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Joseph Vaillant
Jacinto is a member of the Pecos tribe who acts for many years acts as a guide to both Latour and Vaillant. Jacinto frequently displays a deep knowledge of both the Southwestern landscape and the various people who inhabit it, helping the two French priests navigate snowstorms, miscommunications, and the complicated legacy of Spanish settlement. Though Jacinto distrusts Vaillant (who he believes exemplifies the white settler practice of showing a “false face” to indigenous people), he forms a close bond with Latour. As he gets to know Jacinto’s views of cosmology and history, Latour begins to realize how little he actually knows about the people he works with—“behind Jacinto,” he sees, “there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him.” Jacinto is married to Clara, with whom he has a small (and sickly) child.
Jacinto Quotes in Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Death Comes for the Archbishop quotes below are all either spoken by Jacinto or refer to Jacinto. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 3: Jacinto
Quotes
The Bishop seldom asked Jacinto about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn’t think it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4: The Night at Pecos
Quotes
Among the Indians measles, scarlatina and whooping-cough were as deadly as typhus or cholera. Certainly, the tribe was decreasing every year. Jacinto’s house was at one end of the living pueblo; behind it were long rock ridges of dead pueblo,—empty houses ruined by weather and now scarcely more than piles of earth and stone. The population of the living streets was less than a hundred adults. This was all that was left of the rich and populous Cicuyé of Coronado’s expedition. […]
As Father Latour sat by the fire and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains and howling over the plateau, he thought of these things; and he could not help wondering whether Jacinto, sitting silent by the same fire, was thinking of them, too.
Book 7: Spring in the Navajo Country
Quotes
Though the Bishop had worked with Father Joseph for twenty-five years now, he could not reconcile the contradictions of his nature. He simply accepted them, and, when Joseph had been away for a long while, realized that he loved them all. His Vicar was one of the most truly spiritual men he had ever known, though he was so passionately attached to many of the things of this world. Fond as he was of good eating and drinking, he not only rigidly observed all the facts of the church, but he never complained about the hardness and scantiness of the fare on his long missionary journeys. Father Joseph’s relish for good wine might have been a fault in another man. But […] time and again the Bishop had seen a good dinner, a bottle of claret, transformed into spiritual energy under his very eyes.
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Jacinto Quotes in Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Death Comes for the Archbishop quotes below are all either spoken by Jacinto or refer to Jacinto. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 3: Jacinto
Quotes
The Bishop seldom asked Jacinto about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn’t think it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4: The Night at Pecos
Quotes
Among the Indians measles, scarlatina and whooping-cough were as deadly as typhus or cholera. Certainly, the tribe was decreasing every year. Jacinto’s house was at one end of the living pueblo; behind it were long rock ridges of dead pueblo,—empty houses ruined by weather and now scarcely more than piles of earth and stone. The population of the living streets was less than a hundred adults. This was all that was left of the rich and populous Cicuyé of Coronado’s expedition. […]
As Father Latour sat by the fire and listened to the wind sweeping down from the mountains and howling over the plateau, he thought of these things; and he could not help wondering whether Jacinto, sitting silent by the same fire, was thinking of them, too.
Book 7: Spring in the Navajo Country
Quotes
Though the Bishop had worked with Father Joseph for twenty-five years now, he could not reconcile the contradictions of his nature. He simply accepted them, and, when Joseph had been away for a long while, realized that he loved them all. His Vicar was one of the most truly spiritual men he had ever known, though he was so passionately attached to many of the things of this world. Fond as he was of good eating and drinking, he not only rigidly observed all the facts of the church, but he never complained about the hardness and scantiness of the fare on his long missionary journeys. Father Joseph’s relish for good wine might have been a fault in another man. But […] time and again the Bishop had seen a good dinner, a bottle of claret, transformed into spiritual energy under his very eyes.
