Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, was born at Assisi in Umbria, Italy in 1181(82) and died in 1226. The Catholic patron saint of animals and the natural world, he is remembered for his tenderness to and power over animals, and he devoted his life to the care of the poor and sick. The Franciscans became a mendicant order vowed to poverty and humility. Missionaries of the order accompanied the earliest Spanish civil and military expeditions into the American Southwest beginning in 1540, and religious outposts were established under royal charter for conversion of Indigenous people to Christianity. Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument preserves the ruins of three missions established by the Franciscan order on the remote frontier of New Mexico in the 1620s.