The Politics of Religion, Recognition, and Accommodation: Father Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM, and the Making of the Tohono O odham Reservation, 1911-1939 1 Rev. David J. Endres DEndres@Athenaeum.edu Historians have ably documented the encounter between Catholic missionaries and Native Americans in the U.S. Southwest. 2 Early attempts at analyzing the missionary experience called the missionary myth idealized the encounter, portraying selfless missionary priests as forces for civilization, bringing Christian faith to lazy, uneducated, but docile indigenous peoples. By the 1960s, historians reversed their assessment of missionary-native relations, advancing the so-called genocide myth 3 that emphasized missionary violence and exploitation of Indian labor and land. Many contemporary historians recognize the deficiencies of both narratives. 4 The encounter between an early twentieth-century Franciscan missionary, Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM (1885-1967), 5 and Arizona s Tohono O odham tribe stands as needed corrective to establish a via media. This study attempts to situate Father Oblasser s missionary work in its proper context: acknowledging the paternalism, racism, and cultural destruction found in the missionary encounter, yet also recognizing the genuine desire of missionaries in this case, Oblasser to better the lives of those they were sent to civilize and Christianize. This study will highlight one important intervention: Oblasser s participation in the committee that fought for tribal recognition and establishment of the tribe s principal reservation in 1916-1917. Missionary Efforts among the Tohono O odham In the late seventeenth century, the Jesuit Eusebius Kino founded missions near the present Arizona-Mexican border, including San Xavier del Bac mission near Tucson. Jesuits, 1
Franciscans, and others attended to the mission sporadically. After the initial Christianization of the so-called Sonoran Catholics, members of the Tohono O odham (also known as the Papago or Desert People ), few missionaries provided for their spiritual care until the early twentieth century. 6 In 1908, Franciscan missionaries established several missions in the Papaguería (land of the Papago), a massive territory roughly the size of Connecticut. In 1911, Father Oblasser began serving the missions, taking a special interest in Tohono O odham language, history, and culture. Oblasser, who served the Papago for three decades, was known to the natives as Father Ventura. For most of the twentieth century, the tribe referred to all missionaries as Venturas. 7 The Papago were not easily reached, nor evangelized. 8 The harsh climate, lack of drinking water, risk of flash floods, and poisonous snakes and scorpions made their ministry difficult and dangerous. Villages could be a day s journey or more apart. Lay catechists and interpreters (often from among the Pima to whom the friars had also ministered) assisted the Franciscans. As they traveled, the friars preached and taught, moving some to accept baptism. Oblasser recorded his early successes: 55 infant baptism and 16 adult conversions in his first full year among the Papago. 9 The friars ministry was not always welcomed. Presbyterian missionaries had been at work, especially in the southeastern Papaguería since the 1890s. In the town of San Miguel, a government official told [the Franciscans] to leave the village, since none desired to remain Catholic. One Tohono O odham chief, favoring Presbyterians, spoke against the friars saying that Catholicism was incompatible with the U.S. system of government. In the village of Cobabi, the missionaries recorded that medicine men are raging at the friars presence. 10 The Franciscans clearly saw the opposition, however, as a sign of progress: Religion is doing well in Papago land, one friar wrote. The Protestants have already sent in two petitions to have [us] 2
removed. 11 The Franciscans work resulted in a quick and steady growth of the Catholic population. By 1916, there were 39 mission stations among the Papago. The annual reception of Holy Communion rose from less than 100 in 1912 to more than 2,000 in 1915, evidencing the growing influence of the Franciscans an influence that was to extend well beyond religious worship. 12 Oblasser and the Creation of a Reservation From the time of the Gadsden Purchase (1854) which incorporated the Tohono O odham s ancestral lands into the United States, the tribe steadily lost land to Anglo and Mexican ranchers. The Papago were considered peaceable Indians; they had never waged war against non-indians who threatened their land. Consequently, there were no treaties, nor tribal recognition from the U.S. government. 13 The land on which the Papago lived was technically public; they had no documentation proving ownership of the land on which they lived; their only proof of ownership was having lived there for centuries called aboriginal title in later legal proceedings over Indian land rights. 14 The Tohono O odham land was opened to homesteaders beginning in 1866, inviting ranchers and prospectors. [T]he country is fast filling up with cattlemen, a government agent reported, and now at almost every spring or well some white man has a herd of cattle, and the inevitable result follows, the Indian is ordered to leave, and the superior race usually enforces such an order. 15 The need to define the land of the Tohono O odham was recognized as early as 1874 when President U.S. Grant reserved 71,000 acres near San Xavier del Bac mission for the Indians. In 1882, the government established a second smaller reservation (22, 400 acres; known as the Gila Bend Reservation), yet most of the Papaguería remained in public use. 16 3
