Sierra Gorda Part 12: Tancoyal's Franciscan Mission (exterior features)

A statue of San Francisco de Asis stands beside the atrium gate . The two  flower-shaped finials on either side of the statue are among several that are spaced along the low wall surrounding the atrium.  St. Francis of Assisi was the man who, in 1209, founded the Franciscan Order. In 1524, following the defeat of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish under  Hernán Cortéz, twelve  friars from that Order were the first group of evangelists to arrive in Mexico. More than two centuries later, Junipero Serra led another group of Franciscan into the  Sierra Gorda. After arriving, they took over several former Augustinian missions. 

This posting will focus on the mission called Nuestra Señora de la Luz (Our Lady of the Light) in  Tancoyal . I will show you some of the exterior features, including the atrium and explain the meaning of some of the features of the elaborate facade. I'll tell you about the complicated relationship between the Sierra Gorda's Franciscan and Augustinian missions and their relationship with the native people over whom they had assumed dominion. 

Overview

The route from Jalpan de Serra to Tancoyol. Take Highway 120 east for 37km (23mi) to the intersection with Highway 190, just before reaching the pueblo of La Vuelta. Turn left on Highway 190 at the sign for Tancoyal. Drive another 23km (14.3mi) to reach the town of Tancoyal and the mission. The total journey should take you just a bit over an hour. For directions from the Guadalajara/Lago de Chapala area to Jalpan de Serra, see Part 1 of this series. For a Google interactive map of the Sierra Gorda region, click here .

Tall, thin, single-trunk cacti stand among a variety of other vegetation. We encountered these cacti along Highway 190 in a narrow canyon on the way to Tancoyal. I have not been able to determine the precise species of this cactus, so if anyone knows, please let me know in the Comments section below. The morning light reflecting off the cactus' spines gave them a halo effect that I found very attractive. The Sierra Gorda abounds with a wide variety of plants and animals that make it a wonderful place to explore.

Atrium

This mission shares many of the architectural features of the other four missions. There is a large atrium in front, surrounded by a low wall with capillas posas in two of the corners, a steeple on the left side of the church, an elaborate Baroque facade, and a cloister attached to the church's right side. Like the others, this mission also has many details that are unique to it. One of the details visible above is the tile on the lower section of the church steeple.

The Augustinians operated a mission at Tancoyal for many years, but it was probably just a humble adobe and thatch affair. Their lack of success in pacifying the natives led to this mission and several others being turned over to the Franciscans in 1739. The Franciscan mission in Tancoyal that you see above was the last of the five  that they built in the Sierra Gorda. The project was directed by a friar named Juan Ramos de Lora, who resided there from 1761 to 1767. As with the other missions, the actual work of construction was accomplished by native laborers and craftsmen of the Pame tribe.

In the center of the atrium is the atrial cross. In the backround, you can see one of the capillas posas to the left and the main gate to the right. As noted in the posting on Misión Tilaco, a capilla posa (literally "pause chapel") is a small structure used during processions around the atrium. These stop briefly at the little chapel for prayers or other rituals. Capillas posas are architectural features unique to Spanish colonial missions.

Juan Ramos de Lora was born in Spain in 1722 and entered the Franciscan Order in 1743. An intelligent man, he became a professor of Theology in his 20s. Similar to Junipero Serro, who had also been a professor, he decided that saving souls in the New World was more important than teaching. In 1749, he arrived in Nueva España (Mexico) and joined Junipero Serra's expedition to the Sierra Gorda. Ramos de Lora worked there for sixteen years, including six at Misión Tancoyal. When Serra left the Sierra Gorda to evangelize in Baja and Alta California in 1767, Ramos de Lora was among those who accompanied him.

A year after he arrived in Alta California, Ramos de Lora ran afoul of a Spanish official. This inept and stubborn man managed to alienate both the natives and the Franciscans. Ramos de Lora  made a detailed report on this when he returned to Mexico City in 1772, greatly impressing the Viceroy. In 1780 the Viceroy surprised everyone (including Ramos de Lora himself) by appointing the Franciscan friar to be the bishop of the newly created diocese at Mérida, in Venezuela. The new bishop instituted various reforms and founded an important seminary which later became a university. He died in Mérida in 1790.

Facade

Like the other mission churches, this one has a Churrigueresque Baroque facade.  Many of the symbols and statues on the facade are similar to those on the other churches. For example, on either side of the door are statues of St Peter and St. Paul. In addition, just above the door and to its left and right are the Franciscan coat-of-arms and the emblem representing the Five Stigmata . Since I have shown and explained these symbols and statues before, I won't repeat them below. Instead, I will focus on other features on this facade that are unique to Misión Tancoyal .

