La Dama Azul (The Lady in Blue): Spanish Saint or Indian Demon?
Juliana Barr University of Florida
For the Georgia Workshop in Early American History and Culture, University of Georgia,
April 2008, Athens, Georgia
Please do not cite, quote, or reproduce without authors permission
1
In the 1620s, Mara de Jess de greda, a young Franciscan nun living in the hills
northeast of Madrid began experiencing trances, visions, and levitations all before the avid,
watching eyes of her convent community enthralled by both the pallor and ecstasy revealed when
her veil was pulled away from her face. Her confessor quickly spread the story that while in
these trances, the young woman had been transported in spirit to America by angels where she
appeared to Indians urging them to seek Christian conversion. She was tormented by thoughts of
those whose souls would be lost to damnation through their ignorance, and her anguish led her to
fixate on those regions of the New World where she knew missionaries of her own Franciscan
order labored. As her prayers had become more and more focused, her visions had shown her
Indians whom she seemed to know personally, could move among and converse with easily, and,
thanks to Gods revelation, could give rosaries, instruction in the Faith, and exhortations to seek
baptism. This phenomenon, she confessed, had repeated itself over 500 times between 1620 and
1631 as the young woman became a tool for Gods sacred work.1
The story of gredas spiritual journeys became more elaborate with each new telling as
it spread across Old and New Spain, culminating in the version retold in the writings of fray
Alonso de Benavides, custodio of the missions of New Mexico. Benavides traveled to Spain to
interview greda, asserted that confirmation of her claims could be found in Franciscans reports
from New Mexico, and in 1630 wrote a Memorial to the king of Spain Felipe IV. Four years
later, he revised the Memorial for pope Urban VIII, reporting that numerous tribes and thousands
of Indians in the northern provinces of New Spain had been miraculously converted by this nun,
Sor Mara de Jess de greda. Not coincidentally, this miracle secured future funding for the
1 T. D. Kendrick, T. D., Mary of greda: The Life and Legend of a Spanish Nun (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1967), 14-45.
2
missions. Spurred by heartfelt prayer, meditation, and longing to reach the many souls in remote
parts of the world who without help might be lost forever to damnation, Benavides testified that
Mara had fallen into a trance during which God showed to her the worlds heathen populations,
narrowing in particularly on the Indians of New Mexico for whom God felt a special love.
Directing her to fulfill her holy devotion, God empowered her to speak the truth of the Faith to
these Indians, making her words understood to them despite the language barrier, as she told
them to seek out the missions of Franciscans nearby who could lead them to salvation.2
Such claims would normally have gotten someone hauled before the Inquisition in
seventeenth-century Spain, but evidence of her apparitions soon came from New Spain in the
reports of missionaries who, having heard stories of greda, sought confirmation of her
miraculous journeys wherever they went across the northern provinces in and around New
Mexico. The key account used to prove the miracle of her travels came from New Mexico in
1629, and became the centerpiece of Benavides 1634 Memorial. In that year, Benavides
reported, Franciscans had met with Jumanos who had traveled from the east to request that
Spaniards visit their encampments, explaining that they made this petition because a beautiful
young woman dressed in a blue robe had appeared to them, preached in their own tongue, and
directed them to the Fathers for instruction and conversion. As the seventeenth century
progressed, other Indians in other northern regions of New Spain came forward with their own
accounts of the magical appearances of a Woman in Blue.3
2 Fray Alonso de Benavides' Revised Memorial of 1634, with Numerous Supplementary Documents
Elaborately Annotated, eds. and trans. Frederick W. Hodge, George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1945); A Harvest of Reluctant Souls: The Memorial of Fray
Alonso de Benavides, 1630, ed. Baker H. Morrow (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1996).
3 Morrow, A Harvest of Reluctant Souls, 79-85; Hammond and Rey, Fray Alonso de Benavides'
3
In the spirit of the burgeoning literature on the Virgin of Guadalupe as well as studies of
local religion and the veneration of saints in Old and New Spain, I would like to explore possible
meanings behind the apparitions of Mara de Jess de greda. It is striking to note that the
greda phenomenon was limited to the northern provinces of New Spain where it took on
great significance. From Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries to military and government officials,
all found in her story a unique foundational myth and a divine patroness for Spanish claims to
northern reaches of the empire. Sacred forces had led greda to the northern provinces, and the
miracle of her journeys gave proof and reassurance that Spaniards had arrived in a place
ordained by God. Just as the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe marked Mexico City as a
place of sacred significance, so too did gredas visions offer the first act in a process of
Christianization of the northern landscape. The viceroy who ordered the settlement of Texas
thus claimed to have been inspired to do so because as a child he had read gredas writings on
her trips to the New World. Franciscans named their missions in her honor, and her later work,
The Mystical City of God the life of the Virgin Mary as revealed to greda by the Virgin
herself (though quite controversial in Europe) appears in the inventories of mission libraries
across the northern provinces as well as the libraries of individual Spanish officials and citizens.
Many, including the well known Venerable fray Antonio de Margil and fray Junipero Serra,
Revised Memorial of 1634, 141-44; William H. Donahue, Mary of Agreda and the Southwest United States,
The Americas 9 (January 1953): 291-314; John L. Kessell, Miracles or Mystery: Mara de gredas Ministry
to the Jumano Indians of the Southwest in the 1620s, in Great Mysteries of the West, ed. Ferenc Morton Szasz
(Golden CO: Fulcrum Publishing 1993), 121-44; Nancy P. Hickerson, The Visits of the Lady in Blue: An
Episode in the History of the South Plains, 1629, Journal of Anthropological Research 46 (Spring 1990), 67-
90.
4
recorded the personal inspiration as well as doctrines and lessons for their mission work
gained from her writings.4
The timing and various versions of her apparitions, moreover, suggest that greda served
as an intermediary or transitional icon for Spaniards in the northern provinces between
sixteenth-century militant imagery of Spanish power embodied in the figure of Our Lady of the
Conquest (La Conquistadora) and the more pacific symbolism that was later ascribed to the
Virgin of Guadalupe in the eighteenth century when she became the preeminent image of a
sympathetic intercessor and advocate for the faithful (be they Spanish or Indian). The Virgin
Mary had first been the guardian of reconquest and conversion in Old Spain and was particularly
powerful as the key icon used to transform Muslim mosques into Christian churches. It was
4 Fray Fernandez de Santa Ana, for example, maintained that he and his colleagues worked in the
enlightened and exalted spirit of Venerable Mara de Jess de greda. Others recorded that they sought to
follow the footsteps of the Almighty and the Most Holy Mother through the history of the Venerable Madre
de greda. Fray Benito Fernndez de Santa Ana, Memorial of Father Benito Fernndez Concerning the
Canary Islanders, 1741, trans. Benedict Leutenegger Southwestern Historical Quarterly 82 (January 1979),
295; Juan Domingo Arricivita, Apostolic Chronicle of Juan Domingo Arricivita: The Franciscan Mission
Frontier in the Eighteenth Century in Arizona, Texas, and the Californias, 2 vols., trans. George P. Hammond
and Agapito Rey, revised trans. by Vivian A. Fisher (Berkeley, CA: Academy of American Franciscan
History, 1996), I: 70, 171, 353, 362, 364, 381, 383; Jos Antonio Pichardo, Pichardo's Treatise on the Limits
of Louisiana and Texas, 4 vols, ed, and trans. Charles Wilson Hackett (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1931-46), II: 520-21, 523; Benedict Leutenegger, trans. and Marion A. Habig, ed., The San Jos Papers: The
Primary Sources for the History of Mission San Jos y San Miguel de Aguayo from its Founding in 1720 to the
Present, 3 vols. (San Antonio: Old Spanish Missions Historical Research Library at San Jos Mission, 1978-
1983), I: 238; Eleanor B. Adams and France V. Scholes, Books in New Mexico, 1598-1680, New Mexico
Historical Review 17 (July 1942), 226-70; Steven W. Hackel, Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint
Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of Carolina
Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2005), 133-34; Palus Life of Fray Junperro
Serra, trans. Maynard J. Geiger (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1955), 110-
112, 125.
