Fray Francisco Atanasio Dom nguez, canonical inspector of the Missions of New Mexico in 1776, compared most everything in New Mexico to Mexico City, "the delightful and alluring cradle of my birth, for which no praise is ever adequate." And hardly anything measured up.
Benavides looked out hopefully upon a young colony bent upon the Christian conversion of the Pueblo Indians, and Dom nguez saw realistically what an ever more sec.
The contrast could scarcely be sharper.
Since its rediscovery in 1928 and now published in a new edition, the unparalleled Dom nguez report has often been compared to the 1630 and 1634 memorials of Fray Alonso de Benavides.
Dom nguez\'s superiors, however, resentful of his unflattering wordiness and occasional wit, filed his commentary away unceremoniously and forgot it.
How much a nanny goat cost (2 pesos), a fat pig (12 pesos), a trade knife (1 buffalo hide), a captive Indian girl from twelve to twenty years old (2 good horses and assorted dry goods), or the funeral of a Spanish child with tall cross and cope (8 pesos); how to prepare atole or chocolate (not coffee); the resentment of the colony\'s merchants toward their Chihuahua creditors and the fatalism of New Mexican families living under constant threat of Comanche attack; or where to catch trout-such details abound.
From no Other document do we learn so much about daily life in raw and remote late colonial New Mexico.
Yet all the while, Father Dom nguez maintained the keen eye and curiosity of a born observer.
He found fault with certain of his Franciscan brethren, calling them on their drunkenness, insubordination, or public scandal.
Dom nguez likened New Mexican churches to hacienda granaries, wine cellars, or Mexican pulque parlors.
Then, by an ironic twist later in 1776, Dom nguez found himself on a five-month vision quest with Miera and Fray Silvestre V lez de Escalante.
He disparaged the people of New Mexico and the religious art of Spanish immigrant Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco.
Fray Francisco Atanasio Dom nguez, canonical inspector of the Missions of New Mexico in 1776, compared most everything in New Mexico to Mexico City, "the delightful and alluring cradle of my birth, for which no praise is ever adequate." And hardly anything measured up