Juan Ramos de Lora was 26 when he arrived in the Sierra Gorda in 1749 and he worked at several of the missions before he was given responsibility for Tancoyal . In 1761 he was told to gather the local Pames into a mission community, to build the church and cloister you see above, and to make the operation economically self-sufficient. The success of the second and third tasks were completely dependent upon success in the first. However, the Pames lived in small widely dispersed villages. In a letter to his superiors, Ramos de Lora complained that the Pames had an "innate propensity to every novelty and to live in freedom."

The arch above the door is beautifully painted . The carved wooden door is a work of art itself. Notice the spiraling Solomonic column inset into the face of the arch's support. This is another Baroque touch. In the upper left are some relief carvings of local vegetation.

In his reports,  Ramos de Lora wrote about the difficulty in keeping the Pames settled at Tancoyal, often using the phrase Indios y Gente de Razón ("Indians and People of Reason"). The Franciscans essentially viewed the native people as children. They were not "People of Reason", as the Spanish viewed themselves. As children, they needed to be persuaded to settle at the mission through regular food rations. They were to be dealt with by friars who had learned to speak their language and who allowed them to incorporate their native elements into the churches they were building. This was the positive side.

I noticed this display just below St. Peter's niche . At first, I thought it represented the leaves of a plant. However, I now think it is a spray of feathers arranged much like the feathered head dresses of pre-Hispanic times. Above the feathers is a carving of vegetation with dangling fruit. Below St. Paul's niche is a similar relief. Most of the mission facades contain features that echo back to pre-Hispanic times, a deliberate strategy to make the overall composition relatable to the native people.

The inducements offered by the Franciscans worked for a while until, as they say, the bloom was off the rose. The Pames had the habit of wandering freely, as they had always done before the Spanish arrived. They disliked the strict Franciscan rules governing day-to-day life and the work requirements the friars placed upon them. The Franciscans operated from a framework of Christian morality which was alien to the free-spirited Pames . In addition, the Pames were needed to build and maintain the church properties and to tend the crops and livestock. Without sufficient native manpower the mission would fall apart. 

To the right of St. Paul's niche is one of the stipite columns. Like Solomonic columns, stipite columns are typical features of 18th century Churrigueresque Baroque architecture in Spanish America. To the right of the column is a small figure with indigenous features who appears to be nude except for a loincloth and a peculiar head dress. He is clutching a thick tapering column that has a disembodied hand at its base. Protruding from the top of the column and dangling down its side are two ends of a rope. The meaning of all this is unclear, except for the rope, which may symbolize the cord used as a belt on a Franciscan cassock.

When epidemics periodically raged through the missions, the problems with the Pames grew even worse. The very act of congregating them at the missions in large groups precipitated diseases like cholera and when smallpox arrived, many hundreds died. The natural human impulse was to get as far away as possible from this unfamiliar horror. As people stayed away and re-adapted to their traditional mode of life, it became ever harder to get them to return. Soldiers had to be sent out to round them up and often those who were captured and returned were physically punished. One wonders what Jesus would have said about all this.

San Joaquin is surrounded by an extraordinary symbolic display . There is so much here that it is hard to take it all in. Joaquin is said to be the father of the Virgin Mary. He is shown as bald and bearded and standing with one hand reaching out, with the other over his heart. However, since neither he nor Mary's mother Ana appear anywhere in the Bible, only non-Biblical tradition tells us what they were supposed to have looked like. Two stipite columns parallel Joaquim's niche and in the middle of each is a grotesque face. As with the rest of the facade, there is a riotous jungle of vegetation.

In 1756, a Franciscan report identified 227 "fugitives" from the Sierra Gorda missions. An additional 130 families were discovered to be living outside the area controlled by the Franciscans. Upon investigation, Ramos de Lora discovered that there was still another reason for these departures. A lot of the Pames were being "poached" by the Augustinians! Padre José Guadarrama was the Prior of the Augustinian mission in Xilitla. He was actively encouraging refugees to come to his mission, with the promise that he would support them and protect them from Franciscan efforts to capture and return them.

To the left of San Joaquin is a figure carrying a ladder. The ladder is a reference to Jesus' crucifixion. The upper part of the  stipite column contains a grotesque face with staring eyes and streamers pouring out of its mouth. These are among the almost innumerable small details of the facade. They would have been easy to miss without my telephoto lens and a close inspection of the resulting photos when I uploaded them to my computer.