5
certainly no coincidence that when Hernn Corts invaded Mexico he did so carrying with him
statues and banners of Nuestra Seora de Remedios, that became known as Americas first La
Conquistadora, with which he replaced native icons with those of the Virgin Mary from
Cozumel to Tenochtitln. But official imperial policy changed from one of conquest to one of
pacification in 1573 with the Royal Order for New Discoveries. In turn, as missionaries
replaced conquistadores at the head of new expeditions in the seventeenth century, they found
that they would have to remake religious imagery in the spirit of the more peaceful approach
now mandated by the Church and Crown.5
Thus timing is everything when we seek an understanding of the greda stories which
are all from the seventeenth century. On the Spanish side of the equation is the tendency to view
her tales of bilocation as harbinger of the later missionary-driven, pacific Spanish policy, which
5 It was not until 1754 that the pope recognized the Virgin of Guadalupe as the official patroness of
New Spain, and it is interesting to note that Spanish references to the legend of greda seemed to disappear
during the same period that the cult of Guadalupe spread beyond Mexico and became well established in
the northern provinces. The crowns 1573 Order for New Discoveries prohibited violent conquest and instead
promoted the pacification of Indian lands with missionaries at the head of exploration and settlement. Amy
G. Remensnyder, The Colonization of Sacred Architecture: The Virgin Mary, Mosques, and Temples in
Medieval Spain and Early Sixteenth-Century Mexico, in Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religious
Expressions and Social Meaning in the Middle Ages, ed. Sharon Farmer and Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2000), 189-210; D. A. Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image
and Tradition Across Five Centuries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Timothy Matovina,
Guadalupe and Her Faithful: Latino Catholics in San Antonio, from Colonial Origins to the Present
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Stafford Poole, Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and
Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531-1797 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995); William B.
Taylor, The Virgin of Guadalupe in New Spain: An Inquiry into the Social History of Marian Devotion,
American Ethnologist 14 (1987), 9-33; Angelico Chavez, La Conquistadora: The Autobiography of an Ancient
Statue (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1975); J. Manuel Espinosa, The Virgin of the Reconquest of New Mexico,
Mid-America 18 (April 1936), 79-87.
6
frames her apparitions within the context of religious conversion. Yet the stories about her from
the American side of the Atlantic cannot be viewed outside the genealogy of encounters that
preceded them and provided the context for both Spanish deployment and Indian interpretation
of religions iconography across the north. In these worlds, too much violence had already taken
place in the sixteenth century (and continued to take place in the seventeenth century) under the
watchful gaze of Spanish deities emblazoned on banners, statues, and statues. Christian images
were not seen, interpreted, and used by Indians as part of an exchange or dialogue about religious
faith. Rather, within the context of Spanish slave raiding and invasion, gredas apparitions
were enmeshed in associations with militarization and violent conquest. As such, greda
appears to have been inseparable to Indian observers from the pantheon of Spanish images of the
Virgin her female gender and blue robe made the two figures indistinguishable.
One challenge in seeking an understanding of Indian interpretations of stories of greda
is the oft-made mistake of viewing the cross-cultural moments involving the woman in blue in
terms of a first encounter. Part of that belief stems from the legend itself, as it is crucial to the
miraculous nature of gredas apparitions that she made contact with Indians who had never
before met Spaniards. Thus they could know nothing of Christianity, so that when they later
gave testimony and description of Christian ritual and practice to missionaries who inquired
about her visits, that new knowledge served as proof of gredas prior visitations. No one else
but she could be the source of their information. A second problem arises from the persistent
notion that Indian peoples across the northern provinces lived in isolation from one another, so
that if they were distant from an area of Spanish invasion and expansion, then they remained in
ignorance of them blissful ignorance that lasted until Spanish expeditions first entered their
own lands. Yet just as Spaniards gained information about the northern lands and peoples from
7
the accounts of Cabeza de Vaca, fray Marcos de Niza, Francisco Vsquez de Coronado, and
many others, so too did communication networks carry news and reports about Spaniards over
the vast distances of long-existent native highways and thoroughfares. Indeed, one of the most
striking points made by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century expedition narratives is the speed
with which news traveled across the landscape in advance of the Spaniards, so that, for example,
one arm of the Coronado expedition, sent north along the gulf of California, heard native reports
of their fellow soldiers deeds in New Mexico long before they ever rejoined forces.6
So, what had past encounters with Spaniards in the sixteenth century taught Indian
peoples of the northern provinces about the invaders, so that it framed understandings of
gredas apparitions in the seventeenth century? In striking similarity to the initial invasion of
Mexico, the men whom Indians met carrying religious icons and images remained primarily
those of the military for the first one hundred years of contact across the northern provinces
men who came seeking wealth, in mineral or human (enslaved) form, and were quite willing to
resort to violence to achieve it. Even if stories reached Indians of missionary efforts taking place
further south, they had no reason to associate the religious emblems of Franciscans and Jesuits
with peaceful exchange as both orders worked hand in hand with mining, ranching, and
agricultural encomienda systems in Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya, Nuevo Len, Coahuila, and
Sinaloa, to coerce Indian labor and souls simultaneously.
6 J. Charles Kelley, Juan Sabeata and Diffusion in Aboriginal Texas, American Anthropologist 57
(October 1955), 981-95; Carroll L. Riley, Early Spanish-Indian Communication in the Greater Southwest,
New Mexico Historical Review 46 (October 1971), 285-314; Carroll L. Riley, The Frontier People: The
Greater Southwest in the Protohistoric Period, rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987);
Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539-1542, ed. and trans. Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint
(Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005).
