Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico

1: Different Paths

CHAPTER ONE Different Paths Each man is saved according to his own religion. — Proverb proscribed by Spanish Inquisition B efore local scouts tracked the hairy-faced, metal-clad beings on American shores, before mariners stocked vessels to search for undiscovered sea passages, before robed and tonsured men uttered the first incantations of a foreign faith to native audiences, Indians, Spaniards, and Franciscans had evolved in separate worlds. Despite cultural differences including custom, social complexity, and language, Indians in both the Southeast and Southwest practiced flexible, inclusive religions that readily absorbed new spiritual concepts to augment traditional practices. Lay Spaniards and Franciscans, on the other hand, followed an increasingly exclusive, evangelical religion that united countrymen against foreign invaders, distinguished Christian“faith”from others’ “superstition,” and sometimes forced dissenters to convert. When these distinct cultures—Timucuas, Guales, and Apalachees in Florida, Pueblos in New Mexico, and Franciscans and settlers from Spain—met, their cosmologies and perceptions of spiritual power concussed . The collision of worlds led to a protracted, often violent, negotiation over whose approach to faith would predominate. In the process Indians and Spaniards forged a new world. Discerning a people’s cosmological beliefs is delicate and difficult work. Deciphering the beliefs of people in the past is exponentially more complicated. Each native culture practiced particular traditions, recounted 11 unique versions of origin stories, and cultivated independently derived conclusions about human relations to the world. Many of the minute details that characterized and delineated one culture’s beliefs from another are lost. But by culling ethnographic interviews, sifting archaeological evidence, scouring ethnohistorical documents, and applying ethnological analyses, a general native perspective emerges. The key to Indians’ views of the universe lay in their surroundings. The Guale, Timucua, and Apalachee Indians of Florida, and the Tano, Tewa, Tiwa, Keres, Piro, Zuñi, and Hopi Pueblos of New Mexico, lived in close contact with the landscape. Whether hunting, farming, fishing, cooking, crafting, building, or dancing, Indians spent nearly all their time outdoors. Their wooden huts or mud houses were places to sleep or to seek shelter from winter frost or summer storms. The lands encircling native settlements were as familiar as their kith and kin. Passing the majority of their time along riverbeds, in miles of wilderness, or atop mountain ridges, Indians did not consider themselves divorced from, or opposed to, their environment; they saw themselves as important players in their universe. They encouraged the continuation of life and the passing of seasons through their rituals. They also appeased powerful spirits that animated and articulated their world. Natives were an essential part of their environment. But Indians knew that they lived in lands that could take as easily as they could give. Florida’s coastal and riverine environment that provided abundant fish and lush, varied vegetation was also pocked with sinkholes and swamps. Warm year-round temperatures encouraged fierce thunderstorms; nearby Atlantic and Caribbean shores were targets for hurricanes. Lightening could create an inferno if it struck dead trees or native structures made from dried wood. Persistent rains could flood a season’s plantings and drought could wither fertile fields. Animals also posed perils for negligent Indians. Treacherous alligators lurked in the swamps where natives fished and gathered canes, while poisonous snakes slithered among the reeds, in rivers, and in forests. Staggeringly high humidity bred countless mosquitoes and other parasitic insects that feasted on human blood. Although ecologically different, New Mexico posed equally perilous conditions for its inhabitants. The Southwest was a study in extreme contrasts . Mesas, buttes, and mountains rose in solitary nodes or in powerful , snow-capped ranges, while treacherous canyons cut deep into the earth. 12 Chapter One The Rio Grande, Colorado, and San Juan drainage systems provided lush vegetation near their main waterways but most of the landscape was a sparse, desert-like plain covered with sagebrush and cacti. Water was the rarest resource; the Southwest’s annual rainfall of twenty-five to thirty centimeters parched the land and its inhabitants. Thunderstorms between July and August and snows from December to March provided almost all of the region’s moisture. Summer temperatures in the s, winters that could last through April, and average elevations of , meters above sea level made the Southwest an inhospitable place to live. Yet for thousands of years people came to these two places, remained there, and found ways to survive. Despite harsh climates, Florida and New Mexico could be fruitful. Soils, grasses...