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USA > Florida > A Catholic history of Alabama and the Floridas Volume 1 > Part 3
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CHAPTER II.
TOWARDS the opening of spring 1541, the Spaniards resumed their march until they came to the Mississippi, which they crossed, May 5. After traversing the country during the summer, they wintered on the banks of the Wachita, and passed down that river to the Mississippi. Certain it is that De Soto's men did not follow up their advantages. They wandered far from the scene of their glory and disaster. Their wander- ings have never been accurately described. Wearied by their toilsome marches through the wilderness, the splendid army reduced to a mere handful, the Captain paused at the great river, below the mouth of the Arkansas, little knowing how tragically his last journey was to end for himself.
His health had sunk entirely under the conflict of emotions. His spirits were broken, and a malignant fever, which never left him, threatened to cut him off in the vigor of his manhood. The prostrate warrior
. knew that this meant death. As a soldier and as a Christian, he began to prepare for the dread hour which was soon to place him before the judgment-seat of his God and Creator. What follows seems like a passage from the Lives of the Saints.
He confessed his sins with lively sorrow and humble hope of forgiveness, through the merits of Christ. He summoned the officers of his council, and the chief men of his army. He gazed lovingly on them
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as they surrounded his poor bed, and told them he was going to give an account, in the presence of God, of all his past life. He thanked his gracious Saviour for calling him to himself. He expressed gratitude for their love and their loyalty to him, and said he had intended to reward them when it should please God to give him rest and prosperity. He begged them all to pray for him to God that, in his mercy, He would forgive his sins and receive him into eternal glory. He asked pardon for any wrong he might have done them, or others, as their Captain or fellow soldier.
He had many things to say to them, but above all he charged them to prosecute the conversion of the natives to the Catholic Faith. This was the chief ambition of the great men of these times who would compass sea and land, to make a proselyte. And he prayed them most tenderly, to live in peace and love with one another. As for the restitution which, under other circumstances, he might have been obliged to make, if he had not done so already, no doubt his con- fessor reassured and consoled him, for he was now as poor as the poorest.
Next day, May 21, 1542, the seventh of his illness, he died, grieving for his sins, but full of confidence in the merits of Christ and his mercy. "And thus," concludes the chronicler, " departed out of this life, the valorous, chivalrous, and most noble Captain, Don Hernando de Soto, Governor of Cuba, and Adelentado of Florida, whom fortune raised, as it had done many others, only that he might have the higher fall. The danger of his followers perishing without him in that country was clear before their eyes, and they grieved that they had borne ill will to him, or that
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they had not held him in the esteem they ought to have done.
And now as they wept over their great chief, they recalled his courteous, engaging manners, his humane and merciful treatment of them, his bravery and high courage, his patience in every toil and hardship, his deeds of daring-how he had fought five hours stand- ing in his stirrup at Mauvila, and one hour in a loose saddle at Chickasaw. They might have added his patience in grievous illness, his resignation when every- thing went against him-his fortune gone, swallowed up in this ill-fated enterprise-his fame, his hope of family, and the great estate he was to found-all had vanished as the dream of a dream, and only shadows were left behind.
The new Captain, Luis Muscoso, chosen in defer- ence to the wish of the fallen Adelentado, decided to conceal his death from the Indians. He ordered that the corpse be kept hidden in the house for three days. At midnight, the priests, officers, and cavaliers, carried the dead commander, to an open space outside the village, and laid him in a deep pit which they filled with earth.
But the Spaniards were uneasy. The Indians were watching their movements, and the Spaniards knew that if the watchers suspected the burial of a body among their pits, they would, if necessary, dig up the whole plain with their hands, and never rest until they had found it. And should they find the conqueror of their great chief, Tuskaloosa, they would wreak upon him dead, the vengeance they dare not think of in his presence, living.
Then came the inspiration to bury the Captain- General in the great river which he had discovered,
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where alone, in these wilds, his remains would be safe from savage insult. They found in the channel a depth of many fathoms, and there they resolved to make his grave. As there were no stones with which to weight the body, they caused an enormous oak to be felled. In the trunk of this they hollowed out a cavity, about the size of a man's body.