8
Yet, in contrast to Corts and his contemporaries, Spaniards traveling to the northern
provinces appeared to assign different icons to different kinds of exchange and did not initially
attempt to destroy native icons or to replace them with Christian ones. Iconoclasty would await
the establishment of permanent missions in the mid-seventeenth century. As a result, Indians did
not associate the Spaniards spiritual icons and statues with religious conversion but rather with
trade, diplomacy, and, as will become clear, warfare. This did not mean, however, that they
failed to recognize that Spaniards imbued such icons with supernatural power. The critical
distinctions they marked across a range of icons came from observing Spanish custom and
behavior that accompanied their appearance. Like native amulets, some objects for instance
crosses and rosaries appeared to be bearers of divine forces that Spaniards might share with
Indians in gift and trade exchange. In contrast, the banners, statues and paintings of Christ, the
saints, and especially the ubiquitous Virgin Mary were figurative embodiments of Spanish
deities who made appearances only in times of violence and war directing and overseeing
Spaniards in battle.7
Such distinctions began simply enough, perhaps as early as the 1530s when Indians
sought to make lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca and his three castaway companions into healers.
Believing the foreigners to possess power, like all things that exist, be they rocks, trees, or
persons, Indians compelled Cabeza de Vaca and the three others who they came to refer to as
people from the sky or children of the sun to heal the sick, first by merely blowing on the
afflicted. But as word of their ability to perform prodigies and miracles spread, the men added
their own prayers and the sign of the cross, endowing the sign itself with power, and Indians
7 For comparisons to Mexico, see Serge Gruzinski, Images at War: Mexico from Columbus to Blade
Runner (1492-2019), trans. Heather MacLean (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
9
responded, demanding the sign of the cross to be made over them. Though another Narvez
expedition chronicler, Gonzalo Fernndez de Oviedo y Valds, and to some degree Cabeza de
Vaca himself attributed the appellation, children of the sun, to native belief that the Spaniards
were gods who inspired spiritual devotion, it seems clear from the context that either some
natives believed the men had come down from the sky not descended from heaven because
the sky was the origin of anything strange or inexplicable, or they invented the persona in order
to impress or inspire fear in a neighboring people. It was their origin unknown rather than the
supposedly self-evident superiority of European civilization or Christian faith that imbued
Spaniards and their crosses with supernatural qualities.8
As expeditions traveled through the north in increasing numbers, crosses began to litter
native highways and thoroughfares, sharing space with wayside shrines built by Indians; both
kinds left on hill tops or spaced so that each could be seen from the vantage point of the last one,
the distance representing a days travel. Just as Spaniards left crosses along roads as route
makers as well as emblems of divine protection, so too had Pueblos, for example, long set up
stone markers decorated with feathers and painted sticks midway between pueblos. In the first
half of the sixteenth-century, Spaniards also used crosses as a form of communication with other
Spaniards or as a signal of formal possession for other Europeans. In 1539, for instance, fray
Marcos de Niza went north in search of the seven cities of Cbola with lvar Nez Cabeza de
Vacas former companion Esteban de Dorantes, and the two men sent crosses to one another as a
form of code, the size of the cross communicating the import of discoveries. The following year,
Coronado and his officers left letters at the site of crosses for trailing units of their expedition to
8 Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and
the Expedition of Pnfilo de Narvez, 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), I: 251-65, II: 297-
300, 351-58.
10
find as they converged on designated locations. The efficacy of such diplomatic signaling fit
well into Indian forms of political communication, and they had no reason as yet to associate
crosses with claims of imperial rule. Spaniards unknowingly echoed native systems by which
parties announced their presence by sending diplomatic objects ahead to the settlement or
encampment to which they traveled. Thus, Melchor Diaz, who led some of the forces of the
Coronado expedition, found he could send a cross ahead to an Indian community with whom he
hoped to lodge as a sign of his coming and as a means of securing welcome. Increasingly, then,
Spaniards utilized crosses to announce the identity, diplomatic intent, and passage of their
expeditions, recording, as did one commander, that Some crosses were left on the trees for the
Indians as a sign, and on them some leaves of tobacco were hung, in order that, coming to
reconnoiter, they would see that we were Spaniards.9
As Spanish and Indian political ritual came together, new forms of meaningful exchange
associated with crosses developed quickly. If an Indian village offered Spaniards food, the
visitors erected a cross, seemingly in reciprocal trade. Indians might then scatter feathers and
pinole at the base of the cross in confirmation of the pact. Some Indian groups incorporated
crosses further into their political sign language. They might make the sign of the cross with
their hands as a form of peaceful greeting and paint or wear crosses of colored sticks on their
9 It also seems likely that Esteban lost his life when he sent the wrong message to the city of Cbola
(the Zuni pueblos) in 1539 by sending ahead a gourd that he had used as passport of other regions of the north
with success but that, to the Zuni Pueblos, may have suggested an enemy identity or hostile intent. Documents
of the Coronado Expedition, ed. Flint and Flint, 40, 48, 65, 68-76, 121, 198-200, 204, 235; The Rediscovery of
New Mexico, ed. and trans. Hammond and Rey, 220; Cliz, Diary of the Alarcn Expedition into Texas, 51.
For discussion of the appropriation of Christian icons and expression in another region of northern Mexico, see
Cynthia Radding, Crosses, Caves, and Matachinis: Divergent Appropriations of Catholic Discourse in
Northwestern New Spain, The Americas 55 (October 1998), 177-203.
11
foreheads (in place of shells or other decorations they might use with other native groups). With
such markers they identified themselves to Spaniards as friend, ally, or, at minimum,
someone without hostile intent. As time passed, Indians erected structures at way stations along
trails when news reached them of approaching Spaniards building decorative arches and
crosses surrounding a ramada which would serve as a place of gift and food exchange as well as
temporary lodging for the visitors.10
The use of crosses as a form of passport and token of peace took on even greater meaning
in the wake of hostile encounters. When Spaniards found only abandoned villages or saw the
backs of Indians fleeing at their approach in fear of Spanish raids, crosses became amulets of
protection against other Spaniards. Part of the problem was that, perhaps unknowingly,
expeditions sent mixed messages of intent. As early as 1539 when fray Marcos de Niza went
north to Cbola with Esteban, they traveled with Indians who had been among the victims of
Nuo de Guzmns slaving operations. So too did the expeditions of Francisco Snchez
Chamsuscado, Antonio de Espejo, and Gaspar de Castao de Sosa carry enslaved Indians back to
their own communities. Spaniards employed the captive Indians in hopes that they could serve
as interpreters and thus aid their overtures to northern Indian groups, but the captives enslaved
status could not help but convey an implicit threat of potential violence. Therefore Spanish
10 Documents of the Coronado Expedition, ed. Flint and Flint, 66, 68-76, 121, 124, 186-205, 235,
256, 305, 407, 516, 627n.71, 678n.297; The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580-1594: The Explorations of
Chamuscado, Espejo, Castao de Sosa, Morelete, and Leyva de Bonilla and Humaa, ed. and trans. George P.
Hammond and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1966), 84, 190-91, 197, 217,
220, 226, 227; Don Juan de Oate, Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595-1628, 2 vols., eds. and trans. George P.
