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Fray Francsico Atanacio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 44, 1976, No. 1
Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante
BY ELEANOR B. ADAMS
ON MONDAY, JULY 29, 1776, two friars of New Mexico, sons of the Franciscan Province of the Holy Gospel with headquarters in Mexico City, set out from Santa Fe on a journey of exploration "happy and full of hope," trusting that their brethren would remember them "in their sacrifices and prayers." Their hope was to discover a route from New Mexico to Monterey, California, but "even if we should not attain our end . . . the knowledge we could acquire of the lands through we traveled would represent a great step forward and be of great use in the future."
The stories of Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, and that of their expedition, belong not merely to New Mexico and to Utah but are an integral part of the final struggle of the far-flung Spanish Empire in America to maintain and advance its borderlands in North America. By the middle of the eighteenth century it had become clear that the cumbersome and underfinanced systems of government and defense in New Spain were in need of drastic revision if the northern frontier was to survive the threats posed by constant Indian hostilities and encroachment by European rivals. Charles III, who had ascended the throne in 1759, well aware of the need for reforms at home and abroad, sent Jose de Galvez to New Spain as visitor general. The visitation lasted from 1765 to 1771. Although Spain had lost Florida to England in 1763, she had acquired Louisiana from the French, and plans were afoot for the colonization of Upper California at a time when the frontier was already too extended for practical purposes of defense. Therefore, in 1765, Charles III also appointed the marques de Rubi to inspect the long thin line of presidios and to make such recommendations as his findings might suggest. For two years, from March 1766 to February 1768, Rubi traveled through the northern provinces of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Then, in 1772, don Hugo O'Conor became commandant inspector of the interior provinces to reform and strengthen the military organization. Finally, in 1776, Charles III, pursuant to the recommendations of Galvez, now minister of the Indies, created a new governmental unit for the Provincias Internas. Nueva Vizcaya, Coahuila, Texas, Nuevo Mexico, Sinaloa, Sonora, and the Californias were placed tinder a commandant general who was, at first, directly responsible to the king. Under the first commandant general, don Teodoro de Croix, an overall policy to cope with the mutual problems of the beleaguered northern provinces came into being.
Meanwhile, in 1769, Fray Junipero Serra had founded San Diego, the first mission of Upper California. The port of Monterey was settled in the following year. When the news reached Sonora both the military and the religious envisaged golden opportunities in the California enterprise. The opening of good land routes between the old frontiers and the new establishments on the Pacific Coast could assure success—increase Spain's dominions and God's faithful. The soldier don Juan Bautista de Anza and the friar-explorer Francisco Garces were eager to do their part.
Anza's proposals received prolonged and careful consideration in Mexico City. Viceroy Antonio Maria Bucareli y Ursua sought opinions and assistance from every likely source. In response to his request, the prelates of the Province of the Holy Gospel and its Custody of the Conversion of Saint Paul of New Mexico notified the missionaries, ordering them to seek out and provide any data they could obtain relevant to the possibility of finding overland routes from New Mexico and Sonora to the South Sea. Certain friars received individual instructions, and among these was a fledgling priest called Silvestre Velez de Escalante. Fray Fernando Antonio Gomez, secretary of the Province of the Holy Gospel, one of Fray Silvestre's mentors at the Convento Grande, gave him his orders and kept him furnished with all the pertinent information he could acquire.
The fame of this talented and dedicated young man has long overshadowed that of his friend, and superior, Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez. His letters and other writings received more widespread attention in his own time, and many of them have been available to later historians for more than a century. Over the years they were used not only by Spanish civil and military authorities in the formation of their frontier policy but by those of the United States after much of the old northern frontier of New Spain had become our Southwest.
