A Harvest of Reluctant Souls: Fray Alonso de Benavides's History of New Mexico, 1630

31. The Miraculous Conversion of the Humana Nation

• 69 Leaving behind all this western part, and leaving the Villa of Santa Fé, the center of New Mexico, which is at 37 degrees north latitude , we cross the land of the Vaquero Apaches for more than one hundred twelve leagues to the east. Here the land of the Humana nation begins. Their conversion was so miraculous that it deserves to have its story told. Some years ago, a priest named Fray Juan de Salas was occupied in the conversion of the Tompiro and Salinero Indians in a place where there exist the greatest salt lakes in the world.1 These people border the Humanas. There was a war among them, and Fray Juan de Salas returned to collect the Salineros. TheHumanassaidthatpeoplewhogobacktogetunfortunatesare good people, and they got to be very fond of the padre. They begged him to come and live among them, and each year came searching for him. He was also quite busy with the Christians, being a linguist and a very good minister. I didn’t have enough clerics, and so I continued to put off the Humanas, who kept asking for him, until God should send me more workers. He sent them this past year of 1629, having inspired Your Majesty to order the Viceroy of New Spain to send on thirty priests, who were led by their Custodian, Father Fray Estevan de Perea. And so we then 31. TheMiraculousConversion of theHumanaNation 70 • Chapter 31 dispatched this same father with a companion, Father Fray Diego López,2 both guided by these same Humanas Indians. Before they left, we had asked the Indians to tell us why they pled withussomovinglyforbaptismandprieststoteachthemthewaysof the church. They answered that a woman like the one we had in a painting there3 (which was a portrait of Mother Luisa de Carrión) had preached to each one of them in their own language. She said they should come to call on the padres to teach and baptize them, and that they should not be lazy. They said that the woman who preached to them was dressed more or less like the woman in the painting. But her face was not like that of the woman in the painting: she was a slip of a girl and beautiful.4 And always when Indians from those tribes came to see us again, they looked at the portrait and talked among themselves, saying, “The clothes are the same, but not the face.” Because the woman who preached to them was a slip of a girl and beautiful. That enemy of souls, the devil, seeing that those priests were about to free a number of people from his claws, decided to defend himself. He used one of his customary stratagems—drying up the pools of water from which the people drank. Along the same lines, he gathered up all the buffalo in the area. All those tribes supported themselves off these beasts. And after this, he spread the word through the medium of Indian sorcerers that everyone should move. People were to go away to look for something to eat. He said the priests they had asked for would not come, as the Indians had already been waiting for six years and they had not appeared. And it seemed that the priests were so late that no one need wait for them any longer. The captains decided that they would indeed go. They struck their tents to leave early the next morning. At daybreak the saint5 spoke to each one of them individually. She told them that they should not go, that the clerics they had been searching for were drawing near. Conferring among themselves, they decided to send twelve very reliable captains to see if it were so. On the third day out, they ran into the priests, whom they asked to show them the portrait of the woman who had preached among them. The padre showed them the portrait of Mother Luisa de Carrión, about which they said that their lady was dressed like that, but was younger and more beautiful. The Miraculous Conversion of the Humana Nation • 71 They left right away to give the news of the coming of the padres to their friends and relatives, and everyone came out to meet them in a procession with two crosses in front, like people well trained in the ways of heaven. The padres and three soldiers who had come with...