Source: Amy Notes (ID702)
Author: Howard, Amy (ID633)
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Maybe Mont can have an argument with someone and then play it off for the Indians' sake.
Maybe Mont can have an argument with someone and then play it off for the Indians' sake.
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Captain Fuentes let Indians in Apalache party against their friar's wishes
Date Created: 2023-10-12 20:56:17
Source: Situado and Sabana (ID 82)
Author: Bushnell, Amy (ID 32)
Content_id: 1691
Then, on the 9th of August, Fuentes had a confrontation with Father Juan Arias de Servantes at San Joseph de Ocuya, one of the places to which the tenientes ordinarily went to buy maize for the presidio (Escobedo, 1675). Exercising his role as provincial magistrate, Captain Fuentes was in the town on the eve of San Lorenzo, name day of the cacique, to administer justice and to attend a dance in his and the cacique's honor. It was the practice, wrote Servantes to an unnamed superior, probably Blas de Robles, for the dances in the bujio to stop at the bell for "las animas" AN212 -a fact corroborated by Bishop Diaz Vara Calderon, who visited the same doctrinas in 1675 (Diaz Vara Calderon, [1675]). When, that evening, the Indians did not stop dancing, Servantes sent to ask why not and was informed that Fuentes had told them they should continue. He asked a soldier to tell the teniente that he was at the door of the bujio to speak to him, and Fuentes, he said, "answered with a lofty air that it made no difference where the padre was, that he himself was there (with his hat cocked, thinking he is somebody when he is nothing but a piece of worm shit), forgetting the veneration that is due to priests. And this was because I did not go out to greet him [when he came], whereas I am neither an indio nor a mulato AN213, and besides, on account of the feastday there were some Indians to confess. . . . "I want to know who is interfering with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction . . . . If it is the governor, I believe it, for it would not be the first time. Inasmuch as the teniente's behavior causes scandal and the Indians [take] liberties, I require him not to introduce himself in what is not his business, telling the Indians they can dance all night-which they did do, until cock's crow. Every feastday as many as 200 are missing for Mass AN214, and when I send to find out why, they don't care, for they know that they only have to give the tenientes packages of cassina and maize cakes, hens, and even watermelons, as they have to that teniente, and they will let them live as they please (Servantes 1682). No allowance was made for late sleepers at Ocuya. The bell rang for Mass on the Day of San Lorenzo at eight o'clock in the morning. Servantes, however, had decided that he should leave his doctrina to inform on the teniente in person, and cursed him resoundingly in consequence: "Let the holy sacraments and Masses that fail to be administered to these natives be charged to the account of his soul and his conscience." He concluded his letter to his superior with a grim little poem run into the text: "Vida breve muerte cierta hora incierta juez riguroso ay de ti perezoso que un alma tienes no mas si esa pierdes que haras has aquello que quisiera:s haber hecho cuando mueras" (Servantes 1682). Translated as verse, it reads: "Life is brief, death is sure, Hour uncertain, judge severe. Idle one, alas for you, One soul have you, only one. If that you lose, what will you do? Have you that which you desire To have made ere you expire?" What every Christian aspired to make, of course, was a "good death," safely confessed and absolved. In Captain Fuentes's version of the same events, addressed as usual to the governor, Father Servantes abused the soldiers roundly, saying "Vayase nora mala, que eres un indio!" ("Go in a bad hour, you indio!"), varying this with "you mulato indio!" Of Fuentes, he demanded rudely, "Who does the Gascon think he is? AN215 Does he think I don't know him and his sister and his whole family?" Fuentes replied, "What am I to do about it, padre? Nobody can pick his lineage. So I am a Gascon. . . . Go with God, Your Reverence." As Servantes walked away, he said over his shoulder, "See what we have now, married to a vil india!" AN216 Stung by this insult to his wife, Fuentes retorted, "That's false and you are lying, I swear to God!" If the friar would doff his holy habit, the captain said, he was ready to meet him with two carbines and four pistols." Somehow, decorum was restored. Inside the bujio, the caciques were waiting to go on with their feast day. Said Fuentes, "I smiled at them as affectionately as possible and said, "My sons, do not let this affright you; it is nothing. These are jurisdictional matters… . Be happy and enjoy your day licitly and as God commands, for the matter is over; I love the padre and regard him as I do the saints of the altar" (Fuentes, 1682b). AN217 The captain continued his reporting of Franciscan misdeeds all the same. (Bushnell SS)