Colonial America Biographies | Eusebio Francisco Kino Biography

c.1644

Segno in Tyrol, Austria (now Italy)

March 15, 1711

Mission at Santa Magdalena

Jesuit missionary and explorer

"He died as he had lived, with extreme humility and poverty."

Kino's companion Luis Verde.

Eusebio Francisco Kino was a pioneering seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary. He was also an explorer, mathematician, mapmaker, astronomer, and businessman. In 1665 Kino joined the Jesuits to train as a missionary. (Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious order for men founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola. They are dedicated to academic study and the establishment of foreign missions and schools.) Three years later he participated in an expedition to establish Spanish settlements in Mexico. Beginning in 1687, he spent almost twenty-five years in Primería Alta (the area that is now northern Mexico and...