Hammond and Agapito Rey (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953), II: 1015. For discussion
of the appropriation of Christian icons and expression in another region of northern Mexico, see Cynthia
Radding, Crosses, Caves, and Matachinis: Divergent Appropriations of Catholic Discourse in Northwestern
New Spain, The Americas 55 (October 1998), 177-203.
12
commanders found they spent much time trying to temper Indian fears with promises that any
village that allowed them to erect a cross in its midst would then be protected from enslavement
future raiders would know by the crosss presence that the villagers were allies of Spaniards.
Or, in the far west, for example, as captain Hernando de Alarcn headed a third arm of
Coronados 1540 expedition moving up the Gulf of California, he repeatedly used crosses as a
means of mollification erecting them with promises of brotherhood to distinguish his
expedition from other, warlike divisions of Coronados army whose destruction and violence in
Cbola had been rapidly broadcast through native information networks.11
In contrast, if the cross held out the potential of reciprocal exchange or protection, the
kings standard emblazoned with the Virgin Marys image proclaimed only hostile intent. In
part, this was due to the fact that some Indian nations utilized similar markers of combat. While
on the Gulf of California, Alarcn recorded that he immediately recognized the hostile intent of
one Yuma group that raised banners like the Indians of Nueva Espaa use during war. And, to
convince them that his forces did not seek a fight, the captain quickly seized the Spanish
standard and lowered it at the same time laying down his sword and shield. Most often,
however, Spanish actions made clear their own association of flags with military force. In 1583,
when Antonio de Espejo learned that Hopis were awaiting his expeditions arrival in order to
give battle, he marched his forces on their pueblos with our flag unfurled. In 1598, when Juan
de Oate attacked multiple Pueblo villages that would not accede to his demands, he did so
marching under a banner embroidered with the image of Nuestra Seora de Remedios the
identical image of the Virgin carried by Corts soldiers in 1519. At coma, when forces under
11 Documents of the Coronado Expedition, ed. Flint and Flint, 198-200; The Rediscovery of New
Mexico, ed. and trans. Hammond and Rey, 186.
13
the leadership of captain Juan de Zaldvar destroyed the pueblo and its people in 1599, they
carried out the carnage declaring that Santiago and a maiden of most wondrous beauty
clearly the Virgin Mary stood by their side throughout. Tellingly, too, when Coronado ordered
the Tiguex pueblo destroyed by blood and fire, Pueblos attempted to surrender under the sign
of a cross. Even as the close association of the Virgins iconography with violent deeds
imprinted her image in the minds of many Indians only in the violent terms of La Conquistadora,
the cross might still hold out possibility of truce.12
Missionaries were not exempt from using statues and banners of Christ, the Virgin and
the saints as emblems of conquest they too claimed for themselves an identity as
conquistadores conquistadores of the spirit. Thus they described themselves fighting a battle
for souls, armed with weapons of a manly and zealous spirit and heroic virtue that helped
them to return victorious from the field and leave the conquered with the satisfaction of seeing
themselves subdued by their force. And, a battlefield did await them. Strikingly, Spaniards
who went to New Mexico in the seventeenth century with or following Oates establishment of
a settlement there, noted the presence of crosses among native peoples but no sign of Christianity
12 Warriors in pre and post-contact Mesoamerica commonly wore insignias on their back when going
into battle. Documents of the Coronado Expedition, ed. Flint and Flint, 189-90, 645n.33; Jack D. Forbes,
Warriors of the Colorado: The Yumas of the Quechan Nation and Their Neighbors (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1965), 84-85; The Expedition of Don Domingo Tern de los Rios into Texas (1691-1692),
ed. Paul J. Foik, trans. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 2
(January 1932), 10-47); The Rediscovery of New Mexico, ed. and trans. Hammond and Rey, 186-90; Carroll L.
Riley, Rio del Norte: People of the Upper Rio Grande from Earliest Times to the Pueblo Revolt (Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press, 1995), 176; Ramn A. Gutirrez, When Jesus Came, the Cornmothers Went
Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1991), 48, 53; see also Susan M. Deeds, Defiance and Deference in Mexicos Colonial North: Indians Under
Spanish Rule in Nueva Vizcaya (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 30-36.
14
after seventy-five years of interaction, suggesting that the crosses, if of Spanish origin, had been
appropriated for native supernatural ends. When fray Alonso de Benavides arrived in Santa Fe
in 1625, he brought with him his own La Conquistadora, a small wooden statue of the Virgin
Mary dressed in clothes of silk and gold braid that he had found in Mexico City. Ceremonies to
install the statue in the parish church began with the entire garrison marching in procession under
the royal standard, with its embroidered image of Our Lady of Remedies, followed by firing of
endless rounds of gun and cannon salutes who could misinterpret the Virgins association with
Spanish force and imperial rule.13
Despite directives of the 1573 Royal Order for New Discoveries as well as the principles
of the Franciscan and Jesuit orders, moreover, missionaries carried out their own violent deeds in
the name of God and the Virgin. In attempts to eradicate native paganism, they raided homes
and temples, confiscating anything that appeared to be an icon of native belief. Yet in doing so,
Spanish iconoclasty equated Indian idols with Christian icons and so sought out primarily
manifestations of deities in figurative form pieces of wood, clay, or stone carved into the shape
of animals or people to be destroyed and replaced with statues and images of the saints, Christ,
and the Virgin. Because he believed the Pueblos to hold fire in high veneration, for example,
Benavides recorded with special relish that he burned a thousand idols of wood in the public
plaza of a Tewa pueblo. Even as all this devastation went on, however, evidence suggests that
crosses fell into a different category from that of figurative, human representations of gods and
saints. Crosses existed in native symbolism and could be more readily appropriated for native
use in their own ceremonies in a way that (whether purposely or not) was unrecognizable to
13 Arricivita, Apostolic Chronicle of Juan Domingo Arricivita, I: 145; Riley, Rio del Norte, 214; Fray
Anglico Chvez, Our Lady of the Conquest (Santa Fe: Historical Society of New Mexico, 1948), 33-36;
Chavez, La Conquistadora.
15
missionaries who only chose to see veneration of a Christian icon by mission neophytes. Thus
prior to contact with Spaniards, elements of ritual Pueblo motifs periodically included crosses,
most often recognizable as representations of dragonflies, insects and stars. What is more, in the
seventeenth century, Pueblos increasingly used crosses interchangeably or in the place of birds in
a way that may have masked the continued ritual significance of the symbolic design when
viewed by Spanish authorities. Taking a similar tact, Hopis incorporated little or no Christian
symbolism into their rock art except for a handful of crosses that were used as representations of
stars in the sky.14
At the same time, the search for iconographic correspondence between Spanish and
Indian religious items may have delayed Spanish recognition of some native religious objects. It
was only in 1661 that the kachina wars erupted, with directives that missionaries seek out and
destroy any and all objects suggestive of idolatrous worship, in particular targeting and
prohibiting kachina dances, which resulted in the incineration of 1600 kachina masks worn by
dancers who embodied the spirits while in ritual dress. Significantly, the zealous campaign
began when the new custodio of New Mexico missions, fray Alonso de Posadas, accused the
governor of the province, Bernardo Lpez de Mendizbal, of allowing if not encouraging
Pueblos to maintain ceremonies involving dancers performing in kachina masks. What had set
Posadas off was the discovery of multiple kivas (underground Pueblo temples) filled with idols,
14 Gruzinski, Images at War; Gutirrez, When Jesus Came, the Cornmothers Went Away, 71-2, Fray
Alonso de Benavides' Revised Memorial of 1634, 43; Jeannette L. Mobley-Tanaka, Crossed Cultures, Crossed
Meanings: The Manipulation of Ritual Imagery in Early Historic Pueblo Resistance, in Archaeologies of the
Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World, ed. Robert W. Preucel (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 77-84; Kurt E. Dongoske and Cindy K. Dongoske, History in Stone:
Evaluating Spanish Conversion Efforts through Hopi Rock Art, in Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt, 114-
31.
