One wishes there were some vivid personal picture of this courageous priest. The quaint phrase of the old chroniclers is too apt to convey an idea of an elderly, grave, and wholly pious padre. But I suspect that any man daring enough to undertake and carry through so hazardous an adventure as this of Fray Juan was certainly in the prime of life. I see him a lithe, muscular, forceful figure, resourceful in emergencies and always fearless. We need not question nor minimize his zeal to save souls if we also believe him gifted with a large share of practical common sense, alertness to seize upon and adapt unusual incidents as they offered, and a firm will that would impress and even awe the Indians. A man in such circumstances must know a great deal besides the liturgy and the confessional. Most of the Spanish priests were men of affairs in one sense or another. They knew how to wield tools and guns as well as the censer and the bell. They were adepts in a score of ingenious useful ways of making life tolerable in the wilderness. How else could they have endured the life there or taught their neophytes new methods of carrying on improved horticulture, church building, and the like? Father Ramírez, like other missionaries in this wild land, thought no danger too great, no labor too mean or too arduous, no sacrifice too momentous, if only the high purpose of civilizing and converting those entrusted to his charge was achieved. All of them understood well that the first step toward winning the confidence of these children of the forest and the desert was to provide for their bodily welfare; and we may take for granted that Father Ramírez was solicitous to give them more food and to teach them how to use their natural resources to better advantage, even while he was learning their language. Then would they in gratitude repay him by repeating the prayers taught them and allow themselves to be “catechized and baptized” as the chronicler tells us was the case. After a time, he went down from the Crag, attended by his flock, apparently to visit some of the other fathers at their posts. They, thinking he must long since have met his death, were amazed to see these ferocious Ácomas changed from “lions to meek sheep.” We are next told that Father Ramírez built a great church on the top of the mesa and enriched it with many decorations. Can we not visualize the slow and laboring procession of moccasined men and boys coming painfully up those difficult paths with loads of heavy adobe, and with huge timbers from San Mateo Mountain to build their wonderful church? Fortunately the Spanish padres allowed these new-found neophytes to combine in the mission churches their own form of house-building with _motifs_ brought from Spain. Consequently we find complete harmony in the simple lines of the massive structures with their natural environment.