Bolton’s extensive biography of Kino has appeared in three editions: 1936, 1960, and 1984, or once every twenty-four years. Photomechanically reproduced, the book in its last two editions has remained unchanged in text; but the last edition shows a few slight modifications in the presentation of maps and illustrations.
Kessell’s Foreword (pp. xiii-xviii) helps to bring the biography somewhat up to date by furnishing a selective bibliography of pertinent post-1936 items and giving important data on the author and his topic. It does not, however, attempt to modify the text in the light of the considerable research and publication that have appeared since the first edition. That is the purpose of this review essay. The pages of Rim cited here will be enclosed in parentheses; also the references to the indispensable bibliography appended to the review.
Bolton’s text proceeds thematically within an essentially chronological framework. After an autobiographical “Adventure in Archives and on the Trail, he furnishes a masterful background essay, The Jesuits in New Spain (a misprint in the title omits the “New,” thus rendering it inaccurate: 3).
Then begins the story proper of Kino: boyhood in his native northern Italy, higher studies in Austria, Jesuit formation in Bavaria. He volunteers for China, but is sent instead to Mexico. Designated scientist and religious superior of the enterprise, he participates in one more effort to “conquer Lower California from 1681 to 1685. With funds cut off by the Spanish government for further California expeditons, he writes a new page in mission methods: he will go to northern Mexico and establish productive cattle ranges and flourishing wheat fields from which to supply the barren peninsula.
He realized this plan during the remaining twenty-four years of his life: 1687-1711. Some forty expeditions later, most of them undertaken to prove anew the peninsularity of Baja California and with a dozen or more mission centers established in northern Sonora and southern Arizona, which extended the rim of Christendom several hundred miles westward and northward, his apostolate constitutes one of the greatest successes in the annals of world missions.
Bolton searched in Mexico, the United States, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain for pertinent materials; and, to make his account more realistic, he followed every mile of Kino’s trail. His most important discovery was Kino’s complete journal, which he translated and edited (1919, 1948: Bolton). Nowhere does Bolton mention the fact that he was the first non-Jesuit permitted to consult the Central Jesuit Archives, which he cites on almost every page.
The Rim is not only the most complete and scholarly account of Kino, his work and times; it is also Bolton’s best work. An excellent evaluation of the book appeared recently (1978; Bannon, pp. 190-197, “His Favorite Black Robe”).
Nevertheless, a half-century of subsequent research leaves about a fourth of the chapters of the biography in need of varying degrees of revision. Important works on the life and apostolate of Kino have been published, though no better or more readable biography than Bolton’s. Many new details have been uncovered, and the bibliography invites additional updating. New critical editions of pertinent documents have appeared. Most of what is listed as manuscript has now been published and edited. The following fifteen points have caught this reviewer’s attention and may be of interest to readers of the Rim.
The cartographical data are only in small part still valid. (Were Bolton alive today, he would be the first to insist on correction and revision.)
On the reverse (p. iii) of the title page, 1644 is given as the year of Kino’s birth. In the text (pp. 27-28) the correct date is indicated as August 10, 1645.
Bolton failed to discover the date and circumstances of Kino’s ordination to the priesthood, or anything about his special studies at the Bavarian University of Freiburg leading to the equivalent of a doctorate. This was first revealed in 1965 (1965b; Burrus, pp. 3, 9 n. 5).
Bolton did not consider it his task to analyze Kino’s spiritual life and character or to delve deeply into the motives that inspired him in his arduous ministry. This deficiency is made up in part in a recent study (1980: Kelly-Burrus).
Bolton found the passenger lists of hundreds of Jesuits sailing from Spain to the foreign missions, but he failed to find the list in which Kino appears. How this reviewer discovered it is indicated by Kessell in the Foreword (pp. xvi-xvii).
The Rim omits the entire second section of Kino’s biography of his fellow missionary Saeta. (Bolton had consulted the manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico City, and took much information from it, especially on the Caborcan rebellion [pp. 293-333] and the Sigüenza y Góngora-Kino dispute about the comet [pp. 77–85]. Bolton, however, does not cite from the second and more valuable portion of the Saeta biography found in a separate part of the same manuscript.) The uncited portion is a unique treatise written by Kino and attributed in part by him to Saeta on the best methods to convert and instruct the Indians (1951b: Burrus, pp. 161-183).
Bolton was unaware of the unqualified defense of Kino by Tirso González, the Jesuit general in Rome. After late 1696, when the general’s letter of July 28, preserved in a private collection in Mexico City, reached Provincial Juan Palacios in Mexico City, no one was allowed to interfere with Kino’s work or plans. Bolton’s conjectures and speculations about the actions and attitudes of Superiors Antonio Leal, Horacio Polici, and especially Francisco Javier Mora (scattered references from pp. 334 to 593), must be interpreted in the light of Tirso González’s letter to the Mexican Provincial.