The next night the Adelentado was disinterred with all possible secrecy, and placed in the oak, as in a coffin, amid the tears and prayers of his bereaved fol- lowers. "They steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead," and reverently closed the opening. Priests and cavaliers carried all to mid-stream, and recommending to God with all possible fervor the soul of their great Captain, with the touching prayers of the Church he had loved so well, they dropped their precious burden overboard, and watched it sinking into the wonderful waters he had discovered. "He fell in the wilder- ness," says McGee, "and the sorrowing Mississippi took him, in pity, to her breast." He died beneath the shadow of the cross he had planted on its banks. His body, wrapped in his poor mantle, was consigned to its depths. "He had crossed a large portion of the continent," says Bancroft, "and found nothing so remarkable as his burial place."
The first Requiems sung above the eddies of the great river were for the eternal repose of the valiant De Soto. And who can look into the depths of that grave, even in spirit, without thinking of the loyal Catholic Knight who found rest beneath its turgid waters, and repeating the simple, holy words of the sublime liturgy of the Church of ages: "Grant him, O Lord, eternal rest. And let perpetual light shine on him! May he rest in peace !
3
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The bravery of De Soto and his followers became a fountain of poetry and legend for future generations. His chivalrous hosts were always accompanied by priests, in brown, or white, or black, who, besides at- tending to the spiritual wants of their countrymen, no doubt converted numerous Indians. Some must have stayed behind when the hero swept, comet-like, through the western wilderness in search of other lands to conquer. Benign shades of gracious priests sometimes appear in Indian legend. Students of legen- dary lore will recall the priest mentioned as going out in a frail barque, at twelve of the clock, on Christmas night, lured by the mystic music of the Pascagoula, in the vicinity of Mobile, and many another phantom priest.
Traditions of a picturesque Spanish column that marched through these regions in their burnished breast-plates and shining helmets, were long rife among the aborigines. Indeed, rapiers of old Toledo, steel, fitted with carved silver handles, ancient brass helmets of a pattern worn by European infantry in remote times and hardly seen since the early days of the great Louis-rusty war-knives, tomahawks, human bones in the sand dunes, coarse pottery, and many other relics of a day that is done, have been turned up by the spade of the laborer, on these ancient battle-fields, around which the Indians of many a tribe lived, and warred, and ruled in barbaric glory, long before the English Pilgrim Fathers touched the shores of America.
After weary wanderings and awful sufferings, a wretched remnant of De Soto's once brilliant hosts escaped into Mexico.
Meanwhile, no herald had as yet published the death
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of De Soto. But in many lands expedition after ex- pedition sought him and his followers, in vain. In October, 1543, however, one of the old soldiers learned, at Vera Cruz, that the Captain-General was no more, and that the few who survived of his once magnificent army, had lately escaped into Mexico.
When the faithful Isabella, after years of grief and anxiety, learned of the failure of De Soto's expedition, the loss of their fortunes, the ruin of their house, and, above all, the death of her beloved husband, whose body lay buried in the fatal river he had discovered, she could not survive under such a weight of misery. After three days of conscious widowhood, the first vice-queen of Havana died of a broken heart.
Of the remnant of the adventurous men that sailed on De Soto's expedition with such high hopes and such noble aspirations, some returned to Spain with only memories for their companions, but from bitter experi- ence they would now rather be poor at home than rich in the New World. Several entered religious houses, especially of their favorite Order of St. Francis. De Soto's gallant successor married a wealthy lady of Mexico. And a few went to Peru, where they gained fame and fortune.
Practically, the Spaniards in North America were confined to Mexico and Florida, the English-speaking to the Atlantic seaboard, and the French to Canada and the gulf coast.
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CHAPTER III.
THE speech and sentiments of De Soto and the followers who consoled his sorrowful last moments, as they have come down to us in the Chronicles, re- mind us of the piety of many of the secular population of Spain at that epoch.
