NOTES AND FRAGMENTS.

In an article on Tribal Society, in the Quarterly for July, 1897, I fell into the error of stating that Maria de Agreda was a Spanish missionary lady who had been in Texas about 1630. I am gratified to see this error corrected by Edmond J. P. Schmitt in the Quarterly for October, 1897. The same error has been made by others. Indeed, Manzanet's manuscript is misleading in that particular. I have never seen the original, but quote from the translation in the Texas State Library. He says: “At that time I was living in the Mission of Caldera, in the province of Coahuila, where I had gone with the intention of seeing whether I could find out and obtain any information about the interior of the country toward the north and northeast. As for the information which I had so far, it was a letter which I had in my possession dated from Madrid to our brother Antonio Linaz, this letter makes mention of the statement which the blessed Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda imparted in her convent to the guardian father of New Mexico. who was Brother Alonzo de Benavides. The blessed mother says that she was many times in New Mexico, and in the great Quivira; and coming out from the great Quivira towards the east, there are the kingdoms of the Ticlas, the Theas, and the Cabuzcal; but she says also that these names are not the proper ones of those kingdoms, but they resemble them. On account of that intelligence which I had from Spain, and because it came expressly to the department for the conversion of the infidels, I set out and visited the missions of Coahuila,” etc.

The closing paragraph of Manzanet's manuscript, as appears in the above mentioned translation, is as follows:

“Since I have no more time, I shall only relate the most peculiar event of all. It happened after distributing in the village of the Tejas the clothing, both to the Indians and to the chief, that one evening the chief of the Tejas told me that a piece of flannel had been given to him for a shroud to bury his mother in when she should die. When I spoke to him of a kind of cloth which was better, he said to me that he did not want any other color but blue; and when I asked him about the mystery which was in the blue color, he told me that all their people liked the blue color very much, and that by preference they wished to be buried in cloth of that color. In former time a most beautiful woman had come to see them, who descended from heaven and was dressed in blue; they all wished to be like that woman. When I asked him whether it was long ago, the chief said that it had not been in his time, but that his mother, who was very old, had seen her, and so had the other old people. Therefrom can clearly be seen that it was the Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda who was in those countries very often, as she herself confessed to the guardian father of New Mexico; the last time that she was there, it was in the year 1631, as is evident from the same declaration which she made to the custodian father of New Mexico.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,  “Fray Damian Manzanet.”

This, in the absence of any explanation, would lead any one to think that he asserts that Maria de Agreda had herself been in Texas. Now it appears that what he means to assert is that although she had never crossed the ocean in the flesh, yet in a trance, or ecstacy, her spirit had come over and materialized among the Indians. My first impression upon reading it was that it was an Indian legend. It sounds like one, and similar legends appear in various places, notably in Peru, long before the discovery of America, and now I am convinced of the correctness of my first impression. However that may be, Maria de Agreda seems to have been in some measure the moving spirit in the discovery of Texas.

M. M. Kenney.  Austin, Texas, Jan. 13, 1898.