g seventy-three different pueblos. In 1767, for
political reasons, the Jesuits suffered expulsion; and the Franciscans
came in--tramping, as told before, 600 and 900 miles. It was under the
Franciscans that the present structure of San Xavier was built. Garcez
was the most famous of the Franciscans. He spent seven years among the
Pimas and Papagoes and Yumas; but one hot midsummer Sunday--July 17,
1781--during early mass, the Indians rose and slew four priests, all the
Spanish soldiers and all the Spanish servants. Garcez was among the
martyrs. San Xavier, as it at present stands, is supposed to have been
completed in 1797; but in 1827-9, came another political turnover and
all foreign missionaries were expelled. Tumacacori and San Xavier were
always the most important of the Arizona Missions. Originally quite as
magnificent a structure as San Xavier, Tumacacori has been allowed to go
to ruin. Of late, it has been made a United States monument. It is a
day's journey from Tucson.

To describe San Xavier is quite impossible, except through canvas and
photograph. There is something intangibly spiritual and unearthly in its
very architecture; and this is the spirit in which it was originally
built. At daybreak, a bell called the builders to prayers of
consecration. At nightfall, vesper bells sent the laborer home with the
blessing of the church. For the most part, the workers were Mexicans and
Indians; and as far as can be gathered from the annals, voluntary
workers. The Papagoes and Pimas at that time numbered 5,000, of whom 500
lived round the Missions, the rest spending the summers hunting in the
mountains.

[Illustration: On top of the world--a Moki city on a Mesa in the Painted
Desert. At the left are the ends of a ladder leading from an underground
council chamber]

When the American Government took over Arizona, San Xavier went under
the diocese of New Mexico. From Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Tucson was 600
miles across desert mountains and canyons, every foot of the way infested
by Apache warriors; and the heroism of that trail was marked by the same
courage and constancy as signalized the founding and maintenance of the
other early Spanish Missions.

It would be a mistake to say that San Xavier has been restored.
Restoration implies innovation; and San Xavier stands to-day as it stood
in the sixteen hundreds, when Father Kino, the famous mathematician and
Jesuit from Bavaria, came wandering up from the Missions of