Although Bolton knew about the letters of Kino to the Duchess of Aveiro, having secured them for Huntington, he was unaware of her devotion to and influence on the Jesuit General Tirso González, and hence unaware of the power of her intercession with him in behalf of the missionary (1964a: Burrus, Introducción; 1965a: Burrus, Introduction).
The strangest error in the biography concerns a certain Jesuit Luis Velarde. Bolton writes that he lived with and accompanied Kino during the last eight years of his life, that is, from 1703 to 1711 (pp. 584-585). Kino, who carefully records everyone who ever came to his mission of Dolores, if only for a few days, never once mentions this supposed companion, and even expressly says that no one came to help him (p. 510 n. 2). At the time Bolton states that Velarde was with Kino, he was in fact a student in his native Spain. He did not cross the Atlantic until after Kino’s death in 1711, and did not reach the apostle’s mission until 1713 (1971a: Burrus, pp. 12–15, 537–539, 745). Who, then, had spent the last eight years with Kino at Dolores? The only possibility is the author of the book from which the passage quoted by Bolton is taken: Juan Mateo Manje, a military officer mentioned dozens of times in Rim. Had Bolton known that Manje was the author of the highest praise ever bestowed on Kino, he would have found the answer to the question that tortured him: whether the Parral incident caused a permanent breach between Kino and Manje (p. 564).
The translation (p. 585) of the entry made in the burial register by Agustín Campos, the Jesuit who was with Kino in his last hours, is inaccurate. Because of the inaccurate translation, points that were clear to Campos were misunderstood by Bolton (p. 586) (1961c: Burrus, Introduction). It seems apparent that Campos had Kino’s map of 1710 and that Bolton did not and hence was mystified (published 1965b: Burrus, Plate XIII).
In 1662 the Mexican Jesuits sent to Rome a report on all their fifty-four northern mission centers. As was their practice, they illustrated the written account with a detailed map. Each mission reported on in the written text was assigned a number on the map, from 1 to 54. In the course of centuries, the two elements became separated. Bolton came across the map, but not the report, when he worked in the Central Jesuit Archives. He assigned the year 1681 to the map and attributed it to Kino (p. 606). I published the map in colors and edited in English translation the report it once accompanied and illustrated (1965b: Burrus, Plate IV and pp. 33-37).
In 1706 Kino was exploring the Tepoca coast along the eastern shore of the Gulf of California north of the present Kino Bay. Looking westward across the gulf, he described two new geographical features close to the opposite shore. He took one of them to be an island and the other a promontory jutting out from the peninsula toward the island. The first he called Isla de Santa Inés; the second, Cabo de San Vicente. Sixteen years later, when Juan de Ugarte, S.J., sailed close by the spot, he saw that it was only one island and christened it Angel de la Guarda, the name it has kept through the centuries (1967; Burrus, I, 195–200). Bolton (pp. 545-548) assumed inaccurately that the second element (San Vicente) was Tiburón Island.
Bolton never succeeded in finding Kino’s definitive map made for the 1710 portion of his journal. It records his latest expeditions and data, also his latest nomenclature; Isla de Santa Inés, Nueva Navarra (Pimería Alta), Presentación (the huge island formed at that time by the main branches of the Colorado after being joined by the Gila). Nor did Bolton know that numerous manuscripts and printed maps showing the above data and nomenclature had been copied from Kino’s 1710 map (1965b: Burrus, Plate XIII).
Bolton, while quoting frequently and copiously from the diary of Diego Carrasco, the officer who accompanied Kino from September 22 to October 18, 1698, gives no indication that he was aware that Carrasco merely copied the Jesuit’s original account (1971a: Burrus, pp. 553-584).
Bolton maintains (p. 109) that Kino was acquainted with the text of Francisco de Ortega’s third expedition to Baja California. Neither Kino nor Bolton was aware that the expedition never took place (1972: Burrus, pp. 272—283). Bolton lists Zárate’s Relaciones (p. 626) but fails to add that Niel’s Comentario, which is a part of them, is also fictitious (1962a: Burrus, pp. 569-576). The author of the work attributed to Georgius Agricola (p. 373 n. 1) was Alvaro Alonso Barba (1971a: Burrus, p. 211 n. 60).
In the bibliography at the end of this review, I indicate a few important publications that either give a wider background of themes dealt with by Bolton, (1952. 1968: Dunne; 1966: Father Kino; 1951: Ives; 1969: Mathes), or writings of missionaries closely associated with Kino, such as Píccolo and Salvatierra (1962b: Burrus; 1971b: Burrus).
As each edition of the Rim has appeared, I have been puzzled by certain anomalies; one example, the contents (pp. vii-viii) lists 30 chapters, but the text itself is divided into 153. The chapters of the contents are not numbered in the text and the chapters of the text are not indicated in the contents.
Despite these qualifications, this third edition of Bolton’s Rim is a splendid volume presenting a most fascinating chapter of southwestern history and reflecting the high standards of the publications of the University of Arizona Press.
Bibliography Cited in the Review Essay
