The Indian Chief: The Story of a Revolution

The Jesuits founded in Mexico missions round which, with the patience that constantly distinguished them, an unbounded charity, and a perseverance which nothing could discourage, they succeeded in collecting a large number of Indians, whom they instructed in the principal and most touching dogmas of their faith—whom they baptized, instructed, and induced to till the soil. These missions, at first insignificant and a great distance apart, insensibly increased. The Indians, attracted by the gentle amenity of the good fathers, placed themselves under their protection; and there is no doubt that if the Jesuits, victims to the jealousy of the Spanish viceroys, had not been shamefully plundered and expelled from Mexico, they would have brought around them the majority of the fiercest Indios Bravos, have civilised them, and made them give up their nomadic life. It is to one of these missions we purpose conducting the reader, a month after the events we have narrated in a preceding work. The mission of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles was built on the right bank of the Rio San Pedro, about sixty leagues from Pitic. Nothing can equal the grandeur and originality of its position. Nothing can compare, in wild grandeur and imposing severity, with the majestically terrible landscape which presents itself to the vision, and fills the heart with terror and a melancholy joy, at the sight of the frightful and gloomy rocks which tower over the river like colossal walls and gigantic parapets, apparently formed by some convulsion of nature; while in the midst of this chaos, at the foot of these astounding precipices, past which the river rushes in impetuous cascades, and in a delicious valley covered with verdure, stands the house, commanded on three sides by immense mountains, which raise their distant peaks almost to the heavens.