16
offerings, masks, and other things of the kind which the Indians were accustomed to use in their
heathenism. Indeed at Isleta, eleven kachina masks hung upon the wall of the mission church
under which were offerings of flower garlands to the kachina spirits represented by the masks.
Apparently, many Spanish mission officials even after 60 years had failed to recognize the
spiritual purpose of kivas, seeing their only purpose as council chambers or communal housing
for relief against the winter cold. One archaeologist points to evidence that every mission built
between 1610 and 1648 (that has been subjected to archaeological study) has a kiva in the midst
of the convento built simultaneously and thus with Franciscan approval within the mission
structure itself. The 1661 assault on kachina ceremonies was soon followed by heightened
violence idolaters beaten and burnt while Pueblo religious leaders (sorcerers) were
harassed, arrested, and in a few cases executed in the 1670s. The delayed destruction unleashed
against Pueblo spiritual practices associated with kachina deities may explain both Pueblo
toleration of Spaniards before the 1660s and the timing of the outbreak of the Pueblo Revolt in
1680.15
Tellingly, when Indians fought back in response to the violence of missionaries and
militia both, they targeted Spanish figurative icons. As tensions mounted in the second half of
the seventeenth century in New Mexico, Jumanos at Ab Pueblo revolted, burning the church,
stripping the missionary, killing him with blows, and leaving his dead body where it fell
15 Gruzinski, Images at War, 34-9; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain,
Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960 (Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1962), 160-61; Historical Documents relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto,
to 1773, 3 vols., ed. Charles Wilson Hackett (Washington DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1937), III:
166, 179-80; James E. Ivey, Convento Kivas in the Missions of New Mexico, New Mexico Historical
Review 73 (April 1998), 121-52, esp. 143-44; France V. Scholes, Troublous Times in New Mexico, 1659-1670
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), 12.
17
hugging an image of the Virgin Mary. In 1680, Pueblo rebels surrounded the besieged town of
Santa Fe, chanting that Now the God of the Spaniards, who was their father is dead, and Santa
Mara, who was their mother, and the saints, . . . were pieces of rotten wood. To celebrate
victory, Pop and his followers toured villages where they broke up, mutilated, burnt, and even
scalped images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. Banning all utterance of their names, Pop
declared Now God and Santa Mara were dead. The kachinas returned to take the place
usurped by Spanish icons, with kivas and masked dances insuring the restoration of balance in
the Pueblo world.16
Twelve years later, Diego de Vargas commanded the reconquest of New Mexico, leading
his men in hymns and vows to La Conquistadora with a much venerated statue of the Virgin
transported before them in a chapel on wheels to be restored to her throne in Santa Fe, thereby
eradicating memories of other statues of the Virgin hacked to pieces by Pueblo macanas (war
clubs). Upon reaching the walls of Santa Fe, he demanded the rebels surrender in the name of
the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of the Conquest. Those who opposed him replied with a
shout: the devil was stronger than God or Mary. Striking as well, to aid his veneration of the
Virgin, Vargas also carried with him his own copy of gredas Mystical City of God. Yet when
peace returned to the northern provinces at the end of the seventeenth-century, it did so mediated
by crosses, not the Virgin. Pueblo leaders who eventually sued for peace with Vargas wore
16 Gutirrez, When Jesus Came, the Cornmothers Went Away, 130, 134, 143-45; Revolt of the Pueblo
Indians of New Mexico and Otermns Attempted Reconquest 1680-1682, ed. Charles Wilson Hackett, trans.
Charmion Clair Shelby (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), II: 203-04, 225-53, 328-30,
342-46, 359-62.
18
crosses around their necks and carried rosaries sent them by Vargas as safe passport to Santa Fe
where the negotiations took place.17
So now lets return to the deployment of images and stories of the other woman in
blue, Mara de Jess de greda. Alonso de Benavides narrative from which the original
stories of gredas apparitions came reflected his struggles to redefine the state of Indian-
Spanish relations, especially in the destructive wake of Oates conquest of New Mexico. In that
attempted redefinition, greda played a central role. To make his case for the kings and the
popes greater investment in the missions of New Mexico, Benavides jumbled fact and fable to
create a divine history that would reveal the great deeds of an intervening God and his saints as
they aided Franciscan missionary efforts on the northern frontier.18 Yet that meant he had to
reclaim the holy figures of Christianity, especially the Virgin Mary, and put distance between
them and the violence of the past. Thus as he sought to create a story for Franciscan New
Mexico, gredas claims of mystical journeys offered Benavides just the kind of miracle that
might put his new mission field on the sacred map on par with Mexico Citys legend of the
Virgin of Guadalupes appearance to Juan Diego.19
17 Gutirrez, When Jesus Came, the Cornmothers Went Away, 144; John L. Kessell, Spain in the
Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Coahuila (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 148, 172-73, 191, 405n.46.
18 Daniel T. Reff, Contextualizing Missionary Discourse: The Benavides Memorials of 1630 and
1634, Journal of Anthropological Research 50 (Spring 1994), 52, 57. See also Daniel T. Reff, Plagues,
Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
19 Iconography was central to his mission. Thus, for instance, when Benavides first went to New
Mexico from Mexico City, he brought with him a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, dressed in silk and braid,
and his first task upon arrival in Santa Fe was to install this new figure which would be known as Our Lady of
19
If we look at the account of the Jumano visit to New Mexico in 1629, it suggests that
Benavides embellished actual events and added the saintly figure of the young nun to reshape the
event into a story worthy of the hagiographic tradition he sought to establish for New Mexico.