Escalante, then in his mid-twenties, went to New Mexico late in 1774, the same year as the first expedition of Anza and Garces. He was born in the villa of Treceno, valle de Vandaliga, in the mountainous northern province of Santander, Spain, about 1750. Unfortunately no record has been found of his physical appearance, but one suspects that his skin was fair and his eyes were grey—in Mexican terminology, giiero. He may even have had blond hair. When he arrived in Mexico City is not known, but he took the Franciscan habit in the Convento Grande in 1767. There he passed through the usual courses in philosophy and theology and had been ordained priest before he was sent to New Mexico. His first signature in the extant parish books of New Mexico appears in the baptismal records of Laguna pueblo on December 21, 1774. He must have been on his way to Zuni, where his signatures begin on January 13, 1775. It is likely that before he took up his assignment as one of the mission fathers at Zuni he had spent long enough at Santa Fe to discuss his other assignment with Gov. Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta and Lt. Diego Borica, for a year or so later he wrote to Provincial Fray Isidro Murillo:
This was not the only occasion during his short life that he was to express his diffidence and his longing for a quiet life far from the hurly-burly of secular concerns—a wish that was never to be granted.
His companion at Zuni was Fray Damian Martinez. How long he had been stationed there when Escalante arrived is not known, but he too had been asked to gather information. Commandant Inspector O'Conor, knowing that Martinez had been assigned to Zufii "asked him to employ 'every means his intelligence and prudence might dictate in an endeavor to learn the truth' of 'the flying reports I have picked up on this frontier about the existence of a settlement of Europeans on the opposite bank of the river named Tizon [the Colorado] which is to the northwest of New Mexico.' Fray Damian wrote to O'Conor on April 1, 1775, repeating the story of a Christianized Navajo Indian who had traveled as far as the Colorado with his people. At the river he encountered "a white man on horseback with clothing and armament of the type we use. He spoke to him in Castilian and in his Navajo language, and he says that the man did not reply but only smiled to himself when he used our language." Martinez also summarized the accounts of friendly Yutas who had offered to guide the Spaniards to the lands of these people through the Moachis and Paiuches in the interior. They said that the trip would take twenty days, and although such projects had been considered by some governors,
This is not the place to go into the problem of the early trade from New Mexico to the northwest. While some scholarly work has been done, the details are obscure and some key documents have not been found.' Although Velez de Escalante was skeptical about such information, observing that "not only the infidel Indians, but even the Christians, in order to raise themselves in our esteem, tell us what they know we want to hear without being embarrassed by the falsity of their tales," Commandant Inspector O'Conor took Fray Damian's reports more seriously and wrote to Viceroy Bucareli that the existence of the European settlement seemed likely enough to justify an expedition he proposed for May 1777. Although Bucareli was not impressed by Father Martinez's report, he went astray in another direction, saying that according to the maps he had consulted it was not unlikely that Monterey could be reached in twenty days and that perhaps the white man mentioned by the Navajo could have been from that presidio.
Although, like many earnest young priests, Escalante had undoubtedly traveled to the frontier missions with glowing visions of great accomplishments in the spread of the Faith, his inborn critical sense, when confronted with the kind of information he was acquiring about the unknown territory between New Mexico and California, provides an interesting contrast to the credulity of highly qualified and experienced administrators like O'Conor and Bucareli. As time went on Escalante was to become more and more annoyed by the misuse and misinterpretation of his cautious and carefully considered reports and opinions, which were widely circulated to those concerned with the expansion and consolidation of the New Spain frontier.
Meanwhile, during Lent of 1775, Escalante was presented with an opportunity to further both his religious and political aims. A group of Hopi, who came to Zuni to trade, invited him to visit their pueblos. Not only could he hope to be the one to bring the apostate Hopi back into the fold at long last, but he
He wrote to the vice-custos asking permission to go, and also to Lieutenant Borica, who notified Gov. Pedro Fermin de Mendinueta. Although he had planned to take only a guide and an interpreter, the alcalde mayor of Zuni, don Juan Pedro Cisneros, and the Zufii Indians refused to permit it, saying that the Hopi were not to be trusted. It is quite likely that they all were eager for the chance to do some trading.
