Background
Juan de Padilla was born about 1500 in Andalusia, Spain.
Juan de Padilla was born about 1500 in Andalusia, Spain.
Juan de Padilla came to New Spain about the year 1528 and was attached to the Order of Friars Minor in the province of Santo Evangelio. In 1529 he became a military chaplain in the expedition of Nuno de Guzman to Nueva Galicia and Culiac n. In this capacity he served for three years, trying to rescue from oppression and slavery the natives who had been captured by the Spanish settlers on the borderland of the unknown wilderness. In the course of the following years he made many missionary journeys among the Mexican Indians. He built monasteries at Zapotlan, Tuxpam, and Tulancingo, ruling the friars as superior and guardian until 1540. In that year, hearing of the new lands discovered by Fray Marcos de Niza, he was fired with apostolic zeal to Christianize the natives there. In company with Fray Marcos and two other religious of the Order of St. Francis he obtained permission to join the expedition of Francisco Vzquez Coronado. One may gauge the stamina of the much-traveled Padilla by the fact that he was a pedestrian in all his journeys.
After reaching Zuei with Coronado he trudged on with Pedro de Tovar to Moqui in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon, and after wending his way back to Zuei, joined Hernando de Alvarado on a trip of several hundred miles over vast deserts and immense rocky areas; he accompanied Coronado with a well-selected troop of cavaliers in search of the mythical Quivira and returned with the disappointed General to Cicuye (now known as Pecos, New Mexico). When Coronado abandoned New Mexico in 1542, Padilla, Fray Juan de la Cruz, and the lay brother Fray Luis Descalona remained behind in the midst of the savages, with only one mounted Portuguese soldier as a military escort. Two donados of the Franciscan Order (tertiaries) and two Mexican Indian boys also cast their hazardous lot with the friars. Slowly they retraced the weary way to Quivira. The little party plodded the long and painful journey to the place where Coronado had planted a cross, and there established the first mission in the North American Southwest.
The religious influence exercised by the padre upon the roving children of the prairies soon gained their confidence and affection, but his ardent missionary zeal urged him to attempt also the conversion of the Guas, a hostile tribe near by. This project was bitterly opposed by the Quivirans, but Padilla was determined to go. Only one day after his departure, he was overtaken by a galloping horde of Quivira Indians. His companions were ordered to flee for their lives, while he dropped on his knees offering his soul to his Master, and as he prayed, the Quivirans pierced him from head to foot with arrows. There has been much difference of opinion about the location of Quivira, the place near which he met his martyrdom. It has been placed on the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle and also in what is now Kansas, somewhat north of the present Wichita. The year of his death is given variously as 1542 and 1544. The day of his commemoration is November 30.
Juan de Padilla was a distinguished missionary. He became known due to missionary tours among the Indians of Tlamatzolán, Tuchpán, Tzapotitlán, Totlamán, Amula, Caulán, Xicotlán, Avalos or Zaolán, Amacuecán, Atoyac, Tzacoalco, and Colima from 1531 to 1540. Padilla also established the monastery of Zapotlan, Tuxpam, Tulancingo.
It was said that Juan de Padilla "had been a fighting man in his youth".
