Fray Padilla
This priest is usually spoken of as Fray Juan Padilla, and it is said that he was a native of Andalusia. He remained on the Rio Grande when Coronado returned to Mexico. And Fray Juan de la Cruz, a Portuguese soldier of fortune named Andres del Campo, a negro, and a half-blood negro named Louis and Sebastian respectively, and some Indians from Now Spain stopped with Fray Padilla at the pueblos on the Rio Grande. In the summer of 1542 Padilla prepared to return to Quivira as a missionary to that country. Some of his company went with him, and all may have gone. The journey was made in the fall of 1542. By some accounts, they went on foot, and by others there was at least one horse taken along by them. It is reasonable to suppose that the route used by Coronado in coming out of the land was followed by Padilla and his company going in.
What Padilla accomplished in Quivira remains hidden. Some say he immediately sought the cross set up there by Coronado, and that he found the grounds about it swept and cleansed. This service had been rendered by the Indians, who doubtless regarded it as an occult object to be propitiated. It is not to be supposed that Padilla accomplished much in the work of Christianizing the Quiviras, for they murdered him shortly after his arrival. Indeed it is not certain but that they met and murdered him as he entered their towns. Others say that after a short sojourn with the Quivirans he set out for the country of the Guaes. These Guaes are set down as the enemies of the Quivirans, who could not understand how any good man could leave them to dwell with their foes. It is not improbable that they attributed traitorous designs to the good father. In any event, he lost his life trying to reach a new tribe. One account had it that he was much beloved by the Quivirans, and he left their villages against their wishes, but attended by a small company. This chronicler says that the band had proceeded more than a day's journey when a war-party was encountered, and this company of warriors murdered Padilla.
| What the old writers say of Padilla is
here set out, for it may be affirmed that he was the first Christian
martyr in what is now the United States. Castaneda says:— A friar named Juan Padilla remained in this province together with a Spanish-Portuguese and a negro and a half-blood and some Indians from the province of Capothan, in New Spain. They killed the friar because he wanted to go to the province of the Guaes, who were their enemies. The Spaniard escaped by taking flight on a mare, and afterwards reached New Spain, coming out by the way of Panuco. The Indians from New Spain who accompanied the friar were allowed by the murderers to bury him, and they followed the Spaniard and overtook him. This Spaniard was a Portuguese named Campo. It would appear from the foregoing that
Padilla did not return to the Rio Grande with Coronado, but remained
in Quivira when his commander left the plains. There is more detail
in this account: |
The second paragraph of the foregoing quotation must have been written
from the imagination purely. There was no white witness to the murder of
the friar except possibly the Portuguese and the attendants. They are said
to have observed it from a hill. It is not safe to depend on such
testimony. They were fleeing for life. It is doubtful if they turned to
look back while in view of the Indians. In truth, they might have
themselves murdered Padilla. The account contains no sufficient motive for
his murder by the Indians. The assertion that they committed the murder to
secure his ornaments can not be taken seriously. And the asseveration that
the earth was convulsed, comets seen, and the sun obscured, discredits the
entire account. There is still another Spanish version, quoted by Davis in
his work on New Mexico, as follows:
When Coronado returned to Mexico he left behind among the Indians of
Cibola, the father fray Francisco Juan de Padilla, the father fray Juan de
la Cruz, and a Portuguese named Andres del Campo. Soon after the Spaniards
departed, Padilla and the Portuguese set off in search of the country of
the Grand Quivira, where the former understood there were innumerable
souls to be saved. After traveling many days they reached a large
settlement in the Quivira country. The Indians came out to receive them in
battle array, when the friar, knowing their intentions, told the
Portuguese and his attendants to take flight, while he would await their
coming, in order that they might vent their fury on him as they ran. The
former took flight, and placing themselves on a height within view, saw
what happened to the friar. Padilla awaited their coming upon his knees,
and when they arrived where he was, they immediately put him to death. . .
. The Portuguese and his attendants made their escape, and ultimately
arrived safely in Mexico, where he told what had occurred.
If this version of the effort of Padilla to found a mission in Quivira is
correct, he was slain before he had entered the Indian town. The heavens
were not rent, nor was the moon turned to blood. There is no mention of a
cross, and the inference is that the priest had reached a new town—had
found a village of which he had not heard before.
It is with Padilla as with the other Spaniards connected with the Coronado
expedition. There is little that can be asserted with confidence. The
evidence is fragmentary, contradictory, and incomplete. No certain thing
can be founded on it.
The effort to have it appear that a certain monument erected of stones
more or less regularly set together near the present Council Grove was
erected by the Indians as a monument to Padilla cannot be sustained. That
monument was probably set up as a guide-post at the opening of the Santa
Fe Trail by the Missourians. General James H. Lane marked the underground
railroad from Topeka to Nebraska City in 1856 with exactly such monuments
as that to be seen at Council Grove. After the discontinuance of the Lane
Trail these monuments were called "Lane's Chimneys." There were some of
them still standing in Richardson County, Nebraska, in 1890. Their purpose
had been forgotten with new generations, and their origin was attributed
to the Indians. And there is not the slightest evidence that Padilla was
ever in the Council-Grove regions. He may have been there, but there is no
record to establish that historical fact.