The party that left Zufii on June 22, 1775, included Cisneros, who was later to accompany the Dominguez-Escalante expedition, seventeen Zufii, and a Christianized Hopi from Sandia pueblo to serve as interpreter. From Fray Silvestre's point of view the expedition was a failure that caused him "great chagrin and mortification." Although some of the common people treated him in a friendly way, they dared not disobey their leaders' commands to resist his attempts to evangelize them. He did obtain some information about the Cosninas from two Hopis who had visited them. And, despite efforts by the Oraibis to prevent it, the head of a delegation from the nearest Cosnina rancheria succeeded in reaching him. After the friar and the Cosnina had shared the traditional smoke, they conversed for nearly two hours. On the sudadero of a saddle the Indian drew with charcoal "a rough but clear map of the road that goes from Oraibi to his land, indicating turns, stages and watering places, the area his people occupies and inhabits, the distance from the last rancherias to the Rio Grande and the direction in which it flows, and the bordering tribes." Escalante responded to messages of good will from the Cosninas by telling their messenger that he would "have gone with him to see his people, whom I already loved as my sons" had he not been ill and his horse worn out.
The account of the Hopi journey gives the first indication that Fray Silvestre suffered from attacks of a serious chronic ailment which almost completely incapacitated him when they struck. And on the day after his meeting with the Cosnina his hopes for good results with the Hopi were completely blighted when he was suddenly exposed to a sight that upset him so that he decided he could no longer remain among them." Then and thereafter the young missionary was shocked to the very core of his being by ceremonials that he was incapable of seeing as anything but abominations inspired by the enemy of mankind.
Although he reached Zuni on July 6, Escalante could not bring himself to send a full report to Mexico City until August 18. When they received it, the Franciscan prelates transmitted copies to the viceroy, who, in turn, forwarded a copy to Father Garces at the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers. Garces had already gone upriver and did not receive it until October 1776, after returning to San Xavier del Bac."
In 1774 don Francisco Antonio Crespo, governor of Sonora, had proposed to Viceroy Bucareli a general campaign on the frontier to back up the advance into Upper California and facilitate the opening of a land supply route to Monterey. Military conquest of the Hopi and a road between New Mexico and Sonora to permit trade between these provinces and the Californias were part of the plan. On August 2, 1775, the viceroy requested an opinion from the governor of New Mexico. Since Escalante had been investigating these matters, Mendinueta required him to draw up a statement of his findings without delay.
In his reply, dated October 28, 1775, 15 Escalante described the Hopi pueblos and his experiences earlier in the year. In view of the fact that all attempts over many years by the Franciscans of New Mexico to persuade the Hopi to return to the fold had failed, he said: "With the army of the expedition now being planned let them be reduced by force to the dominion of their legitimate sovereign. Let them be taken down from the penoles to a flat and convenient site. And let all other steps be taken that may be considered necessary to hold them in due subjection." Escalante advised the establishment of a presidio at Moqui to ensure against further resistance by the Hopi and to hold the Apache to the south and southwest in check, thus reducing the perils of travel to Sonora. It would also facilitate the conversion of the Cosninas and protect them from their enemies, the Jomajabas and Chirumas.
On the basis of information he had gathered about previous campaigns in conversations with various people, including the Zufii Indians, Fray Mariano Rodriguez, a former missionary at the pueblo, and don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, Escalante found it
With regard to the discovery of a land route to Monterey, he did not consider the scanty data he had worth repeating. Nevertheless, if, on his return from Monterey, Governor Crespo were thinking of recrossing the Colorado "via the Jalchedunes and going on [to] the Cojninas and Moquis from this point," the information Escalante had obtained from his Cosnina informant indicated that this would be ill advised. The terrain for more than a hundred leagues of the way was so bad as to be impassable with a large train, water and pasturage were scarce, and they would encounter the Chirumas and Jomajabas, "bellicose and bestially inhuman tribes." According to Vibas's maritime chart of 1766,
He then expressed quite clearly his opinion of the possibility of reaching the coast with a small expedition: "Twenty men well armed and equipped" would be sufficient to discover the truth of the legend of the white men on the far side of the Colorado,
Obviously these men could not be from Monterey. Possibly at some time shipwrecked Europeans had gone inland and settled down. Later Escalante and Dominguez concluded that the legend was based on earlier glimpses of the bearded Utes they encountered during their expedition.
