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  • The Strange Case of the Headless Saint Francis:An Exercise in Historical Sleuthing
  • Robert S. Weddle (bio) and Carol A. Lipscomb (bio)

The year was 1758. Colonel Diego Ortiz Parrilla, making a personal inspection of the devastated Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, saw first to the burying of charred and mutilated bodies of those slain in the recent massacre. He then turned his attention to the ruined mission property. Among the broken and charred crates of mission ornaments, jewels, and paintings, he found an effigy of "the holy Saint Francis." Having been thrown from its pedestal in the mission church, its head lay apart from the body.1

Two hundred years later, Leslie Copeland, looking for Indian artifacts in present-day Borden County, Texas, found buried in the bank of a dry arroyo—near a prominent butte called Mucha Que—a headless statue of Saint Francis. Made of a clay-and-gravel mix and about two feet tall, it seemingly had all the characteristics of images of the venerated saint that once adorned the naves of Franciscan mission churches throughout the Spanish Borderlands. The feet of the effigy, as well as the head, had been broken off, as might have happened when being rudely removed from its pedestal. The statue itself has since been lost. Its finder, Copeland, is deceased. Yet the fact of its existence, and its description, corresponding so closely to the San Sabá statue, begged the question: Was the statue found at Mucha Que the same effigy that once decorated the San Sabá [End Page 287] chapel? If so, how did the statue come to rest at the base of that prominent mesa in Borden County?

The Borden County statue is remembered only through a photograph taken by David Murrah, former director of the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, and a few persons to whom Murrah showed it. A dove perched on the arm identified the statue as that of Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order (Order of Friars Minor) in thirteenth-century Italy. In his lifetime, "St. Francis of Assisi renounced all worldliness and led a life of self-denial and religious devotion. Believing in the brotherhood of all men and all nature, he preached the gospel to all—to rich and poor, to criminals and lepers, and even to animals and to birds." Hence, the emblematic dove perched on his arm in statues and paintings.2

The icon inspired members of the mendicant Order of Saint Francis who played an instrumental role in the early exploration and settlement of Texas and the Southwest. These pious missionaries with their zeal to bring word of the Christian God to pagan peoples often formed the vanguard of European civilization on the southwestern frontier. In addition to missionary duties, they assisted the Spanish crown as explorers, cartographers, diplomats, scientific observers, and historians. Considering the widespread influence of these tireless clerics, a Saint Francis statue is not an unlikely relic to be found on the Texas plains.

Murrah, more recently with Southwest Museum Services in Rockport, Texas, recalls his first involvement with the statue. "Several years ago while I was at Tech, a rancher [John R. "Rich" Anderson] from Borden County brought in a statue of St. Francis for me to look at . . . found many years before. I had opportunity to show it to an archaeologist who was familiar with the mission period, and he said the statue was more than likely from an early mission. The best I could guess is that it may have been carried off from San Sabá by the Comanches, as the place it was found was in the heart of the Comanches' favorite campsites along the Colorado below Mucha Que Peak."3 A Comanche band formed part of the Indian horde that destroyed the San Sabá Mission on March 16, 1758, less than a year after it was founded for the purpose of converting the eastern Apaches to Christianity. The attacking force also included Wichitas and "other nations from the north" who were the Apaches' enemies.

Mucha Que (corrupted to Mushaway Peak on present-day maps) was a well-known landmark for Comanches and other tribes who roamed western Texas. Anthropologist...

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