The family life of the great Queen, Isabella, was marked by every virtue. Her daughters were in- structed by the best of tutors, under her own super- vision. Greater care, if possible, was bestowed on her son, Juan, a youth of the brightest promise, whose death in his twentieth year, was the sorest trial of her chequered career. She improved the religious and in- tellectual life of her whole Kingdom, and, like King Alfred, she made learning an indispensable condition of ecclesiastical preferment. Her daughters emulated, in other courts, her noble example, but they enjoyed little of her prosperity. Her eldest, Isabella, Queen of Portugal, died with her first-born. The picturesque insanity of Juana, widow of the dashing Philip of Flanders, lasted till her death in old age. Catalina went to England, where she became the persecuted but glorious Katharine of Aragon, the most venerated Queen in English history.
Queen Isabella, deservedly styled " the Catholic," proclaimed herself the mother and protectress of the
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Indians whom she called her children. Not even Las Casas himself was more anxious to bring them, one and all, into the true Church.
All those immediately connected with the discovery of America appear to have been Catholics of the highest type. Columbus had led a holy life from childhood; and his deathbed eloquently teaches the nothingness of human glory. He was an extraordinary genius, but above all he was a great Catholic. "The finger of the historian," says Prescott, "will find it difficult to point to a single blemish in his moral character. . It was in perfect harmony with the grandeur of his plans and their results, more stupendous than those which heaven has permitted any other mortal to achieve."
When Columbus discovered a new region he knelt, and kneeling uttered the following short, but beautiful, prayer, which all other Catholic discoverers were wont to repeat after him :
"O Lord God, Eternal and Omnipotent, who by Thy divine word hast created the heavens, the earth, and the sea! Blessed and glorified be Thy Name, and praised Thy Majesty, who hast deigned by me, Thy humble Servant, to have that Sacred Name made known and preached in this part of the world ! "
The discovery of America was a pre-eminently Catholic enterprise. Columbus undertook his voyages that he might carry the gospel to pagan lands, and raise funds to free the Holy Sepulchre from the in- fidels, for the age of Christian chivalry never ceased for him. No sooner was a new land found, than the discoverers felt obliged to begin the conversion of the natives or cause it to be begun, by some priest of the ship.
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Columbus was intensely pious. Religion mingled with the whole course of his thoughts and shone forth in all his private and most unstudied writings. The voice of prayer and praise arose from his ships, as they beheld the New World, and his first action on landing was to prostrate himself on the earth, and render thanks to God. Every evening the Salve Regina and the Ave Maris Stella were sung by his crew, and all his enterprises were undertaken in the Name of the Holy Trinity.
Columbus died the death of a Saint in Valadolid in the seventieth year of his age, in 1506. In his will he thought of the Indians and said, among other things: "Schools of theology are to be established for the instruction of those who will devote themselves to the conversion of the Indians."1
Pope Alexander VI. issued a bull, (May 9, 1493) in which he made it obligatory on the Catholic Sov- ereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, to send to the newly found lands " tried men who fear God, learned and skilful and expert, to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic Faith, and teach them good morals."
Navigators from other lands showed the zeal and piety which we laud in Columbus. Thus Champlain, the first projector of the Panama Canal, was wont to say: " The salvation of a single soul is worth more than the conquest of an empire."
When we look at the homes of Spain, from which so many of the heroes of these times came forth, we are not surprised at their piety and high principles. See the family of St. Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia,
1 Columbus said he felt he had been chosen by God to be His mes- senger to these people in new lands beyond the seas, and to bring them to Christ.
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while living as a grandee of Spain. Think of St. Teresa's father, at Avila, " the city of Knights." Her brother who had seen the New World, and helped to build her convents; her uncles, versed in the higher secrets of sublime prayer. Her friend, Francesco Salcedo, afterwards a priest, to whom she opened her whole soul in the earlier stages of her spiritual life, and who, having given her excellent instruction on that abstruse subject, the discernment of spirits, intro- duced her to the Jesuits who had just come into Spain. They calmed her perturbed soul and taught her to bless God for his gifts though extraordinary.
In that favored age piety seems to have dwelt in every walk of life from the patient, industrious mother of Venerable Luis of Granada, to the powerful em- peror of Spain and the Netherlands, who had re- nounced crowns and sceptres to prepare for death in the monastery of St. Just.
