KINO, EUSEBIO

born Aug. 10, 1645, Segno, Tirol [now in Italy] died March 15, 1711, Magdalena, Mex. in full Eusebio Francisco Kino, original name Eusebio Francesco Chino, Chino also spelled Chini, or Khn Jesuit missionary and explorer in Spanish service, founder of numerous missions in the Pimera Alta region, now divided between the Mexican state of Sonora and the U.S. state of Arizona. Educated in Germany in mathematics and astronomy, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1665 and was sent as a missionary to Mexico City in 1681. In March 1687 he established his first mission among rural Indian peoples, Nuestra Seora de los Dolores, in what is now Sonora. In 1691 he made the first of about 40 expeditions into Arizona, and he is said to have explored the sources of the Rio Grande and the Colorado and Gila rivers. He helped the Pima Indians to diversify their agriculture, and he opposed the enslavement of Indians in the northern Mexican silver mines. His Favores celestiales (1708) was translated into English as Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimera Alta, 2 vol. (1919, reissued 1948).