On November 9, 1775, Governor Mendinueta sent his report to don Hugo O'Conor. He summarized Fray Silvestre's description of the Hopi, praising him as a "religious of exemplary life and unusual talent," but Mendinueta saw grave objections to any use of force to subdue the renegades. Peace negotiations with the Navajo were in progress, and what they and the Ute would consider unjust war on the peaceable Hopi might result in an alliance of the three tribes which "would very soon finish off this kingdom, and they could keep us as busy as the Apaches Gilenos do now." He suggested sending three or four zealous missionaries to the Hopi, with "goods of small value to present to the chieftains, who (as sons of their own interests) would permit them to teach the mysteries of our religion."
When Escalante learned that the governor had deleted part of his letter of October 28 in the copy sent to the viceroy and that "the very reflections I impugn in the aforesaid paper were represented to his Excellency, showing great ignorance of how much our missionary brethren have labored to reduce those rebels," he was furious. On May 21, 1776, Escalante sent another copy of his October 28 report to Provincial Murillo to make sure that his conclusions would not be suppressed and that the efforts of the Franciscans to win the Hopi back to the Faith would not be forgotten.
Meanwhile the prelates of the Province of the Holy Gospel had decided to send a commissary visitor to New Mexico to make a complete investigation and report on spiritual and economic conditions in the Custody of the Conversion of Saint Paul. The high office of canonical visitor, who outranked all other friars in the custody, was given to Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, a native of Mexico City who had taken the habit in the Convento Grande about 1757 at the age of seventeen. Few references to his earlier career in the Order have turned up.
The instructions for his visitation bear no date, but Dominguez reached El Paso del Norte on September 4, 1775. There he found everyone "in a state of miserable panic because of the repeated assaults" by the Apache, who had raided the pueblo itself a few days before his arrival. The Comanche, as well as the Apache, were active in the interior, and Custos Fray Juan de Hinojosa had written: "This Custody is on the point of suffering its last agony." The only hope lay in the general campaign against the Apache which began on September 21. Colonel O'Conor "showed in a thousand ways" his gratitude to Father Dominguez and the Franciscans for their prayers and for sending a chaplain with the force.
Because of the Indian troubles, the father visitor was unable to leave El Paso until March 1, 1776. Accompanied by Fray Jose Mariano Rosete y Peralta and Fray Jose Palacio, he reached Santa Fe on March 22. The governor treated them "with special attention and courtesy," and "until April 10 we all continued to receive the favor of his table and conversation." One of the topics they discussed was the search for a route to Monterey. Dominguez had also received special instructions, in particular to make every effort to find out whether any news had been received from or about Fray Francisco Garces. Governor Mendinueta deplored the inadequate number of mission friars, and
Fray Damian Martinez, who was in poor health and disliked Zuni, had left there in the summer of 1775. Although Escalante thought it the best mission in the kingdom of New Mexico, it was thirty leagues from its nearest neighbor and he longed for a companion. With the governor's consent, Dominguez sent Father Rosete to join him late in April."
The commissary visitor began his tour of the mission pueblos on April 10, 1776, and by early June he had made formal inspections.of most of them. His lengthy report is a unique and invaluable source to increase understanding of what day-to-day life must have been like in eighteenth-century New Mexico. Dominguez's letters fill in further details and illuminate his character. He was a keen and impartial observer who recorded what he saw in meticulous detail. Much of what he saw— "the progressive decadence [he] found in the missions (and a few of the missionaries) as well as the material and cultural backwardness prevalent among the colonists"—deeply disturbed him. His comments about deviations from the straight and narrow path are severe. He was quite incapable of compromise when his moral principles were offended, and this trait did not always endear him to his contemporaries.
