The inquirers leaned forward with quickened interest. But why, demanded the pastor, had the Humanos never mentioned this before?, and they replied,
“Because you did not ask us, and anyway, we thought she was around here, as well.”
It was astounding. It demanded action. The religious community immediately decided to send two friars from the river province to the Humanos kingdom. Without delay, Fray Juan de Salas and Fray Diego López set out with the Humanos for the east. In a week or two they were back to call for more workers, “as the harvest was great.” They told how crossing the plains of the Apache buffalo country they travelled one hundred leagues by the time they came among the Humanos nation. There the people came forward in procession to meet the friars, calling aloud for baptism. They carried a large cross garlanded with wild flowers. Mothers with babies at their breasts held the infants aloft and begged that they be baptized too. The friars were enchanted. Where had the people gained knowledge of the cross? The Indians replied that the same young woman in nun’s robes had told them how they must go in procession to meet the friars, and herself had helped to decorate the cross with its garlands. For several days the friars prayed with the people about the cross which they set in the ground. There was more to hear about the visitation. To the Indians she was flesh and blood like another woman. They all saw her, though this joy was denied to the friars. The Indians told how she taught them in their own language, and reproved them for laziness that they did not go more often to seek the priests of the Rio del Norte. The friars were moved. What was known of this matter in Spain now began to be supported by what was becoming known of it in this last wilderness of the New World. One day while Fray Juan and Fray Diego were with the Humanos, messengers from two other Indian nations to the east arrived asking for baptism. A white woman, young, pretty, in gray, black and white robes, with a blue cloak, had been among them preaching and urging them to seek the desert fathers. It was bewildering. The Franciscans made ready to return to the river to ask for more help in the great task. The Humanos chief begged that before they went they would bless the sick. Two hundred invalids were brought to the cross, and the friars told the other missioners at Isleta on the river how they had immediately arisen, “well and healed.”
There was much to report to the Archbishop of Mexico. Fray Alonso de Benavides, the Father President of the river province, resolved to go to Mexico, and—there was much other administrative business to justify the decision as well—even to Spain, where he hoped to obtain permission to pay a call upon Mother María de Jesús himself. To his brothers on the river he would report the outcome as soon as possible. He left New Mexico in the summer of 1629, in time to make the spring sailings from Veracruz in 1630.
It took nearly two years for his report to come back to the river. Affairs of the church and the government moved slowly across time and distance. But at last it came. Fray Alonso submitted his findings in detail, in a letter written at Madrid on May 15, 1631.
“Most dear and beloved father custodian and other friars of our father, Saint Francis, of the holy custodia of the Conversion of Saint Paul in the kingdoms and provinces of New Mexico,” he wrote, “I give infinite thanks to the divine majesty for having placed me, unworthy as I am, among the number enjoying the happy good fortune of your paternities, since you are so deserving of heavenly favor that the angels and our father, Saint Francis, aid you. They personally, truly, and actually carry the blessed and blissful Mother María de Jesús, discalced Franciscan of the order of Concepción, from the town of Agreda, which is in the limits of Castile, to help us with her presence and preaching in all these provinces and barbarous nations.”
Having first stated his tremendous conclusion he went on to the absorbing details. He arrived in Spain on August 1, 1630, and in due course was received by the Bishop of Viseo, who at the moment was governing the Franciscan order. They exchanged their knowledge of Mother María de Jesús. The Bishop had been familiar for years with the matter, had been to see her, and only looked for confirmation of her claims. Fray Alonso told him of what had occurred in New Mexico, which seemed to supply it. The Bishop authorized him to go to Agreda, there “to constrain the blessed nun through obedience to reveal… all that she knew about New Mexico.” He kissed the bishop’s ring and by the last day of April, 1631, was in Agreda, where the Mother Superior was waiting.
She could not, he thought, be as old as twenty-nine. Her face was beautiful, white except for a faint rosy tinge. She had large black eyes under heavy, high-arched eyebrows. Her costume consisted of coarse gray sackcloth worn next to the skin, and over that a habit of coarse white sackcloth with a scapulary of the same stuff. She wore the white cloth tucked up so that much of the gray showed. Around her neck was a heavy rosary. At the waist she wore the Franciscan cord. Her face was framed in a winding of white cloth over which she wore a black veil. To her feet were tied hemp sandals. Her cloak was of heavy blue sackcloth. If her eyes were darkly calm, her mouth had a little smile of sweetness and humor. She talked freely.
She said that all her life she had suffered for those who did not know God, especially the heathen peoples whose ignorance was not their own fault. She had had made known to her in revelations all those lands which did not know God. To them she had been repeatedly transported by her guardian angels, whom she identified as Saint Michael and Saint Francis of Assisi. As for New Mexico, she had been expressly called for by the custodian angels of that kingdom, who had come to get her by divine command. She went there the first time in 1620, and continued to go ever since. On some days she went three or four times in less than twenty-four hours.
So much for the general claims. As to particulars, she said that when Fray Alonso himself had gone to baptize the Piro pueblos, she had been there. She recognized him now.
On another occasion somewhat similar, she said, when a father was baptizing Indians in a pueblo church, the people all crowded about the door. With her own hands she pushed them on. They looked to see who was pushing “and they laughed when they were unable to see who did it.” She described the officiating pastor—an old man but without gray hair, who had a long face and a ruddy complexion. It was a clear description of Father Cristóbal Quirós, who was known to all the province.
She told in detail about how Fray Juan de Salas and Fray Diego López went from the river to the Humanos nation, and said that it was she who had sent the Indians to fetch them. She described the two priests, and declared that she helped them herself in their work. When the messengers came to them from the other tribes farther out on the plains, it was because she had sent them. Her descriptions of the country were so accurate and detailed that they recalled to Fray Alonso much that he had seen and forgotten.
Fray Alonso asked her “why she did not allow us to see her when she granted this bliss to the Indians?” and she “replied that they needed it and we did not, and that her blessed angels arranged everything.”
He then asked her “most earnestly” if she would not make herself plain to the friars still in New Mexico, and “she promised that she would ask God, and that if He granted it, would do it most willingly.” Fray Alonso wrote that he trusted that “by the time this letter reaches the hands of your paternities some of you will have succeeded in seeing her.” They could not say that they had.
She went on to tell of other savage kingdoms which she had visited, and of dangers, conversions, and martyrdoms. She herself, in her other person, had been martyred “and received many wounds, and her heavenly angels crowned her.…”
When the interview was over, Fray Alonso showed her what he had written down of their exchange, and asking her whether it was the truth he “invoked the obedience from our most reverend father general that I carried for this purpose.” Her confessor was also present and he called down upon her the same powerful sanction. In her own hand she addressed to the friars of the New Mexican river a confirmation of all that Fray Alonso had put down in his notebooks. “… I saw and did all that I have told the father,” she wrote, and in a final summation of his view, the priest declared, “She convinced me absolutely by describing to me all the things in New Mexico as I have seen them myself, as well as by other details which I shall keep within my soul. Consequently, I have no doubts in this matter whatsoever.”
In her written statement to the friars, Mother María de Jesús