lifornia ional iity OLD SPAIN AM ERIC JVFLEAN -WILLIAMS THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE Gift of THE HONNOLD LIBRARY OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA INTERDENOMINATIONAL HOME MISSION STUDY COURSE Each volume I2mo, cloth, soc. net (post, extra) ; paper, 30c. net (post, extra) UNDER OUR FLAG. By Alice M. Guernsey. THE CALL OF THE WATERS. By Katharine R. Crowell. FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT. By Mary Helm. CONSERVATION OF NATIONAL IDEALS. A Symposium. MORMONISM, THE ISLAM OF AMERICA. By Bruce Kinney, D.D. THE NEW AMERICA. By Mary Clark Barnes and Dr. L. C. Barnes. AMERICA, GOD'S MELTING-POT. By Laura Gerould Craig. Paper, net 250. (post, extra). IN RED MAN'S LAND. A Study of the American Indian. By Francis E. Leupp. HOME MISSIONS IN ACTION. By Edith H. Allen. OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA. By Robert McLean, D.D. and Grace Petrie Williams. JUNIOR COURSE Cloth, net 400. (post, extra); paper.net 250. (poet, extra). BEST THINGS IN AMERICA. By Katharine R. Crowell. SOME IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORS. By John R. Henry, D.D. COMRADES FROM OTHER LANDS. By Leila Allen Dimock. GOODBIRD THE INDIAN. By Gilbert L. Wilson. ALL ALONG THE TRAIL. By Sarah Gertrude Pomeroy. CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE. By Charles L. White. OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA BY ROBERT MCLEA.N Superintendent of Mexican Work in South Weft Home Mission Board Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. AND GRACE PETRIE WILLIAMS Illustrated Issued by the COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS 124 EAST 28rn STREET, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY J. F. MCTYIER S7 FOREWORD There seemed to the General Committee of Twenty- eight, to which is committed the choice of topics for the text books for mission study, one outstandingly ap- propriate subject for 1916 "The Two Americas." The national pride in the physical achievement of a completed Panama Canal has crystallized into appre- ciation of the new problems and greater responsibilities coming to the United States with the easier access to the West Coast of South America, and with the draw- ing together of all the peoples of the two continents. Jhe continued disturbances in Mexico have aroused more earnest inquiry into the conditions that exist in that unfortunate country, and the reiterated demands for intervention by this government have emphasized its nearness to us. The Expositions of San Francisco and San Diego have acquainted the people of the North with the ad- vance made by the countries of the Southern Continent : the Pan-American Scientific Congress held in Washing- ton, D. C, in January, 1916, and the Congress on Chris- tian Work in Latin America held at Panama, February, 1916, have concentrated attention on the Spanish speaking peoples of the two continents and the adjacent islands. With such introductions what more logical than that vi FOREWORD the churches should this year study their relation to the Latin- American peoples who are without a knowl- edge of the Christ? The Home Mission text book of necessity confines itself to a study of those groups which live under the Stars and Stripes, i. e., the Mexicans living in the .United States, and the Spanish speaking peoples of Porto Rico and Cuba. The latter group, being under the protection of this country, has been accepted as Home Mission territory by most of the denominations and is, therefore, included here. Believing that the Christian Church must be mightily aroused as to its responsibility for the Spanish speak- ing peoples of the continents, so that spiritual growth may keep pace with material development, the Council of Women for Home Missions, representing the Women's Home Mission Boards of sixteen denomina- tions, prayerfully sends forth this little book, trusting that through its agency there may be awakened a more responsive interest in those peoples who represent " OLD SPAIN " in " NEW AMERICA." PUBLICATION COMMITTEE. Acknowledgment is made to Mr. R. C. Tillinghast, The Congregational Education Society, The Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, and The Ameri- can Missionary Society, for the pictures used as illustrations in this book. CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 PAGE SPAIN IN AMERICA 3 PERIOD OF EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST Aim of Early Explorers 4 Discovery of America 5 Search for the Fountain of Youth 6 Conquest of Mexico 7 Discovery of the Mississippi River 8 Revolt of the Pueblos 9 Capture of Acoma 12 Settlement of Florida by Menendez 13 RESULTS OF SPANISH CONQUEST Population 14 Mixture of Races 15 Education in Latin America 16 Indian Opposition 17 WHY SPANISH EFFORTS IN THE NEW WORLD FAILED Advantages of Spain 18 Reasons for Spanish Failure 19 Words of a Spanish Statesman 20 Comparison of Spanish and English Colonization . . 21 Advantages of Saxon Colonization 22 Other Elements Contributed to Strengthen America . 23 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER II FOLLOWING THE CROSS 29 MISSIONARY WORK OF THE SPANIARDS Religious Motive 29 Attitude of Natives 30 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE Destructive Policy of Clergy 32 Consecrated Missionaries 34 Second Capture of Acoma 35 The Inquisition 36 Religion of Mexicans 37 The Old Missions 37 BEGINNINGS OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS Early Missionaries 38 Mexican People 41 Hindrances to Missionary Efforts 42 Power of God's Word 43 THE PENITENTES A LAND OF CROSSES CHAPTER III REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 51 CONDITIONS WITH WHICH MISSIONARIES CONTEND Superstition and Belief in Witches 54 Power of Priest 55 Customs 58 The Saloon 60 WORK OF THE CHURCHES Evangelistic 61 Educational 63 Medical 68 Social 70 RESULTS OF MISSIONARY WORK In Homes 71 Testimony of Roman Catholics 71 Pupils Sent Out 72 Desire to Help Others 73 OUR MISSIONARY TEACHERS Is THE WORK WORTH WHILE? CONTENTS ix CHAPTER IV FACE CUBA PARA CRISTO 79 THREE GLIMPSES OF CUBAN HISTORY Days of Splendor 79 Ten Years' War .81 Cuba Libre 82 CUBA OF TO-DAY Geography and Climate 84 Who Are the Cubans of To-day? 85 Cuban Character 86 Internal Improvements Begun by United States . . 88 Education in Cuba . 89 RELIGIOUS WORK IN CUBA Intolerance of Spain 90 Evangelistic Work 92 Educational Work 94 Cuba para Cristo 96 CUBANS IN THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER V OUR NEW POSSESSION ,. ,. . . 101 UNDER THE POWER OF SPAIN Discovery and Colonization 101 Ponce de Leon 103 Diego Columbus . , * ... 103 Coming of the Negroes 104 Better Days 104 Freedom of the Slaves 104 Spanish Misrule . . 105 OUR NEW POSSESSION Government . 105 Physical Conditions 107 Sanitation and Health . . 108 x CONTENTS PAGE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION IN PORTO Rico Educational Conditions Under Spanish Occupation . no Growth of Schools Under United States . . . .no RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF THE PORTO RICANS Under Spanish Domination 112 Protestant Entrance 114 Church Comity 114 Missionary Work 115 Encouragements 116 Effect on the Catholic Church 116 SOCIAL SERVICE Religious Settlements 118 Orphanages 120 Medical Work 120 THE SYMBOL OF LIBERTY CHAPTER VI A NEW ERA 127 MISSIONARY WORK AMONG SPANISH SPEAKING PEOPLES Evangelistic Results 127 Educational Results 128 Medical and Social Work 128 GENERAL RESULTS Awakened Peoples 130 A Christian Sabbath 131 Comity 132 LARGER AIMS FOR THE FUTURE Better Understanding of Spanish-Americans . . . 133 Better Knowledge of Spanish 134 Better Knowledge of Mexicans in United States . . 135 Leaders of Their Own People 136 Educational Work 138 More Work for the Homes 138 Extension of Medical Work 139 OPPORTUNITY GOD'S CALL TO ACTION Call to Cuba and Porto Rico Answered 140 CONTENTS xi PAGE Home Missions Our Defense 141 A Lost Opportunity 141 What Can We Do? 142 The Bearing on Home Missions 143 The Church's Problem 145 APPENDIX 149 Concerning the Great Southwest 149 Population 149 Cuban Facts 150 Porto Rican Figures 152 PROTESTANT MISSIONS TO SPANISH AMERICANS . . . .153 Cuba 153 Porto Rico 154 In the Southwest ISS BIBLIOGRAPHY 160 ILLUSTRATIONS MISSION OF SAN XAVIER DEL BAG .... Frontispiece PAGE MAP OF SPANISH POSSESSIONS AT TIME OF LOUISIANA PUR- CHASE 26 THE PENITENTES 44 SOUTHWESTERN DESERT 50 SANTIAGO DE CUBA 66 TYPICAL PORTO RICAN MOUNTAIN HOME 114 PUBLIC SCHOOL AT ARECIBO 114 MODERN MISSION SCHOOL IN THE SOUTHWEST .... 130 DAY NURSERY IN PORTO Rico 130 PREFACE The marked difference between Saxon and Latin America cannot be due wholly to climate or to race. There must be contributing causes that have removed the stimulus from the people of Latin America; there must have been a fundamental lack in their system that would account for their lack of progress. As the re- ligious faith of a nation largely determines its progress and its destiny, it seems legitimate to ask whether the form of Christianity introduced long ago has not proved itself inadequate to create a civilization that would develop the best qualities of those who ac- cepted it. Great honor is due those early missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, who came with the explorers and adventurers, and who alone mitigated to the In- dians the severities of the conquerors. They planted many missions but they committed the fatal error of adapting Christian worship to the beliefs and practices of pagan tribes. Instead of Christianizing paganism, they allowed their Christianity to become paganized. In the place of patiently teaching right thinking and right living to the Indians, the more expeditious method was adopted of having the converts conform mechanically to a system differing but slightly from that they had always practiced. The Roman Catholic xiii xiv PREFACE Church did so many wonderful things in the two Americas that it is impossible not to grieve that there should not have been that deeper knowledge of truth that would have laid in this hemisphere the foundation of a spiritual and vital religion. The Protestant founders of this nation brought with them high ideals and a true knowledge of spiritual things ; the nation they founded has often failed at the testing times, but those ideals have ever been before it and toward them it has striven. The churches thus es- tablished have sought the highest development of the individual, they have demanded that his personal ac- ceptance of Christian truths and his transformed life shall conform; they have sought a regenerated social conscience and works that should show to a doubting world the truth of their professions. The mission of the Protestant Church is not to de- stroy the Roman Catholic Church, but to bring it into cooperation with all Christian forces on the one foun- dation Christ Jesus, and for the one work, to make Him known as King and Lord. Recognizing the splendid men and women of that communion, we are yet face to face with the fact that its system, left to itself, is one that breeds paralysis. The Spanish-American peoples offer wonderful pos- sibilities to those communions that are ready to meet them with vital, transforming truths ; there must be a close union of all the forces that are Christian to carry to a successful conclusion one of the greatest tasks of the Church. I SPAIN IN AMERICA "My men grow mutinous day by day, My men grow ghastly wan and weak." The stout mate thought of home ; a spray Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek, "What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn? " "Why, you shall say at break of day, ' Sail on ! sail on ! sail on, and on ! ' " JOAQUIN MILLER. " And while he held above his head the conquering flag of Spain, He waved his glancing sword and smote the waters of the main; For Rome! For Leon! For Castile! thrice gave the cleav- ing blow, And thus Balboa claimed the sea four hundred years ago." T. B. READ. OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA SPAIN IN AMERICA THE early maps of the United States showed west of the Missouri River a vast stretch of country extending to and beyond the Rockies marked " The Great Amer- ican Desert." The steady progress of civilization has redeemed that desert and it is now the great granary of the North American continent. The utilization of the streams, the opening of the fountains held in reserve by the bountiful Creator, and the planting of forests to conserve the rainfall, have made the " desert " the happy dwelling place of throngs of prosperous people. Millions of acres of the public domain are still unre- deemed, and await the action of the government in developing their resources to make them the fit habita- tion of the millions who will yet come to our shores. Scattered throughout this great region are the mis- sions of the Protestant Church to the Mexicans, one of our great Spanish speaking peoples. To understand the Mexican of the United States as he now presents himself, we must know the elements of which he is com- posed. We cannot, in our discussion of the Mexican missionary problem in the United States, separate it 3 4 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA from the problem in old Mexico. The problem was created while yet our whole Southwest was under the Mexican flag, or, farther back, under that of Spain. The Spanish population within the boundaries of the United States is the product of Spanish activity in ex- ploration and colonization in the sixteenth century, and the character and condition of the people must be inter- preted in the light of the character, teachings, and con- ditions of that age. Old Spain has left her impress upon the whole Southwest. Spanish names cling to villages and towns ; the language and religion of Spain are to a great extent the language and religion of today ; the results of her persecution and oppression are everywhere visible. It is the Spain of Philip the Second, the Spain that has not been touched to any degree by the spirit of modern progress, the Spain that is not in harmony with American ideals or American ideas of intellectual or spiritual growth. The churches of America have no greater task than the transformation by the teach- ings of the Gospel of this bit of Old Spain into a re- gion that shall possess the highest ideals of the New America. PERIOD OF EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST Aim of the Early Explorers. The fifteenth century was distinguished as a period of great physical activity among men. There were voyages, discoveries, and ex- plorations ; there were many new inventions, chief among them the mariner's compass. Two trade routes between Europe and the East had been used for cen- SPAIN IN AMERICA 5 turies, but the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 closed the northern route while the southern was practically under the control of Venice. The other powers hoped to find a new way to the Indies, and Portuguese navigators, by following the coast of Africa, finally reached their goal. The new theory advanced that the earth was round led others to be- lieve they would achieve success by sailing westward. The Discovery of America. Columbus was the first to try to prove that such a route was possible. The story of his attempt to equip an expedition, of the courage of the leader, and of the despair of the sailors is familiar to all. Columbus did not realize his desire ; but he opened to the world a new continent. The great navigator was received with the highest honors by the Spanish when he returned from his first voyage with trophies of conquest, and men were eager to embark with him on succeeding voyages. As the Pope, whose authority was recognized by most rulers, had granted Portugal the land she had discovered along the African coast, Spain asked that the countries in the west be guaranteed to her. The Pope was desirous of peace, and decided that Spain should hold all the lands west of a line three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands that were not already claimed by some Christian power, while Portugal was to have possession of the eastern regions. Many men accom- panied Columbus on his second and third voyages and colonies were established in the islands discovered by him, but there was great disappointment in Spain be- cause the riches they had expected were not found. 6 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA His popularity later declined and he became an object of derision; by the common people he was called the "Admiral of Mosquito Land," and broken-hearted, practically disgraced, he died in poverty. The Search for the Fountain of Youth. Ponce de Leon was one of the many whose desire for wealth and adventure led them to the New World. He was gov- ernor of Porto Rico, but, losing the favor of the King, was removed from his office. The desire for gold had not been satisfied and a still greater desire possessed him. De Leon had heard strange stories of the land where there was a Fountain of Immortality. It seemed to him well worth while to seek out this fountain, to bathe therein, and then live to enjoy the wealth and power he felt sure would be in the new land. The King of Spain gave his consent to the undertaking, ap- pointing de Leon governor for life of the country he planned to discover. An expedition was fitted out at great expense. The men sailed from island to island searching for the fountain and for gold, and on Easter Sunday, 1513, called by the Spaniards " Pascua de Flores," the coast of Florida was sighted. Three days later the men landed, and because of the day when it was first seen, and the profusion of beautiful flowers and foliage, de Leon named the land Florida. The search for the Fountain of Immortality was continued unsuccessfully and de Leon, bitterly disappointed, re- turned to Porto Rico. A few years later he went back to his province of Florida only to receive a mortal wound from the arrow of one of the Indians who op- posed his landing. His entire wealth was lost in this SPAIN IN AMERICA 7 last expedition and sick, old, and impoverished, he re- turned to Cuba to die. The Conquest of Mexico. Spanish history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries records stories of adventure and romance that seem almost incredible to people of the twentieth century, but it tells no more desperate nor exciting tale than that of the expedition of Cortez against Mexico in 1519. When this Spanish youth first came to the New World he attracted the attention of the secretary of the governor of Cuba who told him that the governor would doubtless settle a good estate upon him. The confident boy answered, " But I came to get gold, not to till the soil like a peasant." Rumors had reached Cuba of the cities and people who lived just west of them, whose empire contained all the gold, silver, and jewels the Spaniards had been seeking. Cortez was chosen to lead an expedition against the land, and prepared for the voyage with tireless energy, only to find as the time to embark drew near that the jealous governor had decided to take the appointment from him. Cortez hastened his preparations and slipped away in the night. He spent some months sailing westward along the coast of the mainland, and then with eleven ships landed on the southern shore. Cortez was fearless, a leader who admitted no possibility of defeat. To make sure that there should be no temptation to withdraw from the attempt, all but the best one of the ships were beached and burned at the place of landing, which was named Vera Cruz. The inhabitants of the coun- try were greatly alarmed at the approach of strangers, 8 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA and their ruler, Montezuma, sent presents to the in- vaders with the request that they turn back. Cortez moved steadily forward. His guns and horses, which were seen then for the first time by the Aztecs, terri- fied them and they were ready to believe Cortez the war god of their legends. With remarkable tact he was soon in control of the country, Montezuma trusting him absolutely. Unfortunately Cortez had to return to Vera Cruz for a time, and his substitute was so cruel that the people rose against the Spanish. Cor- tez, on his return, persuaded Montezuma to try to pacify his subjects. They were stilled for a few months but later broke out more fiercely than before against the white men, Montezuma himself being killed in this uprising. Cortez immediately made the attempt to lead his men out of the capital, Tenochtitlan, under cover of the darkness, but did not escape the Aztecs who attacked from all sides. The bloody struggle of that night has few parallels in history. It has been called ever since Noche Triste, the " doleful night." Although his forces had been fearfully reduced, Cortez did not despair, but by a most daring attack within a few days regained control of the city, adding new territory to the empire of Spain. Discovery of the Mississippi River. One of the ad- venturers of the day who had joined an expedition to Peru was Hernando de Soto. When he started on his journey he was almost penniless but he returned a man of great wealth. With others, de Soto begged royal permission to attempt again the colonization of Florida. for he believed that the gold and silver that were in SPAIN IN AMERICA 9 other parts of the New World must be found in Florida as well. Having obtained the consent of the King, he prepared a fleet of nine vessels, carrying almost a thousand men, as well as horses, swine, and blood- hounds. Men of birth were eager to share the adven- tures of this well known leader. Troops were landed at Tampa Bay and the ships went to Havana for pro- visions. Like most of the Spaniards, de Soto treated the Indians cruelly and was hated by them in return. His forces moved farther and farther westward in their useless search for gold, finding instead " fighting, fever, and famine." Some adventurers had reached the mouth of the Mississippi ; de Soto was the first to explore the river above the entrance to the Gulf. His party crossed it and wandered many miles beyond, only to return disappointed to its banks. The leader, dis- couraged by misfortunes, died and was buried in the great river he had discovered. The few survivors of the expedition sailed down the Mississippi and found protection among Spanish settlers in Mexico. Revolt of the Pueblos. Some of these adventurers, who had been unsuccessful in their journeyings, excited the Spaniards in Mexico with tales of the " seven cities of Cibola " that were filled with treasures of gold. A priest first went north and found the cities, now believed to have been the villages of the Zuni Indians in the present New Mexico. On his return the Spaniards, always indefatigable in their pursuit of treasure, planned an advance on the country under Coronado. It would be interesting to follow the in- trepid Spanish explorers through the region now form- io OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA ing the states of New Mexico, Arizona, and Cali- fornia, but neither space nor the purpose of this volume will permit. The history of exploration has hardly a parallel to the courage and tenacity of pur- pose that characterized this invading army. Tourists today speak of the hardships and discomforts of a summer trip across the desert in a Pullman, but these men cheerfully explored those desert places, carrying provisions and water, suffering hunger and thirst, heat and cold without impairment of discipline or abatement of courage. The motives were mixed: the adventurers were lured by lust for gold, the patriots were animated by the desire to add to the glory of the Church and Crown, the priests by the desire to con- vert the natives to the faith of the Church. Everywhere the Indians received them kindly, but the Spaniards in most cases grossly abused the hospi- tality. A few examples will suffice to reveal the causes that finally led to the revolt of the Pueblos and a most desperate attempt on their part to rid their land of the invaders. Coronado's expedition into what is now New Mexico took place in 1540, and, coming to their villages at the beginning of winter^ he not only quartered his soldiers upon the natives and consumed their winter's supplies, but demanded of them one hundred pieces of cotton for his men. Without giving them time either to weave the goods or to collect them from others, he sent out collec- tors with a company of soldiers and stripped the In- dians of the clothing they were wearing. In one of the villages the camp-master, Lope, de SPAIN IN AMERICA 11 Samaniego, was killed by an Indian arrow, and his death was avenged by hanging every Indian belonging to the place. An officer insulted the wife of a prominent Indian, but Coronado gave no heed to the complaint of the hus- band. At length the Indians resolved to protect them- selves, so, barricading their pueblos, 1 they made war upon the Spaniards. The battle that followed was a desperate one, but finally superior arms and discipline prevailed, and the Indians, worn by the long de- fense and smoked out of their houses, came out and called for quarter. Two of the Spanish officers re- sponded by crossing their arms, the Indian sign of inviolable friendship. On seeing this, the Indians threw down their arms and surrendered. Who was to blame for the infamous treachery that followed is not clear, but Coronado's orders were that none should be spared. He directed that two hundred stakes be driven into the ground and that the Indians be burned alive. The historian says that no protest was made by the two officers who had pledged their sacred honor for the safety of the captives. The " seven cities of Cibola " were never found, al- though Coronado advanced as far north as Kansas. When de Soto and his followers were in their most desperate straits, Coronado and his men without doubt were but a short distance from them. Had the leader pushed a little farther east, " he might have shaken 1 The Pueblo Indians were named from their peculiar style of communal dwelling, built from two to five stories high around a court, and easily defended. 