His conscience never permitted him to spare himself, and busy as he was with the visitation, he "began to gather information and to see with my own eyes what I could, and I have already written this down." He wrote to Provincial Murillo that
He had already taken steps to examine the data in the governmental archive at Santa Fe when Fray Juan Agustin Morn* wrote to the governor asking permission for Velez de Escalante to do so. Mendinueta replied to both that it contained "nothing but old fragments." Bucareli too had written to the governor requesting further information about Escalante's reports. He, said the viceroy, promised to discover the route to Monterey with twenty men. "I am expecting him hourly," said Dominguez, "and also hoping to see what comes of this."
In response to his superior's order, Fray Silvestre reached Santa Fe on the night of June 7. Fray Francisco Atanasio "immediately asked him whether he had any news of a letter which the Reverend Father Garces had written from the junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers to the missionaries of this Custody." Escalante had not, but
They notified the governor, "who not only applauded our plan but also opened his heart and his hands, giving us supplies and everything we might need for the journey."
Their intention to leave on July 4, 1776, was frustrated by various incidents. On June 20 Dominguez sent Escalante as chaplain w y ith the presidials who went in pursuit of a party of Comanche who had raided La Cienega. The chase lasted ten days and Fray Silvestre returned exhausted. But three days later he went to Taos on urgent business his superior had no time for. There he came down with another of his excruciating attacks. Dominguez hastened to him and found him out of danger but too weak to travel. He ordered him to rest for a week before returning to Santa Fe.
As it turned out the delay was fortunate. On July 2 Fray Francisco Garces reached Oraibi, and on the third he sent a letter to the missionary at Zufii by hand of an Acoma Indian, called Lazaro, who had been a fugitive in the Hopi pueblos since the previous winter. Fray Mariano Rosete questioned the Indian at length and forwarded Father Garces's letter with one of his own on July 6. Dominguez and Escalante reviewed their plans and decided that their journey would still be useful since Garces had come to Moqui from the mouth of the Colorado River. Moreover, they intended to return via Cosnina "to confirm that nation's good decision to become Christian and to divorce it completely (if God favors us) from the Moquis, who are so strongly opposed to their conversion and that of the others."
The Dominguez-Velez de Escalante expedition has been treated in detail by Herbert E. Bolton and others, and there is no reason to go into it here. But it should be noted that in a letter to Provincial Murillo, dated July 29, the very day the fathers set out, Velez de Escalante reiterated his doubts about the possibility of reaching Monterey:
Incidentally, in this same letter, he felt it necessary to put clown any pretensions on the part of Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, who, he said, "would be useful ... not to command the expedition, but to make a map of the terrain explored. And I state that only for this do I consider him useful."
It should be clear by now that Fathers Dominguez and Velez de Escalante were very similar in outlook, temperament, and unswerving moral rectitude. The difficult expedition would have been a severe test of the compatibility of any two men, but their mutual respect and friendship never faltered then, or later. Although Escalante had commenced work on the problem of the road to Monterey earlier, Dominguez was equally dedicated and diligent. He went along with Fray Silvestre's conclusions on the basis of his own critical evaluation of the data. The belief that Escalante alone was responsible for the diary of the expedition is not in accord with either the internal or external evidence. As the subordinate it was his task to act as amanuensis, but Dominguez was the man in charge and the one ultimately accountable to their superiors; in view of his character, it is incredible that he should have delegated the entire responsibility to his younger colleague. The account reads "we" throughout and both fathers signed it. In later years Velez de Escalante never referred to it except as "our diary," the one he and Dominguez had kept during their journey. Fray Francisco Atanasio was an equally keen, articulate, and interested observer, and there can be no doubt that the report was a true collaboration.
