Franciscan Frontiersmen: How Three Adventurers Charted the West by Robert A. Kittle (review)

Robert A. Kittle, an award-winning journalist and historian, traces in this work the "lived religion and experience" of three prominent explorers of the Spanish colonial west and southwest, all of whom kept detailed diaries of their travels. Filled with copious citations and very fine summaries of these and other first-hand accounts (for example, that of the little-known friar Thomas Eixarch, 140 ff), the whole study is expressed in a crisp, lively, and engaging narrative. All three explorers were Franciscan friars, thrust by their calling into the frontier zones of Alta California and the deserts of Mexican Sonora and Arizona at the high point of eighteenth-century Spanish exploration. Their careers parallel that of Junípero Serra. They expressed themselves in very different ways, but their paths and experiences predated and more than anticipated the better known nineteenth-century explorations of middle America by the Corps of Discovery. Anyone interested in the early history of the southwest, native cultures, birthing and dying on the frontier, and various mission methodologies will find the accounts engaging and illuminating.

Juan Crespí (1721–1782), a companion of Junípero Serra on the Potolá expedition of 1769, details in his diary the geographical beauties of the "new Eden," the first encounters with the Chumash natives, and the extreme difficulties of both native life and daily insecurity: the scurvy that accompanied travel by ship, famine, and starvation on the dusty roads, the frequency of death amongst the natives, the uncertainties of daily living, and the failures to reach an expedition's goal (Chapters 1–3). More on Créspi surfaces in chapter 13, where his experiences in the Pacific Northwest are described. Francisco Garcés (1738–1781), a colorful and eccentric friar who accompanied the first Anza expedition (1774), conveys in his frontier pilgrimage along the Rio Colorado and Gila River a commitment to live as the Native Americans live, to learn their languages, to go among them alone and without anything of his own, to bridge the warring tribes through a witness to peace. Garcés's diary is particularly notable for its recording of a host of "first encounters" (73) and detailed descriptions of indigenous customs, dress, slave trade, and marriage practices (Chapters 4–7, and especially the well-crafted and illuminating chapters 10, 11, and 14). "By going alone and relying only on the support of divine providence," Garcés writes, "one is guided without fear, and the people one meets are more inclined to give information about rancherías, springs, and roads. It is true that in this way the minister does not carry so much authority, but thus he will be less conceited, more charitable and humble" (72). In chapters 7, 8, and 12, Pedro Font (1731–1781) emerges as the informative but more difficult member of the trio. Cantankerous with an up and down relationship with Anza, his diary stands as an indicator of the diversity of approaches among the three explorers: "Font's contempt for the Indians' primeval ways contrasted sharply with Garcés's solicitousness, his eagerness to sit cross-legged with them around the fire for hours at night, his readiness to learn their languages and eat the same food as they ate, even to spit constantly on the ground as they did" (112, 114). The last three chapters (15–17), narrate the killing of Garcés in Yuma, the subsequent retribution by the Spanish authorities, and the deaths of Crespí and Font. Both the Prologue and the Epilogue, perhaps to engage a general readership, attempt to address the contemporary debates over Spanish colonialism and the work of the Franciscan friars in their encounter with the various tribes of the west and southwest. This particular reviewer would nuance the discussion a bit more. How the graphic and "real time" descriptions contained in the dairies relate to the historiographical discussion about colonialism remains elusive—but surely the information contained in this book...