These Mexican peaches become of special interest to American fruit-growers because they constitute, with the offspring of early introductions in Florida, what pomologists call the "Spanish Race" of this fruit. "American Race" is a more fitting name, for these peaches are an American product. Four centuries of reproduction from seed, in a climate and soil different from any previously imposed upon them, and abnormally short generations have given to this continent a group of peaches with many characters in common. Tracing further the history of the peaches that early came to Mexico, we find evidence that in a comparatively short time they had been taken northward into New Mexico, Arizona and the Californias. It is barely possible that from the same source the peach was eventually carried as far eastward as the Mississippi, for early explorers found naturalized peaches in the valley of this great river. No doubt the Jesuit and Franciscan fathers, chief representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in the early settlement of Mexico and southwestern America, early carried the peach from place to place, for, as advance guards of civilization, these men usually planted fruits, grains, vegetables and flowers at the missions they founded. Therefore, it is hardly too much to say that the history of the peach in the southwest follows the establishment, one after another, of the old missions, beginning in America with the settlement of Sante Fe in 1605 and continuing until Spanish rule passed into that of the United States. That the padres of the early religious orders planted gardens and orchards as they planted the cross of Christianity among the Indian tribes in the southwest may be seen from such accounts of the mission as the following, written by a Spanish officer traveling in what is now New Mexico in 1799:[94] "The Moquinos are the most industrious of the many Indian nations that inhabit and have been discovered in that portion of America. They till the earth with great care, and apply to all their fields the manures proper for each crop. The same cereals and pulse are raised by them, that are everywhere produced by the civilized population in our provinces. They are attentive to their kitchen gardens, and have all the varieties of fruit-bearing trees it has been in their power to procure. The peach tree yields abundantly." The antiquity of peach-culture among southern Indians, from Mexico to Florida, is shown by the fact that, among the prominent tribes of this region, there is a distinct name for the peach but the names of other introduced fruits, and of some native ones, are derived from that of the peach. Thus, according to W. R. Gerard,[95] who gave careful study to Indian names of plants in at least four Indian languages, the name of the peach is the radical while that of several plums is the equivalent of "little peach," "deer's peach" and "barren peach" while the cultivated apples and pears were by some Indians called "big peach."