Francisco Garcés

Francisco Hermenegildo Tomás Garcés (April 12, 1738 – July 18, 1781) was a Spanish Franciscan missionary who explored much of the southwestern part of North America, including what are now Arizona, southern California, and northeastern Baja California. Garcés was born April 12, 1738, in Morata de Jalón (Valdejalón county), Zaragoza province, Aragon, and was ordained in 1763. He served at the Franciscan college of Santa Cruz in Querétaro New Spain (Mexico). In 1768, when the King of Spain expelled the Jesuits from their extensive mission fields in northwestern New Spain, present-day Baja peninsula Mexico and the Southwestern United States), Garcés was among their replacements. He was assigned to Mission San Xavier del Bac near present-day Tucson, Arizona.

The expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish King set in motion a sequence of dramatic events in the missions. While the Franciscans from the Querétaro college took over responsibility in the Sonoran Desert region in the present day State of Sonora Mexico and southern U.S. Arizona, other Franciscans from the college of San Fernando in Mexico City, under the leadership of Junípero Serra, were assigned to replace the Jesuits in Baja California.

Serra's Baja California Franciscans were also charged with spearheading a bold advance of the Spanish missionary frontier northward into the Las Californias Province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, beginning in 1769. In 1773, control of the Baja California missions passed to the Dominicans. The Franciscans in upper Las Californias, present day California, like the Jesuits in Baja California before them, recognized the desirability of establishing on overland connection with New Spain through the region of the Colorada Desert crossing the lower Colorado River.

Garcés became a key player in that effort. He conducted extensive explorations in the intervening, unsettled region of the Colorado and Mojave deserts and northern Arizona, sometimes on his own and a major expedition in 1774 with the soldier-explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and the legendary De Anza Expedition. The missionary met with and produced accounts of several Indian tribes, including the Havasupai and Mojave.

Garces Memorial Circle, Bakersfield, California.

In 1779 Garcés was assigned to ill-fated hybrid mission/colonies being established on the Colorado River among the Quechan. The warlike native peoples soon clashed with the disruptive Spanish settlers, and in July of 1781 Garcés and his fellow missionaries were among those killed at the Mission San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer in a general uprising and massacre. Garcés' body was later re-interred at Mission San Pedro y San Pablo del Tubutama. He is considered to be a martyr.

Legacy

The El Garces Hotel, named in Garcés honor, is a historic Railroad Station and Hotel located in The City of Needles, California, the site where he passed by in 1776. The El Garces Hotel was built by the Santa Fe Railroad under contract with the Fred Harvey Company in 1908. It is designed in an elegant Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts style, was considered the "Crown Jewel" of the entire Fred Harvey chain.

There are two memorials to Father Garcés in Bakersfield, California: a statue located at the Garces Memorial Circle on Chester Avenue and the city's Catholic high school, Garces Memorial High School. Garces National Forest was established by the U.S. Forest Service in southern Arizona on July 1, 1908 with 78,480 acres (317.6 km2) from portions of Baboquivari, Tumacacori and Huachuca National Forests. It was combined with Coronado National Forest on July 1, 1911 and the name was discontinued.

References

• Garcés, Francisco. 1900. On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer: The Diary and Itinerary of Francisco Garcés. Edited by Elliott Coues. Two vols. Francis P. Harper, New York, NY.
• Garcés, Francisco. 1967. A Record of Travels in Arizona and California, 1775–1776. Edited by John Galvin. John Howell, San Francisco.