In its fashion this mission personifies a sort of Independence Hall of the first Americans,--the Papagoes, who might be termed Red Quakers. Founded in 1687 by Father Kino, a Jesuit priest of the royal house of Bavaria, the original mission suffered from Indian rebellions, Apache massacres, and the expulsion of the Jesuits. Abandoned for awhile, it fell a century later to the Franciscans, who erected the present building, which represents the almost single-handed conquest by some eighteenth century padre of engineering difficulties which might well baffle a Technology graduate. It became the Rheims of the Papagoes, Christians, in their peculiarly pantheistic fashion, since the advent of Father Kino. Mildest of all Indians, in their whole history they went on the war-path but once,--after hostile Apaches had thrice desecrated their loved San Xavier and murdered its priests. The Apaches never returned. Nine miles from Tucson, on a wide plain which the Santa Rita mountains guard, the Mission lies cloistered, exquisite souvenir of the Moors and Spaniards, its arched gateway a legacy from Arabia. Little Papago huts of wattled reeds and mud, scarcely different in construction from prehistoric cliff-dwellings, lie scattered over the plain. Out in the sunshine, Papagoes in blue overalls and brilliant bandas mended tools or drove a primitive plow, and the women caught the wind and the light in billowing scarves of purple, green and red. They smiled broadly and sheepishly at us, proudly exhibiting blinking, velvet-eyed progeny in wicker cradles, who bore such good Catholic names as Clara, Juan, Madelina. Some women were busy covering reeds with split yucca fiber, intertwined with the black of the devil’s claw, a vicious curving seed-pod which more than once had clamped about our feet in our desert travel. Others baked round loaves in rude outdoor ovens of mud. Across the plains, sheep grazed, and an occasional horse: the omnipresent mongrel beloved of the Indian snarled and yapped as we drove to the Mission doorway. Here we stepped into another world. An Irish Mother Superior welcomed us, her soft brogue tempered to the hushed stillness within, and offered us trays of cold milk. Hers was the mellow presence which long ripening in cloisters sometimes,--not always--brings. Walls four feet thick shut out the yellow sunlight, save where it fell in dappled patterns on the flags, or filtered through green vines covering open arches. [Illustration: SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, TUCSON, AND THE RAPAGO INDIAN VILLAGE.]