The Indian saw no sense in worshipping the good spirit, but when his luck was bad he went to great lengths to propitiate the wrath of the bad spirit. He resorted to various Indian mysteries, hoping thereby to bring the good spirit into the ascendancy once more. Then, of course, luck would change.

It is difficult for a Christian to comprehend the theology of an Indian. But it was vastly more difficult for the Wichita Indian to comprehend the religion of the Christian. When told that there was but one good God who not only brought the buffalo but also created the rattlesnake, the Indian sported in disgust:

"The white man's God must be a fool god to make rattlesnakes!"

Such impiety not only shocked the Spaniards but caused them to discuss the heathens of Kansas with much concern. English propagandists have so long pictured that Spaniard as a cruel gold grasping murderer that we Americans who have our history from English sources, have failed to notice that the Spanish conquistadors were deeply concerned about the salvation of the souls of this whom they conquered. With Coronado on his journey thru Kansas was Juan de Padilla, a former soldier, who had renounced to become a Franciscan friar.

The Franciscans were a Mendicant order. They went about in the poorest of clothing and ate the poorest of fare so that they would not be above the meanest beggar.

When Padilla saw the Wichita and Kansas Indians in their grass houses and when he realized that they were worshipping the devil he resolved the return journey to the Rio Grande in central New Mexico. Padilla informed Coronado of his plan and it met the commander's approval.

No sooner had the news gone out that Padilla would return to Kansas in the spring. Andres del Campo, a Portuguese serving in the Spanish army, volunteered to accompany him as hunter. Two Mexican Indians who had served with Padilla as laymen also volunteered to go, and one of the Spanish officers, wishing to make a handsome contribution to the missionary effort donated his Negro slave Sabastian.

In addition there were several Wichita Indians in New Mexico, who had accompanied Coronado as guides to show him a shorter route from the Arkansas to the Rio Grande than the one he had taken on his trip to Kansas. These journeyed to the Wichita villages the following spring, Campo on a mule, the rest walking.

Padilla was well received by the Wichitas. He conducted services in their lodges and baptized their children. To the Indians the rite of baptism was no doubt as deep a mystery as their religious mysteries are to us. The Wichitas, however, were impressed with the fact that Padilla had come to live among them and to be with them because he loved them and wished to do them good, and so they loved him in return, accepting his baptisms and other services, trusting there was some great magic in all he did which would work to their advantage.

Padilla's work among the Wichitas was so remarkably successful that when he announced that now he must go to Guas to preach the Gospel the Wichitas objected. Historians are not agreed who the people of Guas were but generally accepted theory is that they were the Kansas Indians. There was a deadly feud between the Kansas and Wichita tribes. The Wichitas and Pawnees were the original owners of Kansas, the Kansas tribe having intruded at about the time of Coronado, coming into the state from Arkansas.

So deadly was the hatred of the Wichitas for the Kansas that they did not want their enemies to have the benefit of Padilla's mysteries. When Padilla tried to bring them to this point of view by preaching they should love their enemies they thought that as supreme foolishness.

Leaving the Wichitas unconvinced of the saneness of his plan Padilla set out for Gaus. He traveled only three days when he was overtaken by a party of Wichita warriors. After his departure they held a council. Some of them decided that the only way to prevent Padilla from giving the blessings of Jesus to Gaus was to kill him.

While they were still some distance off Padilla recognized their purpose. Ordering Campo and his other followers to make their escape he knelt on the ground and bowing his head waited for the death blow to fall. From a nearby hill Campo and the others saw the Wichitas rush on the priest and kill him. As he died he held a crucifix in his right hand and kissed it. Sebastian and the Indians returning buried the priest after which they covered his grave with stones to keep out the coyotes. Campo being a white man, and therefore faring the wrath against Padilla might be directed against him, remained on the hill, not daring to assist in the burial.

Thus ended in 1542 the career of Padilla, priest of the first church of Kansas, and also the first Christian martyr to die in what is now the United States. He taught the religion of Jesus in Kansas 78 years before the Christians conducted Christian services in Massachusetts and a century before Jesuit saints were martyred in New York and Ontario.

The story of his martyrdom was brought back to Texas by Campo, Sebastian and two Indians, who returned by way of Texas and the lower Rio Grande, arriving at the settlements in Mexico after suffering great hardships. (- Bliss Isley in the Wichita Beacon.)