ignacio became an armed camp. On November 30, 1751, Governor Ortiz Parrilla arrived with his party. Apparently he was looking for a way out of a personal dilemma involving his personal relationship with Luis O. He sent out peace missions to Luis and began taking anti-Jesuit testimony.

In the early dawn of January 5, 1752, near the deserted visita of Arivaca, Luis suddenly lost his advantage. As the head of a horde of Indians, reportedly 2,000 strong, including Indians from Guevavi, he fell upon 86 Spaniards under the leadership of Bernardo de Urrea and was beaten. After this he was more willing to talk peace. There were conditions: Father Garrucho, now serving the Ópatas at Oposura, must return the Pima houseboys he had taken when he fled the revolt. Father Keller must be removed from the Pimería.

On March 18, 1752, Luis came alone to Tubac and surrendered to Captain Juan Tomás de Beldarrain. By mid-April, Governor Juanico Cipriano and 65 others were back at Guevavi.[35] For more than a year they would resist a missionary’s return.

Father Garrucho was Father Visitor of Sonora in the early 1760s and for a brief time as Father Visitor General.[36] He might have returned to Guevavi once more had not “his attacks” made riding so painful.

He served at Oposura for 15 years until the day of the Jesuit’s rude expulsion. The mission church at Oposura was one of the best in the province. He added additional rich furnishings, and with oval paintings, he arranged a small chapel to the Holy Virgin of Loreto.[37] He even learned to preach in Ópata.

Among the Jesuits who survived the terrible trip after the expulsion were Garrucho, Pauer and Ximeno.[38] They were put aboard the Swedish ship Princess Ulrica at Vera Cruz on November 10, 1768.

Those who survived the trip were disbursed to monasteries throughout Spain. A special reception awaited Joseph Garrucho, the Jesuit who spent more of his life at Guevavi than anyone else. When he disembarked at Cádiz, he was not allowed to go with his fellow Padres to the hospice at the Puerto de Santa María. Instead he was placed under heavy guard and marched halfway across Spain to Madrid, there to be imprisoned.[39]

As an ex-missionary who had lived in the northern frontier, he was, in the eyes of the Spanish authorities, potentially dangerous. In his cell, which he shared with a German lay brother, he and his companion drew maps.

Later he was held in a Hieronymite monastery and then told he could go home. He refused. When and where death closed the remarkable life and ministry of Joseph Garrucho, once of Guevavi, is still a mystery.[40]

His first experience as a missionary, Garrucho had gained at Guevavi. He endured longer than any other Jesuit either before or after him. Under him, the mission was transformed from a marginal, wilderness operation into a relatively prosperous frontier community. When he left, however, he fled. Fortunately for Jesuit Guevavi, his successor proved equal to the difficult task of reconstruction.

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[1] At his embarkation in 1744, Garrucho was reported to be 28 years old. Elsewhere, however, his birth date is given as March 27, 1712, which is apparently correct, making him 32 instead. Father Joseph had entered the Society of Jesus on January 6, 1731, and had sailed from the port of Alghero, Sardinia, bound for Spain, on October 23, 1740. AGI, Contratación, 5550. Zelis, Catálogo, pp. 20-21. Because the Jesuits of Sardinia were joined to those of Spain in the internal organization of the order, a considerable number of Sardinians found their way to the missions of the Spanish New World.

[2] Sedelmayr to Amman, Puerto de Santa María, November 21, 1735; translation, BRP.

[3] Alegre, Historia de la Companía, IV, pp. 404-405. Forty-one-year-old Father Cubedo (Giovanni Cubeddu) later served for many years at the mission of Chínipas, on a tributary of the upper Río Fuerte in extreme western Chihuahua. Ibid., p. 404, n. 31.

