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| Mi Govr
y Sor tengo ia quasi
concluida aque mi comicion y espero salir para Mata pe en ellos espero
lleguen los tres Jesuitas qe
no vinie ron aquiens
conduciran los comicionados hasta este
ia io huviera marchado pero la emfermedad del Pe Perera y el dejarlo recu perar paraqe pueda salir me Detiene. En esta Mision se encuentro mucho sevo lo aviso por si se nececi tara el qe remito solo pue de ir acausa de nececitar las mulas pocas qe solo ai para conducir al Pe y el qe el camino para mulas cargadas aun no (f.11v) las sufre. Espero merecer a VSa me saludo al Amo Mesias y qe no tengo ociosa mi Volun tad qe spre la Decea sacri ficar en el obsequio la VSa su obligo servor.
Anza (rúbrica)
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My Governor and Lord:
I have already almost completed my commission1
and hope to leave for Mátape2
where I hope the three Jesuits, who are not coming with me but are being
conducted by those I commissioned, will have arrived. I would have already
gone on the march before now but for the illness of Padre Perera.3
Permitting him to recuperate so that he can leave has detained me.
I find a lot of tallow in this mission.4 I inform you of this in case it is needed. He who supplied it can only go [with me] because the few mules we have are needed to bring the Padre5 and he is travelling on loaded mules although he has (f.11v) not suffered. I hope I deserveYour Lordship’s remembering me to our friend Mesias and that my will, which always desires to sacrifice in obedience to Your Lordship, will not be unprofitable. Your dutiful servant.
Anza (rubric)
On the march, 4 August 1767 |
1Anza
was ordered to arrest the Jesuit Priests serving in the missions of the
Sonora River.
2All
of the officers ordered to carry out the Jesuit expulsion were to take
their arrested priests to Mátape, from where José Antonio
de Vildósola, nephew of Anza’s brother-in-law, Gabriel de Vildósola,
and husband of María Rosa Tato, Anza’s niece, transported them to
Guaymas. There they were locked in the barracks which had been newly
constructed to house the soldiers coming to fight the Seris in the Cerro
Prieto. At Guaymas, the Jesuits awaited the ship on which their
journey of imprisonment and exile would continue.
3
Nicolás de Perera, priest at Aconchi, was nearly seventy-one years
old at the time of the arrest (a very old man for the times) and could
not ride a horse. Anza planned to leave him at Horcasitas but Padre
Nicolás told him, "Iré gustoso en compañía
de mis hermanos" -- "I will go happily in the company of my brothers!"
Born September 23, 1696, in Zacatlán, Mexico, Father Perera had
hopes of seeing Italy with his fellow exiles but died on the forced march
on August 29, 1768, at Ixtlan del Río in Nayarit, Mexico.
See Zelis, Raphael de. Catalogo de los Sugetos de la Comapñía
de Jesus que formaban la Provincia de México el día del arresto,
25 de Junio de 1767. Mexico: Imprenta de I. Escalante, 1871, pp.32
and 167.
4As
Anza travelled south he was also taking an inventory of mission supplies
for the Great Seri War which was about to begin.
5The
Captian had a reed stretcher made and Padre Perera was carried to
Mátape on the pack mules.