On the Padres' Trail

by Vecsey, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780268037024
• ISBN10: 0268037027
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr

Summary

Until 1492, Christianity was totally unknown to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Although the Native Americans already had long-established religious cultures of their own, the arrival of the Christian Europeans made an extremely significant impact on their lives: over the following five centuries, millions of American Indians would come to identify themselves as Christians. Roman Catholicism, and, in terms of numbers of self-identified American Indian Catholics, Catholicism has remained the dominant Christian religion among Indian peoples -- for better or worse. On the Padres' Trail begins with the arrival of Europeans in the New World and the invasion of the Caribbean, from which author Christopher Vecsey traces the expansion of Catholicism into New Spain. He devotes special attention to the history of the Catholic faith and institutions among the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico. particularly in the years since the establishment of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Then he turns his attention to the history and effects, both good and bad, of the Catholic missions among the Indians of California. In the final section of the book, he details the history of the judgments made about Catholic missionizing in California (and, by extension, all of New Spain) and closes with the sometimes critical perspectives of contemporary Native American Catholics regarding the padres who first brought Catholicism to their ancestors. On the Padres' Trail, the first volume in Professor Vecsey's three-volume American Indian Catholics series, is an invaluable additon to current scholarship on the history of the Catholic Church and to the field of Native American studies.

Table of Contents

MAPS	ix	(2)
PREFACE	xi	(6)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xvii
I Spanish Catholicism among Native Americans	3	(120)
Introduction	3	(8)
Hernan Cortes' Conquest of Mexico	11	(5)
Missionaries in Mexico	16	(11)
The Effects	27	(15)
The Northern Frontier of New Spain	42	(8)
Yaqui History	50	(8)
Contemporary Yaqui Religion	58	(12)
Waehma	70	(6)
Yaqui Catholicism	76	(6)
Jesuit Missions among the O'odham	82	(11)
The Waning of New Spain	93	(5)
Sonora Catholicism	98	(8)
Reinstituting Evangelization	106	(17)
II The Pueblos and Their Neighbors	123	(96)
The Spanish Regime among the Pueblos	123	(11)
Revolution and Reconquest	134	(7)
Puebloans at the Rim of New Spain and Mexico	141	(10)
The Vicariate Apostolic of New Mexico	151	(8)
The Campaign to Regularize Pueblo Catholicism: Santo Domingo	159	(12)
Pueblo Religious Patterns at Midcentury	171	(11)
The Isleta Controversy	182	(12)
The Contemporary Situation	194	(13)
Other Catholic Indians in the Southwest	207	(12)
III Indian Catholicism in California	219	(128)
The Foundations	219	(10)
Church and State	229	(4)
The Lives of Neophytes	233	(17)
Indian Resistance	250	(10)
Secularization	260	(12)
The Neophytes' Descendants	272	(5)
The Luisenos and Their Neighbors, 1846-1903	277	(7)
Diocesan Outreach	284	(8)
Mission Indian Catholicism	292	(16)
Contemporary Indian Catholics and the Church	308	(7)
Catholic Luisenos	315	(32)
IV Detractors and Defenders	347	(48)
Patterns of Criticism and Rebuttal	347	(8)
Social Scientists	355	(10)
The Contemporary Apologia	365	(14)
The Serra Controversy	379	(16)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	395	(24)
INDEX	419