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Chapter 6: Flying Like an Eagle: Franciscan and Caddo Dreams and Visions
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Chapter Flying Like an Eagle Franciscan and Caddo Dreams and Visions carla gerona When the Spanish marched into east Texas in the late 1600s, a large convoy of soldiers and priests brought horses, cattle, and trade goods; in addition, the missionaries came armed with their visions. Early on the Franciscans from the Colegio Apostólico de Propagande Fide (Apostolic College to Propagate the Faith) in Mexico who sought to found missions in the region wrote about the abundant rivers, flora, and fauna, describing east Texas as ‘‘more fertile than the land of Spain.’’ They also had high opinions of the Caddo Hasinais, or the people they mistakenly called the ‘‘Tejas.’’ One Franciscan optimistically noted that if the ‘‘evangelical ministers learn the language they will reap great fruit’’ from the ‘‘meetings where various tribes assemble.’’ Several decades later another Franciscan missionary wrote explicitly about the Hasinai visionary practices. To join the Caddo priesthood young initiates would ‘‘relate what they have dreamed,’’ turning their dreams into songs. The same Franciscan also described the priests’ own visionary epiphanies, many of which related to their travels. This suggests that during this period of Caddo-Spanish interaction both groups valued their visionary experiences, and raises the question of whether Spanish and Caddos could exchange their dreams and visions with each other.1 To explore this question, one must first examine the ways in which each group understood these experiences—a task fraught with difficulties. For one thing, it may be impossible to know the exact nature or even the truthfulness of their dreams and visions—all we can go by is what the historical records said, and try to understand their language for what might have 126 Intercultural Encounter been different phenomena that were sometimes conflated or left unexplained . This raises an even bigger issue: the Spaniards told their own story while the Caddos did not. Contemporaneous historical sources came solely from the perspective of Europeans, and in particular, from the Franciscan priests. Nonetheless, analyzing these Spanish texts can shed light on dreams and visions in this contact zone. The sources especially show how the priests came with a deep belief in the value of visionary experiences and a well-developed system to analyze and record them, one that accorded the most true experiences to themselves. But Franciscan sources also show that the Spanish understood that indigenous Americans likewise turned to their dreams and visions for guidance and held their visionaries in high esteem.2 This essay follows European and indigenous visionaries and their visions as they traveled their worlds: Spain, New Spain, Texas, and Indian Territory. It locates the place of dreams and visions in a specific moment of history: the larger post-Columbian exchange of peoples, goods, and ideas, especially between the Franciscans and the Caddos. When they first met, both groups valued their dreams and visions for the powerful knowledge they produced, and both recognized that exchanging these experiences might provide an important means of communication. Nonetheless, in the end, they found it difficult to agree on common meanings. From Spain to New Spain Even as Spain entered the age of the Counter-Reformation, early modern Spaniards continued to place great value on their dreams and visions. Thus a twenty-one year-old laywoman from Madrid, Lucrecia de León, could claim to have significant dreams, and she had no shortage of people with whom to discuss them. Lucrecia confided hundreds of dreams to family and friends and consulted different experts to help her interpret them. Her mother encouraged what she considered God-sent dreams, and Lucrecia conferred with the local beatas (pious women) who devoted themselves to Christ as well as a morisca (Moorish) boarder who understood Arabic prophetic traditions. She also shared her quixotic dreams with a former governor of Yucatan who studied astrology and a number of street prophets who criticized King Philip II and Spain. Most detrimentally to Lucrecia’s spiritual career, she reported them to her religious confessors, including a canon connected to the cathedral of Toledo and the head of Madrid’s Franciscan (2024-03-19 11:22 GMT) Flying Like an Eagle 127 convents. Because these last two believed in the prophetic nature of Lucrecia de León’s dreams, they recorded them and eventually drew the attention of the Inquisition, which led to the visionary’s trial and incarceration. According to Richard L. Kagan, early modern ‘‘female seers were more likely to be burned at the stake than...