On the 300-year-old trail of Father Kino
It was 300 years ago--in 1687--that a 42-year-old Italian-born Jesuit priest on horseback, wearing a black robe, first set foot in New Spain's northern frontier. Known as the Pimeria Alta, the 200-mile-square saguaro-studded desert, ribbed with lush valleys, was home to some 30,000 Piman-speaking Indians.
Before his death 24 years later, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino had established 22 missions. Nine of them--those in Mexico near the ...