12 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA hands with de Soto and with him wept tears of disap- pointment " over their accumulation of misfortunes. The Capture of Acoma. On a lofty, perpendicular rock, having on the summit an area of about seventy acres of arable land, was located the " Sky City " of Acoma which may to-day be reached by driving from Laguna. A half century after the expedition of Cor- onado and the revolt of the Indians, Don Juan Onate visited New Mexico to make another attempt to estab- lish Spanish authority. Pueblo after pueblo submitted, offering no resistance. On October 27, 1598, he camped at the foot of the cliffs on which Acoma was built. The chief men came down and invited Onate and his followers to visit them. They finally consented, and barely escaped annihilation at the hands of the In- dians. The refusal of Onate to enter the Estufa, or underground Council House, was all that saved them. The Indians had concealed a band of armed warriors in the darkness, prepared to avenge the sufferings of their countrymen in the other pueblos. In November of the same year the " Sky City " was again visited by another Spanish force under Juan de Zaldivar, and when they were scattered about the vil- lage the Indians suddenly attacked from all sides; of the whole band four only escaped by a daring leap from the cliff, fortunately striking upon great sand heaps below. In January of the following year a brother of Zaldi- var made an attack upon Acoma and after a most bloody battle succeeded in capturing the place, but only after nearly all the defenders were killed. Acoma was SPAIN IN AMERICA 13 later repeopled by the Indians, but they never were friendly to their Spanish conquerors. The Settlement of Florida by Menendez. After several attempts at colonization in Florida the Span- iards appear to have abandoned the effort. In 1564 Admiral Coligny, the great French commander, planned to place there a colony of French Huguenots. The site selected was the mouth of the St. John's River. Here the colonists built a fort and began the explora- tion of the interior of the country. Lawless and dis- contented adventurers greatly hampered the better class in their efforts to develop their holdings, and it was only when in August, 1565, Jean Ribaut came with several hundred new colonists, among them many artisans, that the attempt at colonization appeared to offer prospects of permanency. Unfortunately for the future of that land, the Span- iards decided to make another attempt to colonize Florida. News of the French expedition reached Spain while Pedro Menendez de Aviles was preparing to sail with his force of 2,500 men. He landed in Florida in September of that same year, and took formal posses- sion in the name of the crown of Spain. A surprise night attack gave them possession of the French fort ; the scattered French were defeated and captured in detail. In response to their offer of surrender if their lives would be spared, Menendez writes : " I answered that they might give up their arms and place themselves at my mercy and I would deal with them as the Lord should command me." He declined an offer of 50,000 ducats for their safety, and " conscientiously " put them 14 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA to the knife in cold blood. One account relates that one detachment was captured and hanged with this inscrip- tion above them, " Not as Frenchmen, but as Luther- ans." Two years later an expedition of Frenchmen under Dominic de Gourges recaptured the fort taken from the French, and all the Spaniards who escaped the sword were hanged with this inscription above them, " Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers." So were the wrongs of the French avenged. RESULTS OF SPANISH CONQUEST Population. Dr. Bourne quotes from the report of Juan Lopez de Velasco to the Council of the Indies in 1576. "Velasco enumerates in the New World some two hundred Spanish cities and towns with some min- ing settlements. These towns, together with the stock- farms and plantations, contained one hundred and sixty thousand Spaniards of whom about four thousand were encomenderos, i. e. lords of Indian serfs the rest settlers, miners, traders, and soldiers. Of Indians there were probably about eight or nine thousand vil- lages, inclusive of tribes or parts of tribes, containing one million five hundred thousand men of tribute-pay- ing age (fifteen to sixty), or an approximate Indian population of about five million, not counting the con- siderable number who escaped taxation, either because not yet reduced to village life or because they hid away. The Indians were divided into three thousand seven hundred repartimientos belonging to the king or to private persons. In addition there were about forty SPAIN IN AMERICA 15 thousand Negro slaves and a large number of mestizos and mulattoes. " The great mass of the Indians were nominally Christians and were living as civilized men, and their numbers were increasing." If the figures of Velasco are correct, one cannot help wondering what became of that great Indian population. Did they become decimated by slavery and abuse as did the Indian population of Porto Rico? Mixture of Races. The Indians of Latin America, whose blood, mingled with that of their Spanish con- querors, flows in the veins of the great mass of the population south of the Rio Grande, had attained before the coming of the white man a higher degree of civili- zation than had the Indians of North America. They were proficient in agriculture, while their knowledge of astronomy was astonishing. They had never learned to use an alphabet, but had invented a picture writing. They cast gold and silver vases. Some of the treasures sent to Spain by the conquerors are now in the Amer- ican Room of the British Museum. To-day some of the proudest statesmen of Mexico boast of the purity of their Indian blood. Benito Juarez, the one reverenced above all others as liberator because his indomitable courage and masterful leader- ship thwarted the attempt of Austria, France, and Rome to establish a monarchy on the ruins of the Republic, was of pure Indian blood, and this same blood predomi- nated in Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's most brilliant presi- dent. The Spanish adventurers freely intermarried with the 16 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA natives, and, whatever else may have been lacking in their education, wives and children were taught to fol- low the religion of their husbands and fathers, and also to accept unquestioningly whatever the priests deemed essential to their eternal welfare. Old Spain, with all that inhered in the old feudalism that was disappearing from Europe, was thus bodily transplanted to America. The mingling of the Spanish and Indian bloods in a race that was molded in the fanatical monastery schools is sufficient explanation of the medieval character of the population of the Southwest at the time of the incorporation of this territory into the union of the States. Education in Latin America. Educational facilities were provided for the wealthy. The first printing press in America was set up in Mexico City by Bishop Zumarraga about 1535. The oldest books in America came from that press. Books published in that century are still in existence, and are a credit to the men who wrought the evidence of their skill into these fine and enduring specimens of art. A great industrial school was founded in Mexico City near the middle of the i6th century by Pedro de Gante, a blood relative of the Emperor Charles V. The Uni- versity of Mexico opened its doors in 1553, and had an enrollment of more than one thousand students ; among the instructors were found some of the finest educators of Europe, many of them graduates of the University of Salamanca, then at the highest period of its glory. Among the branches taught in the industrial school were Latin, music, painting, and the manufacture of SPAIN IN AMERICA 17 crosses then so much in demand standards and other articles for ecclesiastical use. The students were taught wood carving, carpentry, engraving, and stone-cutting. In the ruins of many of the old churches are found excellent specimens of the workmanship of these first pupils of the Spanish Pioneers. Nearly three-quarters of a century before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock, Mexico City was the centre of culture and industry. Massively constructed and magnificently adorned churches were built in the most prominent places in all the more important cities and villages, while public works received far more attention than they did in the two succeeding centuries. Great aqueducts were built to convey water from the mountains to the fertile val- leys, fine roads were constructed and mines were opened, employing thousands of workers and yielding millions of gold, silver and copper, while substantial and costly public buildings were erected in every city. The Spaniards of that day utilized to the limit the ser- vices of the natives, and could those old ruins be given voice, what stories they might tell of a peaceful people being crushed to satisfy the lust for gold and power of a stronger race! Indian Opposition. The Indians did not submit without heroic attempts to oust the invaders, who had become their masters. Charles F. Lummis declares, in " Spanish Pioneers," that the stories of cruelties practiced upon the Indians by the Spaniards are " wholly untrue," and he pictures the Spanish conquest as animated by the most sincere desire for the material 18 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA and moral uplift of the natives in the New World. Halos are given to Cortez and Pizarro, and Fray Val- verde, to whom historians attribute the doubtful credit of having given the signal for the massacre of Atahual- pa's force, is called " Good Fray Valverde." Ata- hualpa's death was, according to Lummis, the necessary result of his own " treachery " toward the Spaniards. These apologies will not obscure the fact that, conceding the energy, the enthusiasm, the zeal, and the consecra- tion of the missionaries, there was something cruel, something radically wrong with the whole Spanish sys- tem of colonization, some inherent principle because of which God did not suffer it to dominate the whole New World. Its moving spirit was that which overran Hol- land, that of Sevilla and Valladolid, the spirit that de- stroyed or drove out more than twelve millions of the best blood of Spain, " sacrificing," as one Spanish his- torian says, " her material interests to conserve the spiritual." WHY SPANISH EFFORTS IN THE NEW WORLD FAILED Advantages of Spain. Spain had greater advantages in her attempts to control the New World than any other nation that came to our shores. She was mistress of the seas ; she was the first country to reach the western hemisphere; she had great wealth and daring men; she chose the southern lands where the Indians were partly civilized and not as able to oppose the white man as were the northern tribes, and where the riches of the soil were hidden. In spite of all these advan- tages Spain failed. SPAIN IN AMERICA 19 Reasons for Spanish Failure. New Spain, as it was known in the sixteenth century, included nearly all the country around the Gulf of Mexico and reached west- ward as far as California. Explorers penetrated to the north as far as Kansas and on the Atlantic coast even to Virginia. The Spaniards founded the two oldest towns in the United States, St. Augustine and Santa Fe. Spain possessed splendid material upon which to build a strong and progressive civilization. That mix- ture of races that gives the energy of a Cortez and the sturdy, incorruptible patriotism of a Benito Juarez, is capable of accomplishing anything that the Creator may ask of His creatures. Yet today Spain holds none of this great territory that was hers by right of discovery and conquest. In most cases the territory claimed by Spaniards overlapped that claimed by other countries. The other countries held the disputed territory through superior strength. The defeat of the Spanish Armada made it impossible for Spain to attempt to control the coast. Spain had no great desire to colonize. Like young Cortez, her men were unwilling to till the soil, desiring to find gold without labor and to enjoy the wealth they gained without exertion. The aristocracy of Spain did not look with any more favor upon the development of educational institutions in her colonies in America than did England upon the development of industries in her colonies prior to the Revolution. The colonies of Spain were for exploitation, not for develop- ment. The two great motives for progress, love and hope, had no place in the system imposed by the Span- iards, and gross darkness and hopeless stagnation 20 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA settled upon the people. Spain held her colonies in an iron grip, but never helped them to a higher life. The Words of a Spanish Statesman. In 1871 Emilio Castelar, Spain's greatest statesman, advocating in the Cortes a more liberal and progressive policy in the colonies of Spain, said: "When from our narrow visible horizon we turn our eyes to the whole world, we see that the continents are ruled by universal and unchangeable laws; that Asia is the land of the im- movable past, the land of empires, of theocracies, of castes; Europe is the land of the volcanic present, the land of combat between ancient powers and new ideas ; while America, and above all, Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its rising republics, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the con- tinent of the future, the immense blackboard stretched by God between the Atlantic and the Pacific, upon which the human race may write, test and solve all social problems. The closing years of the I9th cen- tury upon which we have entered may be as grave and momentous as the closing years of the i8th century when the French Revolution broke out. It rests with Europe to decide whether she shall follow Asia, erecting upon her soil the old altars, and upon the old altars the old idols, with her idols the immovable theocracies, with her theocracies despotic empires ; or whether she will go by the way of labor, by liberty, by right to co- operate with America in the work of universal civiliza- tion. And a most important factor in this civilization may be our Spain with her glorious past." Castelar SPAIN IN AMERICA 21 did not hesitate to charge Spain's decadence to the dominant church. He said : " We know that a demo- cratic state cannot bear in its bosom a privileged church ; democracy was born under the curse of the church." Could Spain at that time have heard and heeded these stirring words, the story of the two Americas might have been far different. Comparison of Spanish and English Colonisation. Edward Gaylord Bourne, in " Spain in America," says : "If we compare what the Spaniards accomplished in the 1 6th century with the work of the English in the I7th, we shall appreciate that, although different in character and less in accord with our predilections and prejudices, it was, nevertheless, one of the greatest achievements of human history. They undertook the magnificent if impossible task of lifting a whole race numbering millions into the sphere of European thought, life and religion. Yet this thought and life and religion were so different in many respects from the ideals which now appeal to the descendants of the 1 7th century English Protestant that we instinctively appraise the attempt of the Spaniards both by modern standards and by the measure of their failure, rather than by the degree of their success." The light of the sixteenth century was not that of the twentieth, nor is the light of the twentieth century that in which our own civilization will finally be judged. When we compare the work of the Spaniards with that of the English as colonists in the New World, the more amazing appears the general assumption as to the assured superiority of the Saxon, and the oft 22 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA repeated assertion that the attempt to bring the present day descendants of Indians and Spanish adventurers up to the level of the Saxon is doomed to fail. Advantages of Saxon Colonization. President Gates, of Amherst College, says: "At the time when the colonies that formed the vital nucleus of our American life came from the mother land, England overflowed with Puritan zeal, and Puritan godliness, and virility of soul. England's life had been deepened and made spiritual. It was no longer marked by the brilliant and seething effervescence of the Elizabethan age. Even before that time the Wars of the Roses had broken up that comfortable, materialistic tendency to ' settle on the lees ' that has proved so deadly to so many nations. Take your place in one of the great cathedral churches of England, and as the service is intoned and the words fall on your ear, ' O Lord, send peace in our day/ let the thought make real before your eyes the emotions that led to that petition. See the faces of the worn old warriors and of the long-suffering women whose families had been rent asunder by the Wars of the Roses, and by the Civil W T ar; men and women whose hearts went out to God in an agony of petition in these words, as they longed to establish something of peace and family life again in homesteads that had been deso- lated by these long struggles. There had come to Eng- land out of this deep suffering a great moral renovation. The Lollards had kindled a light. Luther had spoken more clearly and emphatically. The wonderful intel- lectuality of Elizabeth's reign had given a new con- sciousness of power and a fresh sense of national unity SPAIN IN AMERICA 23 to the English people. The struggle between Papist and Protestant had forced Englishmen to think out for themselves theories of government and of personal religion and personal responsibility. Then came the insincerity, the wilful yet feeble despotism of the Stuarts. It clashed with the forged steel of Prot- estantism, and was broken against the Ironsides, Cromwell's Christian heroes. It was at such a time from the best life of England the scion was transplanted to America. The very best of English life was taken. In the history of our dear motherland, this was pre- eminently the time for her to become the noble parent of a still nobler offspring. There was iron in the blood. There was faith in the life. Do you remember how near Cromwell came to embarking as an emigrant to America ? When next you visit our oldest univer- sity at Cambridge, go into the library of Harvard, gaze at the death-mask of Cromwell's face, a part of the noble gift of Carlyle to his admirers among the young men of America, and as you note the massive power of those features and recall the work which that man's iron will accomplished for England and for the liber- ties of the world, remember that it was men of his con- victions and of his training who came swarming to America, at a time when he so nearly accompanied them. They became the fathers of our national life. They impressed upon our institutions and our ideals the life that made England under Cromwell and Mil- ton the foremost nation of the world." Other Elements Contributed to Strengthen America. Other strengthening elements entered into the making 24 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA of the nation. Holland had fought the world's battle against the legions of all-conquering Spain, and had won her freedom of worship and conscience. With the band of Englishmen, exiled for conscience' sake, who sought a place to build their altars to God, there went a mingling of sturdy Dutch and fire-tried Huguenot, all animated by one purpose, and these laid the founda- tions of a free government in that portion of the new world now known as Saxon America. Bowing the knee only to God, basing their laws upon His revealed Word, believing in the equality and brotherhood of man, these men and women were fitted in the trial by fire to give to the world a high type of human government. Their ideals are the ideals of Christian America; and a continued striving toward these ideals is sufficient explanation of the growth and greatness of Saxon America. To conserve these ideals is the work of the Church of the living Christ. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The story of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of Spanish occupation of the Mexican territory is one of oppression and tyranny endured through necessity by the conquered natives. Not until the nineteenth century did they make any effort to release themselves from this bondage. One rebellion after another was suppressed until that of 1821, when the Mexicans were able to throw off the yoke of Spain. Their leader was Yturbide, who became Emperor for a few months and was then sentenced to be shot. Already the United States had purchased Florida from Spain, so after the SPAIN IN AMERICA 25 Treaty of Cordova Spain could claim no territory on the mainland. Meantime the present state of Texas had been settled by colonists from Mexico, whose num- bers were greatly increased by settlers from the United States. These opposed the Spanish control of Mexico and, after an insurrection in 1836, made Texas an in- dependent republic, which it remained until it was an- nexed to the United States in 1845. The Mexican War which lasted a year and a half soon followed, and at its close the tract now known as New Mexico, Arizona, and California was ceded by Mexico to the United States. In these few years were added to our country all the regions of the mainland occupied by Spanish speaking people for whom our work of Home Missions is now carried on. Hereafter the use of the term Mexican applies to those people who are descendants of the union of the Spanish and Indian races. 26 II FOLLOWING THE CROSS " More than all the pageants of Castilian manners, more than all the sheen of Montezuma's gilded courtliness is the grace and glory of a Christlike man. What the Mexican was and is must sink and wane while the Mexican to be rises the new Christ's man." "Where restless, turbulent peoples toss Under the fire of the Southern Cross, A light gleams down the mountain track As the gates of Panama swing back. ' On the South three gates.' Swing wide, swing wide A welcome here for the human tide ! " REV. CHARLES L. THOMPSON, D.D. II FOLLOWING THE CROSS MISSIONARY WORK OF THE SPANIARDS Religious Motive. It is hard to reconcile the treat- ment the Spaniards gave the natives of America with the deep religious purpose that so evidently actuated some of the explorers. The names they gave the islands, rivers, and lands they discovered show how great was their desire to honor the religion they pro- fessed. The first land Columbus stepped upon was named San Salvador ; another island he called Trinidad, in honor of the Holy Trinity; the Mississippi was known to the Spaniards as the Rio del Espirito Santo, the River of the Holy Ghost, while Vera Cruz means the True Cross ; the Virgin and the saints of the Church were all remembered. When Columbus asked aid of the King and Queen of Spain he claimed he had been influenced by reading Marco Polo's work on China, and confessed that his main purpose in attempting the voyage was his desire to reach China in order to con- vert the Great Khan, or Emperor, as well as his sub- jects, to Christianity. Still, he stated if they refused to accept the religion he offered, any Christian king was at liberty to enslave them and take their possessions. When land was reached the Admiral appeared in his richest clothes, and approached the shore bearing the 29 30 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA royal flame colored standard of Spain ; there he and his men knelt down, kissing the ground and giving thanks to God for bringing them safely to land. To the end of his life, it is said, Columbus believed he had been ap- pointed by God to carry Christianity to the people of the far east, and his purpose in taking natives to Spain was to Christianize them as well as to show them to the rulers. Even the audacious Cortez claimed that his purpose in visiting the country of Montezuma was in- spired by his noble desire to make that ruler a believer. Montezuma refused to accept the religion so graciously offered, and those of his followers who survived the Spanish attacks must have doubted the sincerity of Cortez. Attitude of the Natives. The Indians of the south- land who were conquered by the white man were partly civilized tribes. They worshipped the sun with great ceremony and some of these tribes had temples and numbers of priests. The approach of the white man appeared to inspire them with awe, for they at first looked upon him as a god. De Soto with all his cruelty succeeded in deceiving the natives into believing he was one of the immortals. It is told of him that at one time he erected two crosses, and the Indians, thinking he was about to perform a miracle, brought two blind men for him to heal. De Soto did not admit he was unable to make the blind see, but instead of attempting the mir- acle delivered a talk on the mystery of the Atonement, which could hardly have been appreciated by his audi- ence. The ceremonies attending disembarking were always very impressive to the simple natives; there FOLLOWING THE CROSS 31 were the explorers in their resplendent robes, the priest bearing a crucifix while chanting a Te Deum; there was the prayer of thanksgiving and the kissing of the crucifix. The Spanish explorers not only over-ran what is Mexico proper today but pushed northward, eastward, and westward, even penetrating to Colorado on the north and to Virginia to the northeast. They were accompanied by zealous priests whose passion it was to convert the natives to the true faith. That the converts had not even the remotest idea of the true Christian doctrine seemed to matter little, so long as they con- formed to the rites and ceremonies of the Church. A Mexican historian says they looked upon conversion to the doctrines and forms of worship of their conquerors as a necessary consequence of their defeat in battle. The acceptance of the religion of their conquerors was as much an acknowledgment of their subjection and vassalage as the queue was the symbol of the Chinese subjection to the Manchu dynasty. While the old religions were nominally destroyed, many of the gods appeared under Christian names, and little change was really required of the converts. The same Mexican writer says, " The conquered Americans, who feared everything, and rightly, from the hardened conquerors, came to the conclusion that conversion and baptism were the most powerful shield behind which to protect themselves from further cruelties. They, therefore, entered towns en masse asking the missionary to baptize them, and in search of the precious guar- antees of liberty and life." 32 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA Nor was this the only pressure brought to bear upon them. Philip the Second decreed that only Christian ^children could inherit the property of their parents. As the result of this command an Indian chief would insist on the conversion of the whole tribe. The re- semblance between the old and the new religion made the transition comparatively easy; and in the distorted form of Christianity that has prevailed since that day among the Latins in our land we see the shadow of old pagan Mexico. Destructive Policy of the Clergy. The destructive policy of the Romish clergy has deprived the student of the present day of the key to the history of the people who left, in the ruins of their cities and temples, evi- dences of a higher civilization than has been found in any other part of the New World. The Maya ruins and inscriptions are the admiration and despair of the modern archaeologist. Edward H. Thompson, writing in the Geographical Magazine of " The Home of a "Forgotten Race," says of certain ruins that appear to have been libraries : " Who knows but their contents formed part of that funeral pyre of ancient Maya literature made by the zealot Bishop de Landa on the Mani common. " De Landa, seeing on these old rolls of deerskin and volumes of Maguey paper signs he could not read and symbols he could not understand, concluded they were cabalistic signs of a diabolical nature, and caused them, with many other objects of inestimable value to science, to be destroyed by fire on the public square of Mani. " At that time, the old chronicler tells us, there were FOLLOWING THE CROSS 33 destroyed five thousand idols of distinct forms and sizes, thirteen altar stones, twenty-two stones, carved and of small sizes, twenty-seven rolls of ancient hiero- glyphics on deer skins, one hundred and ninety-seven vases of all sizes and patterns, and many other unre- corded objects. "An ancient Spanish chronicler states naively that the natives who witnessed the destruction by fire were much affected and made a great outcry of woe. Is it to be wondered that they made a great outcry of woe ? They saw not only the sacred things calcining in the fervent heat, but also that written lore, accumulated knowledge of their race, going up in smoke and red cinders. Naturally the thinking ones among them made a great outcry." The destruction continued. The children educated in the monastery schools were led out to demolish the old Aztec temples. Sahagun, a Franciscan monk, came to Mexico in 1529 and labored zealously among the Indians for many years. He prepared an exhaustive history of New Spain and has given much valuable in- formation as to the methods pursued in giving to Mexi- can civilization the impress that characterizes it today. The children were taught to be iconoclasts, and the spirit of the race descended from this mixture of Spanish and Indian bloods has ever been destructive rather than constructive. Sahagun says of the education of the children : " We took the children of the caciques into our schools ; we taught them to read and write and chant. The children of the poorer natives were brought into the 34 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA court-yard and there instructed in the Christian faith. After our teaching, one or two of the brethren took the children to some neighboring teccalli, and by working at it for a few days, they leveled it to the ground. In this way they demolished in a short time, all the Aztec temples, great and small, so that not a vestige of them remained." On one occasion, the mission children in Tlascala stoned to death a priest of the old religion who sought to win the people back to the ancient faith. Consecrated Missionaries. It would be unfair to underrate the sincerity, the piety, the zeal, the purity of purpose of the Franciscan missionaries of that day. We must remember that it was the time of Philip the Second, the time of the murderous Alva, the time of the Inquisition, an age of brutal cruelty in war and a worse cruelty in church. These monks not only accompanied all the military expeditions, to look after the welfare of the natives, but often alone they penetrated the wilds wherever souls were to be found, exiling themselves from civilization and all congenial companionship, suf- fering hunger, thirst, cold, persecution, and death, with no thought of reward except the approval of the Mas- ter whom they served with all the fiery and consecrated zeal of the old crusaders. Hard indeed would be the heart that would not be deeply moved at the recital of their consecration, their heroism and suffering. Often they protected the Indians against the cruelty and lust of the adventurers who accompanied the expeditions of conquest. The fact that their own conduct would not, at times, meet the test of modern Christian civilization, FOLLOWING THE CROSS 35 must be viewed in the light of their age; they were seeing as through a glass, darkly. When the adven- turers had satisfied their desire for exploration they went back to the settlements. The missionaries had not accompanied them for the sake of adventure ; theirs was a desire to serve the people, to bring them to the Cross, and again and again the priest stayed with the savages when his companions returned to civiliza- tion. Through their efforts many missions were estab- lished on Spanish territory, but oftentimes the mission- ary was foully murdered by the very ones he hoped to save. The majestic ruins of great mission churches that are today found where once there were large Indian populations attest the zeal, the energy, the consecration of these pioneers of the Cross. Second Capture of Acoma. The second capture of Acoma was in 1629 by the good Fray Juan Ramirez. This apostle to the Indians determined to establish a mission upon the lofty rock, and alone left Santa Fe, refusing an escort of soldiers, bearing no weapon but love in his heart and the crucifix in his hand. Footsore and weary he came to the foot of the rock, but as he began the ascent of the narrow stairway the Indians poured down upon him such a flight of arrows that he was compelled to take refuge under the overhanging cliff. Just then a little girl toppled and fell from the summit, but was caught by a sand-covered ledge out of sight of the people above, who supposed she had fallen to her death. The Fray quickly gathered the child in his arms and stepping boldly into the path once more, . 