Juan María de Salvatierra

He was subsequently appointed visitor of the Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert in the Sonora y Sinaloa Province of the Real Audiencia of Guadalajara in New Spain (Mexico).

[1] For a time he acted as priest, captain, sentry, and cook, besides studying the languages from a vocabulary prepared by earlier Jesuit missionaries Eusebio Kino and Juan Copart, and from indigenous people who could be induced to come near.

[1] In 1717 he was called to the capital by the Viceroy Baltasar de Zúñiga y Guzmán, to provide material for a history of California which King Philip V had ordered to be written.

Although suffering from illness, Salvatierra obeyed, and, crossing the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), continued his voyage along the coast until he arrived in and died at the colonial city of Guadalajara in the Kingdom of New Galicia.

[1] The whole city assembled at his funeral, and the remains were deposited amidst ceremonies rarely seen at the burial of a Jesuit missionary, in the chapel which he had erected to the Lady of Loreto.