When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767 the Franciscans took their place, but the missions declined and were finally abandoned in 1828 by order of the Mexican Government. The influence of their teachings was largely lost on the Indians as a race; for the converts remained largely pagan at heart, and the amount of secular learning, in the narrowed use of the term, acquired by them may be regarded as an entirely negligible quantity. Further than this the Spanish missionaries came in contact in the main only with the tribes of the south—the Papagoes and Pimas—sedentary, agricultural, and peaceful Indians; but from the time the Territory was first occupied by the United States down to its organization as a separate self-governing Territory and from that time down to 1874 its history was one of more or less continued Indian wars. Even as late as 1886 the menace was not entirely removed, for in that year occurred Geronimo’s last outbreak. The country in the northeast was occupied by the brave and warlike Navajoes; the central and southern portions by the savage Apaches—brave, fierce, bloodthirsty, and cruel. For the first generation of its American existence the Arizona iliad of Indian horrors was almost unbroken. Indeed during the Civil War period, when the pressure of Confederate arms necessitated the withdrawal of Federal troops, the savage reigned supreme, and the lowest point in civilization since the American occupation was attained.
Prior to the American occupation all the inhabitants of this region were Mexicans and Indians; and all the educational institutions, general in character and purpose, proposed in the past for this country by the Spanish Government had failed of realization.
Thus early as 1777–1789 the founding, of a missionary college, perhaps at El Paso, was ordered by the King and the Pope,[1] but nothing was accomplished. About the same time industrial education was proposed as a remedy for the ills of the country, but this, too, came to naught,[2] and while educational reforms were demanded by Pedro Bautista Pino, the New Mexican representative in the Spanish Cortes of 1812, his efforts were without results.[3]
The less ambitious educational undertakings at the missions, conducted and controlled by the missionaries who came up from Mexico, were a little more successful, but they were intended for the Indians only, and were later abandoned.
Hamilton, in his Resources of Arizona, says:
After the abandonment of the missions, and up to the time of the Gadsden Purchase, there was not a school or educational establishment of any kind within the territory.
