A Document Concerning the Franciscan Custody of Rio Verde, 1648: Historical Introduction

The franciscan custody, or Minor Province, of Rio Verde in Mexico occupied a comparatively small section of that large country. It lay between the present cities of San Luis Potosí and Tampico. We can say that its boomerang-shaped territory made up part of the southeastern part of the modern state of San Luis Potosí and extended northward to the southwestern section of the modern state of Tamaulipas, and possibly into the southernmost tip of the state of Nuevo León. Missionary endeavor soon encompassed this section of New Spain to the north of Mexico City. With a sort of holy emulation the Franciscan provinces vied with one another in staking claims—spiritual claims—to large sections of the “land of the Chichimecs” or marauding pagan Indians to the north of Aztec domination. The new section of which we will speak in this paper is called “Rio Verde” from a tributary river of the same name, which flows into the Río Panuco and thence to the Atlantic. It was called “verde” either because of its dark color, due to depth, or because of the green verdure along its banks.Since it was the Franciscan Province of San Pedro y San Pablo of Michoacán that began the work of evangelizing Rio Verde and continued it throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is necessary to review in a few brief sentences the early history of this Franciscan province.