Conditions in New Mexico had not improved when the wanderers returned late in 1776. Commissary Visitor Dominguez despaired of rectifying lapses that scandalized him. He begged to be relieved of his new appointment as custos, quoting Saint Francis: "I do not wish to be my brothers' executioner." He left the interior missions on May 5, 1777, with don Diego Borica, who had been summoned to Chihuahua. After he reached El Paso on May 18, 1777, he proceeded to complete his visitation of the missions there. Before he left interior New Mexico he had appointed Escalante vice-custos because, said Father Dominguez, "He is the only person who can carry out my just plans and decisions."
As vice-custos Fray Silvestre was stationed at San Ildefonso pueblo, and on August 17, 1777, he addressed an official communication to the New Mexico Franciscans. This was the "scheme of government" for the missions usually issued by a custos when he took office. Since urgent business had prevented Dominguez from drawing it up,
Escalante was indeed in an awkward position, forced to make the necessary strictures upon the conduct of his brethren when most of them were his seniors. He undoubtedly received his share of the antipathy that Dominguez's refusal to compromise had aroused in some quarters.
Fray Silvestre divided his "scheme" into two parts. The first reminded the friars of their obligations under the "Seraphic Institute," or rule of the Franciscan Order: 1) "In regard to the necessary temporalities, let our poverty be adjudged without stain or suspicion of covetousness or attachment." 2) The use of Indian labor in farming and assistance for the convent must not go beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of the friar, and he was to give the workers their food. 3) No friar was to engage in trade or barter of any kind except the exchange of something "which is no longer necessary for something else he may need more, without the intervention of any civil contract." 4) No friar was to provide support or assistance for any Spanish family, especially if "the very slightest labor of the Indians may be involved"; nor was he to send Indians with messages to those who had once served in the friary. 5) "Let no friar keep in his convent or visit, or receive visits from women suspect either because of their youth or beauty, or, finally, because of their customs and ill fame." 6) This concerns the regulations about the use of the Franciscan habit by laymen and the blessing of shrouds.
The second part dealt with their obligations as parish priests: 1) They must not leave their missions except for compelling reasons and with permission from the custos. 2) They were to explain "a point of Christian doctrine every Sunday and feast day of obligation . . . with the truth, order, and clarity that their [parishioners'] more or less limited understanding may require; and in the case of the Indians by means of the best interpreters . . . admonishing them that they are to express those words, such as God, Trinity, Person, Blessed Sacrament, which all the languages of these Indians lack, as they sound, and not to try to translate them, because ... if they try to say it all in their languages, it is unavoidable either that they will say something different or give rise to errors of which it will not be easy to disabuse the people who hear them, since they usually believe that what the interpreter says is on all occasions the same as what the Father teaches." 3) Each minister must "apply the Mass for his parishioners every Sunday and other feast days on which they are obliged to hear it, even though after hearing it, they may work, because the Council of Trent so orders and our Most Holy Father Benedict XIV has so declared and decreed." Father Custos Dominguez was sending them a Spanish translation of the Apostolic Constitution "with some reflections upon it so that no one who holds a cure of souls at present may think himself exempt from this obligation, trusting in the now improbable opinion of various summarists ... of moral theology who formerly defended and considered the contrary probable." 4) They were forbidden to write to the governor on any topic except for "Christmas and Easter greetings, congratulations, and on days [of his name saint]." Moreover, they were not to reprove local alcaldes mayores or their lieutenants for abuses against the Indians, or attempt to prevent them, "since the most serious discords between the ecclesiastical and secular ministers result from this and nothing can be remedied." Even in the case of flagrant excesses they must "tell your prelate and no one else . . . when they are grave and capable of proof, and when there is no danger that the accuser may come out of the affair as the delinquent. Under these circumstances the prelate will take the most appropriate course of action, having recourse to the government in due form, if it be necessary in order to cut off such disorders." 5) The friars were not to discuss "decisions of the prelates or of the government" with laymen, nor even receive them in the friary except for unavoidable reasons. 6) They were forbidden to "issue certifications in favor of or against any lay person, whoever he may be, without permission." Nor were they to give receipts for payment for masses unless the alms had actually been received, "because it is known that some laymen have satisfied other debts with such receipts. ..." Items 4-6 clearly reflect the problems of friction between the secular and ecclesiastical authorities and resultant scandals that had plagued the New Mexico colony from the beginning. Fathers Dominguez and Velez de Escalante were undoubtedly following policies prescribed by their superiors in Mexico City wiien they attempted to enforce more discreet behavior on the part of their brethren.