When Oblasser arrived in the Papaguería, there were no established boundaries for the vast lands outside the San Xavier and Gila Bend reservations. Oblasser argued the illegality of any encroach on the Tohono O odham lands since their rights had been assured by a Spanish land grant prior to the nineteenth century. In the dispute, Oblasser held that the Papago were not asking for favors. They know fully well, Oblasser reported, that the [their lands] were granted to them by treaties with Spain, and confirmed, (rather unfortunately, but orally) by the military authorities of America. 17 According to Oblasser, the U.S. government at the time of the Gadsden Purchase had agreed to abide by prior land grants. Oblasser set about proving the Tohono O odham s land rights, seeking to uncover documentation from Mexican and Spanish sources that might corroborate the Tohono O odham s claims. His analysis of diaries and the field reports of the first missionary priests among the Papago indicated that some families had lived on the same land for generations, even dating back well before the American Revolution. 18 Though he was unsuccessful in finding titles to the land, he maintained the Papagos ownership rights. With pressure mounting to parcel out the Papaguería, in 1915, the federal government formed a committee called the committee of eight to consider the creation of a third Papago reservation to encompass a significant proportion of their aboriginal land claim. Frank A. Thackery, a federal agent supervising the nearby Pima reservation, served as chairman of the committee. The other representatives included Oblasser; Rev. Frazier S. Herndon, a Presbyterian missionary to the Tohono O odham; two tribal members; and three government representatives. 19 Their charge was to make a recommendation to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Cato Sells, on the desirability of the reservation s creation. 4
Oblasser believed that the creation of a third reservation was consistent with the Indians plea for autonomy what he later paraphrased as: Please stranger, keep off my property and let me run my house the way I want. 20 In working toward establishing the reservation, Oblasser had a two-fold task: first, to convince native peoples that reservation boundaries were necessary to define their ancestral homeland, and second, to lobby the federal government for rights to their land. Oblasser explained to the Papago that setting boundaries related more to keeping others out and less about keeping them in. 21 Others joined Oblasser in his support for creating a reservation and advocacy for official federal recognition of the Papago tribe. The committee argued against the government s allotment of 160 acres to each Papago head of household, a solution in keeping with the government s approach to Indian land since the passage of the 1887 General Allotment Act (called the Dawes Act). 22 Oblasser explained the difficulties of allotment of Papago land, That meant that somebody got somebody else s land. Somebody got communal land. The land which the whole village of Topawa had worked was alloted (sic) to one man. 23 The allotment was contrary to the tribe s understanding of land use and ownership. As one explained, We Indians believe land belongs to all, not to just one person. The Papago had a tradition of communal use of the land, not privatized land claims. 24 To further strengthen the claim for a reservation, Oblasser and other committee members attested to the Papagos organized, developed culture, emphasizing the industrious character of the tribe and its usefulness to business and agriculture. 25 Prior to significant government intervention, the Papago, Oblasser boasted, had accommodated to Anglo-American culture. Their involvement in cotton picking, mining, railroad construction, and their service as farmhands for Anglo and Mexican ranchers were viewed as evidence of their accommodation. 5
Unlike other tribes, the Papago had avoided dependence on the government for their livelihood. As historian Eric Meeks noted, The perception that the O'odham were more independent, industrious, and civilized than other Indians led some to challenge the notion that erosion of their communal land base was desirable. 26 The committee of eight unanimously concluded that a reservation was necessary, but Thackery and the committee, fearing a backlash from miners and ranchers, kept their deliberations secret until their recommendation was acted upon. 27 President Woodrow Wilson established the reservation by executive orders in 1916-1917 naming it the Sells reservation after Wilson s Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 28 The new reservation was among the largest Native American reservations in the country, yet only one-quarter the size of the Papagos original lands. 29 Recalling the victory many years later, Oblasser exclaimed, "We got our reservation! a clear assertion of his identifying with the people for whom he advocated. 30 The Papago did not celebrate their victory, however; the recognition of the tribe and the drawing of reservation boundaries was little appreciated at the time. One contemporary recalled, The people had lived there always and they continued to live like they had before. It didn t mean anything to them. They took it for granted that the land was theirs. 31 But the establishment of the reservation was a delicate political issue. Ranchers and miners protested the decision, countering the committee s recommendation and arguing that a smaller reservation would suit the Papago. The Tucson Chamber of Commerce, representing local business interests, took exception to the reservation s establishment, demanding a retraction of the land. 32 In response, President Wilson, shortly after approving the reservation s boundaries, removed 475,000 acres some of the most favorable land from the reservation. Oblasser and others continued to fight for recognition of tribal lands. Lobbying Sells and Secretary of the 6