[4] This scribe, perhaps a resident of the presidio at Terrenate, made numerous entries in the books of Soamca for Father Keller, who was indeed a very poor penman. Because Garrucho signed some of these entries while visiting Soamca (e.g., baptisms on June 4, 1746, and October 19, 1747) several historians have taken the scribe’s graceful studied hand for Garrucho’s and, thus, have erroneously implied that Soamca not Guevavi was Father Joseph’s station from 1744 to 1748., for example, Pradeau, Expulsíon, p. 150. By comparing the entries Garrucho actually did write (e.g., Soamca, Libro de Bautismos y Casamientos de los Pueblos de Visita, 1743-1755, September 4, 1746; Pinart, CPA; and Guevavi, “Tubaca y Otros,” 1745-1751) with those of the scribe it is obvious that they were indeed two different men.

[5] Lieutenant Francisco Xavier de Escalante, Cuquiárachi, September 5, 1754; Utrera testimonies, AGI, Guad., 419, microfilm, BL. These are the testimonies recorded by the Jesuit Father Visitor General, Joseph de Utrera, August-December, 1754, concerning the Pima rebellion of 1751.

[6] Their flight on this occasion was supposed to have been caused by a false report spread by a malevolent Pima. Christóbal de Osef, Real de Todos Santos, September 16, 1754; ibid.

[7] From the bunching of burials at Guevavi during certain months in 1747, 1749, and 1751, Dobyns noted the lethal effect of these epidemics in “Tubac through Four Centuries: An Historical Résumé and Analysis,” unpublished report for the Arizona State Parks Board, 1959, pp. 94-100.

[8] Father Carlos de Roxas to Father Provincial Andrés Xavier Garcia, Arizpe, December 29, 1748; AHH, Temp., 278.

[9] Father Gaspar Stiger to Segesser, San Ignacio, November 29, 1751; Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, Quaderno no. 1, AGI, microfilm, BL. This legajo contains the documents assembled by Governor Diego Ortiz Parrilla during and immediately after the pima rebellion of 1751, November 1751-March 1753.

[10] Luis Oacpicagigua, San Ignacio, March 24, 1752; Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 8. The names of the rancherías reduced to Guevavi were recorded as “Upiatuban” and “El Concuc”; and those of the rancherías reduced to Arivaca as “El Toamuc” and “El Suctuni.” Perhaps the latter was the same ranchería referred to by Father Torres Perea in 1743 as “the village of Santo Thomás Apóstol Supquituni.”

[11] Treutlein, “Relation of Segesser,” MA, XXVII, p. 161.

[12] Captain Gabriel Antonio de Vildósola, Cuquiárachi, September 9, 1754; Utrera testimonies.

[13] At Soamca on El Dia de San Ignacio, July 31, 1748, Father Joseph baptized a boy for whom Father Ignacio was godfather.

[14] It was customary for a Jesuit to profess his final vows on one of the various feast days of the Blessed Virgin Mary. December 10 was the feat of the Transfer of the Holy House of Loreto (traditionally the house in which the Annunciation took place, later moved from the Holy Land to Loreto, Italy). Although Father Garrucho’s profession was dated at Arizpe on December 10, he himself signed an entry in his mission book stating that he had baptized five children at Guevavi that very same day. In one or the other instance the date was an approximation or a slip, for it is extremely doubtful that Father Joseph was in both places on a single day. A copy of Garrucho’s profession is listed in AHH, Temp., 16. An English translation of the profession of Father Henrique Ruhen, Tubutama, August 15, 1751, is included in Ronald L. Ives, “Mission San Marcelo del Sonoydag,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. LXVI (1955), pp 220-21.

[15] Roxas to García, December 29, 1749.

[16] Roxas to García, Arizpe, August 8, 1749, AHH, Temp., 278. Sáenz had accepted Caborca on November 29, 1748, and had given it up on July 10, 1749. Entregas; WBS, 1744, ff. 271-72, 295-96. He was apparently to have been installed at San Xavier del Bac in April 1749, but when a military escort was denied the plan fell through. Arriving at Guevavi during the summer he seems to have remained in the salutary company of Father Joseph until fall. Shortly thereafter, he was re-assigned to Cuquiárachi. Father Salvador Ignacio de la Peña also was assigned to San Xavier, it appears, but before he got there his mission was changed to Cucurpe. Father Thomás Miranda to Balthasar, Ures, June 16, 1749; ibid. José Rafael Rodríguez Gallardo to Ortiz Parrilla, Mátape, March 15, 1750; AGN, Historia, 16.

