Francis in the Americas: Essays on the Franciscan Family in North and South America (review)

Unlike the Society of Jesus, whose works in America are treated in a plethora of works, the historical literature on the Franciscans is less abundant than their importance warrants. It is the mission of the Academy of American Franciscan History and the present work, edited and introduced by John F. Schwaller, to help fill this void. Schwaller’s Introduction is followed by twenty articles, divided into six sections. The first, “Sixteenth Century Franciscans in New Spain,” is the editor’s area of expertise. Other sections include, “The Capuchins in the Seventeenth Century throughout the Americas,” “Franciscan Missions in Peripheral Regions of the Americas,” “Franciscans in the Borderlands: Seventeenth Century Experiences,” “Franciscan Missions in Alta California,” and “Franciscans in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century United States.” Inevitably in a collection such as this, some contributions are stronger than others. All, however, are useful additions to our storehouse of knowledge. Schwaller’s Introduction will be helpful to most readers. Interspersed with his previews of coming scholarly attraction, his commentaries helpfully explain the major players in the historical drama—the Observant Franciscans, the Discalced Franciscans, and the Capuchins.

A short review like this cannot even list all twenty essays, but several caught the attention of this reviewer. One was Guillermo Antonio Nájera’s defense of Franciscans in Mexico’s Santo Evangelio Province, and another was Marcela Corvera Poirés chapter on Observant and Discalced Franciscans in Mexico and the Philippines; this is based on her dissertation at the University Complutense in Madrid. Corvera Poirés attempts to redress historians’ inattention to the Discalced branch in New Spain. Silvia Castro Shannon’s interesting article studies the French (Breton) Capuchins in Brazil in the 1600s, a branch of Franciscan who not only sought to convert Indians but also to combat the errors of Protestant heretics there. Barbara De Marco studies the career of Francisco de Ayeta as a preliminary to a full-scale biography of the procurador general much concerned with the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico. Robert L. Hoover’s study of the archeology of Franciscan activities in Alta California and Robert H. Jackson’s contribution on the supply system(s) in Texas and California are thoroughly professional, informative, well written, and mature. The section on “Franciscans in Peripheral Regions of the Americas” refers to peripheral not only in relationship to the crown but also to most historians. Yet Franciscan activities in Santa Fe, Argentina, the Upper Amazon Frontier, and the Maya Hinterland, containing new empirical data in articles by Nélina de Grandis, Rick Goulet, and John F. Chuchiak, broaden our understanding of how many important frontiers remain understudied.

In the section on the seventeenth-century borderlands, Barbara De Marco introduces readers to Francisco de Ayeta, as a preliminary account of what should be a book-length study of a negelcted procurador general much concerned with the Pueblo Revolt. She includes a lively commentary on the historiography of that uprising. Rick Warner says that the Franciscan missions in Nayarit represented “the second Franciscan period” (1769–1858). It was not, as commonly assumed, a time of decline. Nevertheless, it has been overshadowed by the earlier work on Jesuits there, a phenomenon that resembles the relative neglect of Franciscan missions and missionaries in the Gran Chaco. Catherine Broué’s scholarly detective work on the writings of Louis Hennepin, who chronicled Louisiana in the 1600s is a marvel of the evaluation of evidence and authorship.

Jack S. Williams’ comparison of Franciscan activity in Alta California and the Pimeria Alta of Sonora uses archeology to understand the followers of St. Francis. He states, “There has been a tendency to portray . . . frontier missions as an institution that remained the same, irrespective of time and place” (p. 219), an interpretation which unfortunately overlooks a ground breaking article in this journal by Erick Langer. Williams’ fine work more than compensates for this oversight, especially his suggestions on how archeology...