The work and ministries of the Roman Catholic friars who gave their lives, both as martyrs for the cause of their church and in years of hard and often thankless labor, are the inspiration and basis for Missionary Practices and Spanish Steel, a theological and practical narrative that seeks to remember and understand their accomplishments in Christian mission. Missionary and theologian Andrew L. Toth investigates the roots of Christian mission as it developed into the field of Christian missiology in the chaotic, terrible, and incredibly diverse three-hundred-year Spanish conquest of North America indigenous nations. Through his research Toth shows that, in the great majority of the cases studied, the friars accomplished their goals to transform these native cultures into their own Spanish culture to account them as Roman Catholic Christians. This study us more than just a history of the friars' missionary movement. Toth not only explores how Spanish Catholic missionaries approached their work, but also asks to what extent their approach conformed to a particular theological perspective. Toth rounds out his argument by speculating on what the friars can teach us about the role of missionaries today. Comprehensive and thought-provoking, Missionary Practices and Spanish Steel offers a new perspective on the current missionary movement by looking through the lens of the past.

MISSIONARY PRACTICES and SPANISH STEEL

The Evolution of Apostolic Mission in the Context of New Spain ConquestsBy ANDREW L. TOTH

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Andrew L. Toth
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-4743-4

Contents

Preface................................................................................................ixChapter I. Introduction................................................................................1Chapter II. The Preconquest European Context...........................................................13Chapter III. The Council of Trent......................................................................29Chapter IV. First Epoch: Discovery—Caribbean/Florida.............................................38Chapter V. Second Epoch: The High Central Valleys......................................................80Chapter VI. Third Epoch: The Yucatan Region............................................................119Chapter VII. Fourth Epoch: The Gran Chichimeca.........................................................136Chapter VIII. Fifth Epoch: The Nueva Vizcaya...........................................................160Chapter IX. Sixth Epoch: The Nuevo Mexico..............................................................187Chapter X. Seventh Epoch: The Rio Grande Valley........................................................216Chapter XI. Eighth Epoch: The Upper California.........................................................241Chapter XII. The Evolution of Tridentine Missiology Through the Epochs of Conquest.....................261Chapter XIII. The Missionary Legacy: Approaching Indigenous North Americans Today......................279About the Author.......................................................................................289Bibliography...........................................................................................291Notes..................................................................................................301

Chapter One

Introduction

The sweat-soaked missionary struggled both to maintain his balance and to keep up with Rutillio, his Native American guide. The humid air brought no relief on the steep, rocky, and muddy jungle trail. Rutillio had pastored the small congregation for several years in the Pame village that was their objective for that day. Spanish was the common language of these two apostles of the Christian faith, though Rutillio also spoke Tenek, Aztec, and even a little English. Neither of them spoke Pame or Xi'iuy, as the North American indigenous people of the village call themselves.

Cresting another hill, they paused for the missionary to catch his breath and slow down his heart rate. They noticed an opening to a cave close by and the missionary got up to explore it. Rutillio nearly panicked and demanded the missionary stay away from the sacred cave. With concern for the possibility of snakes and large cave spiders, the missionary retreated, asking why the sudden alarm. Rutillio explained that in this area the people believed spirits lived in the underground and could come out through that cave. Some believed babies lived when born because good spirits came from the cave and inhabited the newborn baby giving them spirit and life. Other times, bad spirits came out from the same cave and the baby only lived a short while or died at birth. This belief explained why the mortality rate of the newborn babies was over 50% in this village—there were just too many bad spirits coming out from this cave.

As they moved along, the missionary attempted to grasp the implications of this Mexican pastor's explanation. What were the historical roots of this strange mixture of animistic and Christian beliefs? After three hours of walking mountain trails from the nearest road, they arrived at a beautiful, high valley with the Pame village scattered over one side of it. People had lived there for many hundreds of years, and it was as if time had stood still. The rugged mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidentales were considered unfit for human habitation by the Spanish—certainly not worth fighting for them. This left the culture of the indigenous Pame people relatively undisturbed as the centuries went by.

The homes there were mud and stick walls with thatched roofs; three to seven one-room houses together defined a family complex. There were several natural springs that supplied water for the village and their animals—all drinking from the same crude cistern. There were no roads, no electricity, almost no outside interference with the daily lives and routines of these subsistence farmers. They ate what they grew or starved if there was not enough—and no one from the outside seemed to care one way or another. After all, they were just Indios. For more than 500 years, the gospel of Jesus Christ had been in the land. Why then was this village so unaffected spiritually, without the normal lifting of moral and living standards that usually accompanies the entrance of the gospel message into a new culture?

The missionary went to the village Juez, the judge or leader, to introduce himself and was informed that, "In this village we are all Catholic." He was also informed that no other religions were permitted there. There were no church buildings in the valley of any kind. Worship consisted of processions to sacred places where men and women would drink themselves into a stupor while sacrificing small animals or birds. Once per year a Roman Catholic priest would try to come up the trail, if it was passable, to celebrate the Eucharist, baptize living babies for that year, collect tithes and offerings to cover the costs of his trip, and then leave. There was a cross which was also considered a sacred place set up on a hill in the distance overlooking the valley. For daily worship, a number of houses had a type of altar set up in a corner, often with a picture of Mary and baby Jesus or the popular Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe—usually with a garlic wreath as an adornment and a candle to burn on special occasions. When the missionary asked, "Who does this represent?" The typical answer was usually: God.

Most of life's milestones were still held in the traditional Pame ways. Marriages were done without the benefit of church, clergy, or even a celebration. Burials were a cause for drunken excesses and ancient Pame customs. In fact, the burial place was the most sacred place of all and the only one strictly maintained by the villagers. Every year on Day of the Dead the whole village turned out to clean away rubbish, restore the rock walls, and spend a day or two in feasting and drunkenness. It was from here that the departed spirits left the bodies and fled out over the eastern sea and then returned to the ground until new life called them forth from the caves again. The missionary marveled at just what it meant for these indigenous villagers to be Catholic, or what they really understood of the Christian faith as expressed in the biblical concepts of sin, propitiation, redemption, forgiveness, being in Christ, and filled with the Spirit of the Living God.

The Roman Catholic Church states that these indigenous people in the Mexican rural villages are Catholic. The village leaders themselves in many of these nearly forgotten rural towns also say that they are Catholic. But aside from a few borrowed Christian symbols here and there, and perhaps a visit from some outsider that represents being Roman Catholic to the rest of the world, one would look in...