In 1695, Father Antonio Menéndez, the Rector of the Mayo and Yaqui missions of Sonora, wrote to Father Eusebio Kino to assure him that the recent revolt of the O’odham and death of the missionary Father Javier Saeta was not a tragedy, but a triumph. He optimistically reassured Kino, “It is a good sign, Father, that all those missions begin with the blood of a minister to cultivate it since it is an indication of their perseverance and good stability.” While the idea that successful missions needed Indigenous revolts and missionary deaths seems counterintuitive, this book illustrates how it bec ... More

In 1695, Father Antonio Menéndez, the Rector of the Mayo and Yaqui missions of Sonora, wrote to Father Eusebio Kino to assure him that the recent revolt of the O’odham and death of the missionary Father Javier Saeta was not a tragedy, but a triumph. He optimistically reassured Kino, “It is a good sign, Father, that all those missions begin with the blood of a minister to cultivate it since it is an indication of their perseverance and good stability.” While the idea that successful missions needed Indigenous revolts and missionary deaths seems counterintuitive, this book illustrates how it became a central logic of frontier colonization in Spanish North America. Missions Begin with Blood argues that martyrdom acted as a ceremony of possession that helped Jesuits understand suffering, violence, disease, and death as ways that God inevitably worked to advance Christendom. When positioning themselves vis-à-vis rival religious orders, petitioning superiors for support, preparing campaigns to extirpate native “idolatries,” or protecting converts from European and Indigenous enemies, Jesuits believed that winning would come through their wounding and victories through victimization. This book correlates these tales of suffering to deep genealogies of redemptive death in Catholic discourse and explains how such traditions and practices worked to rationalize early modern colonialism. Specifically, it focuses on an agricultural metaphor that pervaded missionary discourse where Jesuits understood their lives and labors as seed, watered by the sweat of their suffering, tears of their exile, and blood of their sacrifice.