Conflict in Colonial Sonora: Indians, Priests, and Settlers

2: Father Canal Calls in the Troops

54 Chapter Two father Canal Calls in the troops . Jesuit Entradas on the Río Sonora / Around the time that Pedro de Perea was attempting to settle at Tuape, Jesuit missionaries had become active on the upper Río Sonora, in that portion of the basin east and north of the canyon now known as Puerta del Sol. A decade earlier, in the late 1620s, they had founded missions in the southern and eastern reaches of the Opatería. In 1638 they arrived for good at the Río Sonora but had sent advance missionaries well prior to making settlements. It seems likely that they directed Pedro to Tuape on the Río San Miguel, perhaps hoping he would stay away from the Río Sonora. The advance missionaries faced terrifying prospects. They usually embarked alone or in the company of a small number of supposed Native converts of untested loyalty. The priests spoke only stammering bits of Native speech, facing alien peoples of unknown disposition and distinctly barbarian (from the European viewpoint) customs. The clerics preached a blatantly incomprehensible message that relied on untranslatable metaphors and arcane mysteries delivered with dubious translations laced with irrational threats. From their headquarters or advance stations, the Jesuits armed themselves with faith, reinforced and exhorted each other repeatedly, then shoved their intrepid brethren from the protection of the nest into a perilous sea of gentility. Their first missionary on the Río Sonora was the Portuguese priest Father Canal Calls in the Troops 55 Bartolomé Castaño, an apparently charismatic preacher and accomplished linguist. Other Jesuits reported that Father Castaño lived in dire poverty, and he seems to have achieved a positive reputation among the Indians of the region, due especially to his use of music. Father Pedro Pantoja, a skilled organizer, joined him in 1639, and the two founded missions at Baviácora, Aconchi, and Banámichi along the Río Sonora.1 According to Pantoja’s claims, they were rapidly successful in establishing the missions, baptizing several thousand Indians, generally pacifying the Natives, and inculcating the Catholic faith. Or so he reported. By 1640, however, the Jesuits could claim little progress in evangelizing north of Banámichi, in the upper portions of the valley of the Río Sonora. Pedro de Perea may have sent an expeditionary force north around that time, probably to clear the way for the Franciscans he had invited to administer to the Indians, but surely not to assist the evangelizing Jesuits. Whether Padre Castaño met with the Franciscans is a matter of speculation. Apparently he was a bit too strange even for his superiors. He was transferred to work elsewhere, and Father Gerónimo de la Canal was drafted to replace him and carry out the difficult task of overcoming Native resistance to the north of Banámichi and nudging the Franciscans out of territory that the Jesuits viewed as rightfully theirs. Father Canal was installed on the Río Sonora in the mid-1640s and may have run into conflicts with Franciscans. At any rate, the Jesuits dispatched him in 1643 or thereabouts to Mexico City to protest Pedro de Perea’s importation of Franciscan priests into Jesuit territory, a mission that placed him in direct opposition to Pedro and his men. Much to the Jesuits’ satisfaction, in 1644 Father Canal was successful in extracting from the viceroy an edict ordering the Franciscans out of Sonora and Pedro de Perea out of the alcalde mayor’s office—a triumph for the Jesuits, but perhaps a stumbling point for later relations with Pedro’s security forces. While Father Gerónimo was representing the Jesuits in the capital, he received new orders, directing him to evangelize the northern reaches of the Río Sonora. Departing Mexico City, he arrived at Sinoquipe in June 1646, in the company of several Native assistants, presumably interpreters and guides (to whom he referred as “mis muchachos,”—“my lads”).2 He had been charged with the pacification of Sinoquipe, Arizpe, and the lesser-known village of Cucubazunuchi (or Cucubazunichi).3 Father Canal’s writings give us no sense of his linguistic abilities. The peoples of the central Río Sonora probably spoke Teguima, an Opatan Chapter two 56 language. The Hímeris, who lived to the northeast and who may have also lived in northern villages, spoke Pima. The two languages are about as close as Spanish and...