[17] Ibid. Rodríguez Gallardo to Ortiz Parrilla, March 15, 1750.

[18] For an excellent summary of the areas of conflict between the missionaries and the civilian population, from the Jesuit point of view, see ibid., pp. 81-83. The economic basis for Jesuit-civil discord is considered by Treutlein in “The Economic Regime of the Jesuit Mission in Eighteenth Century Sonora,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. VIII (1939), pp. 289-300, and by Navarro García, Sonora y Sinaloa, pp. 161-234.

[19] Ibid., pp. 203-208. Although land ownership during the Jesuit years in Pimería Alta remains unclear, this is not the case in the later Franciscan period, when land grants, including the missions’, were carefully surveyed and duly recorded. See Ray H. Mattison, “Early Spanish and Mexican Settlements in Arizona,” NMHR, Vol. XXI (1846), pp. 273-327

[20] Stiger to Segesser, November 29, 1751.

[21] The quotation is from Sedelmayr’s oft-cited apology of November 29, 1754, supposedly written from Guevavi. The copy in AGN, Historia, 17, does indeed read “Guevavi.” Quite understandably, historians have accepted the fact and have claimed for Guevavi the distinction of Sedelmayr’s presence (e.g., Hazel Emery Mills, “Father Jacobo Sedelmayr, s.j.: A Forgotten Chapter in Arizona History,” ArizHR, Vol. VII (1936), p. 17; Dunne, Sedelmayr, p. iii, and Balthasar, p. 49; and Pradeau, Expulsión, p. 232). But the AGN copyist erred. Sedelmayr wrote from his mission of Guásavas, more than 150 miles southeast of Guevavi. Sedelmayr (to Father Visitor Joseph de Utrera), “Guassabas,” November 29, 1754; apparent original in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California (HM 22238). Cásares alleged that his peones, as he called the workers, came to work late, took a long lunch hour, and quit early. Joaquín de Cásares, Arizpe, September 20, 1754; Utrera testimonies.

[22] Captain Santiago Ruiz de Ael, Diario, September 21 to October 11, 1751; Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 7. Vildósola, September 9, 1754. Garrucho to Utrera, Oposura, December 6, 1754; BNMex, 43/721.

[23] Antonio de Rivera, San Miguel de Horcasitas, December 5, 1753, et al., Arce y Arroyo testimonies.

[24] Miguel Siarituc, San Ignacio, March 14, 1752, et al.; Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 8.

[25] Olave and Stiger quoted in Roxas to Arce y Arroyo, Arizpe, January 18, 1754, unsigned draft, WBS, 1744, ff. 347-50, and 40, ff. 163-64.

[26] Father Juan Nentuig to Father Joseph de Utrera, Tecoripa, December 3, 1754, et al.; Utrera testimonies.

[27] Francisco Padilla, San Ignacio, February 4, 1752, et al.; Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 8. Juan Manuel Ortiz, San Ignacio, December 9, 1751, ibid.

[28] There is some question as to whether word of the uprising reached Guevavi on Sunday, November 21 or on Monday, November 22. There is no question as to the effect it produced. This account of Garrucho’s last days at Guevavi is based on the various declarations and letters in AGI, Guad., 418 and 419, and on the Padre’s own defense, Garrucho to Utrera, December 6, 1754. For a general treatment of the uprising, see Russell C. Ewing, “The Pima Uprising, 1751-1752: A Study in Spain’s Indian Policy,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Berkeley, 1934; and his “The Pima Outbreak in November, 1751,” NMHR, Vol. XIII (1938), pp. 337-46; and “The Pima Uprising of 1751,” in Greater America: Essays in Honor of Herbert E. Bolton (Los Angeles, 1945), pp. 259-80.

[29] Garrucho to Father Provincial Pedro Reales, Oposura, July 13, 1763; AHH, Temp., 17.

