The cause of Catholic Christianity in New Mexico never recovered from this stunning blow. After twenty years the Spanish power, taking advantage of the anarchy and depopulation of the province, had reoccupied its former posts by military force, the missionaries were brought back under armed protection, the practice of the ancient religion was suppressed by the strong hand, and efforts, too often unsuccessful, were made to win back the apostate tribes to something more than a sullen submission to the government and the religion of their conquerors. The later history of Spanish Christianity in New Mexico is a history of decline and decay, enlivened by the usual contentions between the "regular" clergy and the episcopal government. The white population increased, the Indian population dwindled. Religion as set forth by an exotic clergy became an object of indifference when it was not an object of hatred. In 1845 the Bishop of Durango, visiting the province, found an Indian population of twenty thousand in a total of eighty thousand. The clergy numbered only seventeen priests. Three years later the province became part of the United States. To complete the story of the planting of Spanish Christianity within the present boundaries of the United States, it is necessary to depart from the merely chronological order of American church history; for, although the immense adventurousness of Spanish explorers by sea and land had, early in the sixteenth century, made known to Christendom the coasts and harbors of the Californias, the beginnings of settlement and missions on that Pacific coast date from so late as 1769. At this period the method of such work had become settled into a system. The organization was threefold, including (1) the garrison town, (2) the Spanish settlement, and (3) the mission, at which the Indian neophytes were gathered under the tutelage and strict government of the convent of Franciscan friars. The whole system was sustained by the authority and the lavish subventions of the Spanish government, and herein lay its strength and, as the event speedily proved, its fatal weakness. The inert and feeble character of the Indians of that region offered little excuse for the atrocious cruelties that had elsewhere marked the Spanish occupation; but the paternal kindness of the stronger race was hardly less hurtful. The natives were easily persuaded to become by thousands the dependents and servants of the missions. Conversion went on apace. At the end of sixty-five years from the founding of the missions their twenty-one stations numbered a Christian native population of more than thirty thousand, and were possessed of magnificent wealth, agricultural and commercial. In that very year (1834) the long-intended purpose of the government to release the Indians from their almost slavery under the missions, and to distribute the vast property in severalty, was put in force. In eight years the more than thirty thousand Catholic Indians had