In 1764, a series of letters passed between Ramos de Lora and his superiors in Mexico City and also between him and Guadarrama . Although fascinating reading, they do not clearly state why Guadarrama was promoting these defections and protecting the fugitives. It is necessary to understand that these two Orders were rivals. In 1739, the Spanish authorities determined that the Augustinians had failed to adequately pacify and settle the Pames in the area. So, Tancoyal and several other Augustinian missions were turned over to the Franciscans to see if they could do better. Perhaps the Augustinians bore a grudge?

The choir window separates the niches of San Joaquin and Santa Ana. Just below the window is an empty niche that once contained a statue of Our Lady of the Light, for whom the mission is named. The statue was stolen or destroyed during the Revolutionary period.  A symbolic Franciscan rope follows the inside of the arch's curve and is held on either end by small semi-nude figures. Above the arch to the left is St. Francis, who is connected by several straight lines to Jesus, on the right. This refers to the stigmata (wounds) Francis is said to have experienced during his life and which connect him to the stigmata of Jesus.

Along with a possible grudge, there was another likely motive. If Guadarrama could swell the rolls of his Xilitla mission with fugitives from the Franciscan missions, he would gain favor with his superiors and look good to the Spanish authorities. Anyone familiar with organizations knows that one way to get ahead is to make your own numbers look good, particularly if in doing so you can make your rival's numbers go down. So this may have been 18th century organizational politics. And, of course, uncomfortable questions could be raised about why the Pames liked the Augustinians so much better than the Franciscans.

Santa Ana occupies a niche very similar to that of San Joaquin . The niche is bordered by Solomonic columns and the top is in the shape of a seashell, which is a reference to one of the legends about Santiago (St. James). He is the patron of Spain and of the Spanish conquistadors. Santa Ana holds the baby Mary in her arms. On the right, another figure, somewhat worn and indistinct, cavorts in the vegetation.

Juan Ramos de Lora reported to his superiors that "since the Indians did not cease to flee..." he had sent Spanish Captain Don Joaquin Alexo Rubio to "follow the Indians who had fled...and return them...so that, in this way, they would also calm and quiet others." When the Captain showed up in Xilitla with his soldiers, Padre Guadarrama blandly turned him away. The Captain didn't feel he had the authority to force the issue and besides this was Church business, so he turned the matter back to Ramos de Lora. The Franciscan friar must have been grinding his teeth at this point. No one bothered to ask the Pames what they thought.

A headless statue of Saint Anthony of Padua fills the left-hand niche on the third level . The statue was another casualty of the Revolutionary period. Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231 AD) was renowned for preaching, scriptural knowledge and devotion to the poor. To the right is the figure of St. Francis seen before, appearing to fly. Below him, a friar looks up at Francis while praying, possibly for the saint's safe landing. On top is the black-and-white Cruz de Calatrava , emblem of a 12th century Spanish Military Order which was one of four created to fight the Moors in Spain during the 700-year Reconquista.

The despair of Ramos de Lora at this point is evident. He wrote again to his superiors, saying  "I do not know what it will take, nor what steps we can apply here to stop the disorder of the Indians and Remedy these damages...before everything is lost or at least it is very difficult to remedy...for things are becoming more and more impossible here, so that we will not be able to compose and remedy later, without great scandals and uproar." What he wanted, and ultimately got, was a letter from Guadarrama's Augustinian superiors directing the Prior of Xilitla to cease his poaching and return the fugitives.

San Roque stands in the niche on the right side of the third level. A small dog squats by his left leg.  Saint Roque (1348-1376 AD) is the patron saint of dogs, as well as invalids, falsely accused people, and bachelors. He was very active in helping the sick during plagues. When San Roque became sick himself, he withdrew to the forest. There, he encountered a dog who saved him from starvation by bringing him food. However, when he returned home, he was arrested as a spy and died in prison. On top is the Cross of Jerusalem, the 12th century emblem of the crusaders who established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Franciscan friar next sent a letter to Guadarrama, attaching the message from the Augustinain's superiors. He asked that Guadarrama "do the possible diligence so that all the Indians who have escaped from these missions are collected...and are returned to these respective missions, for this is how it is determined and commanded by the captaincy general of war to whom your (superiors) are close." However, rather than condemning Guadarrama (the guilty party), he blames the Pame leaders "who are refugees in your community...where they do not cease to influence others." A nice political touch, I thought.