[30] Don Diego had enlisted in Spain in 1734. Six years later he shipped out to Cuba to fight in the War of Jenkin’s Ear. Not long after that, he turned up in Vera Cruz with the rank of captain of dragoons. In 1749 he put down a revolt in Puebla, and that same year was named governor of Sonora. Concluding his controversial administration of that province Ortiz Parrilla took part in the ill-starred San Sabá project in Texas. Robert S. Weddle, The San Sabá Mission, Spanish Pivot in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), p. 38, et passim. From Texas he went on to serve as governor of both Pensacola and Coahuíla, according to the somewhat confused biographical sketch in Almada, Diccionario, p. 542. He died on a visit to Spain, in Madrid in 1775. Navarro García, Don José de Gálvez y la Comandancia General de las Provincias Internas del Norte de Nueva Espana (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1964), pp 217, n. 30, 272, also 101-102, 197, 532.

[31] Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 1; also AGI, Guad., 137. Royal cedulas, Buen Retiro, October 4, 1752; AGI, Guad., 418 and 137.

[32] One of the most remarkable pro-Jesuit accounts of the uprising and its aftermath for a decade has been all but overlooked by recent historians, probably because a cataloguer mislabeled it. Seventy neatly written pages, it was set down in 1760 by Father Salvador Ignacio de la Peña. As one might expect, Peña praised rather than damned Garrucho, whom he portrayed as a kind and energetic missionary presiding at Guevavi over “a scattered mob of haughty thieves.” Not only does this account provide many valuable details of beleaguered Sonora between 1750 and 1760 but also shows the Pima Uprising to have been a decade-long affair. Although this important document is unsigned, its author’s admission that he was Father Utrera’s secretary during the 1754 visitation and that he was missionary at Cucurpe establishes it as the work of Father Peña. “Convite Evangelico á compasion, y Socorro de la Viña del Senor, destrozada, y conculcada con el Alzamiento de la Pimería Alta, desde el día 21 de Noviembre del Año de 1751, y sus lastimosos progressos en la siguiente Decada, hasta el año de 1760.” Labeled “An account of the uprising against the Jesuit missions in California (italics mine), from 1751-1766,” apparently at the University of California at Los Angeles; microfilm 71, UAL.

[33] Ruiz de Ael to Ortiz Parrilla, Terrenate, December 17, 1751; Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 2.

[34] It is possible that the new church was not in use by the time the revolt broke, and that these references are to the old one. Señor Cásares, the master builder, was still in residence on November 21, 1751. He testified later that he had been in Guevavi supervising the building of a church for the preceding three months; he spoke of Garrucho’s fair treatment of the workers on “la principiada Yglecia”; but he did not say how far along the project was. Cásares, September 20, 1754. Because it survived the rebellion while other churches did not, and because there is no mention of Garrucho’s successor having to carry on the work, it would appear that the references are to the new one, which served until the early 1770s, even after the Jesuits were expelled.

[35] Díaz del Carpio, Diario (March 5-24, 1752), and “Padron de los Pueblos citados al norte de esta Pimería alta . . .” (April-May, 1752); Ortiz Parrilla testimonies, 5. The adults of Guevavi were listed by their Christian names only. Native family names were included in the Tubac census.

[36] When Father Visitor General Ignacio Lizassoain was stricken Father Visitor Garrucho apparently functioned for him. Pradeau, Expulsión, p. 151.

[37] Aguirre to Zevallos, Bacadéguachi, February 18, 1764; ibid. This document includes the Father Visitor’s one-paragraph description of Oposura under Garrucho.

[38] “Nota de los 20 Regulares de la Comp.^a embarcaderos p.^a Espana en la Urca Sueca nombrada la Princesa Ulrrica,” Vera Cruz, November 10, 1768; WBS, 1745, ff. 461-62. “PP. Jesuitas que se embarcaron para Cádiz en el Verg.ⁿ Frances el Aventurero. Su Cap.ⁿ D. Pedro Lavant, que salió en 9, de Abril de 1769”; ibid., ff. 465-66.

[39] Matheu in Pradeau, Expulsión, p. 108.

[40] Donohue, “Jesuit Missions,” pp. 318-19. Zelis recorded the place and date of Father Garrucho’s death as Lubianos, Spain, November 30, 1785, but as Father Donohue points out, the Jesuit who supplied this information later corrected himself: the Padre who had died was not Garrucho of Guevavi.

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