Interior Franklin K. Lane, Oblasser traveled in January 1917 to Washington, D.C. with a delegation of Papago. 33 Their petitions were favorably received; most of the land was eventually restored to the Tohono O odham, but the negative response to the reservation s creation resulted in congressional approval of the Indian Appropriation Act (1918-1919), forbidding the creation of new reservations by presidential executive order. 34 Disputes over the Papago s land rights continued for many years. Oblasser defended the Papago against several spurious claims. Heirs of Robert M. Hunter, one-time lawyer for the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, claimed rights to up to half of the Tohono O odham lands for having secured their land rights in the early twentieth century. Twenty-one years after the Hunter heirs first asserted their claim, the government ruled in favor of the Tohono O odham. 35 The U.S. Congress took action in 1926, 1931, 1937, and 1940 to acquire land to further restore the ancestral lands of the Papago, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to reclaim land that had been allowed to pass into private ownership. 36 Conclusion For nearly three decades, Oblasser served as a missionary to the Papago. Throughout these years, he continued to advocate for them. When asked why, Oblasser simply stated, [W]hen we enter a mission field we become one of [the] Indians in all their interests. 37 He helped organize the first day schools in the Papaguería, favoring a partnership with parents and tribal leaders over government or even Church-run boarding schools that forced children far away from their homes. In 1936, in response to the Indian Reorganization Act, Oblasser helped draft the Papago Constitution and By-Laws which allowed for limited native self-governance. In 1937, he represented native interests in the repeal of the so-called Indian Rum Law and 7
advocated for Papago exemption from the Social Security Act, arguing for native independence from the federal government in light of already existing means of care for the elderly, unemployed, and impoverished. In 1939, his Franciscan superiors reassigned Oblasser and he departed the Papaguería, continuing his missionary work among Native Americans in California, and later among the Apache and Pima of Arizona. In total, he spent more than half a century as a missionary to Native Americans. 38 Throughout these years, he made frequent trips to Washington, D.C. (as late as 1959) to advocate for Native American rights. 39 In 1963, Oblasser received an honorary doctorate from the University of Arizona in recognition of his support for the native peoples. 40 Identifying so closely with the Papago, Oblasser requested that he be buried on the Papago reservation at the cemetery in Topawa. At his death in 1967 at age 82, he was widely known as the Desert Priest or the Apostle of the Papagos. He had personally baptized up to threequarters of the Papago reservation s adult population. 41 More than 1,000 attended his funeral; many wept openly for the missionary, local leader, and advocate for native rights. 42 1 This paper was adapted from a presentation at the American Catholic Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 4, 2014. 2 For a brief summary of mission historiography see Willard Hughes Rollings, Indians and Christianity, in A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip Deloria and Neal Salisbury, 121-138 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), esp. 128. 3 See as examples, Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (University of Oklahoma Press, 1969); George E. Tinker, Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993); Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo, The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide (The Indian Historian Press for the American Indian Historical Society, 1987). 44 Willard Hughes Rollings, Indians and Christianity argues for a historiographical via media in Indians and Christianity, 128. See also the U.S. Catholic Church s self-reflection on the missionary-native American encounter, as found in: Heritage and Hope: Evangelization in the United States (1990), in Pastoral Letters and Statements of the United States Catholic Bishops, Volume 6: 1989-1997, ed. Patrick W. Carey, 234-262 (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1998), 234-237: The effort to portray the history of the encounter as a totally negative experience... is not an accurate interpretation of the past... There was, in fact, a deeply positive aspect of the encounter of European and American cultures.... From the earliest days there were Catholic missionaries who exercised a humanizing presence... They labored for the spiritual and material welfare of those to whom they ministered (237). 5 While Oblasser receives a mention in many secondary accounts of the history of the Tohono O odham, the only historical work devoted to him is Regis Rohder, OFM, Padre to the Papagos: Father Bonaventure Oblasser 8