Luis of Granada was a distinguished preacher and one of the ablest ascetic writers of his day. Once, when preaching, he saw his mother, a poor washer- woman, at the church door, eager to hear her beloved son. "I pray you, Señores," said he, to the gentle- men who crowded about the church door, " to make a little room for my poor mother, who is anxious to hear the Sermon." Needless to say the best place in the church was instantly vacated for the venerable mother of such a son.
Another saintly poor creature, John Yepez, born in Old Castile, 1542, led in the world a life of heroic sanctity, dividing his time between study in college and labors in the hospital. Never was he without crosses. St. Teresa, a kindred spirit, chose him to re- form the Carmelite Brethren. His enemies were
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literally those of his own household, and his persecu- tion ceased only with his life. When asked to choose between a convent ruled by a holy Friar, his friend, at Baeza, and a convent whose Superior had denounced him as " an apostate, and a companion of devils," at Ubeda, he chose Ubeda! (Life of St. John of the Cross.)
The family of Alonzo Sanchez de Cepeda, father of St. Teresa, were singularly connected with America. His son, Fernando, was a friend of Pizarro. Teresa's favorite brother, Rodrigo, who as a child went with her in search of martyrdom, and was drowned later in the Indies, leaving her heir to all his wealth,-her brother, Lorenzo, whom she converted to great piety after his return from America, Antonio, a Dominican. who died young, Pedro, who went to the Indies and returned with Lorenzo, Jeronimo who died at Peru, " like a Saint," as Teresa says, Augustine, a distin- guished Captain, victorious in seventeen battles against the inhabitants of Chili, but, being eager for glory and ambition, received a supernatural warning from his sister that his salvation would be in danger if he ac- cepted fresh commissions,-he forgot her words and went out again; but when he reached Lima he was struck by a mortal illness, and, strengthened by the invisible presence of his blessed sister, he accepted his death with resignation, as the penalty for his sins, This is attested by Father Luis de Valdivia, S. J .- who confessed Augustine in his last illness,-in his deposition at the canonization of St. Teresa.
St. Teresa dearly loved her native city, Avila.1 In a
1 In Avila is the ancient Church of San Pedro. In front of its beau- tiful rose window is a pedestal, on which stands the statue of St. Teresa, in her Carmelite robes. On the sides of the pedestal are in-
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letter to her brother, Lorenzo, who had just returned from the Indies, she says: "I have forgotten to tell you what facilities you will find in Avila for giving your sons a good education. The Fathers of the Society of Jesus have a college, where they teach chil- dren their grammar; they confess them regularly, and train them so well in the paths of virtue, that it is truly a matter for which to thank God. They have likewise a course of philosophy. For theology, the people to go to the convent of Santo Tomas,1 so that you can find all that you need, both in knowledge and piety, without going outside Avila. The town is so virtuous that every one who comes to it from other parts, is impressed by it. The people are much ad- dicted to the practice of prayer and of confession, and even those in the world lead perfect lives."
Speaking of her family St. Teresa says : " We were three sisters and nine brothers; and all, through the goodness of God, were like our parents in being vir- tuous, except myself." 2
We may imagine the good which youths so piously brought up were able to do in the new country, and of what assistance they were to the missionaries.
It is pleasant to be able to add that Avila preserves into our own days its reputation for piety. In 1868,
scribed the names of warriors by land and sea, of authors, poets, wise men, and saints, born in Avila. Here may be found the honored name of Pedro Melendez. St. Teresa is regarded as the queen of all these great ones.
1 The convent of St. Tomas still exists, occupied by Dominicans who teach many novices there. They show the gratings at which St. Teresa used to confess.
2 Life of Saint Teresa. By Henri Joly. 1906. With the imprimatur of H. E. Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, March 19, 1903.
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at the time of the disturbance, after the fall of Queen Isabella II., the convents were threatened once more, and the Carmelite Convent, especially, was thought to be in danger. The women of Avila thereupon protested most vigorously to Marshal Serrano. They invoked both the memory of their great compatriot, and the promises of liberty made in the name of revolution. " Yea, your excellency, we beseech you with one voice, and with streaming eyes, in the name of the principle of association, proclaimed by the Revolution, to leave these good souls in their Convents; ease our troubled minds, and you will thus powerfully con- tribute to the upholding of the principles of liberty." 1
1 La Liberdad christiana de Madrid. Dec. 4, 1868.
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CHAPTER IV.
