Cristóbal de Cañas

Cristóbal de Cañas (1680 – 1740) was a Jesuit missionary in New Spain.

Biography

Cañas was born in 1680 in Cádiz, Spain; entered the Society of Jesus on May 19, 1697; was ordained in 1706 in Oaxaca, Mexico; and served his tertianship in 1707. From 1710 to 1718, he taught philosophy at the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro, taking his final vows on February 2, 1715.^[1]

In 1720, Cañas was assigned to Mission Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Arizpe, and by 1722 he was Father Visitor of the Jesuits in Sonora.^[1][2][3] Other Jesuits frequently consulted Cañas as a legal expert.^[2] Cañas clashed with Captain Gregorio Álvarez Tuñón y Quirós for a decade leading up to the latter's death in 1728.^[2]

By 1730, Cañas was serving at Mission San Pedro Aconchi. There, he warned about curanderos, writing that "the devil talks to [them] in the form of a jaguar, puma, dog, or, most commonly, in the form of a snake."^[4] In 1735, he was appointed rector of the Jesuit College in Durango.^[1]

Accounts by Carlos de Roxas, another Jesuit missionary, describe Cañas as tormented by "unnatural" suffering under the spell of a shaman for the last two years of his life.^[5] Cañas died on May 9, 1740.^[1]

References

1. "Canas, Cristobal". uair.library.arizona.edu. University of Arizona Institutional Repository. Retrieved 6 May 2024.
2. Garate, Donald T. (2003). Juan Bautista de Anza: Basque Explorer in the New World. University of Nevada Press. pp. 80, 87, 131, 144, 166, 167. ISBN 978-0-87417-505-9.
3. New Mexico Historical Review. Historical Society of New Mexico and Department of History, School of American Research. 1928. p. 223. Retrieved 6 May 2024.
4. Yetman, David (November 2012). Conflict in Colonial Sonora: Indians, Priests, and Settlers. UNM Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-8263-5220-0.
5. Griffiths, Nicholas; Cervantes, Fernando (1 January 1999). Spiritual Encounters: Interactions Between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America. U of Nebraska Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-8032-7081-7.