Atop the facade is a cross deeply inset into the wall . Kneeling at the base of the cross are two winged angels swinging incense burners from which fumes arise. Above the cross, two cherubs hold a set of drapes open. The whole scene is framed by two Solomonic columns with flowering finials at their tops. Tancoyal's facade is one of the most elaborate of the five mission churches. Studying it closely, I continue to find new features. Oddly, many of these are almost invisible from the ground unless a telephoto lens or binoculars are used. 

The final outcome of this fascinating struggle between Juan Ramos de Lora and José Guadarrama is not clear, since the last letter from Ramos de Lora is all that we have from the archives. It is possible that Guadarrama sent the fugitives back and ceased his poaching. It is just as possible that he followed the classic Spanish colonial practice when a distant higher authority made a demand that the recipient would rather ignore: "I obey, but I do not comply." In fact, this is an approach that has been passed down over the centuries and is still often practiced in Mexico today.

This completes Part 12 of my Sierra Gorda series. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please leave any thoughts or questions in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question, please include your email address so that I can reply in a timely fashion.

See you later, Jim

 

Sierra Gorda Part. 11: Tilaco's mission church interior and its cloister

The apse and main altar inside Tilaco's church . The inside of the church is relatively spartan compared to the exuberant facade on its front, seen in Part 10. Mission of San Francisco de Asis del Valle de Tilaco is named after St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan Order whose statue is in the niche above the crucifix. Blue drapes are painted around the niche on three sides. Painted wall decorations are a practice dating back to the earliest days of New World missions. The statues to the right and left of St Francis are unidentified but may be the Virgin Mary's parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne.

In this posting I'll show you some of the Tilaco mission church's interior and also the cloister where the friars lived and worked. In addition, I'll outline the development of the mission system and tell you about the typical daily activities. My information on these activities comes from descriptions of a mission in colonial New Mexico. However, these  are applicable to the Sierra Gorda missions because, throughout the colonial period, Franciscan friars followed the same set of long-established rules, and faced very similar problems. 

Ceiling of the dome over the transept.  What appears to be a star-burst is actually a large candelabra viewed from directly below. Notice the four triangular spaces formed where the arches supporting the dome come together. In most of the colonial churches I have visited, these spaces are filled with images of important saints or biblical scenes. In this case they are not, possibly because the original paintings had deteriorated and were painted over.

Evangelization was the core function and driving force of the Franciscans in the New World from the earliest days of the Conquest. They came in 1524  at the specific request of Hernán Cortéz  and were the first of the evangelizing Orders to arrive. The Franciscans were committed to a spartan lifestyle and gravitated to the more remote areas like the Sierra Gorda. While individual Franciscan friars were of the firm belief that they had come to save souls from devil worship and eternal damnation, the Spanish civil authorities saw them as a key instrument for establishing control over the native populations.

Cortéz himself understood that, while he could militarily defeat native warriors, he simply couldn't control the conquered populations at the point of a gun. This required the Spiritual Conquest, a "hearts and minds" strategy based on eradicating native religious beliefs and replacing them with Spanish-style Christianity. By extension, this also meant the imposition of Spanish culture and authority. Highly structured civilizations like the Aztecs could be controlled by replacing one hierarchical, top-down structure with another. However, dispersed and nomadic populations like the Chichimeca presented different problems.

Octagonal windows are set high on the walls of the nave. They are the primary source of light for the inside of the church. The painted decorations around the window and along the wall above imitate carved woodwork. Like the painted drapes above the St. Francis niche in the apse, they hark back to much earlier times. One possible reason for this sort of decoration is that actual drapes and elaborate woodwork would have been more expensive and would have required more maintenance.

The Sierra Gorda had once been dominated by the Huastecs, who had populated the city of Tancama (see Parts 4-8), near Jalpan de Serra. However, that city had been abandoned around 950 AD and Chichimeca tribes like the Jonaz and Pames had subsequently moved into the area. The Jonaz were warlike nomads, while the Pames tended to settle in small widely dispersed villages and were somewhat (but not always) more peaceable. From the 16th century through the middle of the 18th, the Augustinian Order dominated evangelization in the Sierra Gorda, focusing their efforts primarily on the Pames.