The Devil, he claimed, had previously prevented Jumano conversion by drying up their watering
holes and driving away the bison, thus forcing Jumano hunting societies to travel out of the reach
of Franciscans. So, logically, it took divine will, exercised through greda, to orchestrate their
return. Yet, if we take out the part about greda, the narrative follows a pattern far more
reminiscent of past Indian-Spanish interaction. Indeed, it quickly becomes clear that the Jumano
party had gone to the Spaniards seeking cures in response to disease in their encampments
(rather than the santas inspiration), and it was crosses, not a female figure in blue, that
predominated in missionary reports of the exchanges that followed. When fray Diego Lpez and
fray Juan de Salas arrived at the encampments, Jumanos greeted their arrival carrying garlands of
flowers and two crosses, and asked insistently for the missionaries healing powers to be shared
with them via the crosses they brought with them as well as the sign of the cross to be made over
the infirm (closely echoing the curing rituals of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions one
hundred years before when they had passed through Jumano settlements). Once the missionaries
acceded to their wishes, Jumano households each put crosses at the frontispiece of their hide
lodges, and, in Benavides rendering, the cures insured that they were all so confirmed in their
faith in the holy cross (italics added).20
the Assumption. He repeated such installments all over the province. Chavez, La Conquistadora, 11-25.
20 A Harvest of Reluctant Souls: The Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, 1630, 82-84; Fray
Alonso de Benavides' Revised Memorial of 1634, 92-95.
20
More telling still, Jumanos never again referenced images of women in blue, be they
Virgins or santas, in their dealings with Spaniards. Another Jumano tale of miraculous
apparition did appear in Spanish diplomatic records in 1683, but this time the story focused on a
cross. Since 1650, Spaniards in New Mexico had been sending scheduled trading expeditions,
under military escort, to Jumano settlements in what would become present-day Texas to
exchange Spanish products first for pearls (from river shells) and later for deerskins and bison
hides. A growing Apache presence in the region made the military escort a necessity, and the
need for defense against Apaches had awakened Jumano interest in a potential alliance with
Spaniards, but the Pueblo Revolt had disrupted all contacts between the two. Therefore in 1683,
Jumano leader Juan Sabeata met with officials in El Paso seeking to find out if Spaniards were
capable of resuming their past obligations of trade and alliance. In their meetings, Sabeata
regaled Spanish diplomats with an accounting of a mystical day when, peaceful in their houses
and fields they saw descending from the sky a cross . . . which was floating in the air but the day
was very calm, and it could not be the wind [to make it dance in the air] because there was none;
the cross looked like something alive and the people were astonished and . . . stopped to admire
the cross until it reached the ground and fell on some sticks where it remained for quite a while
moving like something alive. Not only had the magical cross marked Jumano settlements with
its power, Sabeata continued, it had also insured a decisive perhaps the greatest battle victory
of Jumano warriors over their Apache foes. To extend the crosss supernatural powers from the
village to individual level, Sabeata had painted or tattooed a reproduction of the cross upon his
hand, which he displayed to his Spanish audience. He then invited the Spaniards to see the
actual cross, but asserted that if they wanted to visit his village, they would have to resume their
trading commitments in order to do so. The cross thus embodied an amulet that insured peaceful
21
exchange, protection from disease, and battlefield success, and, more significantly, Indians might
be favored by the same spirit power Spaniards invoked via such icons.21
Notable as well, even the Apache foes of whom Sabeata spoke took similar lessons from
their years of combat against Spaniards, and they too appropriated crosses for their own mystic
benefit. An expedition led by Juan de Ulibarri out of New Mexico northwest of Jumano lands
encountered Apache men who had preserved religious medals as spiritual sources, not of
Christian salvation, but of Spanish military valor. When Ulibarri asked the warriors why they
wore the crosses, medallions, and rosaries (which they had originally taken off Spanish dead),
they responded simply that they had learned from long commerce with Spaniards, that because
they [Spaniards] wore crosses and rosaries and images of saints, that they are very valiant.22
Only a few years after Sabeatas tale of the mystical cross, the greda legend resurfaced,
both to the east and to the west of New Mexico. First, in 1689, Spaniards sought permanent
settlement in the land of the Tejas (that of powerful Caddo confederacies in present-day
Texas), and a missionary who had long treasured the stories of gredas New World visitations
sought indications of her prior contact with Caddoan peoples as a touchstone upon which to
build diplomatic relations. As well, the expedition led by Alonso de Len and fray Damin
Mazanet traveled north in the wake of the Pueblo Revolt and, in response to that violence,
21 For translation of Sabeatas testimony in El Paso see Maria F. Wade, The Native Americans of the
Texas Edwards Plateau, 1582-1799 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 239; Pichardo's Treatise on the
Limits of Louisiana and Texas, II: 350
22 The Diary of Juan de Ulibarri to El Cuartelejo, 1706, in After Coronado: Spanish Exploration
Northeast of New Mexico, 1697-1727: Documents from the Archives of Spain, Mexico, and New Mexico, ed.
and trans. Alfred Barnaby Thomas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935), 72.
22
gredas story seems to have played a critical role in precautionary Spanish efforts to convey
and establish peaceful exchange.
The expedition focused on the Caddos in response to reports that Frenchmen under the
leadership of Ren Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle had been making diplomatic overtures in
the region for the French crown. Spanish officials feared that a French-Caddo alliance would
allow their European rivals to secure a beachhead from which to launch assaults on the silver
mines of northern Mexico just at this moment of Spanish weakness following their expulsion
from New Mexico. Thus while military forces searched for signs of La Salle, fray Mazanet
looked for indications of greda's contact with Caddoan peoples in hopes that she might provide
Spaniards with an inroad to Caddo sympathies. In answer to the Franciscans searching
questions about a woman who might have appeared to them from the sky, Mazanet claimed to
hear tales of visits of a woman in blue who had descended from the heights and was still
honored in Hasinai Caddo traditions. This mysterious but powerful woman had not appeared in
living memory, but elders still recounted legends about her. To Mazanet, it was easily to be
seen that they referred to Madre Mara de Jess de greda. Elsewhere, I have argued that the
Hasinais may have heard, in the story of greda, the outlines of their own oral traditions of two
female deities who had long before appeared to their ancestors with lessons in how to live in the
world. In one story, a female deity who resided in the heavens insured the Caddos daily
provisions of corn and water by controlling the forces of the sun, moon, thunder, lightning, rain,
frost, and snow. In another account, a divine woman had appeared at the creation of the world
and taught the first Caddos how to feed themselves through hunting and fishing and how to
protect themselves with dress and shelter before she returned to heaven. Thus in their exchanges
23
with Mazanet, they did not confirm the nuns spiritual travels, they merely responded positively
to the similarity of the missionarys legend to their own.23
It is equally important to note, however, that the prominent and powerful position of the
Caddo confederacies in the region provided crucial context for the ways in which they chose to
interpret and response to the Spaniards inquiries about a woman in blue. In fact, Caddos too
had prior knowledge of Spaniards, even though this 1689 meeting was the first time they had
encountered the foreigners in person. Jumanos had long acted as middlemen in trading networks
that linked the Caddo confederacies to native settlements to the west in New Mexico. Moreover,
we know they had shared news and information with Caddo leaders about the Spanish
interlopers. A mere three years earlier, in 1686, Jumano representatives likely including Juan
Sabeata had been visiting Hasinai villages when some of La Salles men passed through on
their treks in search for a route to Canada along the Mississippi river.