36 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA carried her safely to the top of the rock. The Indians, believing a miracle had been wrought, received him reverently, as one coming from the gods. For more than twenty years he dwelt among them, teaching them to read and write and instructing them in the doctrines of the Church. He was greatly beloved by them, and his name with that of Las Casas should be written in letters of gold over against the black record of so many of the adventurers. The Franciscans won, in a most remarkable manner, the love and confidence of the Indians, and their consecration and benevolent interest in the victims of Spanish exploitation is the one bright page in the history of Spanish conquest in America. One of the most interesting, most majestic and massive of the old churches stands on the rock of Acoma, recall- ing the conquest of peace by Fray Ramirez. Later the Franciscan monks were replaced by Jesuits and the Indians fell upon evil days. The service that they had rendered in the spirit of hospitality became enforced, and then was laid the foundation of that sys- tem of peonage that has been the curse of Mexico, and has not wholly disappeared from the United States. The Inquisition. The Inquisition was at work dur- ing this time in Mexico, and the awful sufferings, the processions of heretics, the contumely heaped upon them made a deep impression upon the Indians, and from generation to generation there was transmitted a horror of heresy or rebellion against the Holy Catholic Church. This will explain, in great measure, the reason why it has been so hard to make an impression upon the lower classes in Mexico and our Southwest. FOLLOWING THE CROSS 37 The tender and merciful Saviour was hidden from their sight, and in His place there was pictured a God who well might have been placed beside the gods whose tem- ples the children were taught to destroy. It is related of one of the Jesuit missionaries that he tortured him- self until he was but an emaciated skeleton covered with sores, and when, in his old age, he was mercifully deprived of his instruments of torture, he exclaimed in anguish, " What means have I now to appease the Lord ? What shall I do to be saved ? " The Religion of the Mexicans. Through the labors of tireless, consecrated priests, through fear and through compulsion, the religion of the Indians of Spanish speech became that of the Roman Catholic Church. For more than three hundred years she was without a competitor in Latin America. The Old Missions. The stories of the old missionsv of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas form ) an interesting and important background for all the history of the Southwest. Burton Holmes referred to them as the " Beacon Lights of Civilization." It was just seven years before the Declaration of Inde- pendence was made on the Atlantic coast of North America that Junipero Serra, inspired by the noblest motives, reached the Pacific coast and began the estab- lishment of missions for the Church of Rome and the Crown of Spain. The priests were hindered by the viciousness of the soldiers who accompanied them, but in spite of this bad influence succeeded in bringing the Indians to a better mode of living and exerted a bene- ficial influence over many tribes. More than twenty 38 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA missions were established, the Indians performing most of the labor of construction, under the direction of the fathers. When the buildings were completed the In- dians lived about them, performing the duties within and without the missions. The life seems to have been very happy until the Mexican government, which had succeeded in throwing off the yoke of Spain, began to covet the properties, which were worth millions of dol- lars. The missions were secularized to replete the treasuries of Santa Anna, the fathers and the Indians departing from their old abodes. In recent years the buildings have been restored, but the friendly life of priest and people which was a part of the old missions is but a memory of the past. BEGINNINGS OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS The Early Missionaries. Shortly after the close of the Mexican War, men began to cross the continent to the new region of California in search of gold. At almost the same time other men began going to New Mexico for a far nobler purpose that of carrying the Word of God to the Mexican people who had become part of the United States. Many Americans disap- proved of the expense of the war and the acquisition of new territory, but the Church of Christ could not stop to question the advisability of the step ; there was a new responsibility which it must endeavor to meet. At this time, there was but one white settlement be- sides the military posts between Missouri and Santa Fe. The great event in New Mexico was the coming of the railroad to Santa Fe ; before that the journey to FOLLOWING THE CROSS 39 the territory was full of perils. The early missionaries were obliged to travel by ox train, taking three months for the dangerous trip. Yet men and women dared undertake the fearful pilgrimage for the sake of carry- ing the Good News to those who were in ignorance. The first Protestant missionary to begin work in the new section was the Rev. Samuel Gorman, sent out by the Baptist, church to labor among the Pueblo Indians. Little is known of his work except that he established a school, using the Spanish Bible as the chief textbook. About a year after Mr. Gorman went to New Mexico, the Presbyterian and Methodist churches sent mission- aries to the territory. The Civil War interrupted the missionaries, many being recalled, while most of the buildings occupied by them were abandoned for a time. The First Presby- terian Church of Santa Fe was not organized until 1867, although the first Presbyterian missionary had reached Santa Fe in 1850. It had been planned that the organization should take place in the senate cham- ber of the Capitol, but the man who carried the keys disappeared, and instead the organization was effected in the home of the governor, whose wife was one of those most eager for the coming of the Protestant church. At about the same time John L. Dyer made a trip on horseback to New Mexico. Father Dyer, as he was called, had experienced all the dangers and privations known to the daring pioneer ministers of the west. His labors called him to the mining camps of Colorado, where a saloon or a store was the only place in which 40 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA service could be held. His means of support were so small that he was obliged to work at some manual labor during the week to support himself, and yet without bitterness or a feeling of discouragement he continued through the dangers that threatened him. No one better fitted could have gone to visit the new field, and the reports made by him so stirred the Methodist church of which he was a preacher, that the work that had been given up was revived and Father Dyer sent to superintend the field. In speaking of his district, he said : " That year I took in Trinidad, being the first Protestant who ever tried to preach there. This ap- pointment was not taken without at least some knowl- edge of the labor, privations, and dangers attending a Protestant preacher in that field. I already found that it was not Mexico, but New Mexico, the outside or fag ends of an old Latinized nation, that had been ridden over by Romish priests. Being the first discoverers of our American continent, their church, I supposed, had lost almost all but form and ceremony, and had been backsliding ever since. I have seen men by the dozen go to church in the morning and by eleven o'clock the same men carrying their chickens to a pit to have a cock fight in plain view of the priest's house. They were communicants, and yet I never knew one of them to be brought to account for violating the Sabbath. My prayer is that God will convert and reform that whole country. Indeed, it is rapidly becoming enlightened and improved in every way." Others followed Father Dyer and a beginning of school and church in the terri- tory was thus made. FOLLOWING THE CROSS 41 The Mexican People. The new home mission field was in every respect a foreign mission field. There was a new language to be learned and a people whose manner of living was entirely different from anything the missionaries had known. Men, women, and even children smoked home-made cigars ; drinking, gambling, and cock-fighting were prevalent, while education and religion were alike neglected. There were many cus- toms that reminded the missionaries of Bible lands in Bible times. The implements used by the Mexicans were most primitive ; they prepared their food, ploughed the land, threshed grain, and separated it from the chaff like the people of old ; the herding of cattle and watch- ing of sheep made the missionaries think of the age of the patriarchs; people carried burdens on their heads and made the bricks for their homes of the mud of the streets mixed with straw and chaff, as did the Israelites in the days of bondage. Because of their poverty the natives were badly nourished and very poorly clad. There was beauty all around them, but they did not reflect that beauty. When the missionaries were admitted to the homes of the kind and polite people, they found them bare and cheerless. The beds were spread out on the hard earthen floor at night and in the morning were rolled up and placed against the walls. There were no chairs, no tables, no bedsteads, and one room was usually living and sleeping room for a large family, a sufficient reason for the lack of delicacy so evident among the people. Aside from the pleasing reverence for parents and the old, the home relations were dis- 42 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA tressing to those coming from the north. Husbands and sons sat down and ate what was placed before them while wives and daughters stood back or waited in another room until their superiors had finished. There was a freedom from moral restraint that was dangerous to family life. Whether these faults of the home are to be attributed to the Indian ancestry or the Spanish, one can hardly decide. The relations of the family varied greatly in different Indian tribes, but we may imagine that the position of woman in the home was an inherit- ance from the Spanish conquerors. They had lived with Indian women, treating them as slaves ; when it pleased the Spaniard to change his location he did not hesitate to leave a woman and her children behind, while he was free to form new ties in a new locality. Women, always the drudges, were looked down upon by men as their inferiors. Hindrances to Missionary Efforts. The opposition of the Roman Catholic clergy proved to be a great hindrance to all missionary efforts, as did the fact that the Mexican did not differentiate between the mission- ary and the white man, in many cases a fugitive from justice, who had come for the purpose of gain and who had been unfair in his dealings with the Mexican. The immorality of these men was well known and the mis- sionary had the same problem to contend with in New Mexico that he had in China and Africa, where the trader had gone before him. On the other hand, the clergy had been without rivals for so long that they could not imagine the possibility of Protestant mission- aries coming to the regions they claimed as their own. FOLLOWING THE CROSS 43 People were threatened and warned against the mis- sionaries as against a pestilence, and, in view of the knowledge they possessed of the white man, there is little wonder that the people at first believed what the priests told them of the immorality of Protestantism. The Power of God's Word. When Mr. Gorman was recalled from New Mexico at the outbreak of the Civil War, he left behind him at least one Spanish Bible. This was in the possession of a young man who had been in Mr. Gorman's employ. He continued to read the Bible and when he married he read it to his wife, who learned to believe in the Book and love it as her husband did. There was no Protestant church, no missionary to help them, and so they worshipped alone until the Congregational Church established a mission in their vicinity. This man, who was still living in 1914, was the first convert of Protestant missions in New Mexico. A Spanish Bible was picked up on the road near Las Vegas in 1868, the finder exchanging it for a spelling book. The man with whom he made the exchange was fond of reading, and began at once to study his new book. He gained some knowledge of the way of life and told the story to others as well as he could, in a wonderful way preparing the field for missionaries who later reached his neighborhood. Father Gomez was another to whom the Word was revealed. His ancestors came to this country with the Spanish conquerors, living in the manner of the patri- archal families for three hundred years. In some way he had seen a Spanish Bible and was impressed with 44 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA the truths it contained. Although he was a poor man he determined to possess a copy. He borrowed a yoke of oxen and with another ox to sell, started on his journey of 150 miles to Santa Fe to secure the Book. The ox was sold for $25, and the Bible purchased. Father Gomez read with joy; accepting the teachings and telling his friends of the love of God, he formed them into a group of Bible Christians, among whom a church was soon organized when Presbyterian mission- aries came to them. When the General Assembly of that denomination met in New York in 1889 a young man spoke before a group of women holding that price- less Bible in his hands. It had lost its covers from use. The young man, a grandson of Father Gomez, told what a power it had been in bringing people to God, and said in closing, " I bless and praise God for the precious gift, and I would not part with it for all the world beside." THE PENITENTES The Order of Penitent Brothers was even more active in the days of the early missionaries than it is today. This is the development of the Third Order of Saint Francis, the name having been changed three centuries ago in Spain before the Franciscan monks brought it to this country. In America self-torture was added to the original requirements of the order. The members, some twenty-five or thirty-five thousand strong, claim allegiance to the Catholic Church, al- though the Church will not allow the celebration of their rites within its buildings. Men and women are FOLLOWING THE CROSS 45 members, the women meeting separately except during the services of Holy Week. Good Friday is the day on which the religious rites are especially carried out, al- though each Friday in Lent service is conducted at the Morado and processions are held at night in which tor- ture is undergone. On Good Friday is held what is called the Procession to Calvary. Several men carry heavy wooden crosses bound to their naked backs. Others, stripped to the waist, scourge themselves as they pass along the road with scourges dipped in salt water to make them sting more cruelly. The backs bleed under the cutting scourge and men, exhausted through pain, fall down only to be urged on by those attending them. The general idea that the Crucifixion as enacted by the Penitentes is dying out is denied by those who are upon the scene. The nailing of the victim, or hero as he prefers to be regarded, to the cross, does not take place, although he begs for the nails, believing the en- durance of this greater agony is a glory to him ; but a man is stretched, bound with ropes upon the cross, his side pierced until the blood flows from it, and then the cross is elevated. In " Our Mexicans " Rev. Robert M. Craig has given a vivid description of the services in the Morado or Holy Dwelling, to which he was admitted through the influence of a friend. " The building is of adobe, with large sliding doors in one end, and with but one small, round hole in one side for light and ventilation. The floor is native earth, except at the end where the altar is located. In front of this table, on a small 46 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA stool, sit two men, each holding a stone in his hand. Directly in front of the stool, but on the earthen floor, at some distance from the front of the altar platform, is a stand on which is a wooden triangle, having one lighted candle on the apex, three on the base, and five on either side. In front of this the Penitentes stand facing the lights. These men for days have been tor- turing themselves. Now their heads and backs and arms are bandaged. These men we would suppose to be the most religious in the community ; instead, they are regarded by the people as the most deluded and of the lower class, doing penance not only for the sins they have committed, but for those which they intend to commit during the coming year. " All things being ready, at the blast of a trumpet the meeting is in progress. The choristers under the table sing and play one verse. The men in front of the table strike three times on the seats with the stones they hold in their hands, then one of the Penitentes steps forward and extinguishes one of the lights. This continues until all the lights but one have disappeared. There is silence for a moment. Then a large, flat sur- face, probably nine by twelve feet, apparently of wood, covered with zinc, which in its turn is covered with leather, is placed on the floor. The doors in the front of the building are closed and barred. The Hermanns range themselves about the room. The music is again started, and at a given signal the last light is gone. From boxes and barrels, previously ranged round the room, ropes and chains and sticks are drawn, and for FOLLOWING THE CROSS 47 about one half -hour the clashing of chains and the clamor of other instruments is maddening. " The noise, the groans, and the darkness I can never forget. If at any time I want an illustration of that * outer darkness ' I only think of that awful night in the Penitentes? meeting-house. "What does it all mean? Not 'the arrival of the soul in purgatory/ as some one has said. As the candles are again lighted, I see one of the Penitentes go forward and take from the wall a cross on which is an image intended to represent our Saviour, who has died during the darkness, and at once the whole mys- tery is clear. The darkness, with all the unearthly sounds, is intended to represent the transactions at Cal- vary on the Good Friday night when the ' King of Glory ' bowed His head and gave up the ghost. " After this service the image on the cross is borne from the little chapel to the house of a friend where entertainment has been provided, and there the music is kept up until the morning, when all return to the Morado, from which they go to their homes in peace." A LAND OF CROSSES New Mexico has been called a " land of crosses, but \ no Christ." The people have worshipped for centuries ; the dead Christ, His Cross, the Virgin, and the saints as idols. The effort of missionaries is ever to make the | Risen Christ triumph over the darkness of this land, as He ever triumphs over spiritual and physical darkness. Only the Gospel of love, preached in personal contact, 48 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA supported by the godly lives of missionaries, lived in works of mercy and healing, can ever counteract the influence of a teaching that has so largely incorporated the old Indian paganism into the faith developed by the early missionaries. Love and patience, not con- troversy, must characterize the winning missionary propaganda. Once the people are undeceived, the old system loses its hold forever, and blind, unquestioning submission is changed into a strong, living faith in and loyal adherence to the newly discovered Father and the tender, sympathetic Christ. Ill REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST " There is such a thing as the mirage of the desert, which has mocked the dying traveler. There is also the oasis where the grass is green and the palm trees stand erect in their beauty, and the reason thereof is the unfailing spring which rises from the heart of the earth and yields its living water to the traveler as he journeys across the desert from the land which he has left to the land which he has never seen. That spring is the Spirit of the living Christ, Who ' was dead ' and is ' alive for evermore,' Who remaineth from age to age the strength and hope of the race into which He was born and for which He died." JOHN WATSON, D.D. Ill REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST " THE wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blos- som as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and re- joice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God. ... In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes." The prophet might well have spoken these words of our own Southwest. The wildernesses, the solitary places, the parched lands have been redeemed to a great extent through the work of our government, and where habitation seemed impossible the desert is blos- soming as the rose. It is a wonderful country. The remarkable trans- formation of the past few years was seen by thousands of Exposition visitors who traversed the continent last summer. California, New Mexico, and Arizona were appreciated as never before. Much has been accom- plished through irrigation and scientific farming, but vast regions are still untouched. Si 52 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA Many have found the redemption of the wilderness the greatest attraction in the Southwest, others enjoy the climate, while still others are drawn by the wonder- ful scenery. An artist colony has been established in Taos, the second oldest town in New Mexico. Lum- mis, in his book "The Land of Poco Tiempo," de- scribes New Mexico by the words " Sun, silence, and adobe;" to another the moonlight of New Mexico makes the strongest appeal, while a starlit night has been most wonderfully described by a musician, Franz X. Arens, conductor of the People's Symphony Con- certs in New York. On a recent program he intro- duced the Second Movement of Dvorak's " New World Symphony " in the following words : " Some years ago, I made a most interesting trip of over three hundred miles into the New Mexico mountain regions. There were seven of us, and we traveled in old-fash- ioned canvas-covered prairie schooners, along deep canyons, over high mountain passes, through Indian reservations, over lava-strewn deserts, etc. One beau- tiful night we camped on an open prairie; to the East loomed the Taos Mountains, raising their peaks over 12,000 feet. To the North, South, and West was the seemingly endless prairie ; overhead were the stars, and in such numbers! There seemed to be more stars than I had ever dreamed of, and such lustrous stars! They seemed to be suspended from the heavenly dome as so many electric lights, scintillating in their brilli- ancy and lustre. The very stillness and silence with its impressiveness seemed to be pregnant with eloquence. " It was a wonderful and a new experience for me ; REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 53 its beauty would not let me go to sleep; and so, lying on my back, I gazed at those stars, and gave myself over entirely to the wonders of the scene. For a long while I lay thus, when, lo! out of that vast stillness there came a haunting melody to my memory. It was the English Horn melody of the 'New World Sym- phony'; and this movement depicts the mysterious beauty, vastness and stillness of a starlight night on our western prairies." In the early days when New Mexico was received into the United States the government established mili- tary posts throughout the west to enforce order. At the same time the Church stationed her soldiers in the lonely country. The glimpses of Anglo-Saxon cultiva- tion and Christianity have aroused the people of Mexi- can origin and they are eager for education in the Eng- lish language. It is to the ministry of faithful soldiers of the Cross to the physical and spiritual needs of the new citizens, rather than to the enforced control of the government, that the progress made by the people of the Southwest must be attributed. The great region known as the Southwest is made up of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California. Texas, according to the last census, had a population of 3,896,542 people, of whom 125,016 were Mexicans; New Mexico had 11,918 Mexicans in a population of 327,301 ; in California and Arizona were found 33,694 and 29,987 Mexicans. The total number of Mexicans, irrespective of people of Mexi- can blood who have been born in the United States, was about 200,000, scattered over the states of the south 54 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA and west. Since the census was made a large number of Mexican refugees, variously estimated from 500,000 to 1,000,000, have come into the country. Until recently the Mexican people have lived quite apart from the American population in small villages known as plazas, where the Spanish speaking priest had full control until the Protestant missionary went in. Ignorance and immorality, superstition and witchcraft have existed and still exist in parts remote from the paths of civilization and Christianity. CONDITIONS WITH WHICH MISSIONARIES CONTEND Superstition and Belief in Witches. Among some of the Mexican people the belief in witches and what they call the " power of the evil eye " is common. A missionary tells of rinding two brothers crying and on asking the reason he was told by one of them " A drop of blood fell from the ceiling on the towel with which he was drying the dishes, and it means there will be a death in the family, for about the same thing hap- pened just a year ago and our little brother died." The blood had come from a scratch, but they would not believe it. A poor old woman is generally singled out as a witch, and she is said to go around after dark in the guise of a cat, dog, or owl. People fear to touch anything she has touched, believing evil will come from it. Another missionary tells of living next the village witch, and the terror of the children when this poor woman brought food to her. The teacher ate the food, but the fact that she was not harmed did not convince her pupils that the witch was harmless. The same mis- REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 55 sionary was told by a poor old lady who had asthma, that she had been a beautiful singer until a friend who was jealous of her voice hired a witch to give her food with something in it to ruin her voice. Still another missionary has written of her amazement one evening in finding one of the most intelligent women in her village throwing stones up into a tall tree, while she scolded a hooting owl that had taken refuge there. When asked what she was doing, the woman answered she was trying to kill the witch who was concealed in the form of an owl. The examples of belief in witches are not few. It has been stated that probably sixty per cent of the people fear their power. Power of the Priest. The power the priests hold over the Mexicans is very great. From the earliest days of Protestant effort they have opposed the coming of the missionaries. They have tried all these years to keep the people from the mission schools and churches. First the priest warned the Mexicans against Protestants as against those who had come to injure them ; if a warning was not sufficient, the priest exercised his authority, and if that authority was dis- regarded he refused to administer the rites of the church to those who disobeyed, a threat which in very many cases has been sufficient to bring about the de- sired result. The offices of the priest baptism, mar- riage, confession, absolution, burial are administered only for money and the tax on the poverty-stricken people has been heavy and paid under protest, but it has been paid. A missionary writes : " Suppose you were taught 56 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA that they observe ' children's day ' in purgatory ; that every child there for whom friends on earth buy a candle will have a lighted candle to carry in the proces- sion, and that every child for whom a candle is not bought on earth marches with the procession, but with its upraised finger burning; would you not, if you be- lieved it, pay any price for a candle, so your child might not have its finger burn ? " Suppose you were taught that unless you had the priest's forgiveness for your sins and his blessing as you lay on your dying bed that you would go to hell ; would you not get money from any source, so you might have the sprinkling with holy water and the anointing with oil at the hand of the priest who had the keeping of your soul in his hand ? " Suppose you believed that your baby would be lost unless the priest baptized that child ; would you not get the money for the baptism and give it to the priest, no matter at what sacrifice ? " Another missionary tells of a daring attempt of one of the clergy to prove to his people the punishment for disobeying the authority of the clergy : " A mother of three grown sons was dying. She had come to doubt the sanctity and genuineness of the priesthood, and es- pecially of the priest in this particular village, and her last request was that they would not allow him to bury her. This request they honored, laying her away without the religious ceremony. Soon the husband was called upon by the priest to explain why he did not re- quest him to say mass at the burial. He told his wife's wishes in the matter. The priest told him his wife was REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 57 in hell and would remain there until he had mass for her deliverance. The man was rather bold and dared to dispute the belief that his wife was in torment, ' for/ said he, ' my wife was a good woman.' ' I will prove to you next Sabbath,' said the priest, ' that your wife is burning in hell.' It became known that the demon- stration was to take place, so there was a great crowd gathered to see the work. The priest led the way to the cemetery, armed with his vessel of holy water and his crucifix with a long staff. When he reached the grave he pressed the staff down into the grave some two feet or more and worked it about until the hole was left open. He then poured holy water into the hole. It was only a little while until a crackling like fire was heard and something like smoke began to escape. The priest had made good and told the wicked man that the smoke