The result of a nearly fifty-year-old project, A Jesuit Missionary in Eighteenth-Century Sonora is a complete translation of the letters of Philipp Segesser, a missionary whose lifelong dream was to serve overseas. Of the letters that Segesser wrote while studying and serving as a foreign missionary, his family saved seventy-six which are found in the Lucerne State Archive today. For this volume, the letters were translated from their original German and Latin by Werner S. Zimmt and Robert E. Dahlquist, respectively, and are presented with editorial notes and comments by Raymond H. Thompson.

Thompson’s introduction to the volume offers a brief discussion of Father Segesser’s family history and his missionary career. A member of a prominent family in Switzerland, Philipp Segesser decided at the age of ten that he wanted to serve as a foreign missionary in a far-flung corner of the globe. In his introduction, Thompson maps out not only Segesser’s childhood and adolescence but also provides a brief historical context of the events that eventually led to Segesser’s appointment as a foreign missionary in New Spain, along with a brief history of the missions in Sonora where Father Segesser served as well as of the region as a whole. It places each group of letters in context and gives readers an understanding of where Segesser was writing from, both geographically and emotionally. The translation of the letters was done as faithfully as possible, without editing or changes that would change the message in each letter. Although Father Segesser often made obscure statements that would have only been understood by the family member he was writing to, the translators made sure not to edit the letter in a way that would attempt to “resolve ambiguities, eliminate repetitions, or rearrange scattered material” (xxxix). Instead, the translators and editor offer possible interpretations of obscure references in footnote form so that readers can draw their own conclusions without relying on the judgement of a third party.

The seventy-six letters included in the volume are broken up into eleven sections depending on where in the world they were sent from. Each section begins with a brief paragraph placing the letters into the context of Segesser’s life and discuss where he was located when writing them and why he was there. These little introductions by the editor are extremely helpful and make it easy to approach the volume with flexibility: a reader could potentially approach each section on its own without necessarily having read all the preceding sections. The letters begin while Segesser was at Ingolstadt studying theology at the Jesuit University in preparation for his ordination into the Jesuit priesthood and extend all the way through his thirty-one year career as a missionary in the Sonoran missions of New Spain. In addition to the translations, there are maps placed strategically throughout the volume to assist the reader in understanding where Father Segesser was at different points in his career. The editor also includes images of letters, such as Letter 48 in which Father Segesser provided his family with small illustrations of tools that the locals used for building and cooking (139-140).

This collection serves as a window into life in the Spanish Empire during the eighteenth century; not just the life of a missionary but also the complicated relationships between the Spanish settlers and native population, settlers and missionaries, and missionaries and Indians. Segesser’s contact with Spanish ranchers, miners, merchants, soldiers and administrators are often carefully recounted in the letters to his family and remind modern readers that the divide between settlers and locals was not always clear-cut and that foreign missionaries often found themselves on either side of the divide at various points in their careers. Thompson took the time to review official reports submitted by Segesser to the church, comparing them to the letters he wrote home. Often his descriptions of life in New Spain were much more frank and revealing in his personal letters than the official reports and offer insight into the difficult position Segesser often found himself in. For example, although Jesuits were not allowed to own guns, he requested a large gun for shooting game as well as defending his mission in letter number forty-eight to his brother (141). The request was written in Latin and paired with a request that his brother erase the passage in case anyone from the church were to find the letter later. Requests to his family that were clearly against the rules and recommendations of the church reveal how difficult life on the frontier was. Thompson’s notes and insights are invaluable for readers as they point out significant information in the letters through footnote form without muddling the original content. Thompson points out several places in Segesser’s letters that illustrate the difficulties missionaries in Sonora had when they realized that they were responsible “for the economic as well as the spiritual success” of the missions (xxvii). Segesser exhibited a certain level of entrepreneurial desires in his requests for supplies from his family, asking for items like scythes for harvesting wild hay and the makings of a butter churn to make extra money for the mission (144).

The collection is an excellent resource for anyone interested in life as a Jesuit missionary or life in the far reaches of the eighteenth century Spanish Empire. The letters themselves are written in an easy to follow, albeit occasionally rambling, conversational style and offer one missionary’s views on frontier life. For readers without previous knowledge of either the life of an eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary, or life in New Spain, this volume is incredibly enjoyable. Thompson’s introductions and comments are incredibly useful for providing context, without obscuring the original letters themselves.