Velez de Escalante's letter then continues with "some reflections upon the chastity and poverty which we promised to observe throughout our life, because I know, not without grave sorrow and vehement fear of falling, that either because of the guile of the common enemy of mankind, or because of our small favor, there are more perils in this country than elsewhere against the first and not a few abuses against the second." This is in many ways the most interesting part of the document for what it reveals about Fray Silvestre's sincere piety, as well as the education he had received in the Convento Grande at Mexico City. He expounds the compelling reasons for obedience to the enjoinders in the two previous sections citing a wide range of authorities—Saint Paul and the Gospels, canon law, papal bulls, Juan de Solorzano Pereira's Gubernatione Indiarum, Concilio Limense III, Diego de Avendano's Tesauro Indico, Jose de Acosta's Procuranda Indorum Salute, Fray Pedro Navarro's Exposicion de la Regla de Nuestro Padre San Francisco, etc. Fully aware that "as religious we do not cease to be fragile men," he did his best to appeal to the consciences of missionaries living perforce in unusual solitude and liberty in their scattered friaries.
Sometime during the winter of 1777-78, Escalante made a trip to El Paso, probably summoned by Father Dominguez to confer about serious problems encountered in the administration of the custody.
During his last years in New Mexico, 1777-79, he devoted what time he could spare from his other duties to reading and summarizing the manuscripts in the governmental archives of Santa Fe for the benefit of Fray Juan Agustin Morfi in drawing up his reports on the frontier. Escalante's manuscript, known as the Extracto de Noticias, covered the period from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (the earlier documents had been destroyed then) to about 1717. An incomplete and inaccurate copy was first published in 1856 and was a major source for the history of New Mexico until the discovery of much new documentation in this century.
The last reference to Escalante in the New Mexico records is dated February 15, 1779, when he performed a marriage at the militarychapel of Our Lady of Light in Santa Fe. The provincial records of that year again assign him to Zufii, but it is unlikely that he returned there. His uncertain health had taken a turn for the worse, and he was only about thirty when he died at Parral in April 1780 on his way back to Mexico City for treatment. Later Father Morfi eulogized him in these words:
Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez outlived his younger companion by nearly a quarter-century, and so far as is known he received little or no appreciation for his virtues and accomplishments. His meticulous report on the missions of New- Mexico was filed with a sarcastic notation and forgotten. He remained in El Paso until 1788. From there he went to the Presidio of Carrizal as chaplain. In 1791 he was residing at San Antonio de la Isleta in the El Paso area and had again been appointed custos of the New Mexico missions. A letter from the bishop of Durango, dated March 22, 1791, first congratulates him, then takes him to task for excessive zeal in a matter concerning which no explanatory documentation has been found as yet. It is obvious, however, that his gadfly conscience had once more compelled him to take an unpopular stand, and write to the bishop to question the decisions "of his Father Provincial, of a Commandant General, and of a Bishop," who did not wish publicity for certain unfortunate misdeeds.
He was next heard of in 1795 when, on May 1, he wrote to his provincial from the presidio of Janos asking for the "status and exemptions of definitor." He felt that he deserved this for twenty years of service in the missions of New Mexico and as chaplain of presidios in Neuva Vizcaya. No reply has been found. He was still at Janos in 1800, and he apparently died sometime between 1803 and 1805."" One may hope that he received greater rewards in a better world.
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