was from hell, where his wife was in torment. The demonstration was a success, and the man was convinced, and began negotiations with the priest for terms to get her out. He was told that owing to the aggravation of his crime it would take $500. This he could not pay, so he was in a great state. You see he was especially guilty, because he had tried to evade the established forms of the holy church. His wife's sister came to the rescue. She told the man to make no contract, but to go home with her and she would show him what to do. He did so. After all had gone from the cemetery she told her brother-in-law to get a shovel and go with her. They went to the grave and opened it and found there a pile of quick lime, which, of course, began to slack when the water was poured on it. This 58 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA happened a few years ago, but thanks to Him who will lead all who care to follow, the day of such things is fast passing, and the little weak churches and the mis- sion schools are bringing about the change, slowly, it seems at times, but truly, truly." - After the mission schools were definitely established the opposition of the Roman Catholic clergy to them seemed to lessen, but during the past year two teachers, one from one of the largest boarding schools and the other from a plaza school have said : " We are meet- ing with more opposition from the Catholic priests this year than we have had for a good many years. Either they feel the need of a renewed effort locally or there is a pressure from headquarters. This morning a fine boy who entered school last week came to tell me that his father had told him he had to stop school, because the priest had said that none of the family could come to church or have any of the church rites administered to them if the boy was left in the Protestant school. This seems like old times for we have often met this opposition, but not much of late years." " The priests are getting desperate, especially in the more remote villages, and are threatening all sorts of dire calamities upon those who send their children to our schools. They say the children receive a little poison every day." Customs. Efforts to improve conditions in Mexico are hampered by the prevailing idea that what has been for generations must continue forever. Children are a blessing, for they come to relieve parents of work. It is amazing how much labor is expected of the tiny REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 59 children, and their capability for work makes their school attendance very irregular. Marriage takes place early, and the contracting parties have little voice in the matter, the fathers arranging for them. Each place holds its Fiesta annually. The celebra- tion is in honor of the patron saint of the village, and religious services are carried on by the priest. The saint is brought from his place in the church and car- ried about the town, the religious service of the morn- ing being followed by an afternoon of revelry, which often terminates in heavy drinking. In Taos the Fiesta combines with the worship of the saint the old Indian rites in honor of the sun. Ceremonies for the dying and dead are particularly distressing. A note from a recent letter from one of the plaza mission schools helps us to realize these con- ditions. " The evening before my neighbor died the room was filled with people, all praying aloud. A bon- fire is kept burning before the house all night, and there is always a feast for the friends with a plentiful supply of wines and whiskey. And the horrible wail- ing! It is wonderful that the throats of people in affliction are not worn out. The sound is peculiar and terrible. The mourner, her head covered with a black shawl, cries out until completely exhausted. When we ask why they do it they say, ' It is our custom. You Protestants are cold/ " A teacher tells graphically of his experience when going home with the body of one of the pupils who had died in the school. " We were met at the station of Embudo and had to drive twenty miles up into the 60 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA mountains to the beautiful little valley of El Valle del San Maguiel. The wailing of the mourner is a cry of despair and grief. We were met by nine horsemen and four wagonloads of parents and friends, and of all doleful, heart-rending sounds I have ever heard these were the worst. On the drive home we had to stop with every person we met and every town through which we passed, and there the wailing was repeated. Some five or six miles from the home we were met by another band of horsemen, some of them the brothers of the dead boy, some cousins, and some friends. About one mile from the house we were met by all the remaining inhabitants of the valley. The night had settled down long before this, and the wailing and shrieking were awful. This was the way the people had of expressing their sorrow and sympathy for the bereaved. We proceeded to the home and the body was taken into the room and again the wails of sorrow were heard. Such a night I have never passed, and I never want to have to pass another one. One of our young ministers was sent for and we had some Chris- tian services, notwithstanding the fact that the family is nominally Catholic. After the services they took up again the singing of dirges, which had been going on over the body for miles before we reached the home, and was continued all night. About two o'clock the following afternoon we laid the poor boy to rest in the little graveyard." The Saloon. One of the greatest evils with which the missionary must contend is the saloon, and, to the shame of the American, this great evil is a product of REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 6l American occupation. One of the oldest missionaries said that years ago before the American saloon became so universal, evangelistic work was far more fruitful than it has been since. Public schools are oftentimes supported from the license of the saloons, and if there are few saloons and money is scarce, the schools are kept open only two or three months. There is a bright side to the question, for people are awakening to this danger and in some places are voting it out. Here is a word from San Mateo : " Our Mexicans from San Mateo voted unanimously to close the saloons. There was but one vote for the saloons, and it was cast by a poor, benighted American who did it for pure spite." WORK OF THE CHURCHES Evangelistic. Ever since the day when Jose Y. Perea met the Rev. John Annin, who went to New Mexico in 1869, with the words " I have been praying for a missionary, and I have made vows and promises to the Lord in connection with this work. You can depend on me for anything I can do to assist this mis- sion work," there have been splendid men of Mexican parentage to engage in evangelism. Mr. Perea was later ordained, and ministered to a parish that required fifteen days to cover. The great drawback to mission- ary work has always been the small number of men', who are engaged in it. It has been necessary to spread \ the efforts of the few clergy over so large a territory \ that only an occasional service has been possible in; many places, and whole regions have been absolutely neglected. California has a large Mexican population, 62 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA and although work is being successfully carried on in many localities there are large settlements of Mexicans almost untouched by missionary effort. In Arizona mission workers are laboring under great difficulties in the mining camps with a constantly moving population, yet not only is there permanent growth, but there is the joy of knowing that the message is being carried to these roving Old Mexico miners. The influence of the evangelistic work in New Mexico is greatly aided by the work of the mission schools, most of the evangel- ists being graduates of these same schools. In Colorado the efforts of consecrated men who toiled over the mountains, visiting Mexican hamlets and sheep camps, teaching and preaching the Gospel of Christ, have been rewarded. Today are to be found in this locality as strong Protestant Spanish- American Christians as anywhere within the bounds of the United States. The enthusiastic annual conven- tion of the Mexican Christian Endeavor Societies of Colorado is an evidence of the ever increasing influ- ence of the faithful missionaries. Texas is in the making. The most wonderful state in the Union in its possibilities, it has the Mexican problem in a more acute form than any other. Bordering on a more populous part of Old Mexico than do the other states, it comes more closely in touch with the more irre- sponsible and lawless Mexican element. There may be more reason for race prejudice there; but, to the honor of the Texan Christians, in no part of the Southwest is the problem being approached with greater earnestness and zeal. El Paso is the centre of REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 63 activity, but the Southern Methodist, the Presbyterian U. S., and the Baptist have established their missions along the whole frontier line. In El Paso nearly all denominations are at work. Owing to the great mass of refugees from Mexico, this past year has been an exceptional one, for many have " cried unto the Lord in their trouble " and He has given them a hope that is not dependent upon conditions in poor, battle-torn Mexico. Educational. Whenever our forefathers estab- lished a new town, the church and the school were al- ways placed at the center of the settlement. Religion and education must always go hand in hand. The Roman Catholic Church neglected this principle. When the missionaries went to the Southwest they realized that the greatest need of the people, next to the Gospel, was education and they did everything in their power to relieve that need. As late as 1872 there was but one school in New Mexico. The territory was very poor and unable at the start to provide its own schools. Even the largest places were dependent upon those of the Mission Boards for some years. In the larger towns and cities today, however, the schools are as well equipped and progressive as anywhere in the country, and there is a steady improvement in the work in smaller places. Early mission schools were day schools, but teachers realized that far more could be done for the children if they had them all the time, and about 1880 a be- ginning of boarding school work was made. It has been the policy of Church Boards to discontinue 64 ' OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA schools wherever public schools reach a high standard, and so from time to time school work in different vil- lages has been given up. The total number of day and boarding schools now maintained by the Protestant Church in the Southwest is about twenty-five, and as these are spread over New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and southern California, they can reach but a small proportion of the young people of this region. No estimate can ever be made of the value of the plaza schools to the communities to which they min- ister. Oftentimes an American young woman has en- tered a plaza, opened a school and carried on the work alone, being perhaps the only American in the village. She has been nurse, doctor, teacher, and friend to the people of the community. Her home has been their refuge, the model from which they have tried to im- prove their own homes. She has had to adjust her life to the life of the people and win their confidence and love through unselfish living and devotion to them. A teacher who opened the work at Embudo, New Mexico, described her experiences : "We often read of the strange customs of a race whose language differs from ours, but we do not un- derstand until we mingle with them. Thus was the reality brought to bear upon me when first I came to live with the Mexicans in Embudo. My first week was spent in a Mexican home, my bed was made on the floor, the woven mattress hard and knotty ; sleep seemed impossible, but nature at length succumbed and the night passed by. One thing out of their custom, I had a room at night to myself. Breakfast consisted REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 65 of black coffee and tortillas (pancakes) placed on a small stand, and the man of the house ate with me ; as the women eat after the men, they waited until we finished, then partook of their meal in the next room on the floor, as is the custom. " For dinner a chicken was prepared, which had more bones than meat. Not having a stove, all cook- ing is done on the fire-place. So I was amused at the process of cooking the chicken. It was cut in small pieces, and one piece at a time was put on a two- pronged iron rod, held over the blaze until done, then served on a plate. In order to help me the man picked up a part of the chicken with his fingers and gave it to me. At supper we had Indian meal gruel, which is considered a fine drink; before handing the cup to me the man took a drink out of it. This was too much, so I said I did not wish any. All this was done in kindness, only showing the lack of knowledge. The black coffee and tortillas were also part of each meal. " I decided to cook for myself, and rented of them two rooms, one to live in, the other for the school, and remained in that house three years. In visiting the families the first time, I found them anxious for the change from a Mexican to an English teacher in order to study the language. The school then became over- crowded with pupils, and it was impossible to hear every one recite in one day, as no two were studying from the same book, and each one must recite sepa- rately except the chart class." The work at Embudo is typical of the work that has 66 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA gone on in the plaza schools. The rooms engaged by the teacher gave way to a tiny adobe church building for the school, while she continued to live in a native adobe house whose mud roof was no protection from the rain. The church, in turn, was abandoned for an attractive modern schoolhouse containing two large rooms which accommodate the one hundred and twenty pupils ; next the school is a five room home for the teachers, and nearby a small hospital building. The interesting thing about these new buildings is that the people brought the rock and sand required for their construction, and men and women worked valiantly to provide the new school for their children. They gather in the home for social meetings and sewing classes, while the school is opened for entertainments. While the plaza school is an inspiration and a lesson to the homes, teachers find the needs of individual boys and girls are better met in the boarding school. There are several very fine boarding schools conducted by Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. Here the teachers are able to counteract the unfortu- nate moral influences by which the boys and girls have been surrounded, as well as to hold them for a regu- lar attendance, a thing most difficult to secure in day schools. The Rio Grande Industrial School and the Menaul School at Albuquerque have done a remarkable work for boys, while the Rio Grande Industrial and Harwood at Albuquerque, the Forsythe Memorial and De Pauw at Los Angeles, the Mary J. Platt at Tucson, and Allison-James at Santa Fe care for the girls. Holding Institute at Laredo, Texas, is the largest REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 67 Church boarding school in the Southwest. The pupils in these schools are trained for all kinds of work the most important being that which will prepare them to be good home makers. An outline of the schedule at Rio Grande will show what active places these boarding schools are. The rising bell rings at 5 130 each morning, and the older boys hurry to the barn and dairy house to attend to their chores. The girls, under the direction of one of the teachers, begin the preparation of breakfast, dust- ing and cleaning. Breakfast comes at 6:45 and at its- end every one goes to some regular task, housework, laundrywork, or farming ; each one knows his duty and attends to it. This is followed by work in the school- room or some industrial work, which is continued until the bell rings for dinner. After dinner has been served and the dishes washed, all return to the school rooms until four o'clock. Then follows an hour's intermis- sion for play and at five the chores and kitchen work claim the attention of certain pupils. The boys wash dishes after supper, and at 7 115 the entire school family assembles for the chapel service, followed by a study hour and nine o'clock retiring bell. Schools necessarily vary a little, but everywhere they are found training boys and girls for useful lives. They learn to wash and iron, bake and clean, as well as to read and write. They enter with enthusiasm into baseball, tennis, and other sports. It is interesting to> note that where new buildings are added to the school equipment, whenever it is possible the labor of the boys is utilized. Both Menaul and the Rio Grande Indus- 68 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA trial have proved that their pupils have been trained for practical work. The Bible is a most important text book in the boarding as well as in the day schools, and aside from the purely religious education pupils acquire habits of refinement and cleanliness that they 'could hardly gain anywhere but in the boarding school. These schools have given new life to the boys and girls who have been privileged to attend them. What of the thousands who have had no touch of their wonder- ful influence? Medical Work. Nowhere is there greater need of medical missions, and nowhere has less been done along the line of medical work than in the Southwest. A few notes from the letters of teachers will show how great is the ignorance of the people in caring for the sick and how much doctors and nurses are needed in this part of the country. " Operations for adenoids or bad tonsils are practi- cally unknown, though many of the children have ade- noids and diseased tonsils of the worst kind." " Treatment for weak eyes or ears is unknown ; special care of the teeth or of weak stomachs is not only unknown but would bespeak a squeamish fas- tidiousness, pardonable only in teachers, ministers, and other idle folk!" " How we need a nurse ! The nearest doctor is eighteen miles away. We call on the sick and do what we can, but we cannot stay all the time and they will not follow instructions. Then, too, there is so much superstition to overcome. Babies are wrapped tightly for a month with no attempt at proper care. The REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 69 mother must have no bath, not even her hands and face washed nor her hair combed for forty days after the birth of a child. It is terrible. As one woman said to me, ' But no one has told us different ways.' A good tactful nurse could do so much. They might not take her advice at first, but they do trust the missionaries, and we can reach their hearts through this kind of serv- ice." " One of our most beautiful children of last year died early this fall. She was but five years of age. She suffered untold agony for thirteen days, with no doctor to give her any stimulant or opiate or even to say what ailed her." " Claudia was confined to her bed for years and years. No one knew what was the matter. She was ' just sick.' She did have one bottle of patent medicine, or nearly a bottle. It was left over when the baby died of whooping cough. Claudia in her agony took that; but, getting no better, her people took her, lying on a blanket in bed in a lumber wagon, to consult the most notorious witch of western New Mexico. It was a thirty-mile ride in the lumber wagon, and for poor Claudia, who had not been able to sit up for a year, proved a perilous trip. Coming home worse for the journey, her people tried an Indian medicine man. The witch and medicine man cost them over thirty dol- lars and, worst of all, she grew more feeble every day. Fresh air, sunshine, exercise (all abundantly free in this land of sunshine) and nutritious food, might have worked wonders had they known, but ' My people perish for lack of knowledge.' " 70 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA Another teacher speaks of the epidemic of grippe, the great suffering and only one small room for sick and well, for cooking, eating, and sleeping. In one home where a little child died there were twenty-eight people as guests in the small room for a week. The missionary insisted that the men and boys sleep in the school room. One denomination has sent one doctor to New Mexico and provided an automobile for the long trips through the country. At Embudo a nurse has been placed in charge of the new hospital. The teachers do all in their power to relieve the suffering of the people in other stations. Social Work. Like medical work, the social work has very slowly been recognized as a necessary ac- companiment of missionary effort. The missionaries themselves have always realized the need and have pro- vided wholesome diversions for the people among whom they have been, in this way gaining the good will of whole communities. The Methodist Episcopal Church South has been developing gospel settlements with educational and social features in different localities, having deaconesses and social workers in charge. They have opened three night schools and at their mission for Mexicans in Los Angeles have a nurse in attendance. At Los Angeles too the Presbyterians, and at El Paso the Methodists, conduct settlement work with gratify- ing results. Women's Societies and Girls' Clubs are organized. The members are taught cooking and sew- ing, their own culinary products serving for refresh- REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 71 ments. The workers introduce devotional services, and seek in every way to uplift the people. The houses opened to mothers and children for work and play have been a great benefit to those who visit them. RESULTS OF MISSIONARY WORK In the Homes. It has been said of the girls of a leading mission school that no town into which they have gone fails to show, even to passing guests, a better condition because of their presence. One worker has written, " As I have journeyed through the southwest, I have many times entered Mexican homes that had all the appearance of American homes, and when I have asked some of the friends what has brought about the change, why they differ from their neighbors, I am an- swered perhaps, 'Why the lady of the house is a mission school graduate, or the head of the family is a graduate/ and frequently we find that both husband and wife are graduates of these Christian schools. In Las Placitas, there was, years ago, a mission school, but it has been closed about eleven years. Yet, when I visited that place, I found clean, stalwart young men who acknowledged that the impulse to a clean, orderly life had been given them in that school, and the fathers and mothers were asking that it might be reestab- lished." Testimony of Roman Catholics. " I am obliged to oppose your schools; my bishop demands it. At the same time I realize that they are doing good work for my people ; and if I were a man of family, living in one of these Mexican towns, I should wish to send my chil- 72 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA dren to your schools." These words were spoken by a priest. At a recent meeting of mission school graduates an address was made by one of the county superintend- ents. He stated that of the forty-two teachers in his county thirty-six were graduates of Protestant schools. He said that he was a Catholic and had been called to account by those in authority in the church for employ- ing so many Protestants, but he secured always the best teachers he could find. It was said that the Arch- bishop declared that the greatest menace to the Catholic Church in New Mexico was the Protestant mission schools. He said : " They are actually making good citizens out of the Mexican people." When money was raised for a hospital in connection with one of the Protestant mission schools $130 came from patrons of the school, secured by a Catholic, and largely contributed by Catholics. The Pupils Sent Out. As has been previously stated, mission schools have provided a large number of the missionaries who are working in the Southwest. Graduates of every school are filling positions of trust. One principal has given statistics regarding his own school which are characteristic of all mission schools : " Fifteen of our graduates are Home Missionaries, all but one doing work in New Mexico or Arizona among their native people ; seven graduates and many former pupils are public school teachers, and the work that they are doing is almost altogether for the Mexican people, missionary in itself to a great extent. Some of them are yet in college and some in a theological REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 73 seminary. One is in a medical school, and if there is need for any class of help for the people it is medical aid. He will have one of the broadest fields for use- fulness that can be found anywhere." Desire to Help Others. The people are not only giving of their choice youth for the advancement of the Kingdom, but more and more they show a disposi- tion to depend less on mission funds. When they hear of need in other places they are always ready to con- tribute from their own poverty for the benefit of others. OUR MISSIONARY TEACHERS From whatever point we view missionary work, we find the chief factor in the betterment of the people is the missionary teacher. Through perils of loneliness, through perils of disease, through perils of opposition, through perils of discouragement and exhaustion, she continues her ministries to those to whom she gives a new life perspective new hopes and ambitions where lives would otherwise have been hopeless. When asked if his church carried on any social work among Span- ish speaking peoples, a Board officer answered that the day school teachers carry it on to a great extent and "often act as nurses, postmistresses, and justices of the peace." It is so in every denomination ; the plaza teachers have learned to be everything to all men. During the day they are busy in school, but after hours they visit the homes sharing the sorrows and joys of the people. They prescribe for the sick and nurse them as well. They help the bride with her wedding preparations, and even oftener prepare the dead for 74 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA burial. To old and young, sick and well, they are ministering angels. The old monks brought the olive and the date from Mediterranean regions to the Southwest ; a woman mis- sionary from Brazil is credited with having been re- sponsible for the development of the orange industry in California; the missionary of today provides garden seeds and advises the people in matters of farming. There are better vegetables, better chickens, and better eggs because of the mission teacher. A woman who has been almost twenty-five years (most of the time alone) in one of the plaza schools, recently reported for the three midwinter months to her Board as follows : " Patients treated, 48 ; dis- pensary visits, 27; visits, 129; maternity case, i; deaths, o." And she is not a trained nurse; only a day school teacher ! A missionary pictures her experiences in these words : " When I returned after a brief absence from the plaza I was met with the news that one of our men who had gone to Kansas in search of work had come home crazed and with a burning fever. I found him approaching the crisis of typhoid. We put him to bed on a mattress spread with wooden slats, with a coarse brown native blanket for a sheet. You may ask why I did not supply this need. It was due to the fact that nearly all my sheets had recently been used for band- ages. Here he lay for several weeks while the family of five ate and slept in the same room. It is little wonder that two of the children fell ill and that the life of the youngest was sacrificed. During this time I REDEEMING THE SOUTHWEST 75 was spending five hours a day in the school room while doing what I could morning, noon and evening for my patients; for I had another patient almost equally ill who had come sixty miles in order that I might care for her. There is no other mission station within ninety miles of us and a district with a radius of twenty-five miles looks to me for help." An officer of one of the Home Mission Boards visited the region of New Mexico, and before returning home made an address in one of the large cities of the state. He told of a missionary he had seen who had carried on her school work and gone miles over the mountains after school to care for a woman who was suffering from a fearful sickness. When the speaker finished three women came to him, each saying, " I know about whom you were talking. It was Miss ," and each woman mentioned the name of a different missionary ! It is not the exceptional teacher who is doing this remarkable work in the Southwest. The service has developed a wonderful type of self-sacrificing, noble women who learn to laugh and to weep, to vaccinate, to bind up wounds, and to soothe those suffering from fever. They are a group of women of whom the Protestant Church is rightly proud. Is THE WORK WORTH WHILE? When one of the early missionaries went to the Southwest, a priest told him it was useless to try to help the ignorant people. The Roman Catholic Church had been at work for 300 years, he said, and the peo- ple were so degraded they had not improved in the 76 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA slightest degree. The answer of the missionary was that when the Protestant Church had labored for as many years with as little result, it would be time to consider withdrawing. It is less than seventy years since the first Protestant missionary entered New Mexico. Education has made great