And for further consideration of the piety of these Spaniards, we will turn again to De Soto and others. See in what a Christian spirit Balthasar Gallegos com- forts him, in the names of the other warriors when death drew nigh. He emphasized for the dying Captain-General, the shortness of life in this weary, miserable world, adding that God shows a singular favor to those whom he calls out of it soonest. And though his death, under such circumstances, would surely grieve his loyal followers, yet they, as well as he, must learn to conform themselves to the holy will of God.
When an Indian chief besought De Soto to beg his God to send rain on the parched corn after a pro- longed drought, he said: "Though I, and my soldiers, are sinners, we will pray to our Lord God to shew favor to us, and grant our petitions." He then commanded a carpenter to make a colossal cross of the finest pine in the forest. A solemn procession was ordered for the next day. It was led by the priests, chanting the Litany of the Saints, which the rest devoutly answered. The chief walked beside De Soto; the warriors were in line with the cavaliers. Falling on their knees they all prayed aloud to the great God. Then rising, two by two, they approached the cross and venerated it. The procession returned
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chanting the Te Deum. And, just before midnight, the same day, the floodgates of heaven were opened, and the rain fell in torrents for two days, to the great joy of the Indians whose crops were saved.
Later, the chieftain bringing two blind men to the Captain-General, asked him to have his God open their eyes. De Soto gave him a lucid explanation of the Christian Religion, and taught him for what we should pray, and how, concluding :
" Pray to God who is in heaven, only for what you need."
Among other pious navigators was Alonzo de Ojeda,1 " the bravest of the brave," called "the Don Quixote of Navigators," who settled the Isthmus of Darien in 1510. He accompanied Columbus in his second voyage, and was noted, for his practical Faith and fervent piety. Ojeda was greatly devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and called himself her Knight. He finally abandoned the world, and became a Fran- ciscan Monk at San Domingo, dying soon after. His last words were: "Lay my body at the portals of the monastery that, in humble expiation of my past pride every one who enters may tread upon my grave."
Among the successors of Columbus there were those who came with fire and sword, for gold and lands. But men of self-sacrifice came too, and brought the Gospel and the sacraments. Nor can it ever be com- puted how many souls were attracted to the good God by the new Apostles. Chief among them was the heroic Las Casas, who labored for sixty years with untiring energy, for the welfare of the Indians. He was entirely and enthusiastically devoted to them, and gloried in being styled " the Protector of the Indians." That he might be able to give confirmation and Holy
1 The history of the Spanish Main began with the voyage of Ojeda.
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Orders, he was consecrated Bishop of Chiapa, having refused the mitre of the rich city of Cuscos, which is so beautiful, that it was called, " a piece out of heaven."
In 1528, Right Rev. John Juarez, a Spanish Fran- ciscan, was appointed by the Holy See, Bishop of Rio de las Palmas, in Florida. He underwent great hard- ships in laboring for souls, and with a brother mis- sioner, John de Palos, perished by hunger or at the hands of the Indians, 1528.
In 1559, Tristan de Luna tried to plant a colony of Spaniards in Alabama, but the attempt was soon aban- doned. Yet in one sense, these Catholic colonizers deemed it eminently successful. Many babes and adults were baptized by the priests who accompanied the expedition.
Most accounts of the Spanish conquests in the New World were written by the enemies of Spain, and, un- happily, the evils were exaggerated and the good minimized. But no one is more severe on his country- men who failed in mercy and kindness to the Indians, than the Seville Bishop, Las Casas, especially in his " General History of the Indians," graphically trans- lated from the Spanish by the late Rev. Luigi Dutto, of the Diocese of Natchez, and published in St. Louis, 1902.
It cannot be denied that many explorers were filled with zeal to convert the pagans of the New World. And, surely, hundreds, nay thousands, were gathered into the One Fold, of whom history takes but little cognizance.
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