The Diary and Itinerary of Francisco Garcés

"Francisco Garcés was one of the real people I became interested in. He was the Franciscan monk who was sent out to oversee the mission at San Xavier del Bac, which is modern day Tucson. This place was an absolute backwater, and a cruel and oppressive place for the Indians who were attached to the mission. Garcés was quite an extraordinary character. He went exploring on his own, from tribe to tribe, right out into the desert – unarmed, often on foot, and usually carrying only a cross and an oil painting that had a picture of the Virgin on one side and on the other a particularly lurid picture of a sinner damned to hell. Having no common language with the Indians, he would attempt to convert them using this visual aid. He would do this for months at a time. He was actually the first literate person to travel across that desert and make an account of it in the 1770s, so he features in my novel."