advances, the moral and physical condition of the people has im- proved, there are many homes where there were only dwelling places, and, best of all, thousands who would not have known the Saviour have been brought to Him, and reverently acknowledge Him to be their only Lord and King. IV CUBA PARA CRISTO " This is the most beautiful land eyes ever beheld ; one could live here forever." From the diary of CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. " The future of Cuba is unalterably bound up with that of the United States. We have made ourselves responsible in the eyes of the world for her political destiny, and the Chris- tian people of America, whether they would or not, are re- sponsible in the eyes of God for the spiritual destiny of the Cubans. No earnest servant of the Master will deny this solemn obligation of American Christians to this needy people, who have suffered not only from the tyranny and oppression of Spain, but also and equally from the blighting effects of four centuries of Roman domination and oppression." REV. H. R. MOSELEY, D.D. IV CUBA PARA CRISTO THREE GLIMPSES OF CUBAN HISTORY The Days of Splendor. Poor Dona Isabella looked sadly towards the west from the parapets of Havana ; she had been watching thus for weeks and months. She had learned to hate beautiful Cuba. How much she wished she had tried to persuade her brilliant Gov- ernor to be satisfied with the wealth he had gained in Peru and to settle in far away Spain ! She thought of her childhood days, of the stories she had heard of the western land that had been discovered a few years before by the Admiral Christopher Columbus. She re- membered that he had called it a wonderfully beauti- ful land, and that it was not until after the Admiral's death that people knew it was but an island. All her life Dona Isabella had heard that this knight and that lord were going to or coming from the New World. Sometimes she had wished she were a man that she might join one of the expeditions, and she had been sure she would have come home weighted down with the gold and treasures of the New World, not impov- erished as so many had returned. She wept as she thought of what had happened when her girlhood was 79 8o OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA over and she had just entered upon womanhood. There was a youth of noble but poor family, Hernando de Soto, who had gone out with Pizarro, and who on his return had been received with great honor by the King, both because of his great wealth and because of his brave record in Peru. When he had asked to marry her, although a daughter of one of the noblest families of Spain, she had willingly agreed to be his bride and go with him to the unknown New World. Men sold all their possessions in order to equip them- selves suitably to join de Soto, and a brilliant gathering of the flower of the nobility sailed in 1539 for Cuba, the island where they were to prepare for their further expedition to Florida. Dona Isabella remembered the voyage, the music and dancing and feasting on ship board. She recalled her arrival and how she had said it was truly the most beautiful of lands. It all seemed so many years ago, and it was not yet quite three. There had followed the joy of being wife of the Gov- ernor, the year of splendor while ships were prepared for the expedition to Florida. De Soto was to be ruler there and she was to live like a queen. The boats made ready and the expedition started, but it was not as ex- citing as when she had left Spain. Then she had been one of those to go, and now she had seen the one she loved go from her. She had borne the parting bravely, and, with the Lieutenant-Governor, had ruled the use- less people of Cuba. She had waited until the boats returned, bringing her messages from the one who was cruel to others but good to her. She looked with joy upon the Indian maidens he had sent to be her slaves, CUBA PARA CRISTO 81 in promise of the power that was to be hers in the fu- ture; she never thought that they might be missing friends, as she missed the Governor. She never could have thought that, for they were not like her they were slaves and had no feelings. And now almost two years had gone since the ships had brought them to her and there had been no second word from the Gov- ernor. She had watched and waited until it seemed that she could endure it no longer. A message reached Dona Isabella at last. Her ad- venturous husband had perished and was sleeping be- neath the waters of the great river he had discovered. Doiia Isabella had waited long enough. Broken hearted, she soon died and Cuba was in the power of a new governor, who drew from his poor subjects their very life blood in order to gain for himself and his King the wealth that was their greatest desire. The Ten Years' War. Cuba endured the tyranny of the early governors only to find that each succeed- ing ruler was more inhuman than his predecessor, un- til the Indian element had almost disappeared from the population. The people submitted in silence during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in the eighteenth century the oppression of the Spanish con- querors at last roused them and led them to revolt. There were many vain attempts to throw off the yoke, but Spain, unwilling to lose a possession that paid her so rich a tribute as did Cuba, multiplied her soldiers on the island. From twenty to forty million dollars a year went to the mother country from her despised dependency. No wonder that the people of Cuba were 82 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA discontented and in a state of unrest! When a dele- gation of Cubans went to Spain, asking that their griev- ances be heard, the royal commission listened to them but paid no attention to their requests. The Cubans were aroused at the indifference of the Spaniards, and when Cespedes came forward to lead them in 1868 they were ready to begin the guerrilla war which lasted for ten long years. The island was ravaged from end to end and was finally forced to secure peace by the treaty of Zanjon. Important reforms were promised but never fulfilled, and Spain remained in control of an island whose inhabitants were waiting for the oppor- tunity to break out against her power, and to drive her from their bofders. Cuba Libre. The failure of Spain to live up to the terms of the Treaty of Zanjon finally resulted in the most formidable of the revolutions that swept over Cuba. Gomez, one of the leaders of the Ten Years' War, was living in San Domingo in 1895, where he was joined by Jose Marti, who had been prevented by the United States authorities from starting an expedi- tion to Cuba from Florida. With a small force of men they landed on the island and raised the flag of the Cuban Republic. They enlisted their countrymen in a struggle for in- dependence in which the undrilled men were opposed by the trained soldiers of Spain under the notorious " Butcher " Weyler. The rebellion extended and Weyler was succeeded by Blanco, who remained in charge of the army until the destruction of the battle- ship Maine in Havana harbor drew the United States CUBA PARA CRISTO 83 into the war. United States troops were landed on the island and by August, 1898, Spain was willing to ac- knowledge her defeat. By the treaty of Paris, Cuba was declared free, the United States assuming military control until conditions in the island warranted the withdrawal of her troops. In 1902 the military gov- ernment transferred its power to the newly elected president and congress of Cuba. In 1906 there was an unsettled condition of affairs which necessitated a sec- ond intervention of the United States in Cuba, but the former restlessness seems now to have subsided and for the past eight years the people of the island have been able to control their affairs without disorder. The general impression of the nations of the world was that when the United States once had her troops on the island of Cuba she would never withdraw, but this country has been able to prove to the world that her in- terest is not a selfish one, and that while Porto Rico is a possession of this country, the relation to Cuba re- mains that of a protector. If the Cubans need the help of the United States it will be given them, but while they are able to govern themselves it is against the policy of this government to interfere. A partial, though we believe temporary, alienation of the Cubans, caused partly by a misunderstanding as to the motives of the United States, partly by the mis- representations of interested agitators, partly by un- wise tariff laws enacted by Congress and possibly, in part, by the activity of the priesthood, has at times greatly hampered the work of physical, social, and moral regeneration. Cubans are exceedingly jealous 84 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA of their rights, and it would appear to an unbiased ob- server that Congress has not always scrupulously re- spected the rights or the feelings of a sensitive people. Even after these years of helpfulness on the part of the United States, many Cubans are still suspicious of her ultimate design in exercising a protectorate. It may be that eventually Cuba will find peace and safety under the American flag; but if that day ever comes, it should be on the initiative and with the hearty consent of the whole people of the island. Otherwise Cuba must remain independent, for its strategic impor- tance is so great to the United States, guarding as it does, with Porto Rico, the approaches to the Panama Canal, that it could never be permitted to pass under the control of any European power. CUBA OF TODAY Geography and Climate. It is hard to realize that this island which does not belong to us is far nearer our shores than the one that does; it takes but five hours to reach Cuba from Key West while Porto Rico is far beyond Cuba. The shape of Cuba has been compared to that of an alligator. If placed on a map of the United States, Cuba would extend from New York to Indianapolis, and its territory is about equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania. The rough mountains the fertile plains and valleys make Cuba a very attrac- tive island; it is rich in its forests, and the cultivated areas yield freely. The Spaniards realized the possi- bilities of the island and profited from its cultivation ; since Cuba has become independent her industries and CUBA PARA CRISTO 85 commerce have developed marvellously, her foreign trade now amounting to some $300,000,000 a year. One crossing the island beholds the constant contrast of roughly cleared forest tracts, beautiful forests, and newly planted orange groves, with the settlers' cabins. The eastern part of Cuba is very mountainous, and the western low. The central part of the island contains the most fertile land, and is the region where sugar and tobacco are grown to the greatest extent. The climate of Cuba is claimed to be ideal by those who visit her shores ; there are few extremes of heat and cold. Though the thermometer sometimes reaches 94 degrees Fahrenheit, there is a breeze from the ocean to freshen the air and people comfort themselves with the thought that they are in the second healthiest coun- try in the world, Australia being the only one that sur- passes Cuba. Who Are the Cubans of Today? The Indian blood does not strongly predominate in Cuba and Porto Rico as it does in Mexico. Porto Rico was almost depopulated by the extinction of the natives and the dissensions of the Spaniards, and for two hundred years the increase in population was exceedingly slow. The extermination of the natives left Cuba for genera- tions peopled chiefly by Creoles the children of Spaniards born in the island and by Negro slaves. Many Cubans at the present time will not allow that any have a right to be so called unless they are de- scended from the Creole class. The other races were either pure Chinese and pure Negroes or else a mixture called " Mulattoes." These last are considered the 86 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA most turbulent and insubordinate of all, and formed the revolutionary element that caused the second American occupation. The census of 1907 gave the total population of Cuba as 2,048,980. Of these there were of the Cubans 1,224,539. Of the remainder of the population 185,000 were Spaniards, 6,713 Americans, 274,272 Negroes, 11,837 Chinese and 334,695 of the mixed races. Cuban Character. It is not just to judge the Cuban by our American standards. Race, environment, edu- cation, religion, opportunities and possibilities of de- velopment, must all be taken into consideration in our estimate of him both in the present and the future for he is both present and future. Four hundred years of misrule, enforced ignorance, and wrong re- ligious teaching, have left their impress. Denied lib- erty of expression, there was little to develop a thinking people. Surrender of conscience to the priesthood will invariably undermine personal morals. A reverence for things because they are old will paralyze progress. Howard B. Grose (" Advance in the Antilles "), por- trays Cuba as she has been formed through the four hundred years of Roman Catholic domination as fol- lows : " ' By their fruits ye shall know them,' said Jesus. The Roman Catholics can hardly declare it un- just to apply this principle of the Saviour to the product of their Church in Cuba. If, after centuries of com- plete domination over the lives and government of a people, we find an appalling absence of moral and eth- ical standards, of educational institutions, of national and individual ideals, of honesty and chastity, of chiv- CUBA PARA CRISTO 87 airy and conscience, what shall be said of the sins of omission and commission of the Church under whose instruction and dictation this came to be? And when you discover that in all the years of corruption and op- pression the Church never raised its voice for relief even, not to say release or liberty ; when you find that the Church had no protest against the cruel forms of sport such as the bull-fight and the cocking-main, or against the spread of gambling among all classes through government lottery; when you learn that the priesthood was shamelessly and openly corrupt, so that it became itself a source of moral rottenness, according to the confession of some of its own members, and de- served the contempt it inspired in the best men ; when you know that through the greed of this Church the masses of the people were practically forced into fami- lies not bound by legal or Church ceremonial ; when you read the long and terrible chapters of illiteracy, of intellectual repression, of foolish superstitions, of infamous impositions in the name of religion upon a hopelessly chained people it is not unjust to apply the Master's test." Amid such surroundings and under such influences was formed and developed the character of the Cuban people. Conceding that they are lacking in some of the qualities we deem essential for the highest civiliza- tion, we should ask if we would be better under like conditions. The Cuban or Porto Rican at the worst has not been much worse than was the Scot when John Knox worked into the national life, through the school and the Word of God, the spirit of his prayer, " O 88 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA God, give me Scotland or I die ! " What the Gospel did for Scotland it will do for Cuba. ' Internal Improvements Begun by the United States. The first work undertaken by the United States after it organized the military government of Cuba was the cleaning up of the cities. Sanitation was so thoroughly revolutionized that the cities became models of cleanliness. Splendid roads were built, cockfighting and gambling prohibited, streets were repaved, and a public school system established. Today Cuba is changing rapidly. The old and the new are found side by side, but the old is being fast abandoned for the new. Each town gives evidence of its progressive- ness in new buildings, cement sidewalks, well built roads, its improved park and market. Sugar cane is hauled by ox team to the mill, where the process of transforming the cane to sugar is carried on by elec- tricity. Sometimes families travel on horseback and on foot; sometimes they use the automobile or the trolley or steam cars that have been introduced. Under the Cuban government cockfighting, the lot- tery, and other forms of gambling that were prohibited by the United States were reinstated, and are now pro- tected by law. In Havana, a beautiful city in which both the old and the new influences are conspicuous in the architecture, the Cuban National Lottery is car- ried on. Everyone buys tickets, the government re- taining thirty per cent of the money received, the rest going in prices. This lottery, run by the government, has made the Cubans a nation of gamblers. Cock- fighting is restricted to Sundays and holidays. CUBA PARA CRISTO 89 Beside the roads built under the United States mili- tary government, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, and all kinds of electrical appliances have been introduced. The value of real estate is constantly increasing; irri- gation has made once useless land productive so that Cuba is in a very prosperous condition. Education in Cuba. The United States began the organizing of public schools in Cuba. Before the pro- visional government was established by this country very few efforts had been made to educate the people. There had been some private schools for boys and girls, but even these were of a very poor type, and the gen- eral sentiment was against educating the poor. Not more than one child in thirty attended school. Chil- dren of the wealthy classes left the island, some going to Europe, some coming to the United States to study. The provisional government established schools in most of the towns of Cuba, expended ten millions of dollars for buildings and equipment, sent several hundred Cuban teachers to this country for greater preparation in fact gave an educational impulse which it is hoped will always be felt on the island. The Cuban govern- ment has continued the educational work instituted by our government and the island has a large number of schools, but unfortunately the Cuban government has shown no desire to improve the school buildings, which compare unfavorably with those of Porto Rico. A recent visitor to Cuba remarked : " I have fre- quently made the statement that while I bowed my way in and bowed my way out of numerous public schools in Cuba, I did not see any school work, as both 90 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA pupils and teachers are too polite in Cuba to work while they have visitors." Elementary work is carried on in these schools, un- fortunately ending in most cases with the fifth grade ; some schools carry the work to the seventh grade, and their graduates are eligible to take the examinations for the government provincial institutes, of which there is one in each of the six provinces. The insti- tutes carry work a little farther in some subjects than our high schools, giving the B.A. degree at the com- pletion of the course. Graduates of the institutes, in turn, may enter the University of Cuba at Havana. It is unfortunate for the people that the grade of public schools is usually so low ; another unfortunate thing is that there are no government normal schools to train teachers. This must usually result in poor teach- ing, and it makes very desirable the opportunity given to people in some parts of the island to place their chil- dren in the high grade mission schools. RELIGIOUS WORK IN CUBA Intolerance of Spain. The religious intolerance that has been encountered in all Spanish speaking peo- ples was particularly active in Cuba. A number of English speaking people living in Havana about 1870 wished to organize a church. They were refused per- mission to hold public services, and met in private. Bishop Whipple of the Episcopal Church visited the is- land in 1871, and, the people being again refused per- mission to hold public service, he accepted the invita- tion of the officers of an American man-of-war that CUBA PARA CRISTO 91 was in the harbor, and the Sacrament of the Com- munion was celebrated on the vessel. Bishop Whipple interested his church people on his return to the United States, and a clergyman was sent to minister to the English speaking residents of Havana. Services were held in one of the hotels on Sundays, the missionary spending his time during the week ministering to all the people he could reach, whether Spanish or Eng- lish. Many Cubans, driven out of the island as exiles following the civil war, came into contact with Prot- estantism in the United States and accepted it. About the same time the American Bible Society began to circulate the Bible in Cuba, scattering the Word among a few of the people. The work grew quietly in spite of the opposition of the authorities, and an appeal to the Spanish government, following the refusal of local authorities, resulted in a royal decree affirming the principle of religious freedom. Opposition continued, but the Episcopal Church took advantage of the royal decree, and built its first church in Mantazas in 1887. In 1883 the Southern Baptist Church had begun work in Havana, continuing it until the coming of others to the same field in 1899. February 17, 1898, after the terrible disaster of the Maine, Captain Sigsbee asked permission to read the Protestant burial service over the bodies of the first victims that were found. Permission was denied him, and in the carriage, and in his room, he read portions of the service. One of the first steps of the United States in Cuba was to issue a bill of rights, and the second guarantee 92 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA made by this bill was " freedom of worship according to individual conscience." The fact that the Roman Catholic Church was in such close touch with the hated Spain loosened the hold of the priests over the people, but nevertheless they met the coming of Protestant missionaries with opposition. The hostility of the Roman Church, manifest in our own Southwest, was repeated in Cuba. Evangelistic Work. The attitude of the civil authorities during the Cuban war of independence made it necessary for the missionaries under the Episcopal Church to withdraw from the island, but they returned as soon as the Spanish power was broken. At this time other denominations realized their responsibility for this neighboring island, and a number of mission- aries were soon on the field. They have found three important types of work to be done in Cuba: that among the native Cubans, among the Jamaica negroes, and among Americans residing in Cuba. The first missionaries were delighted with the way in which people thronged to their services. Even in pleasure-loving Havana they crowded the meetings, but it was difficult to decide whether the crowds were merely idly curious, or whether they were hungering for the Gospel. Dr. Moseley, who opened the field for the Baptists, said of them : " One of the greatest difficulties we have to encounter is the indifference of the people. They are not a serious people and are in- clined to take everything lightly and carelessly. I think it may be truthfully said that Cuba has no re- ligion. Of course, the Romish Church is the estab- CUBA PARA CRISTO 93 lished church of the island, but its devotees are few in number, and while all Cubans are nominal Catholics, they do not concern themselves about Protestantism or Romanism, righteousness or unrighteousness, but pur- sue the even tenor of their way gaily, carelessly, many of them going to mass in the morning, on some pleas- ure excursion in the afternoon and to our service at night. Many of them are willing to unite with our church without any investigation whatever. For that very reason we must go slowly and carefully, and while candidates for church membership are numer- ous, we examine each one privately, and then again publicly, and receive only such as give evidence of hav- ing been born of God's Spirit. And God is giving His Spirit and souls are being born into the Kingdom." Most of the people had heard little preaching, and a service in a language they could understand was in- teresting to them; the hymns were a novelty; and so curiosity was found to be a great motive in drawing them together. When the careless were satisfied, the attendance at the services diminished somewhat, but the enduring work had begun. There was little at- tention paid to the Romish clergy who tried to keep their followers away from Protestant churches, and homes were opened hospitably to the missionaries where buildings were not provided. When asked last year if the work in Cuba paid, one of the missionaries who has been longest there an- swered : " I make bold to express the doubt if any field of Christian work in Roman Catholic countries has yielded more visible or abundant fruitage in proportion 94 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA to the money expended and the missionaries employed than Cuba." He spoke of the improvement in the home life. When Americans entered Cuba there were 168,000 people living in unlawful cohabitation. To- day marriages are performed without exorbitant fees, and so marriages take place. There are almost eleven thousand members of Protestant churches, and young men and women trained in these churches are carry- ing the Gospel to their own people. Thousands of chil- dren gather each week in the Sunday schools, carry- ing to their homes messages from the Word of God. Every missionary feels that missions in Cuba pay. Many Jamaica negroes have been drawn to Cuba by the higher wages, and among them have been found fetish worshippers. The Episcopal Church is trying to reach this difficult part of the population. Work among our countrymen who have been at- tracted to the island is very necessary. Some of them are of great help to the missionary force, but others have retarded missionary work. Freedom from the restraint of home surroundings, with a yielding to the carelessness of Cuban life, has made it particularly necessary that the Church exert itself for these people, for if it fails to hold them, it can not make great prog- ress with the Cubans. Educational Work. Almost four thousand children have been gathered into the mission schools in Cuba. This number seems encouraging until we remember that there are about four hundred thousand children of school age in Cuba. The plan of education carried out by the government makes it possible for those CUBA PARA CRISTO 95 who live in large places to attend the higher schools, but the majority of pupils complete only the fifth grade. The public school gives absolutely no religious train- ing, and the poor preparation of teachers makes the school work of a low standard. Many parents object to the coeducational plan of the public schools, others to the mixing of white and colored children in the schools ; the result has been that children of the better class have been sent to the parochial schools established by the Roman Catholic Church since 1898, or to private schools that are favored by the Church. There is a very great need of mission schools all over the island, schools that will begin with the kinder- garten and carry the average pupil through the high school grades, providing some means of higher educa- tion for those who desire to fit themselves for teaching or preaching. There are fifty day schools and a few boarding schools under the various Mission Boards which are now accomplishing a splendid work. The children began going to these schools with misgivings. They feared that the priest would put them out of the church if he knew what they were doing. They tried to avoid the religious services that were a part of the daily routine, but little by little they were interested and were won to the truth. The Baptists, who carry on the most extensive work of any denomination in Cuba, have opened an educa- tional work of great promise in El Cristo, ten miles north of Santiago. The site was selected after care- ful deliberation, and dormitories for boys and girls, class room building, and gymnasium erected. It has 96 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA been possible to do a far more effective work with the pupils who have lived with the teachers, than with pupils in day schools. The Cubans have evinced a growing interest in athletics, and schools have culti- vated this interest in honest sports, in order to draw students from the objectionable diversions that have previously been offered them. Workers in Cuban schools have said that the chil- dren are far more difficult to deal with than those in Porto Rico and New Mexico, for they are very likely to be impolite, impertinent, talkative, restless, and ex- citable. They seem to have developed without restric- tions of any kind. In spite of such disadvantages, the missionary teachers in Cuba are doing a work that has already shown wonderful results in the noble type of young manhood and womanhood that has been devel- oped under their inspiring leadership. Cuba para Cristo. Over three hundred delegates, representing the Christian Endeavor Societies and Sun- day schools of Cuba, met recently in Havana. The watchword of the Convention was " Cuba para Cristo" (Cuba for Christ). This is the slogan of the churches of Cuba, and the thought echoes through all the gatherings on the island. A missionary says: " We have abundant reason to thank God, take cour- age, and do more and more for the youth of Cuba." CUBANS IN THE UNITED STATES Almost four centuries after de Soto left Cuba, thou- sands of people from the island of which he was gov- ernor followed his course to Florida and settled just CUBA PARA CRISTO 97 across the bay from the spot where he landed. They did not come with the same purpose that influenced that fearless explorer, but because they looked upon this country as their friend and wished the privileges that life here offered for their children. At the time of the Spanish-American War there was a community of some five thousand Cubans at Tampa, Florida. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, opened a school for the children, which has been main- tained to the present time. Another school, primarily intended for Cubans, was opened by the same church at Key West. English speaking children have taken advantage of the opportunity to attend this school, and today are in the majority. In a population of 10,000 in West Tampa there are but 1,500 Americans. The rest are almost entirely Cubans, for the most part employed in cigar factories. A mission of the Congregational Church has brought great blessing to this city. In 1905 a missionary and his wife started work in a rented house which also served as a parsonage. This building later housed the public school, and when the school moved to its own building, the missionaries decided to open a church school. There has been the gradual growth that at- tends consecrated efforts, and today the church has six buildings in West Tampa. When children were found who were deserted and neglected, the mission- aries took them into their own home. A home for boys and one for girls were later opened to meet the needs of such children. As the work developed two people could not attend to all the demands that were 98 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA made upon them, and a Cuban minister was called to their assistance. There is now a group of six Ameri- can teachers and missionaries who, with the Cuban pastor, carry on day and night school, religious edu- cation in school and Sunday school, church services in English and Spanish, conduct homes for boys and girls, furnish play as well as serious work for the peo- ple, and serve as friends and counselors to the many who come to them for help. In spite of the indifference and carelessness of many of the Cubans, missionaries have found those in Cuba and in the United States a most lovable people. They are responsive to the message of trie Gospel, and very loyal as members of the Church. It has been worth the sacrifices to be able to lead them to a better life than they have ever known. With better educational facilities, better church buildings and equipment, the Protestant Church will be able to extend its influence and hasten the time when the hope of the people that Cuba be Christ's will be fulfilled. OUR NEW POSSESSION " The Porto Rican of yesterday has a heavy bill of charges to lay against the Spanish government and the Roman Cath- olic Church for it was the' Church and State combined in an unholy alliance in Porto Rico, as in Cuba, with the heavier responsibility resting upon the Church. While there was a nominal government of fair form on paper, in fact the rule was a feudal despotism, precisely as in Cuba." HOWARD B, GROSE. "I have no sympathy with the oft heard remark that we can do nothing for the present generation. Our crowded chapels and eager, anxious hearers, belie the statement. Never was it more true in any place or age that the common people heard the Gospel gladly than here in all our missionary cen- ters. Tired of chaff and husks, these starving souls clutch greedily at the bread of life and rejoice fondly in a new found hope and inspiration. But still it is true that for the most effective, rapid, symmetrical, and abiding transformation of Porto Rico's intellectual, social, and moral character, we must look chiefly to the medical and educational work of our Women's Missionary Boards." REV. J. MILTON GREENE, D.D. OUR NEW POSSESSION A BRIGHT young girl was sent from Porto Rico to New York to be educated. Shortly after getting fairly settled in the school she wrote, " Do you know what they call me here ? ' Our New Possession.' " Two years later she said, " I have become American in all my tastes and sympathies, and I do not think I will ever be satisfied to go back to the old life." Still later she married a fine young American, and to-day she is a happy American wife and mother. The young people of the school accepted her at her true worth, and her life soon was a part of our American life. This might well be taken as a prophecy of the future of the beau- tiful little island whose possession means so much to them and to us. No spot under the American flag is of greater interest to the American people than that little island gem, guardian of our Panama Canal. UNDER THE POWER OF SPAIN Discovery and Colonisation. It was on his second voyage to the New World that Columbus discovered this smallest and most beautiful of the group known as the Greater Antilles. The present town of Aguadilla, on the northwestern coast, marks the place where on 101 102 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA November 18, 1493, Columbus landed. A granite monument marks the place where he planted the cross and took possession in the name of the Crown of Spain and the Holy Catholic Church. The town takes its name Aguadilla (watering place) from a great foun- tain that bursts out of the hillside and furnishes water for the whole population. The name given by Colum- bus to this beautiful and fertile region was Puerto Rico, or Rich Port, and to the island, San Juan Bau- tista. For some time the Spaniards called the island San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico. Later when the explorations had extended to the eastern end a settle- ment was made across the bay from what is now the city of San Juan and was called Caparra. Later, in 1521, it was transferred to the present site command- ing the entrance to the bay. The name of the new town was changed to San Juan de Bautista, and the island was henceforth known as Puerto Rico. The In- dian name was Borinquen, and the national anthem of the Porto Ricans bears that name and is as dear to their hearts as is " America " to the Americans or " God Save the King " to the British. Soon after founding the new town, the Spaniards began work on the fortifications at the entrance to the harbor, and the massive and formerly impregnable fortresses of the Morro and Cristobal Colon are monu- ments to the energy and engineering skill of the Span- iards of that time. But as one looks upon those mighty walls, and realizes that they were built by the forced labor of the unhappy natives, it does not re- quire a strong imagination to believe that the mortar OUR NEW POSSESSION 103 that has stood the test o.f nearly four hundred years was mixed with the blood and tears of the unfortunate inhabitants of beautiful Borinquen. Ponce de Leon. In 1508 Ponce de Leon was made governor of Porto Rico. It was a dark day for the hospitable natives when they were delivered into the hands of this cruel and brutal adventurer. Under his administration the Indians were not only made to work in the gold mines of Porto Rico, but were also carried by thousands to the neighboring island of Haiti. If by chance they escaped to the mountains they were hunted with bloodhounds, and were either slain or brought back to toil in their bondage until freed by a merciful death. Diego Columbus. In 1511 Ponce de Leon was suc- ceeded by Diego Columbus, a brother 1 of the dis- coverer, but the condition of the natives was in no way improved by the change. A system whereby the In- dians were distributed among the Spaniards as virtual slaves had been instituted by Christopher Columbus, and under his brother they were divided into eight sec- tions and distributed among eight overseers to search for gold in the streams. So cruel was their treatment that at last in 1511 the peaceful slaves could no longer endure it, and there was a general uprising in which hundreds of their masters were slain. But like all up- risings against the armed and disciplined Spaniards, it ended in greater cruelties, and the Indians were not only subjugated after brief successes, but were almost 1 By some authorities named as a son of Christopher Colum- bus. 104 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA exterminated. How many there were at the time of the discovery cannot be ascertained. The estimates varied from one hundred thousand to six hundred thousand ; but when the King of Spain by royal decree ordered their liberation from slavery it is stated that there were left but sixty to avail themselves of the of- fered liberty and " before the end of the sixteenth cen- tury the natives disappeared as a distinct race." The Coming of the Negroes. In the early part of the sixteenth century Negroes began to be imported in great numbers to take the place of the exterminated Indians. What untold cruelties attended the traffic we can only imagine. It is said that the man-eating sharks that infest the waters of the West Indies came from Africa, following the slavers, drawn by the corpses thrown overboard. Better Days. Fortunately for Porto Rico, Spain had her hands full with European wars and the island had a period of comparative freedom from interfer- ence for almost two hundred years. By 1800 the population had increased to nearly forty thousand, counting the slaves, who numbered about six thousand. The Freedom of the Slaves. On March 22, 1873, while under the short-lived Spanish Republic, Porto Rico abolished slavery. If the Spaniards did bring the first African slaves to America, they were wiser than we in that they abolished slavery without the enormous waste and bitterness of a civil war. Porto Rican representatives to the Spanish Cortes united with the Republicans in the request for the abolition of slavery, and the Negro, who on the night of March OUR NEW POSSESSION 105 2 ist, lay down to sleep a slave, awakened on the 22nd a free man. A loan of nearly fourteen millions of dollars was negotiated to pay the slaveholders for their slaves, and the great act was accomplished without leaving a ripple on the surface of the social or civil life. Spanish Misrule. During the trying years that fol- lowed the restoration of the Spanish monarchy, both Porto Rico and Cuba suffered industrial paralysis. On November 25, 1897, Spain granted autonomy to both Cuba and Porto Rico, but the hand of the Spanish oligarchy was still heavy upon them. Their liberty was only in name. Castelar said with reference to the union of church and state, " A privileged church within a free state is an impossibility." He warned the Cortes that unless a larger liberty, civil and re- ligious, was granted in the islands, they would lose both Cuba and Porto Rico. The reforms were denied and the record of misrule from Ponce de Leon to Weyler was continued, until it led, in the providence of God, to American intervention, and the opportunity for the Church of Christ to show to the world what His Gospel could accomplish in the redemption of a people. OUR NEW POSSESSION Government. A nation was born in a day, in an hour, when on October 18, 1898, the Stars and Stripes were raised over the Governor's palace in San Juan. The centuries of misrule and oppression ended that day with the stroke of twelve ; but not even the most 106 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA sanguine of the thousands who witnessed the unfurling of that symbol of liberty could have foreseen the trans- formation that would take place in the physical, the moral, and the intellectual condition of the people, in the space of one decade from the historic event. It was no easy task which was assumed by the United States in reorganizing the government in the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. Here was an island with a population of about one million, 60 per cent of whom were white, 34 of mixed blood, and 6 per cent Negroes. The Spaniards did not draw the color line very closely, consequently the pop- ulation was decidedly mixed both as to color and blood. This admixture was bound to cause many complications. It is a remarkable fact that the cross- ing of Spanish and Indian produced a much more peaceable and dependable type than the cross with the African. The pro-Spanish element was, of course, bitterly hos- tile to the new government, and the priesthood was even more antagonistic. The Roman Catholic Church had undisputed sway for four hundred years and every effort was made to prejudice the uneducated masses against the new comers. When the terrible hurricane of August 8, 1908, swept the island and al- most destroyed the coffee industry, the main depend- ence of so large a portion of the laborers, the priests declared it was a manifest judgment of God upon them for having accepted a heretic government to the detriment of the " Holy Catholic Apostolic Church." It was only the apathy and indifference of the people OUR NEW POSSESSION 107 toward the Church that rendered abortive this at- tempt to array them against the United States. The wisdom of a military form of government was seen in handling the difficult conditions immediately following the hurricane, when nearly the whole popu- lation was in great distress. The military became the police force, and a government appropriation of $200,000 relieved the immediate necessities and at once convinced the people that at last they had a gov- ernment that would serve them as well as be served by them. The military government gave way to the civil gov- ernment established by the Foraker Law of 1900. Physical Conditions. Porto Rico is a gem for the beauty of its scenery. Standing on a mountain top overlooking the sea, watching the changing colors as the fleecy clouds move over the waters, seeing the wealth and beauty of valley and mountain, one is car- ried away by the wonderful prospect. The graceful palm, the glossy leaved mango, the golden orange, the soft trade wind, purified by its sweep across three thousand miles of open sea, all combine to win the heart of the visitor from the north to swear eternal loyalty to " Borinquen the Beautiful." When once the tropics get their grip on the heart and imagination there is no release. In no other place will the moon seem so bright, the air so soft, the foliage so beauti- ful, while the ear is always listening to hear once more the soft rustling of the palm. The discomforts are forgotten, and only the delights of those long winter days are remembered, days of freedom from frosts, io8 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA days of sudden sunrise and of gorgeous sunsets, such as are seen nowhere else. It is no wonder that the people love their little island home. Though robbed for centuries, with no return, the soil of Porto Rico is still so fertile that its 3,600 square miles are capable of supporting a population of three millions of people. Rugged and broken though it appears, it has marvellously rich valleys, while its hills and mountains can be cultivated to the very limit of productiveness. Governor Post had a careful sur- vey made of the watersheds and estimated that there was water enough to increase fourfold the produc- tiveness of the island. The frequent rains will con- stantly renew the supply in the reservoirs, and the barren places will become the most productive under the new methods, because they have not been so de- pleted by long years of cultivation. The partial destruction of the coffee plantations by the hurricane of 1908 was not an unmixed evil, for it compelled many planters and laborers to turn their attention to other products ; yet it was a terrible blow to those whose whole living depended upon this one industry. Sanitation and Health. When the United States took possession of Porto Rico it was found necessary for the government to look after the health of the natives. The overcrowding and the ignorance of the people had resulted in unsanitary physical conditions and widespread immorality. The simplest rules of sanitation were not observed, there was no care of the sick in hospitals or in homes, and the result was a OUR NEW POSSESSION 109 weakened body of natives. In an address delivered at the laying of the corner stone of the Methodist Episcopal Church in San Juan, Governor Post said that the original walled town was intended to contain about forty thousand human beings, and that the promiscuous crowding was not only one of the prin- cipal causes of disease, but also of appalling immo- rality. The Porto Ricans were stigmatized as " lazy and incompetent " by the first American settlers, but when it was found that not less than eighty per cent were afflicted with the dreaded tropical anemia, or " hook- worm," the marvel was that they had enough vitality to work at all. Pallid and bloated or emaciated men, women, and children were seen at every step, yet no real investigation had been made as to the cause until Dr. Bailey K. Ashford, an army physician, discov- ered the worm and its remedy. Soon the government established anemia camps, and both American and na- tive physicians united in a vigorous campaign to eradi- cate the disease. It was found that the custom of going barefoot was responsible for its prevalence, and shoes were insisted upon as a part of the school equip- ment. The Porto Ricans have taken hold of sanitary im- provements with enthusiasm, and now San Juan and all other towns of importance have their water system and drainage. The old order has passed, as in Pan- ama, and Porto Rico has become a most delightful and healthful winter resort. A new race of Porto Ricans, sturdy and energetic, is coming to the front. i io OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA American athletic sports have taken a strong hold upon the youth of both sexes, and the influence of this new activity cannot be measured by the physical gain. The necessity for self-control in training and the new interest in the open air sports have tended to wean the young men from the old and debasing sports that pre- vailed, and a new generation of men is being devel- oped stronger physically, mentally, and morally than was ever known under the Spanish regime. DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION IN PORTO Rico Educational Conditions Under Spanish Occupation. As a result of four hundred years of Spanish occu- pation, only fifteen per cent of the population of Porto Rico could read and write. The State left all matters of education to the care of the clergy. The Church was supreme in all things, religious, social, and politi- cal. So far as the masses were concerned her motto might well have been " Ignorance is the mother of devotion." Little or no effort was made to educate the people. The Church dictated not only what should be taught, but how it should be taught. The mayor of one of the towns in Porto Rico told the writer that before American occupation the parish priest was al- ways chairman of the board of school directors. A priest coming from Spain one day sat the next day in the board, and dictated the educational policy of a district with which he was entirely unfamiliar. Growth of Schools Under United States. Prop- erly speaking, Porto Rico had no school system prior to her passing under the American flag. There were 'OUR NEW POSSESSION in a few schools, it is true, but no system which looked to the education of the people either in self-government as in a democracy, or in self-control as under a truly Christian system of social development. Under Amer- ican direction an excellent school system has been developed and school houses of modern design dot the island. In primary work the different mission- ary organizations have supplemented the work of the insular government, gradually giving way to the public schools as these were able to meet the demands. In San Juan the government opened a high school that ranks with schools of like order in cities of the same class in the States. The first class, consisting of five Porto Ricans and one American, was graduated in 1904. The Porto Ricans did not take kindly, at first, to coeducation, but are rapidly conforming in this to American ideas. It is inspiring to see the children thronging to the schools, entering with zeal into study and sports and saluting the flag with as enthusiastic loyalty as any Saxon among us, or any son bora of Revolutionary sires. Today most of the cities have modern concrete school buildings, and together with the ordinary branches of study have developed manual training and household arts. The needs of the rural sections have been given particular attention the past two years and now every village has its public school. In 1900- 1901, $435,565.29 was appropriated for the schools, while in 1913-1914, $3,014,740.00 was the amount set apart for this work. Very little school work is now attempted by the churches, on account of the splendid H2 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA system of public schools. The little that is done is confined almost entirely to the poorest districts of the cities. The teachers of the public schools are in a large proportion Porto Ricans, and many of these are graduates of the Normal College of the University of Porto Rico at Rio Piedras, where is also located an- other division of the University, the College of Lib- eral Arts. A third college of the University, the Col- lege of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, is located at Mayaguez. Porto Rico should be grateful to the United States for the aid given in educational matters ; but Americans should understand that it is a Porto Rican legislature that willingly votes the funds to de- velop and carry on the schools and that the Porto Rican people cheerfully pay their taxes to bring the system to a high state of efficiency. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL CONDITION OF THE PORTO RICANS Under Spanish Domination. Spain always carried her state religion to her dependencies, and she suc- ceeded in planting the Roman Catholic Church as firmly in Porto Rico as in any of her other possessions. The Inquisition was introduced by Bishop Manso as early as 1519, and not even Torquemada in his greater field was more relentless in the pursuit of heretics than was this monster in the pursuit of all who incurred his dis- pleasure. There seems to have been no limit to his authority. From all parts of the island the accused were brought to San Juan for punishment, the favorite method being roasting alive. The spirit of the Inqui- OUR NEW POSSESSION 113 sition prevailed even to the last, and the people, ex- cept such as had traveled abroad, were wholly igno- rant of the beliefs and practices of Protestants. Priests were paid from state funds and every city had its cathedral facing the principal square. The priests were frequently men of immoral lives and their hold on the people grew less and less. Men deserted the services of the Church almost entirely, and at the time of the coming of the Americans large numbers had drifted into atheism. The people of Porto Rico knew of the immoral character of many of their priests, and while it was one of the prin- cipal reasons for the absence of men from the services of the Church, yet it did not seem to shock the faith- ful ones. Morals and religion were divorced in a way never understood among Protestants. The excessive fees demanded by the priests for per- forming a marriage ceremony made one almost pro- hibitive and, even in the time when the State recog- nized civil marriage, such was the power of the clergy over the ignorant peasants that few dared avail them- selves of the provisions of the law. As. a consequence fully fifty per cent of the families were formed with- out a marriage ceremony. Often the judges aided the Church in this immoral practice. A well authenticated case is as follows: A young couple in Porto Rico went to take out a marriage license. When the judge found they were Protestants, he availed himself of every possible legal obstruction to the marriage. The girl was an orphan, but had been raised by foster parents. The judge said it would be necessary to wait 114 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA until the court could appoint a guardian, as the con- sent of the foster parents was of no value. When the young man protested, the judge advised him, in the presence of a crowd of men, to take her home with him and not bother about a marriage ceremony. It was necessary to go to the Attorney General to get an order for the license before the judge would issue it. Cock-fighting, gambling, disregard of the Sabbath, and intemperance were prevalent in the island when the Americans took possession. Protestant Entrance. The Church of England was the first Protestant Church to establish itself in Porto Rico. Even before American occupation, there was not the same intolerance of churches other than the Roman Catholic as there was in Cuba, and services for the English residents were held in the Holy Trin- ity Church in Ponce, beginning in 1867. This build- ing was transferred to the Episcopal Church in 1899. Within four months after the Stars and Stripes were raised over the island, Protestant missionaries were on the field. It is an interesting fact that the first Prot- estant church in the city of Mayaguez was organized in the old building of the Inquisition, and the first native Protestants lifted up songs of praise within walls that had echoed with the cries and groans of the victims of the " Holy Office." Church Comity. In a large measure the lamen- table mistake of denominational competition has been avoided in Porto Rico. Methodists, Baptists, Pres- byterians, Congregationalists, Disciples, Lutherans, TYPICAL PORTO RICAN MOUNTAIN Ho: PUBLIC SCHOOL AT ARECIBO OUR NEW POSSESSION 115 United Brethren, and the Christian Alliance have divided the territory in such a way as to secure help- ful cooperation. San Juan and Ponce, the two prin- cipal cities, are open to all, but all have not availed themselves of the privilege of entering. The spirit of union is seen in the tendency to com- bine wherever the way seems open. The Presbyteri- ans had a most successful training school for the na- tive ministry in Mayaguez. After several years of successful work the Congregationalists and United Brethren joined with them, and it is now an interde- nominational school. These three cooperating denominations have also united in the publication of an interdenominational paper for the extension of evangelical work. It would seem from the growth of this spirit of mutual helpful- ness that there is reason to believe that eventually all denominations will unite in supporting one training school for the ministry, in one publication for the dis- semination of the printed truth, and in higher Chris- tian education. The Episcopal Church has not formally accepted the principle of comity prevailing among the other churches, but has been in sympathy with it and has largely observed it in spirit. Missionary Work. The Church Boards having in charge the missionary work on the island sent at once men who had a knowledge of the Spanish language, and, as far as possible, those who had had experience in missionary work in Mexico and South America. The evil growth of years could not be checked at once, ii6 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA and there was much to discourage the newcomers. The immorality was revolting, but there were rays of light through the darkness. Missionaries found a people who were remarkably teachable and who were eager to hear the true message. The few men on the field at first held services in city and country districts, covering as large a territory as possible, and always having large audiences. Gradually the religious indifference and apathy of the people ceased, and there was ready response to the invitation of the missionaries. Even some who still profess that they are Romanists have opened their homes wide for services. Encouragements. The number of church members in Porto Rico passed the 10,000 mark several years ago, and the number in Sunday schools was even larger. Pastors have reported a desire on the part of the people to make their lives better, and very many marriage ceremonies have been performed by mis- sionaries for those who have been living together with- out it for years. Oftentimes there are children old enough to serve as witnesses. Many forms of evil have been restrained, and Christian men are fighting intemperance and an open Sunday. The work of the missionaries is only re- tarded by the small number of men and the large par- ishes that are theirs to serve. Effect on the Catholic Church. Not the least of the wonders wrought by Protestant missions has been the change in the Roman Catholic Church. Ameri- cans who have known Porto Rico from the beginning OUR NEW POSSESSION 117 have seen a new people and a new church born. The policy of the missionaries has never been one of at- tack, but the loving presentation of the Gospel; not antagonizing, but winning. The American Catholic bishop, sent to the island soon after it came under American control, removed the most corrupt of the priests and replaced them with better men. The Sis- ters, who had neglected the poor, began to care for them. Schools were opened by them and the Brothers, and even if the object may have been to counteract the influence of the public and mission schools, it was worth something that they interested themselves in the unfortunate ones. A higher standard of morals for the clergy was demanded by an enlightened public opinion, the nominal, though indifferent Catholics, were moved to a greater interest and devotion, and made a more insistent demand that their church meas- ure up to the standard of piety, purity, morals, and helpfulness that characterized the Protestant churches. A missionary was in company with a number of Porto Ricans and Spaniards; one of the latter com- mented on a fine Protestant church, when another turned to the missionary and said, " We do not need you Protestants here any longer." Asked his reason, he continued, "Because the Bishop has put out the priests who caused such a scandal, and the Sisters are opening schools and are caring for the poor." " Good ! " said the missionary ; " that is a part of our mission. We have not come to destroy, not even to attack the Roman Catholic Church, but to do what she was not doing. If we shall be able to stir her up to Ii8 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA help the poor and make them better and their lives brighter; we will feel that our mission has not been in vain. But, supposing we were to close every Prot- estant church tomorrow, suspend the work of all medical missions, close all our schools, and then with- draw all our forces from the island, how long would this reform of your Church continue ? " " Well said," another replied, " it would not last long." SOCIAL SERVICE The first missionaries to go to Porto Rico realized that there were physical needs that must be met be- fore the spiritual needs of the people could be greatly touched, and they asked their churches for teachers and doctors to supplement the work of the government in eradicating the hook worm, establishing sanitary conditions, and in teaching the Porto Ricans. As the government schools have improved it has been possible for teachers to devote more of their time to raising the standards in the home life of the people. Religious Settlements. After visiting the work of the churches in Porto Rico the head of the School De- partment of one of the Church Boards said of the needs in the fearfully overcrowded city districts : " The only method of attack that will achieve the de- sired end is through a neighborhood settlement with (i) a visiting nurse working in cooperation with the local physician, (2) a day nursery for the mothers, (3) a play school for the little children below public school age, (4) profitable industrial work, and (5) competent instruction in domestic science." OUR NEW POSSESSION 119 It is such a work that missionaries are attempting to develop, and only the lack of buildings, equipment, and helpers have retarded them. The Blanche Kel- logg Institute, located at Santurce, a suburb of San Juan, is the most noteworthy institution under denomi- national control, carrying on this type of work. The workers spend their mornings calling on the sick, vis- iting among the people, encouraging and helping them in every way. They try to provide work for those who have no employment; during the depression of the past two years this has been a hard matter. In the early afternoon time is given to the care of the Settlement house and grounds, business, and prepara- tion for classes. Three afternoons a week girls from seven to twelve attend the Settlement, learning to sew, cook, and clean. It has been found necessary to teach plain sewing, for the women and girls who have learned to do beautiful lace and drawn work have known nothing of the more necessary sewing. Older girls carry on advanced work the other three after- noons, and at night the mothers or still older girls meet. The mothers also form a missionary society, doing missionary and Bible work among their own people. They have practical addresses on such sub- jects as cleanliness, training of children, and pure foods, as well as religion and travel. This settlement has been doing a great work in the interests of temper- ance. Boys and girls, men and women are enrolled in the temperance societies, and are trying to limit the sale of liquors, which are now found in every grocery store. Addresses on temperance are given before the 120 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA societies, and posters in the interest of temperance have been set up by them. In every club at the Set- tlement, the Bible is given a prominent place. Settlement work is of incalculable value to the peo- ple of the cities and to the Christian Church. The missionaries are anxious to increase it, and the Church at home must recognize the need and make it possible for this work to be extended. Orphanages. The George O. Robinson Orphanage of San Juan is ideally located in large grounds near the ocean. The girls are trained in all 'kinds of house- work, together with the regular school branches. The Orphanage has not yet been in existence fifteen years, but it shows results that warrant its continuance. Not only has there been satisfaction in being able to care for neglected little children, but there has been the joy of seeing some of these children develop into beautiful, useful womanhood. Medical Work. Dr. Ashford of the army medical corps compares the proportion of people in the United States and Porto Rico who are able to pay for medical attendance. In the United States the ten per cent who are not able to pay are largely cared for by or- ganized charity. On the other hand but ten per cent of the Porto Ricans are able to pay for the care, and as there is not a well organized system of charity the State and individuals must look after the sick. The first Presbyterian missionary to reach Porto Rico asked his Mission Board for a doctor, for the over- crowding, lack of knowledge of sanitation, and preva- lence of anemia were things with which a clergyman OUR NEW POSSESSION 121 could hardly deal. The Woman's Board of Home Missions of that denomination responded by sending the first medical missionary, a young woman, Dr. Grace Atkins. Before her office in San Juan was in order or her drugs unpacked, patients began to arrive. When she had been but six weeks on the island and was still almost ignorant of the language, she was receiving as many as twenty patients a day and visit- ing many more in their homes. Dr. Atkins found that her work could not have the best results both be- cause the people were too ignorant to carry out her directions, and because the homes were lacking any of the comforts needed by the sick. She returned to the States and persuaded the women of her de- nomination to undertake the building of a hos- pital. Santurce, the home of the Methodist Orphanage and the Blanche Kellogg Institute, was selected as a site for the buildings known now all over the island as the Presbyterian Hospital. The frame buildings orig- inally erected have already suffered the ravages of winds, rains, and insects, and are soon to be replaced by a substantial and beautiful concrete hospital build- ing. The physicians treated 6,000 patients in 1907 and almost 25,000 in 1915, while 600 operations were performed. A great work of this hospital has been the training of Porto Rican girls as nurses. The graduates have begun a most necessary work on the island, some do- ing private nursing, while others have been engaged by churches or districts for work among the poor. 122 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA Their knowledge of people, language, and conditions has been a great asset in undertaking the work. In addition to the nurses, there is at the hospital a missionary who gives all her time to religious work. She opens the clinic with a brief service and as she aids the nurse in the distribution of medicines she uses the opportunity to give spiritual help. That this work is needed was shown by the answer to a question asked at one of the clinics of the forty patients who had gath- ered. They were questioned as to how many had ever been in a Protestant or in a Catholic church. Two of the number had been in the former, and four in the latter. Through the work of the Christian staff of the hospital many have found the Saviour and been brought into the churches of their neighborhoods on their return home. The Congregationalists have a skilled medical missionary who holds clinics in three large centers. The first unit of a new hospital is being erected at Humacao and will be ready for use soon. Sick peo- ple come in from miles around for medical treatment, over 14,500 cases having been cared for during the past year, as many as 170 in one day, the doctor giv- ing all the medicine himself and putting up as many as 10,000 bottles of medicine a year. The gift of a new Ford machine enables the medical missionary to reach his remote clinics much more ex- peditiously than heretofore. With the new hospital he will operate on hundreds of cases of physical blind- ness and through this work there will be an opportu- nity to open the eyes of those who are spiritually blind. OUR NEW POSSESSION 123 One of the women missionaries with the help of a young Porto Rican woman cares for the personal re- ligious work at the Humacao clinic. The native helper reads the Bible passages, gives a little talk, and offers prayer; then a hymn is sung and tracts and other religious reading matter are distributed. St. Luke's, under the Episcopal Church, at Ponce, is another hospital that is meeting the needs of people on the southern side of the island. Other denomina- tional hospitals are in operation at various points, and just as with the settlement and evangelistic work, their usefulness is limited only by lack of workers and equipment. THE SYMBOL OF LIBERTY A young man who was in Porto Rico before the Spanish had entirely withdrawn, wrote home : " The Spanish soldiers are embarking in large numbers and will soon all be homeward bound. Then we expect to celebrate ! We will have a flag raising and make it a day the Porto Ricans will remember. Most of the Porto Ricans have flags but they are afraid of show- ing them." The people did not know what that new flag was to mean to them, but as they belonged to a new country and had no love for the old, it was the part of wisdom to possess the new flag. Whether they were to have a new form of government or a new religion, they did not know. The flag has been the means of bringing blessings of which the Porto Ricans never dreamed: there are 124 OLD SPAIN IN NEW 'AMERICA schools for all children; there are hospitals to care for the sick; there are churches inviting the weary and heavy laden to come and find rest; there is a Book of which they never knew, a Book that has brought com- fort and joy to thousands of people on the island ; there are ministers and evangelists, Bible readers and teachers, nurses and deaconesses, doctors and visitors, all of whom have come through the unfurling of the flag. The Church has by no means completed her work in Porto Rico. She has just arrived at the point of greatest opportunity. She must concentrate her ef- forts on the social and evangelistic work, reaching the thousands who have been so far passed by while their more fortunate neighbors have been offered the bless- ings of the Gospel. She must seek those who have re- fused, the careless and indifferent, and win them to the truth. Above all she must train the young, that there may be an adequate force to carry the Word to every valley and village and give to all the people of this beautiful little island new life, new hopes, and new aspirations. VI A NEW ERA " Our schools have done a great work in New Mexico and they still have a great service to render. Were they with- drawn, the cause of progress would suffer a serious drawback. The task that has been assigned us is a great one to loose the shackles of ignorance and superstition that have bound a race, and set them on the pathway of progress and useful- ness; to train a generation for citizenship and cultivate in them the virtues of temperance, truthfulness, and social purity; to place the cause of education on a permanent basis of effi- ciency unfettered by ecclesiastical control; to aid in the up- building of a great, prosperous, progressive state ; to promote a religion that walks hand in hand with morality and intelli- gence such is our mission and purpose, and we must not falter nor fail until it be accomplished." REV. J. H. HEALD, D.D. " O, Church of the Living God, come to the rescue and give to the poor Lazarus that God has placed within our gates, yes, at our very doors, the crumbs, even the crumbs, that are fall- ing from your tables. Then, when this ransomed people come with gladness unto Zion thou shalt joy to hear the valleys and the hills break forth before them into singing. Thou shalt join the raptured strain, exulting that the Lord, Jehovah, God Omnipotent doth reign over all the earth." VI A NEW ERA IT is desirable to summarize briefly the work among our Spanish speaking peoples as a whole. They are scattered over a large territory touching the Pacific Ocean on the west, Mexico on the south, and reaching far out into the Atlantic and number about three and a half millions of people. These people, with the ex- ception of the Cubans, are a part of our own country, though many of them born under the flag are in ig- norance of the vital principles of a free government. Where the Gospel has penetrated there has come light and understanding; where it has been withheld there has been no change from the former degradation and decay. MISSIONARY WORK AMONG SPANISH SPEAKING PEOPLES Evangelistic Results. In all the regions where mis- sionaries are working among the Spanish speaking people there has been evinced a great readiness to hear the Gospel preached. Children in the Sunday schools, young people in their organizations, and old and young in the churches have responded with eager- ness to the invitation that has been offered. That the net result in church members is no greater is due only 127 128 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA to the fact that the missionary force is not large enough to touch more than a part of the field. Bible readers have proven to be a great help to the evangelistic work. Going from home to home, they have the opportunity not only of leaving portions of the Scriptures and reading them to the people, but of being able to come into close touch with family life, to receive the confidence of the people, and to help them to improve their surroundings. Educational Results. The percentage of illiteracy has been greatly reduced in all the fields, in large part due to the work of the government of course, but the Protestant Church through its missionaries has always encouraged education, and supplemented the work of the authorities. Wherever the public school is of good standard, the Church withdraws its mission school, concentrating its efforts on more needy points. The boarding schools have been of the greatest value in carrying on the work of the Church, for in them are gathered and trained the young men and women who go to higher institutions for special training or return to do school or community work for their own people. Medical and Social Work. The Church has not felt it necessary to open medical work in Cuba, for the general physical condition of the people is good, and the Cuban government cares for hospital work in a satisfactory manner. In Porto Rico, however, the medical mission has been a great aid to evangelistic work. That it has been appreciated by the people has been demonstrated hundreds of times. A man visited the hospital at San Juan recently asking for a bed for A NEW ERA 129 his sick child, only to find there was no place for him. Again he asked if there was a place in the private building for his brother, who was very ill. There was no place there, and the attendant told him of the pros- pect of a new plant from which it was hoped it would not be necessary to turn people away. His answer was : " Well, if you have a hospital containing two hundred beds they will always be full, and there will be lots of people waiting for beds yet." To the medical mission must be given the credit of carrying the Gospel of healing into the most hope- lessly poverty-stricken homes. The government has wrought wonders in banishing yellow fever and other tropical scourges from the islands and the isthmus, but the Protestant medical missionary has sought out the poor in their homes, has opened hospitals and clinics for those who were financially unable to secure treat- ment elsewhere, has taught them to observe sanitary laws, and above all has pointed them to the Great Physician who heals both body and soul. During the past year one denomination made a be- ginning of medical missionary work in the Southwest. The " Brooklyn Hospital " at Embudo, New Mexico, with its ten beds under the care of a missionary nurse, will be a blessing to many sick. A building for dis- pensary use has been added to one of the missions, where a teacher who has been on the field for years will be able to care for the sick who come to her for every need. A district nurse has been added in an- other mission. In addition to the work of the nurses, one mission- 130 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA ary doctor has been sent to New Mexico. It has been deemed best to have him locate at some distance from the nurses who are ministering to the people, and he has been stationed in a field which will include a popu- lation of two thousand in fourteen plazas. This has been named the " Rincones Medical Station." The doctor has been provided with an automobile in order that he may extend his field of usefulness. He is fif- teen miles from the " Brooklyn Hospital " and twenty- five miles from the nearest doctor. Social work as undertaken by the Church has filled an important place among missionary activities. Wherever schools have been closed there has remained the opportunity to carry on a much needed work in the homes. This is being done through institutions like the Blanche Kellogg Institute in Porto Rico, in crowded city communities, and in the lonely little Mexi- can plazas. The missionaries work largely with the children, but reach the homes through the children and exert their energies to improve home conditions. They lead sewing and cooking classes for mothers as well as daughters, plan wholesome social diversions for the young, provide a home that is ever open for the peo- ple who wish to enter it and a model for those who are inspired to make their own homes better. The workers perform the duties of doctors, nurses, dentists, seam- stresses, or any other work they are called upon to do. GENERAL RESULTS ^ Awakened Peoples. Among the Mexican people in earlier years there was a dulness, an indifference, MODERN MISSION SCHOOL IN THE SOUTHWEST DAY NURSERY IN PORTO Rico A NEW ERA 131 an acceptance of what came, without any attempt to better conditions. The same qualities have existed to a greater or less degree among the other Spanish speaking peoples. They have been somewhat roused from this apathy, and today instead of basking in the sunshine and leaving the duties of today for a more auspicious tomorrow, great numbers of these people have been awakened by education and religion to the desire to make themselves more efficient men and women. The numbers of professional and trades peo- ple who have graduated from our schools are a proof of this statement. Life has attained a definite pur- pose where it had been colorless. The war in Mexico with all its horror, ruin, and bloodshed, has been a powerful factor in rousing the Mexicans in America to a realization of what it means to belong to this country. The young men and women who have lived so long under our institutions without becoming in reality a part of our national life, cannot help con- trasting their condition with that of those of their blood on the other side of the line. In Colorado and New Mexico they are calling themselves no longer Mexicans, but Americans, with all the pride and sense of responsibility of citizenship. A Christian Sabbath. Protestant missions have given to Spanish America a truly Christian Sabbath. The old Sabbath meant mass in the morning and the rest of the day spent in sports, bull-fighting, cock- fighting, gambling, and drinking. Usually the laborers devoted Monday to recovering from Sunday's debauch. Wherever a Protestant congregation has been formed, 132 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA there the Christian Sabbath is observed, and its influ- ence is rapidly modifying the character of the Romish Sabbath. Family prayer was quite unknown among the Spanish-Americans before the advent of the Protes- tant Church. A young lady from a prominent Roman Catholic family in Porto Rico went for a short visit to the home of a Protestant missionary. After breakfast they had family prayers, and when they rose from their knees the young lady turned to the missionary, and with tears in her eyes said, "You have a beautiful custom in your home." Later the missionary dined with her people, and as they gath- ered at the table the mother said to him, " Anita tells me you are accustomed to ask a blessing at the table ; will you do it here?" So little by little the influence of the missionaries is gaining in the homes, cleanliness and godliness going hand in hand and transforming the home life. Comity. There has been a great gain to the home Church through these Spanish-American missions in the growth of the spirit of comity among the different missionary organizations. In Cuba and Porto Rico there has been a fair division of the field among these groups, and for the most part there is an honest keep- ing of the compact. Human nature causes discord now and then, but the spirit of comity is growing. A closer cooperation in education, in training schools, and in publications indicates the approach of the day when all will work in perfect harmony and waste will be eliminated. The aim set by the Panama Confer- A NEW ERA 133 ence of 1916 pointed toward the withdrawal of some denominations from Cuba and Porto Rico, and the elimination of distinctive denominational emphasis, leading to the use of the general name of the " Evan- gelical Church." This aim may not be realized, but it is a step toward the unity that is so desirable among Spanish-Americans. In the southwest of the United States there is an Interdenominational Council that meets once a year to take up and consider all questions that have to do with the work among the Mexicans in the United States. There are snags in the stream and there are differ- ences of opinion, but the end is being gained. LARGER AIMS FOR THE FUTURE A Better Understanding of the Spanish- Americans. There is needed a better understanding of the Span- ish-American people. The assumption of undoubted superiority in intellect and morals on the part of the Saxon has been a constant barrier to a better under- standing and closer relation between the two races. Few Saxons ever get into either the mind or heart of the Latins. The assumption of racial superiority has often led to a degrading patronage, and the very men who should stand erect in the presence of God and men, who should radiate the spirit of freedom and independence have been pauperized. For keenness of intellect, for energy and courage, the men who pushed out into the unknown, crossed hitherto untravelled seas, found a new world, burned their ships that there might be no possibility of retreat, 134 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA and then with their handful conquered that world, need fear comparison with no race that lives or has lived. A leader in Latin America must acquire the faculty of seeing things from the Latin point of view. Just here is where the Saxon missionaries have failed. Lat- ins and Saxons do not see things through the same eyes. One great mistake made in mission work among both Latins and Orientals is the insistence that they con- form to our way of thinking and seeing. Their think- ing men are keen students of philosophy and keep abreast of the developments of science, and it is use- less to get them to come down to what may be termed "pious patter." Dr. George Knox said of the mis- sionary to Oriental lands: "If the missionary is to succeed, to aid in making the new civilization Chris- tian, he must have a threefold training: first, he must intelligently and sympathetically enter into the spirit of the modern scientific world; second, he must under- stand the civilization of the land to which he goes ; third, he must disentangle the essential truths of Chris- tianity and Occidental forms and accidental accre- tions." The Latin mind is essentially Oriental, and what Dr. Knox has said applies with equal force to Latin America. To know the mind of God is the first re- quisite of the missionary, but next to that must come a knowledge of the mind of the people over whom he shall be placed by the Holy Spirit. Need of a Better Knowledge of Spanish. One of the great needs of missionary workers among Latin A NEW ERA 135 Americans is a better knowledge of the Spanish lan- guage and its literature. This is as necessary in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Southwest as in South America, and it has been an unfortunate fact that many who have undertaken work in American parishes which has brought them into contact with Spanish speaking peo- ple have made no effort to learn the language. There are those who have ministered year after year to a handful of Americans and who are surrounded by far greater numbers of Mexicans who know not the Christ, and yet, with the tremendous opportunity presented to them, have made no effort to learn the language that would make it possible for them to save those who are dying in ignorance. In the day when business men in all parts of the country are exerting themselves to ac- quire Spanish for commercial purposes, should not the religious worker who will be able to touch the spiritual nature of these people make a like effort? The translations of Scripture and hymns into Span- ish have received severe criticism from those who work among Spanish-Americans, on the ground that they are of no literary value, and cannot appeal to edu- cated people. As well as a better knowledge of the Spanish lan- guage, there is needed a better knowledge of Spanish history in the New World. To understand the Mexi- can, the Porto Rican, and the Cuban, his historical background must be appreciated, for the history of his people has greatly affected him personally. Better Knowledge of Mexicans in United States. The people of America are more ignorant of the 136 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA needs and conditions of the Mexicans in the United States than of the people of any other part of the globe. When the great Christian Endeavor conven- tion met in Los Angeles in the midst of thousands of Mexicans, representatives of various nations were called upon to rise and show their numbers ; the leader had to be reminded of the Mexican people, and was amazed at their numbers when he called upon them, saying he had not expected to find them in attendance. A conference on work among the immigrants was called in the same city, and in spite of their being 40,000 strong in Los Angeles, Mexicans had not been included in the list of immigrants who were to be con- sidered. In the same region the recent Laymen's Missionary Convention had no place on its program for the consideration of the varied needs of this peo- pie. Some day the story of the great Southwest will be heard; the story of the heroism and sacrifices of the Franciscans, their great work for the natives, and the reason why their work did not abide; the story of a patient and uncomplaining people, little understood, but capable of great things. One who has had their interests at heart for years has said " Were I a younger man I would make the world hear that story, and arouse the Church to a sense of the wonderful oppor- tunity we now have of doing the greatest missionary work of the century." Leaders of Their Own People. The leaders of Spanish America must come from their own race and be of their own thought and speech. Steiner says, A NEW ERA 137 " Blood is thicker than water, but language is thicke'r than blood." No alien can get into the most intimate life of the Latins, but the alien in blood may be so bound to them by spiritual and sympathetic ties as to be helpful in the development of a leadership from among their own people. To do this he must meet them in the spirit of brotherhood and service, not lordship. The object of our mission is not to get them to follow us, but to train them to lead others to Christ. Little progress can be made in spiritual development except through leaders who can enter into the secret place of their life and character. That it is possible to train young men for the re- ligious leadership of their people has been proved in individual cases on all the fields. In New Mexico young men trained in the mission schools have been wonderfully successful in leading others of their peo- ple to accept the Saviour. The past winter the prin- cipal of one of the New Mexico schools wrote of the work accomplished by two of their graduates with ad- miration : " Last year and this our evangelistic meetings have been conducted by two of our former pupils. As a result of the ten days of meetings with the earnest gospel messages, twelve have united with the church and forty-four have confessed faith in Christ. Most of these are from homes of early mis- sion school pupils. I have many friends in the min- istry and two brothers, but do not know any in whom I have more confidence and for whom I have greater love than these two young men, now evangelists to 138 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA their own people. I am more convinced than ever be- fore that the way to lead the Spanish-Americans to a knowledge of the Christ is through the mission schools, and through these splendid Christian workers who are developed in them." Educational Work. That educational work for the Spanish speaking people is far from satisfactory must be confessed by all. The splendid public school sys- tem of Porto Rico has relieved the missionaries of the need of dealing with the matter of secondary edu- cation, but there is still need of better training of leaders for work as pastors, teachers, Bible readers, and visitors. Such a work undertaken interdenomi- nationally to a greater extent than is now done would greatly multiply results among the people. In Cuba and New Mexico the education of those in cities and large towns is well provided for by the authorities, but the children in smaller places suffer from inade- quate school facilities. Neither do public schools give the religious and moral training that the children of these people do not get in their homes, so the educa- tional work of the government must be supplemented by the mission work in order that the highest needs of the children may be met. Cuba particularly stands in need of far greater missionary effort along the lines of education. M ore Work for the Homes. Throughout the mis- sion fields workers are found using their