KILLED FOR GOD AND COUNTRY

The first Franciscan martyred in Alta California was Fr. Luis Jayme

(1740-1775), who was beaten to death in the middle of the night of November 5, 1775, during an attack on Mission San Diego.

Fr. Jayme was from Petra, in Majorca. He obtained his early training at the convent school of San Bernardino, the same school Fr. Junipero attended. According to his passport records Jaime was a "thin man of a darkish completion." Jamye was singled out for training as a professor of philosophy but elected missionary service in the Americas. He left Spain for America in 1770.

Upon his arrival in Monterey on May 21, 1771, Fr. Serra appointed Jayme as the head missionary at San Diego which had been founded only two years earlier. Fr. Jayme quickly proposed relocating the mission away from the presidio to the valley where it is now located. By August 1774, the transfer was completed.

The expansion of the Spanish presence in their territory upset the local Yuman Indians who had proved to be the most uncooperative of any of the mission Indians along the coast. Because water was scarce and the crop output low in these early years, the Indians in San Diego were permitted to stay in their villages, and many were Christians in name only.

In the fall of 1775 the Indian leaders decided to mount a massive attack on the Spanish. Messengers were sent secretly to all of the villages to obtain support for a coordinated attack on both the presidio and the mission. About 800 men assembled near the mission late in the evening of November 5. At midnight they attacked and easily overran the mission, looting the sacristy and storerooms and setting fire to the mission buildings. The Indians dispatched to attack the presidio, some six miles away, saw the flames from the burning mission and concluded that the presidio soldiers must have been aroused and on full alert. They turned around and joined their colleagues destroying the mission. It turns out the garrison slept through the entire attack.

During the assault on Mission San Diego three of the Spanish were killed, Fr. Jayme, a blacksmith and a carpenter. The survivors reported that Fr. Jayme had rushed out to the attacking Indians shouting "Love God, my children." He was seized, clubbed to death and his body dumped in a nearby arroyo. The other missionary, Fr. Vincente Fuster, was in a different section of the mission at the time of the attack, and survived. The battle lasted until dawn.

Fr. Jayme's remains were carried to the presidio for burial. When the San Diego mission church was rebuilt, his remains were transferred there and buried in a place of honor between the main altar and a side altar.

REMAINS OF FR. JAIME IN MISSION SAN DIEGO

Fr. Jayme 35 years old at the time of his death and had been in California less than a little than four years.

The other missionary martyred in Alta California was Francisco Hermenegildo Garces (1738-81), a reknown Franciscan pathfinder and Indian expert. Francisco Garces was born at Marata del Conde in Aragon, Spain. He entered the Franciscan order at the age of fifteen. Fr. Garces was ordained ten years later, and entered missionary service at the college of Santa Cruz de Queretaro, Mexico, in 1766. In 1768 Fr. Garces was assigned to the Sonoran mission of San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson Arizona. Xavier del Bac, the northernmost mission of the Pimeria region, was at the frontier and still subject to Apache raids.

This 30-year old missionary proved adept at understanding the Indians, and over the next decade he was to combine spiritual ministrations with tours of exploration. Garces lived among the Gila Indian tribes and explored hostile Apache lands; he accompanied both the 1774 and 1775 Anza expeditions to find a land route to California and bring in the first group of settlers. He then spent seven months exploring the largely un-chartered territory in the California interior.

FR. GARCES ON ONE OF HIS EXPEDITIONS

A journal of Fr. Garces's exploration was published as A Record of Travel in Arizona and California, 1775-76.

During his travels, Fr. Garces had become acquainted with Chief Palma, head of the Yuman Indians living in the area along the Colorado River. Chief Palma asked Garces to live with the natives and seemed interested in conversion. This area seemed ripe for settlement. After some study the king ordered that area be settled. Fr. Garces strongly recommended against too large a presence. The Yumans, unlike the California Indians who lived off the land, were agriculturalists likely to resent any incursion that would place settlers in the area and appropriate Indian crop land. Unfortunately the commandant general, Carlos de Croix did not listen to Garces. He ordered that two missions be built, Purisima Concepcion at Fort Yuma and San Pedro y San Pablo at Bicuner. Construction began in the fall of 1780.

THE RIO COLORADO AT FT. YUMA SITE OF PURISIMA CONCEPCION MISSION

Fr. Garces and Fr. Juan Antonio Barreneche were assigned to the Purisima Concepcion mission. Just as Garces had predicted, the natives resented the white presence and Garces was given several warnings that the missions would be attacked, which he duly reported. The Yunans finally did attack both missions on July 17, 1781 while Fr.l Garces was saying Mass.

The missionaries survived the first day of the onslaught but both Garces and Barrenche were clubbed to death on 19^th.

PAINTING OF FRS. GARCES AND BARRENCHE

The remains of the martyred missionaries were not recovered until December, when they were temporarily buried at the mission of San Pedro y San Pablo, in Sonoma. Fr. Garces was finally buried at the college of Queretaro in Mexico on July 19, 1794.

Two other Franciscans were killed by neophytes although they are not considered martyrs.

Fr. Jose Pedro Panto (1778-1812) a missionary at San Diego. was poisoned by his cook, an Indian named Nazario, who put poison in his soup. During Nazario's trial he testified that Fr. Panto had flogged him several times in the twenty-four hours before being driven to such a desperate measure. The authorities seemed to have believed him for Nazario was not executed. He was sentenced to eight months labor at the presidio. Fr. Panto, who lingered on for another six months after consuming the poisoned soup pleaded that the indian's life be spared. Panto finally died on June 30, 1812. He suffered one last indignity in 1853 when his remains were moved from the mission church to the cemetery when the mission was converted into a military barracks to house American soldiers.

Fr. Andres Quintana (1777-1812) died at Mission Santa Cruz under suspicious circumstances. The initial investigation was inconclusive. However about two years later some Indians at the mission were overhead discussing how Fr. Quintana was killed because of his cruelty to the Indians. An investigation by Governor Solo vindicated Fr. Quintana's character but the cause of death was never definitely resolved.

Over the seventy-nine years the missions of Alta California were active, 142 missionaries served there. Some died early deaths in this harsh wilderness. Fr. Julian Lopez died of consumption after a few months. 58 mission aires from the apostolic college of San Fernando (almost all of them Spaniards) died at their posts in what was considered in the early years "the last corner of the earth." The Franciscan scholar Fr. Maynard Geiger gave a fitting and balanced assessment when he wrote of these men: "All were pioneers who bore the burden and the heat of the day as well as the solitude of the night. A number were outstanding. Many were merely successful. All tried and a few were failures. Each one deserves the niche in history he earned."