When it was determined that the army should return to Mexico, the friars who had accompanied the expedition[83] resolved to remain in the newly discovered regions and continue their labors among the people there. Friar Juan de Padilla was the leader of the three missionaries. Younger and more vigorous than his brethren, he had from the first been the most active in constantly maintaining the oversight and discipline of the church. He was with Tovar when the Tusayan country on the west was discovered, and with Alvarado during the first visit to the Rio Grande and the buffalo plains on the east. When Coronado and his companion horsemen visited the plains of Kansas, Friar Juan de Padilla went with him on foot. His brief experience in the Quivira country led him to decide to go back to that district, when Coronado was preparing to return to New Spain. If the Indians who guided Coronado from Quivira to Cicuye remained in the pueblo country during the winter, Padilla probably returned with them to their homes. He was accompanied by Andres Docampo, a Portuguese, mounted on a mare according to most accounts, besides five Indians, negroes or half-bloods, two “donados” or lay brethren, Indians engaged in the church service, who came from Michoacan and were named Lucas and Sebastian, a mestizo or half-blood boy and two other servants from Mexico. [p401] [Illustration: LII. Wytfliet’s New Granada and California, 1597] The friar was successful in his labors until he endeavored to enlarge the sphere of his influence, when the jealousy, or possibly the cupidity, of the Indians led them to kill him, rather than permit the transference to some other tribe of the blessings which he had brought to them.[84] Friar Juan de la Cruz is not mentioned by Castañeda nor by Jaramillo, but Mendieta and Mota Padilla are very clear in their accounts of him. He was an older man than the others, and had been engaged in missionary work among the natives of the Jalisco country before he joined this expedition. Coronado left him at Tiguex, where he was killed, according to Mota Padilla. The date, in the martyrologies, is November 25, 1542. Many natives of the Mexican provinces stayed in the Pueblo country when Coronado abandoned it. Some of these were still at Cibola when Antonio de Espejo visited it in 1583, while others doubtless made their way back to their old homes in New Spain, and they may have brought the information about the death of Friar Juan. Friar Luis Descalona, or de Ubeda as Mota Padilla calls him, was a lay brother, who selected Cicuye or Pecos as the seat of his labors in New Mexico. Neither the Spanish chronicles nor the Indian traditions which Mr Bandelier was able to obtain give any hint as to his fate or the results of his devotion to the cause of Christianity. THE RETURN TO NEW SPAIN