utmost strength in their endeavors to raise the standards of family life. Home has seldom been a pleasant place, and family relations have not been held sacred. Mis- A NEW ERA 139 sionaries who have been engaged in teaching have been able to improve conditions to a great extent, but if the home, the citadel of family life, is to be permanently strengthened there must be more Bible women, more district nurses, and more settlement workers whose primary duty it is to go into the homes. It is a most important work that women be taught to make home attractive to the men and children of the family, for to the average Spanish-American home is the place where he occasionally eats and sleeps. A real home would tend to make husbands more faithful and woman's lot brighter. There are occasional homes that are worthy of the name the homes of women who have been trained in mission schools. When these are more numerous a great impulse will be given to all missionary work. Extension of Medical Work. Medical missions in Porto Rico have been the pride of the Church. In Cuba, as has been stated, there has been no great need of these. The Southwest, with its vast regions with- out any medical attendance except that given by the few scattered teachers, must appeal to all as a needy field for this branch of missionary work. Far more medical work is needed in Porto Rico than is carried on today by the churches, and the need of an extension of this ministry in the Southwest is im- perative. There is now one medical missionary, and there are hundreds of lonely little plazas without any medical assistance. It is not fair to the missionaries who go to this region to teach and preach that they should be compelled, in addition to their other duties, 140 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA to bear the burden of caring for those who are desper- ately sick. No field at home or abroad is in greater need of doctors and nurses than this Southwest region. OPPORTUNITY GOD'S CALL TO ACTION The Call to Cuba and Porto Rico Answered. When Cuba and Porto Rico entered into their present relations with the United States, the churches of the country did not doubt that a call had come to them, and in a reverent and statesman-like way planned a definite method of facing the problems confronting them on the new fields. Though the work has been limited to a great degree by the small number engaged in it, there has been satisfaction over the results at- tained. These islands are situated between the two Americas, and stand in a direct line of travel between the Canal Zone and European trade. Their location is strategic from a commercial point of view, and with the results of missionary work, they will be strategi- cally located from a religious point of view. The home mission work accomplished in these islands is destined to be a great foreign mission asset. Edward A. Odell of Porto Rico speaks of the hopes and the immediate needs of the island of Porto Rico in these words: " As the Porto Rican is looking forward to the time when he will have entire control of his own govern- ment, just so the native church is looking forward to the time when she will be able to support herself and indeed be able to pass the gospel along to the south. But this day must be necessarily delayed if, when mis- sions are opened and the work is prospering, we are A NEW ERA 141 forced to retrench because our ranks, depleted by sick- ness, cannot be filled by men able and willing to bear the burden if burden it be. I could tell you of some of the Porto Ricans who, mindful of the sacrifice made by the church for their country, are now nobly giving their services to this work. Let the peculiar, unique, and immediate need of this island speak now, and do not falter in stretching forth the hand to sow while the soil is waiting for the seed." Home Missions Our Defense. Americans have al- ways believed in the gospel of preparedness. Wher- ever a mining camp was opened, there was found the missionary, and there came the school teacher to pre- pare the growing community for worthy, Christian citizenship. Where the lumber-jacks penetrated the forests, there they were followed by the " sky pilot " to hold them true to Christian ideals. The frontier farmer, the immigrant settler on our wide prairies, was no sooner settled than he was sought out by the circuit-rider, that the rising generation might be so instructed as to become a defense and not a menace to society and country. Every school, every church, every family altar, every institution for helping the helpless, is a witness to the defensive power of Home Missions. No other power is adequate, no other can be trusted. A Lost Opportunity. There was a time when the markets of South America were open to the United States and to be had for the taking. When William Wheelright went to investigate the commercial possi- 142 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA bilities throughout the republics of the South he re- turned to Boston full of enthusiasm and sought to enlist American capital in his great enterprise for the development of commerce between the United States and South America, but he found no response to his appeals. That was America's opportunity and it was suffered to pass. Wheelright then went to England and there found willing listeners and returned to Chile backed by Eng- lish capital. Railroads and telegraph lines were built in Chile and the Argentine Republic, and the Pacific Steam Navigation Company was organized, a company that practically controlled the trade of both coasts from the Isthmus of Panama to Cape Horn. So strongly has British trade entrenched itself that for almost two generations America has been a poor fourth in South American commerce. There is a fine monument to William Wheelright in the plaza of Valparaiso, but it might well stand for a memorial to American folly in letting pass the great opportunity. We failed because we did not appreciate its value. Such an opportunity is again offered to us in this world's crisis to make good with Spanish America in a higher commerce. What Can We Do? America has given to the world the highest form of government known to his- tory. It is laid upon this nation to give to the world a new diplomacy, one where language will be the expres- sion of truth, where treaties will not only be sacred, but where the plighted word of a nation will be backed A NEW ERA 143 by the wealth, the power, and the lives of her people. Only thus can this great nation become a truly mighty power in the world. To reach this height of national honor we must begin with our nearest neigh- bors, the strangers within our gates. Had we done this from the beginning of our relations with South America and Mexico, the whole line of republics from the Rio Grande to the Cape would stand solidly with us against the world, if need be. But American egotism, indifference, and injustice in the past stand as a mighty barrier between us and our nearest neighbor. The Bearing on Home Missions. It may be asked, what has this to do with the question of Home Mis- sions? Everything: the half million or more of Mexi- can refugees who are now in the United States because of the war will form the nucleus around which will gather the elements for the new Mexico that is to be born ; and when that new Mexico is born there will re- main little of Old Spain. The children of the Mexican refugees are in our schools and are absorbing both the principles and spirit of our liberty, subject to law. They will never forget the horrors of the revolution, and those scenes will be contrasted, in their minds, with the peace they have en- joyed under the American flag. Many of the better class of Mexicans, for their children's sake, are taking out citizenship papers. What that means to them only those who know the Mexican's loyalty to his country and flag can appreciate. They have come to us with a bitter prejudice against all things American. In Mexi- can schools and histories the American flag is spoken 144 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA of as "La bandera odiada " (the hated banner), but here the people have found that it represents human rights for all races and nations. The people of southwest Texas have now the most serious problem with which they have ever had to deal. It consists not only of the Mexicans across the border, but the resident Mexicans, the majority of them illiter- ate and unskilled, who form more than half the popula- tion in some counties. In El Paso there are more than thirty thousand Mexicans, many of them people of cul- ture and refinement who have never known want, but who are now in destitute circumstances. Mexicans have reached California, New Mexico and Arizona also in great numbers, and both state and church are facing the problem. People of this country have been sending of their wealth across the ocean to the homeless and suffering, unmindful of the fearful need along the Mexican border. The first should be helped, but the others should not be left to perish. Some of the 320,- ooo who have come to Texas alone are converts under the Protestant missionaries in Old Mexico. Those who have heard the Gospel message know their Bibles and are wonderful examples of Christian faith and en- durance. In the history of the United States so large a num- ber has seldom come to us from one foreign country in the same length of time. All the dangers we have faced from the immigrants who have thronged Ellis Island in past years are being faced on our southern border. Unless these individuals are won by the friendliness and kindness of our people, they will be a A NEW ERA 145 great menace to our nation, but if they are reached and made to believe that we stand as brothers to help them in their destitution and misery, they will be a desirable element in our national life. Old Mexico will be more helped by missionary effort now in California, Texas, and elsewhere in the United States, than by the work of missionaries who may go across the border after the war ends. The people who become true followers of Christianity during their exile in this country will be the best missionaries to Mexico. We can today touch the Mexican life as never before. Never again will such an opportunity be given us. The Mexican must be regarded as a brother with rights as inalienable as ours. Churches for the preaching of the Gospel, in- dustrial schools to train the young people for the new duties of their changed life, and sympathetic fair treat- ment will be an intervention that will win a large place in the love and confidence of the Mexico of to-morrow, and in Latin America for all time. The Church's Problem. The problem, then, that confronts the Christian churches of America at this moment is the speedy evangelization of the million or more Mexicans in our land, and through them their countrymen across the border. The tremendous energy that was shown in exploration and in church building in the sixteenth century is not dead. It is in the tomb awaiting the voice of the Son of God. That energy, quickened by God's Spirit, can be used for the building of God's Kingdom in Latin America. John, being in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, had a wonderful vision of the things that should come to 146 OLD SPAIN IN NEW AMERICA pass. Would that we, being in the Spirit, might have a glorious vision of the New America, from the frozen north to Cape Horn, under the influence of God's Spirit, unfolding in righteousness and truth. Mexico may be redeemed and blossom as the garden of the Lord. South America with her virgin forests, with her immense fertile plains and valleys, with her mountains full of untouched wealth, with the possibilities of her people awakening from the slumber of four centuries, will develop in material wealth and power. The task of transforming the two continents into a mighty world power, standing for the right of man to be and to do the very best possible, is today in the hands of Chris- tian America. APPENDIX APPENDIX CONCERNING THE GREAT SOUTHWEST 1492 Columbus discovered the New World. 1512 Ponce de Leon discovered Florida. 1513 Balboa discovered the Pacific. 1519 Cortez conquered Mexico. 1539 Ferdinand de Soto discovered the Mississippi River. 1683 Sack of Vera Cruz. 1769 Serra reached California and founded mis- sions. 1821 Mexico freed from Spain. 1845 Texas admitted as a state. 1848 California and New Mexico ceded to United States by Mexico. POPULATION Seven states have a large Mexican population, ac- cording to the last census, and since that was taken a far greater number of Mexicans, variously estimated from 500,000 to 1,000,000 have crossed the border. These have located almost entirely in these same states. The census report (1910) is as follows: Total Mexican Population Population Texas 3,896,542 125,016 Colorado 799,024 2,603 New Mexico 327,301 11,918 Arizona 204,354 29,987 California 2,377,549 33>694 Oklahoma 1,657,155 2,744 Kansas 1,690,949 8,429 149 ISO APPENDIX Of the total population of Mexicans in the United States all but 5,412 were living in these seven states. In addition to the number who were born in Mexico there was recorded a population of 162,200 who were born of Mexican or mixed parentage. The total Mexi- can population including the foreign born and those of mixed or Mexican parentage amounted to 382,002. CUBAN FACTS 1492 Discovered by Columbus. 1508 Cuba discovered to be an island. 1511 Velasquez sent to colonize. 1524 First slaves in New World brought to Cuba. 1551 Havana became capital. 1585 Drake threatened attack. 1762 Invaded and conquered by the English. 1763 Returned to Spain by England. 1829 Uprising against Spain. 1844 Uprising against Spain. 1848 Chinese coolies taken to Cuba. 1868-1878 Ten Years' War. (Cost Spain lives of 8,000 officers, 200,000 privates and $300,000,000.) 1869 Slavery abolished by new Republic. (Total abolition, 1887.) 1895 Final war of liberation. 1898 Destruction of Maine, and interference of United States. 1902 Cuban Republic established. The trade of Cuba per capita is greater than that of any North or South American country. For 1913- 1914 it amounted to $300,951,000, of which the ex- ports amounted to $169,130,000. The population of Cuba in 1907 was 2,048,980; of whom 1,224,510 were whites, 274,272 negroes, 334,695 mulattoes, 11,837 Chinese, 203,696 foreigners. The following statistical table of results of Prot- APPENDIX R / _ N ^a Oi SJB3^ xig ^^^^^^^ ^ d^SJSqmSK K 2 ?" S S * S < mdnj poqos XEQ 10 0> W> N VO vo 10 >0 OI IO VO t^ VO 1O 1O 1 M > spoqas XBQ tx w 10 10 N * VO "Z; spdnj o o t^ co o t^ * ro N 00 10 OV jooqDS Xepung - " nT (i trt fe O <7) S[OoqDS Xspung 10 vo Ov VO CO 0\ - M 9 P^SS ^,0. N -0 fc ^ fx 1^00 vo < SJ3QtD3W 0; 10 vo^ * M_ vo vo en i ,SJS338 ifsj?-8-a PH fe suotssij^ &*; ^ ?=> ? 1 E i lennuy iacjaAy J-5-^ 10 S 5 S V) o- >J P^mmi Idllall a * *2 3" 2 " H * 3 "C ^ 2* W5 o j3 / s 8 3 rS "3 i i l|w I- I 1 III 111 152 APPENDIX estant missions in Cuba was compiled by Rev. J. Milton Greene, D.D. for the Assembly Herald. Dr. Greene stated that something should be added for the Disciples, Adventists, and Pentecostals, whose figures he had not been able to secure. The Missionary District of the Episcopal Church in- cludes Cuba and the Isle of Pines. The Board appro- priates for this support $45,189 yearly. Forty-eight stations are maintained by this church. PORTO RICAN FIGURES 1493 Columbus first landed. 1509 Ponce de Leon appointed governor. 1511 Half Spanish force slaughtered by Indians. 1533 Authorities petitioned empress against fur- ther introduction of slaves. 1595 Attacked by Sir Francis Drake. 1625 Besieged by Dutch. 1797 Besieged by English. 1837 Porto Ricans deprived of right of representa- tion in Spanish Cortes. 1868 Insurrection of Lares. 1873 31,000 slaves received freedom. 1895 Reform laws enacted. 1897 Royal decree conceding autonomy to Porto Rico signed. 1898 Became possession of United States. 1900 Modified territorial form of government for Porto Rico voted by Congress. Porto Ricans admitted to full citizenship. " A practical matter of first importance is the crea- tion of a public sentiment that shall insist upon the granting of the rights of citizenship to the Porto Ricans. The present situation is anomalous, full of friction and disastrous to the missionary as well as the other highest interests of the island. Porto Ricans will APPENDIX 153 never feel right towards Americans until Americans treat them right in this matter of citizenship." REV. HOWARD B. GROSE, D.D. (Note. Statistical report of Protestant Missions in Porto Rico and map showing boundaries of these mis- sions are given in booklet " Protestant Missions in Porto Rico." Statistics were gathered in 1911.) According to the last census the population of Porto Rico is 1,183,173. In 1915 the United States exported goods to Porto Rico to the value of $30,149,764 and imported from the same island merchandise valued at $41,950,419. The Legislature of 1915 made women eligible for membership on school boards, designated a Mothers' Day, and established a juvenile court. PROTESTANT MISSIONS TO SPANISH AMERICANS In response to a questionnaire sent out to secure in- formation regarding the work of the different denomi- nations among Spanish speaking peoples, the following facts have been secured. The results have been un- satisfactory, as some failed to give any information, in some cases the information was not definite, and in others the work of the women's boards and the men's are so united that it has been necessary to give that of the entire Church. CUBA According to the most accurate data obtainable there are now laboring in Cuba 47 ordained missionaries, 40 women missionaries, 200 native workers; there are about 200 regular and outstations, 10,000 communi- cants, 7,000 pupils enrolled in Sunday schools, 27 day schools with an enrollment of 1,600 pupils, and 4 higher institutes with an enrollment of 375. 154 APPENDIX PORTO Rico Porto Rico has about 60 ordained missionaries, 65 women missionaries, 210 native workers, 570 churches and outstations, with a total of 14,000 communicants. The Sunday schools of all denominations have an ag- gregate attendance of 13,000. There are 35 mis- sion day schools with approximately 3,000 pupils in at- tendance. The main purpose of the day schools was to cooperate with the public schools, providing for those in the cities who could not attend on account of pov- erty, or for the rural districts where there was inade- quate provision by the government. As fast as the public school system provides for the primary grades, the mission schools of like grade are being given up. The Baptist Training School at Rio Piedras, the Polytechnic Institute, interdenominational but under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, in San German, the Theological Training School at Mayaguez, carried on by the Congregationalists, United Brethren and the Presbyterians are outstanding institutions. Three orphanages, the G. O. Robinson, for girls, at San Juan, and one for boys, bearing the same name, at Hatillo, under the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Christian, for boys, near Bayamon, are providing for a class of children who, before the advent of Prot- estantism, were without hope. Three great healing institutions, St. Luke's, Epis- copal, at Ponce ; the Presbyterian, at San Juan, and the Rye Hospital at Mayaguez, are doing as great a work as has ever been known in the history of modern missions. Clinics are held at different mission sta- tions, and the fame of the healings has gone through all the island. Another hospital is being erected by Congregationalists at Humacao. Baptist, The missionary work of the Baptist So- ciety is a most important one and covers more territory APPENDIX 155 than any other in the island. They have important churches in San Juan, Rio Piedras, Ponce, Yauco, Ad- juntas, Caguas, Cayey, and many other points. Fine church buildings have been erected by all the organizations engaged in missionary work, contributing largely to the success of the missionary effort in a land where the " temple " means so much in religion. The influence of the Christian character of the con- verts is being felt in all the island, and Protestantism will soon stand an equal chance with the dominant church. It must do more ; the American ideal must take deep root in this guard of the Panama Canal. A strongly Christian population will be the best defense. IN THE SOUTHWEST In the United States proper, work is being carried on in six states, Florida, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. In Florida the Spanish speaking people are mostly Cubans, while in the other five states they are Mexicans. Methodist Episcopal, South. . In the States the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, is doing a large evangelistic work. They have 60 Mexican churches in Texas and 7 Cuban churches in Florida, with a total membership of 2,900; 27 missionaries, both men and women, are employed, 20 Mexican and 7 Cuban. There are under their care 62 Mexican and 7 Cuban Sunday schools, I boarding, 2 day, and 3 night schools with a total enrollment of 915. In medical and social work they have 17 deaconesses, I trained nurse, and 20 teachers. The work of this church among the Spanish speak- ing people began in 1881 among the Mexicans and in 1892 among the Cubans in Tampa, Florida. The mem- bership in Tampa is 300, with a Sunday school enroll- ment of 500. 156 APPENDIX Methodist Episcopal. In California the Methodist Episcopal Church is successfully carrying on three lines of mission work: Evangelistic, including regular preaching services in the streets as well as in churches, distribution of tracts, literature and Bibles ; Social, aid- ing the poor with work, clothing and food, house to house and hospital visitation, opening reading-rooms and clubs ; Industrial, cooperative laundry, employment agencies and industrial education in the Spanish-Ameri- can Institute at Gardena. There are n regular charges, 14 outstations, and 4 church buildings, with a total membership of 304. The two most important educational institutions for the Mexicans conducted by the Methodist Episcopal Church in California are the Spanish-American Insti- tute for boys, at Gardena, and the Francis De Pauw Industrial School for girls at Los Angeles. Both are well equipped and are doing a fine work. In New Mexico there is an industrial school for girls, located in Albuquerque, called The Harwood School, in recog- nition of the services of Dr. Thomas Harwood, a pioneer missionary of that church. A settlement house has been opened in El Paso, in connection with the evangelistic work in that border city with its 40,000 needy Mexicans. Another school for Spanish speak- ing girls, which was opened in Tucson, Arizona, is now housed in a commodious building of its own, and is preparing the home makers of the next generation. Presbyterian U. S. A. The Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., has work among the Mexicans in the five southwestern states. The total church membership in the five states is 1,850. They have a strong work among the young people in Colorado ; the annual Chris- tian Endeavor conventions, held continuously for nine- teen years, and constantly increasing in interest, re- veal the strong hold the evangelical faith has upon the new generation of Spanish-American citizens. APPENDIX 157 No class of mission work of this church has given better returns than the service rendered by the conse- crated teachers in the plaza schools. In Colorado and New Mexico the Presbyterians have 10 day schools with 15 teachers and an enrollment of 743 pupils. The most prominent schools under the Woman's Board of the Presbyterian Church in its work among the Mexi- cans are the Menaul Training School for boys at Albu- querque, New Mexico, the Allison-James School for girls at Santa Fe, and the Forsythe Memorial School for girls at Los Angeles. The Menaul school has a corps of 15 workers and an enrollment of 157; the Allison-James has 12 workers and an enrollment of 105 ; and the Forsythe a corps of 6 workers and an en- rollment of 50. Already men and women have gone out from the New Mexican schools who are exerting a strong influ- ence in the educational and social life of New Mexico and Colorado; and even to Old Mexico have gone pupils who are carrying the seeds of the new life and hope to that stricken land. The Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., has work at only three points in Texas : El Paso, San Antonio, and San Angelo. In the latter place there is a day school in ad- dition to the regular church service. Settlement work will be undertaken soon in El Paso and San Antonio. Presbyterian, U. S. The Presbyterian Church in the United States, or Southern Presbyterian Church, has been brought into close touch with a large Mexican population, especially in the state of Texas. They be- gan work there in 1883. A Texas-Mexican Presby- tery has been formed that includes the work in Mexico and Texas. There are more than 1,000 Mexican church members in this Presbytery. The increase of the Mexican population from 150, ooo to 400,000 in the last ten years has laid upon this, church a heavy burden in trying to meet the increasing 158 APPENDIX demands for evangelistic and educational work. A new church building in El Paso has given a new im- petus to the work in that important center. An industrial school at Kingsville, Texas, is planned to meet the needs of the great Mexican population on the border, and is destined to exert a great influence in preparing for useful citizenship the hitherto neglected youth of Mexican birth. It was opened in 1912 with 50 students and many more on the waiting list. The farm of 669 acres provides a fine field for agricultural instruction and experimental work. The work of the Presbyterian Church, U. S., in Florida, is confined to the Cubans in Ybor City and Key West. Exact statistics are not available. Congregational. The Congregational Church sur- rendered its work in Cuba to the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. In Porto Rico they have the eastern end of the island, in accordance with the comity agreement made between the different societies at the opening of the work immediately after the American occupation. The educational work at Blanche Kellogg Insti- tute, on the Military Road, in Santurce, has been dis- continued and the buildings are used for Community Settlement and Social Service. The statistics for the Congregational missions are fortunately available ; they are as follows: Ordained American Missionaries, 4; Native Workers, 7; Churches, n; Membership, 731; Benevolent Contributions, $109.42; Outstations, 38; Women Missionaries, 3 ; Teachers in Blanche Kellogg Institute, 4. An advance has been made in comity by the union of the Congregational force with the Presbyterians, Baptists, and United Brethren in maintaining an Evangelical Press. A fourth hospital is promised for the eastern end of the island as soon as plans can be perfected. This will be under denominational con- trol. APPENDIX 159 In Los Angeles the Congregationalists have, for some years, conducted an institutional work for both Ameri- cans and Mexicans ; but latterly the institutional work has been given up and the Mexican evangelistic work has been federated with that of the Presbyterians under a Presbyterian pastor, an arrangement that has proved satisfactory to all. In New Mexico they have three churches, five day schools, one very successful boarding school, the latter located at Albuquerque. The most important work of this church in the South- west is that in El Paso, where there is a flourishing church whose influence is being felt on both sides of the boundary line. Plans are being discussed for a more extended effort in the line of social activity among the dense population in " Little Chihuahua." Christian. The work of the Christian Church among the Spanish speaking people in Porto Rico is confined mostly to the southern part of the island, though they have an important work on a little strip in the north. There they have one church and an orphan asylum for boys. In the territory for which this church is responsible on the south, there are not less than 75,000 souls. For this great number they have only four missionaries. They have a church membership of 190, ten Sunday schools with an enrollment of 750, 5 organizations and a property valued at $14,000. BIBLIOGRAPHY Acosta, Joseph de Historia de Las Indias. Bancroft, H. H. History of Arizona and New Mexico. Bancroft, H. H. History of Mexico. Bourne, E. G., Ph.D. Spain in America. Brown, Hubert W. Latin America. Cappa, Padre Ricardo Derecho de Conquistar America. Carter, O. C. S. Acoma; The Cliff City of New Mexico. Craig, Robert M. Our Mexicans. Curtis, William E. Between the Andes and the Ocean. Davis, W. H. Spanish Conquest of New Mexico. Dinwiddie, William Porto Rico and Its Possibilities. Fairbanks, George R. The Spaniards in Florida. Forbes-Lindsay Cuba, Past, Present and Future. Forbes-Lindsay Porto Rico. Fornaro Carlo de Carranza and Mexico. Gutierrez de Lara, L. The Mexican People and Their Struggle for Liberty. Grose, Howard B. Advance in The Antilles. Halstead, Murat The Story of Cuba. Inman, Col. Henry The Old Santa Fe Trail. James, George Wharton In and Out of the Old Mis- sions. Lummis, Charles F. The Land of Poco Tiempo. Lummis, Charles F. Spanish Pioneers. Lowry, W. Spanish Settlements in the United States. Morris, C. Historical Tales of Porto Rico. 160 BIBLIOGRAPHY 161 Prince, L. Bradford Concise History of New Mexico. Rankin, Melinda Twenty Years Among the Mexi- cans. Read, Benjamin M. Illustrated History of New Mexico. Reed, John Insurgent Mexico. Rees, Thomas Spain's Lost Jewels. Richman, L. B. California Under Spain and Mexico. Romero, Matias Mexico and the United States. Starr, Frederick Mexico and the United States. Winton, George B. Mexico To-day. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. JUL012000 CAT. NO. 24 161 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY HI A 000713198