When Jumanos met the Frenchmen, they appear to have recognized another group of
potentially useful allies, marked as they were with amulets of crosses and rosaries. To overcome
23 Juliana Barr, A Diplomacy of Gender: Rituals of First Contact in the Land of the Tejas, The
William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser, 61 (July 2004), 393-434; Fray Damin Massanet to Don Carlos de
Sigenza, in Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706, ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton (New York:
Scribners Sons, 1916) 354, 379, 387; Fray Damin Mazanet to Viceroy Conde de Galve, September 1690, in
The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: A Documentary History, 332. Alonso de
Len and one of his officers, Juan Bautista Chapa also separately recorded that cadds had told them of long
ago visits of a woman who appeared to the Caddos and gave them religious instruction; a story which de Len
and Chapa also interpreted as evidence of Mara de gredas visits. Alonso de Len, Testimonio de autos de
las diligencias para la segunda entrada que se ha de ejecutar a la provincia de los Tejas y recorrer los parajes
inmediatos a la baha del Espritu Santo, A.G.I. Mexico, as cited in Carlos Seco Serrano, ed., Cartas de Sor
Mara de Jess de greda y de Felipe IV, Biblioteca de Autores Espaoles, Tomo CVIII, Epistolario Espaol,
IV (Madrid, 1958), xxxix, fn. 77; Juan Bautista Chapa, Texas and Northeastern Mexico, 1630-1690, ed.
William C. Foster, trans. Ned F. Brierley (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 138.
24
a language barrier, they used sign language previously used with Spaniards, making the sign of
the cross, touching their chests in a pattern of motions with one hand, and then raising their arms
to the skies. But when they sought to tell the Frenchmen about the hostile forces against whom
they wished the Frenchmens alliance Spaniards living to the west who they now considered an
enemy they drew an image on bark of the Virgin Mary and son, depicting a man being tortured
on a post while a woman looked on weeping. Though the Jumanos willingly gave the
Frenchmen directions for locating the Spaniards, drawing again on bark, this time to indicate the
region as a whole, with rivers, landmarks, the location of neighboring nations, and a description
of the foreigners people to the west, they made clear their hostility and anger with the Spaniards.
They had failed to honor trade agreements and commitments of military alliance against Apache
enemies, so they would be happy if the Frenchmen joined forces with them against the
Spaniards. Strikingly, even as Jumanos used Christian signs of the cross as political sign
language with Frenchmen, they chose an image of the Virgin Mary as a distinctive marker with
which both to identify Spaniards as well as, perhaps, to identify them as an enemy.24
24 Anastase Douay, Narrative of La Salles Attempt to Ascend the Mississippi, in Cox, Isaac Joslin,
ed. The Journeys of Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, 2 vols., ed. Isaac Joslin Cox (New York: Allerton
Book Co., 1922); The Journal of Jean Cavelier: The Account of a Survivor of La Salle's Texas Expedition,
1684-1688, trans. Jean Delanglez (Chicago: Institute of Jesuit History, 1938); The La Salle Expedition to
Texas: The Journal of Henri Joutel, 1684-1687, ed. William C. Foster, trans. Johanna S. Warren (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1998); Nancy Parrott Hickerson, The Jumanos: Hunters and Traders of the South
Plains (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 120-145.
From Jumano reports, in turn, Spaniards in New Mexico gathered that the Kingdom of the Tejas
was a populous and powerful nation with a king or great lord who ruled with lieutenants over a people
so numerous their cities extended for miles, so powerful that their warriors were feared by all neighboring
groups, and so organized that they had a hierarchical governing system. Balancing civilization with
strength, Hasinais enjoyed an agricultural economy successful enough to produce surplus grain for their horse
herds, worshipped a single omnipotent deity, and maintained a material trade that supported a well-dressed and
25
Yet if Jumanos conveyed to Caddos a sense that the Spaniards female deities were
associated only with war and might represent a threat of military force, Caddo leaders response
to Spanish imagery indicated their conviction (which was soon proved quite correct) that they
had little to fear from Spaniards and little reason to expend much energy interpreting the
foreigners spiritual imagery. One imagines as well that the Pueblo Revolt suggested to native
observers a real weakness in Spanish military capabilities. Certainly the Spaniards who came in
hopes of winning Caddos as allies over their French foes did not march into Hasinai villages with
banners flying in any manner to suggest militancy. Instead, though they proudly displayed the
royal standard bearing on one side the picture of Christ crucified and on the other that of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, they seemed to take particular care in presenting a humble and pacific
face to their Caddo hosts. Thus fray Mazanet insured that banners entered Hasinai villages only
in the hands of four missionaries who went on foot, carrying only their crucifixes and a picture of
the Blessed Virgin painted on linen. Caddo leaders asserted their own protocols of diplomatic
exchange and negotiation in response, greeting the figurative female image as the only woman
in the expedition in the same manner they would have greeted women in native embassies,
honoring her presence with salutes as an indication of the visiting partys peaceful intent.
Moreover, the moment Spanish soldiers or missionaries transgressed the terms set by Caddo
leaders for remaining in their lands, the Spaniards were unceremoniously expelled from the
Caddo domain.25
well-housed people. Alonso de Posada Report, 1686: A Description of the Area of the Present Southern United
States in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Alfred Barnaby Thomas (Pensacola: Perdido Bay Press, 1982).
25 One, and only one, foolhardy missionary, fray Francisco Casaas de Jess Mara, made a stab at
iconoclastic destruction while in Hasinai villages and nearly lost his life. He darted into the Hasinai temple of
the sacred fire and attempted to throw two icons representing the sacred cononici revered child spirits who
26
Except for these initial exchanges in 1689-1690 that inspired Franciscans to incorporate
the Virgins image into displays of missionary humility before the powerful Caddos, Texas
proved another region where the cross would be the chosen passport and token of peace received
by native peoples in their interactions with Spaniards in the eighteenth century. Only two years
after their first meetings with Caddos, Spaniards encountered other groups with whom Jumanos
traded and interacted Cantonas, Payayas, Simaomos, Tunosonibis, Yojuanes, and many others
in and around a joint settlement that Spaniards cam to refer to as Ranchera Grande and there
too crosses predominated over women in blue. In rituals enacted in the 1691, for instance, native
leaders greeted Spaniards by gathering together gifts given them in past exchanges carvings,
paintings, and banners that they could display to signal peace and assuage Spanish fears about
their possible welcome. Once the Spanish expedition was in sight of the camp, the headmen held
the objects aloft and in clear sight bamboo and wooden crosses as well as two painted images
and one engraving of a Spanish female deity in blue with light radiating out from all around her.