The Augustinian solution to the dispersal problem was to persuade the native people to congregate around the missions. "The expectation was that once congregated and taught agriculture under the administration of the missionaries, the Chichimecas would embrace the new faith and their status in the new colonial order."* However, the Augustinians devoted inadequate resources to the effort and the Pames clung to their far-flung villages and their beliefs. Such missions as were established were raided by the Jonaz, who burned them and killed the friars. The Pames also periodically revolted against Spanish seizures of their lands.

*  The Chicimeca Frontier and the Evangelization of the Sierra Gorda 1550-1770.

A niche in the nave wall contains a statue of San Isidro Labrador. St. Isidore the Farmer (1070-1130) is the patron saint of farmers and of Madrid, his place of birth. He was born to poor but devout parents who named him after St. Isidore of Seville. Isidore spent his life working on a rich man's farm and was very generous to the poor, sometimes sharing the food he carried with him or bringing groups of them home for supper. Isidore was very pious and was associated with numerous miracles. He was canonized by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, almost 500 years after his death.

The Augustinians never really managed to establish on-going missions among the Sierra Gorda's native people. Finally, in 1735, a Spanish soldier/administrator named Capitán José Escandon decisively defeated the Jonaz at the Battle of Media Luna. He surveyed the overall situation and concluded that the Augustinians had failed their fundamental task, which was to pacify and settle the Jonaz and the Pames. Accordingly, Escandón looked for someone else to do the job. In 1739, he settled on the Franciscans. 

Captain Escandón  gave the Franciscans the Augustinian mission in Jalpa and their two visitas (outposts) at Tancoyol and Concá. He further ordered the Franciscans to establish missions at Landa and Tilaco. A decade later, when Junipero Serra arrived, things began to take off. Serra and his Franciscans settled the Pames around their missions using what was essentially bribery. In 1758, Tilaco's friar reported that "In order to have them quiet and to keep them from wandering on the pretext of having to look for food, they are given daily sufficient corn and frijol (beans) from the communal stores, and on some days meat."  

Painting of Our Lady of Sorrows of Soriano. This version of the Virgin is the patron saint of the Diocese of Querétaro . Her name means "Our Lady of the Sorrows." Soriano is a neighborhood in the city of Querétaro which contains the Basilica de Soriano . A basilica is a church to which pilgrimages are made and the one in Soriano receives over 2 million pilgrims each year. The Seven Sorrows of Mary refers to various events during the life of Jesus, including his crucifixion.

After Junipero Serra arrived, he found that native lands had been usurped by Spanish settlers, as well as some of those belonging to the missions themselves. He successfully lobbied the authorities to force their return, building up a good deal of respect and support among the  Pames. He also deliberately incorporated plants and animals native to the Sierra Gorda in his elaborate church facades, knowing that many of these details contained deep pre-hispanic religious meanings. Along with bribery these tactics helped the friars create their mission communities.  However, the natives were susceptible to European diseases for which they had no natural resistance and larger communal settings resulted in epidemics. 

For example, four of the missions, including Tilaco, lost a total of 422 natives and 3 missionaries in the 1746-47 outbreak. The smallpox epidemic of 1762 at Tilaco killed 200 Pames out of a mission community of 935. In addition, low birth rates among the Christianized Pames forced the friars to incorporate non-Christian natives into their mission communities, just to maintain food production. An increase in the number of Spanish and mestizos from outside the Sierra Gorda increased the pressure on land and resources. These were among the reasons why the Franciscans finally departed. They turned over their missions to the secular priesthood in 1770 and headed to Baja and Alta California to save souls there. 

San Toribio Romo González stands with flags containing messages left by visitors. Some of the messages include requests for the saint's help while others contain thank you notes from those whose requests came true. San Toribio (1900-1928) was martyred during the Cristero War between the new revolutionary government and Catholic reactionaries. He is venerated for his miraculous appearances, beginning in the 1970s, to illegal migrants during their dangerous journeys across the US border. Ironically, San Toribio was opposed to such migrations, fearing that the people would lose their Catholic values in the US.

Cloister

The entrance to the cloister is to the right of the church . We were fortunate to be able to go inside and explore. I expected to encounter someone such as a priest, caretaker or at least a member of the congregation, but there was no one about. Two covered picnic tables stand invitingly at either side of the entrance. Not all churches have cloisters, just the ones that are current or former missions. This is the area where the frailes (friars) of the Franciscan Order and their various assistants lived and worked. So, what was it like to live at one of these missions?