(Tucson, AZ: Oblasser Library, San Xavier Mission, 1982), a popular account of his life. Recently, a number of photographs relating to his ministry have been published: Richard Trible, A Priest in the Papaguería: Selections from the Bonaventure Collection of Early-to Mid-20th-Century Mission Photographs," Journal of the Southwest 55, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 277-293. 6 For the early history of the Franciscans in Arizona, see Zephyrin Engelhardt, OFM, The Franciscans in Arizona (Harbor Springs, MI: Holy Childhood Indian School, 1899). The second wave of friars was from the Order of Friars Minor, St. Louis, Missouri Province and after its creation in 1915, from the Province of Santa Barbara, California. 7 James S. Griffith, Franciscan Chapels on the Papagueria, 1912-1973, The Smoke Signal 30 (Fall 1974): 237. 8 Ignatius DeGroot, OFM, San Solano Missions, 1908-2008, 9-11, Printed Material file, Topawa box, Provincial Archives, St. Barbara Province, Order of Friars Minor, Santa Barbara, California (hereafter PASBP); Maynard J. Geiger, The Kingdom of St. Francis in Arizona (1539-1939) (Santa Barbara, 1939), 39; James S. Griffith, Franciscan Chapels on the Papagueria, 1912-1973, The Smoke Signal 30 (Fall 1974): 235-237, Printed Material file, Topawa box, PASBP; Entry for June 22, 1912, in San Solano Chronology, 100, PASBP. 9 Baptisms outside San Xavier, in San Solano Chronology, 48-49, PASBP. 10 San Solano Chronology, October 1911, pg. 41; June 1912, pg. 63; June 17, 1914, pg. 81, PASBP. 11 Entry for June 22, 1912 in San Solano Chronology, 100, PASBP. 12 Report of Fr. Ferdinand Ortiz, March 1, 1916, in San Solano Chronology, 179, PASBP; List made by Fr. Nicholas (Perschl) in 1916, in San Solano Chronology, 182, PASBP. 13 Peter Blaine, Sr., Papagos and Politics (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1981), 2. 14 The Papago Reservation, in Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Indian Rights Association for the Year Ending December 14, 1917 (Philadelphia: Office of the Indian Rights Association, 1917), 10. 15 1887 report in Bernard L. Fontana, Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), 74. 16 See the summary of Papago land claims and reservation creation in Land petition before the Indian Claims Commission of the United States, the Papago Tribe of Arizona, petitioner, v. the United States of America, defendant (docket No. 345, decided September 10, 1968). See http://digital.library.okstate.edu/icc/v19/iccv19p424.pdf 17 Papago Case May Involve Tucson, Casa Grande Dispatch, January 27, 1933; Spurious Papago Land Claims Censured by Ashurst, Casa Grande Dispatch, February 3, 1933. 18 Harold O. Weight, Padre of the Papago Trails, Desert Magazine 15, no. 2 (February 1952): 8. 19 The Papago Reservation, The Native American (Phoenix, Arizona) 17, no. 5 (March 4, 1916): 72, 82-83, 85-86; committee members listed at 83. 20 Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM, Letter to the Editor: Rights of the Indian, in Desert Magazine 10, no. 10 (August 1947): 30. 21 Rohder, Padre to the Papagos, 47-48. 22 Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934 (Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press, 1991), 14. 23 Weight, Padre of the Papago Trails, 8. 24 Blaine, Papagos and Politics, 82. 25 See, for example, Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM, Papagueria: Domain of the Papagos, Arizona Historical Review 7, no. 2 (April 1936): 3-9. 26 Eric V. Meeks, The Tohono O'odham, Wage Labor, and Resistant Adaptation, 1900-1930, Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 468-489; quote at 477-478. 27 Andrae M. Marak and Laura Tuennerman, At the Border of Empires: The Tohono O odham, Gender, and Assimilation, 1880-1934 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 27. 28 President Woodrow Wilson, Executive orders 2300 (January 14, 1916) and 2525 (February 1, 1917). 29 Winston P. Erickson, Sharing the Desert: The Tohono O odham in History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), 103-106; Eric V. Meeks, Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 56-58. 30 Weight, Padre of the Papago Trails, 8. 31 Blaine, Papagos and Politics, 68. 32 Marak and Tuennerman, At the Border of Empires, 28; Bernard L. Fontana, Interview with Bonaventure Oblasser, OFM, July 20, 1959, San Xavier del Bac, Arizona, Transcription, Papers of Bonaventure Oblasser, 1908-1977, MS-300, box 8, folder 9, University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections, Tucson, AZ, 97. 9
33 San Solano Chronology, January 1917, 194, PASBP; Editorials, Indian Sentinel 1, no. 4 (April 1917): 19; Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), February 3, 1917. 34 McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 17. 35 Charles A. Cook, The Hunter Claim: A Colossal Land Scheme in the Papaguería, Journal of the Southwest 15, No. 3 (Autumn 1973): 213-244; Rohder, Padre to the Papagos, 49, 51. 36 Bertha P. Dutton, American Indians of the Southwest (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press), 215. 37 Weight, Padre of the Papago Trails, 10. 38 Father Bonaventure s Rites Today in Topawa, Arizona Republic, March 1, 1967. 39 S.C. Warman, Fighter for Papagos Recognized, Tucson Daily Citizen, June 1, 1963. 40 Ibid. 41 Lives of Deceased Friars, St. Barbara Province, Volume 3: 1960-1979, 84-94, PASBP. 42 Bob Thomas, Apostle to the Papagos Buried, Arizona Republic, March 2, 1967. 10