Though it was a mix of iconography with crosses and images of the Virgin, it is noteworthy that
Juan Sabeata was among those leaders, and it was he who carried the cross of wood. Moreover,
the passage of time proved all too soon that missionaries here also failed to establish the Virgins
image as a lasting symbol of peace. The banner with Christ on one side and the Virgin on the
other had been carried into south Texas with slaving raids for mines and ranches and recruiting acted as intermediaries between the Caddo xines (high priest) and Ayo-Caddi-Aymay (Caddo supreme being)
into the fire in a bid to replace them with two little images of Christian saints. The apoplectic response of the
xines immediately sent Casaas fleeing in fear. Fray Francisco Casaas de Jess Mara to the Viceroy, in
Hatcher, Descriptions of the Tejas or Asinai Indians, 1691-1722, 292-95, 301. Fray Damin Massanet to
Don Carlos de Sigenza, in Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706, ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton
(New York: Scribners Sons, 1916), 379; Fray Damin Mazanet to Viceroy Conde de Galve, June 14, 1693
and February 17, 1694, in Hadley, Naylor, and Schuetz-Miller, The Presidio and Militia on the Northern
Frontier of New Spain, 344, 353.
27
raids for missions out of Coahuila and Nueva Vizcaya too many times for native memory to
forget. When fray Isidro de Espinosa returned to the region in 1709 he carefully chose and
designed a cross fashioned of paper and painted with ink as his calling card, and in 1716, when
he returned again, five hundred Payayas, Cantonas, Pamayas, Ervipiames, Xarames, Sijames,
and Mescales took the Franciscan and the military officers who accompanied him to their
encampments, where they shared food and trade and marked the site of the peaceful exchange
with a wooden cross. Years of interaction in the eighteenth century would prove that Indians in
the region sought only material exchange not subjection to labor or mission regimes, and
Christian iconography other than the cross could not be separated from the violent associations
of the latter.26
In that spirit, it is a story from the west told by Yumas in 1699 that seems to hold the
most potential for relaying an Indian reading of gredas apparitions. Notably, its source is a
military captain named Juan Mateo Manje rather than a wishful missionary looking for proof of
Gods blessing for his work. Indeed the missionary with whom he traveled, fray Eusebio
Francisco Kino, dismissed the accounts as nonsense, perhaps rejecting the violence that the
Yumas unleashed against gredas image in their retelling. Manjes account of the Indian-told
26 The Expedition of Don Domingo Tern de los Rios into Texas (1691-1692), ed. Paul J. Foik,
trans. Mattie Austin Hatcher, Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 2 (January 1932),
57-8; Isidro de Espinosa, The Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre Expedition of 1709: Espinosas Diary, ed. Paul J.
Foik, trans. Gabriel Tous, Preliminary Studies of the Texas Catholic Historical Society 1 (March 1930), 10;
Wade, The Native Americans of the Texas Edwards Plateau, 22, 56, 152-58; Isidro de Espinosa, Diary of the
1716 Entrada, in The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain: A Documentary History,
Volume 2, Part 2: The Central Corridor and the Texas Corridor, 1700-1765, eds. Diana Hadley, Thomas H.
Naylor, and Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 377-78; Herbert Eugene
Bolton, Rim of Christendom: A Biography of Eusebio Francisco Kino, Pacific Coast Pioneer (New York:
MacMillan Company, 1936), 376.
28
tale came from villages near the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers in northwestern Sonora
(Arizona). As they had moved through the region, Manje and Kino heard repeated legends,
recounted by different Yuma peoples over many days, of a beautiful woman, robed in white,
brown, and blue who had harangued them endlessly in a language they did not understand until
driven to distraction they had shot her full of arrows, left her for dead, only to have her return to
begin the process anew the following day. Given that this was a region long subject to the far
reaching arm of slave raiding by Spaniards themselves or natives who sought captives for them,
one well imagines the anger behind the tale.27
Yet Yumas did not simply respond to gredas image with anger over Spanish warfare.
Studies of their cosmology offer suggestive hints for how her legend may have resonated with
their own belief systems and shaped the contours of their militant retelling of the tale. Yuma
religion did not involve much visible ritual, ceremony, or symbolism; rather they emphasized
dream-visions (icama) as the primary means for individuals to bridge the two dimensions of
reality one material, the other mystical and thereby acquire spiritual power. If and when they
had originally heard the greda story from the mouths of Spaniards, they may well have
understood her to be of a supernatural world a dream or a dreamer herself or perhaps a
female deity like one of their own mythological beings named Ciacacohola, who lived across
the water on an island or the seacoast and later became known as Queen of the Sky (Qua-kuia-
haba). At the same time, if Yumas understood greda as a Spanish war deity, their view of
warfare as a mystical testing ground for the spiritual power of their people might make her a key
target for violence. To kill or destroy her by shooting her full of arrows would not only
27 Kino and Manje: Explorers of Sonora and Arizona, ed. Ernest J. Burrus (St. Louis: St. Louis
University, 1971), 395-96, 404, 419-420; Forbes, Warriors of the Colorado, 77, 115-20, 130-36.
29
diminishing an enemies supernatural power as a people but also prove the spiritual strength of
Yuma peoples.28
A different political context in New Spains northern provinces thus put a different spin
on interpretations of Christian symbolism, images, and icons. Even the seemingly pacific story
of Mara de Jess de greda could take a decidedly violent and bloody tone in the mouths of
Indians.29 Instead, Indians found crosses rather than the image of the Virgin Mary to hold
greater promise of supernatural power that might mediate their contacts with Spaniards or be
appropriated to their own ends. For Indians, their earliest exposure to the figures of Christ, the
saints, and especially the Virgin Mary had been in war war waged by Spanish raiders or
militias who throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century traveled north bent on capturing
Indian men, women, and children and imprisoning them for work camps or missions, or
destroying their villages by blood and fire. When Indian peoples zeroed in on the cross as a
diplomatic symbol to use with Spaniards, they did not choose the iconography of a male Jesus
over a female Mary. Rather, they chose crosses based on their own diplomatic protocols and
experience. Crosses became emblems of peaceful exchange that served as mnemonic icons of
more peaceful previous encounters. In turn, the woman in blue whose legacy Franciscan
missionaries so determinedly sought to discover and confirm in their exchanges with Indian
28 Forbes, Warriors of the Colorado, 22, 40, 57, 62-67, 74; Documents of the Coronado Expedition,
ed. Flint and Flint, 199-200.
29 Even Benavides had conceived of no more appropriate end to gredas travels than that of
martyrdom. In an open letter to the missionaries in New Mexico, Benavides announced that in kingdom of the
Titlas where the nun had directed most of her mystical work, her much wounded spiritual body met its end,
after which heavenly angels themselves laid a martyrs crown laid upon her head. Fray Alonso de Benavides,
Former Custodian for New Mexico, to the Friars of the Holy Custodia of the Conversion of Saint Paul in the
Said Kingdom, May 15, 1631, in Fray Alonso de Benavides' Revised Memorial of 1634, 142.
30
peoples in the seventeenth century could not be extricated from native understandings of the
militant imagery of that other female figure dressed in blue robes, Our Lady of the Conquest.
Mara de Jess de greda may have navigated New Spains northern provinces on the wings of
angels, but the Spaniards who followed in her path found welcome and safe passage along native
thoroughfares and in native villages only if they carried a cross and avoided mention of women
in blue.
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