In 1626, a fraile named Alonso de Benevides arrived at a Franciscan mission in New Mexico. He wrote a Memorial to the Pope and the Spanish King in 1630 about daily life there. Benevides' experiences were typical of colonial-era Franciscan missions and closely mirror what happened in the Sierra Gorda, including at Tilaco. He spoke of the land as "very remote and isolated" requiring long journeys to get there. There were only a few friars and "most of the convents have only one." The friars were supported by 20 or so native assistants who took turns "as porters, sextons, cooks, bell ringers, gardeners, refectioners and other tasks."  

An ancient hallway leads to a weathered wooden door. I was immediately attracted to the antiquity of this hall, with its worn tile floor, bare wooden ceiling, rough plaster walls, and the old door leading to some mysterious space within the complex. 

The friars established "schools for the teaching of praying, singing, playing musical instruments, and other interesting things. Promptly at dawn, one of the Indian singers, whose turn it is that week, goes to ring the bell" in order to get the others "to assemble and sweep the rooms thoroughly. The singers chant the Prime in the choir. The friar must be present at all of this and take note of those who have failed to perform this duty, in order to reprimand them later. When everything is neat and clean, they again ring the bell and each one goes off to learn his particular specialty...the friar oversees it all..." 

A small chapel is contained within the cloister.  This was probably used for some religious functions, such as the religious instruction that was an integral part of the evangelist's role. However, it may also have served as the meeting place where the friars and their assistants could deliberate on problems the mission was facing. Notice the painted imitations of bricks around the window, another example of using paint to imitate decorative stone or woodwork.

Benevides' Memorial describes giving instructions to Indians who plan to get married and about taking the confessions of both sick or healthy persons (epidemics occurred in Franciscan missions nearly everywhere). After marital instructions and confessions, "all go to church and the friar says mass and administers the sacraments. Mass over, they gather in different groups, examine the lists, and take note of those who are absent in order to reprimand them later". The friar then dismisses his native assistants but "warns them first of the circumstances with which they should go about their daily business."

An open arcade spans one side of the cloister's courtyard. It would have been a cool place to sit on a hot day while chatting with others or during solitary contemplations. The arcade also provided some shelter from the seasonal rains. The arches supported by columns are called portales.

The Memorial continues: "At meal time, the poor people in the town who are not ill come to the porter's lodge, where the cooks of the convent have sufficient food ready, which is served to them by the friars. Food for the sick is sent to their homes. After mealtime, it always happens that the friar has to go to some neighboring people to hear confession or to see if they are careless in the boys' school, where they learn to pray and assist at mass, for this is the responsibility of the sextons..."

Carole walks toward the well that stands in the middle of the courtyard. This was a convenient site for a well, accessible to all parts of the cloister. The arcade seen in the previous photo is to the left. The three-tiered steeple I showed in Part 10 looms over the courtyard.

The Memorial describes a food strategy similar to that used by the Franciscans 120 years later in the Sierra Gorda. "For the support of all the poor of the pueblo, the friar makes them sow some grain and raise some cattle, because if he left it to their discretion, they would not do anything. Therefore, the friar requires them to do so and trains them so well that...he feeds all the poor and pays the various workmen who come to build the churches. With the wool, he clothes all the poor, and the friar himself also gets his clothing and food from this source. All the wheels of this clock must be kept in good order by the friar, without neglecting any detail, otherwise all would be totally lost."

A dark doorway leads down into the cloister's interior . The tree appears to be some species of cedar. Given its size, it was probably planted long after the Franciscans turned over the property to the secular priests in 1770.

The role of the mission's friars occasionally resembled that of a civil official. "One of the greatest tasks of the friars is to adjust the disputes of the Indians among themselves, for since they look upon him as a father, they come to him with all their troubles, and he has to take pains to harmonize them. If it is a question of land and property, he must go with them and mark their boundaries and thus pacify them."

A small garden occupies one corner of the cloister's courtyard. During the last half of the 18th century, when the mission was used by the Franciscan Order, such a garden might have served to raise herbs and vegetables for the refectory, or dining hall, attached to the cloister. 

The Memorial ends rather poignantly. "The most important thing is the good example set by the friars. This, aside from the obligations of their vows, is forced upon them because they live in a province where they concern themselves with nothing but God. Death stares them in the face everyday! Today one of their companions is martyred, tomorrow, another, their hope is that such a good fortune may befall them while living a perfect life."

This concludes Part 11 of my Sierra Gorda series. I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please leave any thoughts or questions in the Comments section below or email me directly. If you leave a question in the Comments, please remember to include your email address so that I may respond in a timely manner.

Hasta luego, Jim