Texas

by James A. Michener

  One of the aides looked at the petition and particularly at the endorsement from the viceroy: ‘Son of Don Miguel de Saldaña, of the village of Saldaña. He supported you vigorously when Europe wanted to put someone else on our throne.’

  ‘Good man,’ the king said, and as he ate, another aide pointed to a peculiarity in the petition: ‘Did you notice, Sire, that he asks for the habit not for himself but for his assistant? What he seeks are the shovels.’

  The king pushed back his meal, lifted the petition once more, and asked: ‘Am I thinking of the same Saldaña? The one who served us so well in Portugal?’

  ‘The same.’ Once more the king hesitated: ‘Have any of you ever been to Tejas?’ No one had, in either the meeting room or the entire court, so the king asked: ‘Isn’t that where they have the buffalo?’ and while the courtiers argued whether these great animals—several of which had been imported to Spain for the amazement of the citizenry—inhabited Tejas or Santa Fe, the king impulsively took the petition and not only signed it but even added a notation of his own. The paper was then returned to the Council of the Indies, which endorsed it and started it upon its slow journey back to Sanlúcar, to Cuba, to Mexico City, to Saltillo, to San Juan Bautista and finally to Misión Santa Teresa de Casafuerte. It arrived on 19 July 1728, eighteen months after posting, and with it came a package.

  It was so heavy when Fray Damián lifted it in his tired, calloused hands that he cried out thoughtlessly: ‘Be praised, Garza. We have our shovels,’ forgetting that Fray Domingo, who was eying the package jealously, hoped for something much different. And indeed, when he and Garza ripped open the sea-stained crate they found their three shovels, with handles of Spanish oak, best in the world.

  ‘Look!, cried Domingo, and from a corner of a small package inside the larger peeked a swatch of blue cloth, and when he opened his prize with trembling fingers he led up for all to see a most beautiful blue habit with hood and belt and flowing folds. He could not restrain himself from throwing the precious garment about his shoulders, but as he started to parade in the sunlight so that his Indians could applaud, he chanced to look back at the package, and there beneath the first robe lay a second. Stooping to take it in his hands, he allowed its full length to fall free, and he saw that it was a larger robe of much finer cloth than the first, and it was apparent to him that this had been sent by the king as a personal gift to his superior.

  This must be for you,’ he said, but Fray Damián pushed it back, and then took the first robe from the shoulders of his assistant: ‘This one will do for me.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Domingo asked, and Damián said: ‘I’m certain.’

  Now that Fray Domingo had appropriated the habit intended for Damián, he took doubled interest in his work, riding out to the ranch southwest of the mission each Monday and working there throughout the week. The Santa Teresa ranch was a reach of unlimited definition, with no roads or fences, nor any houses in which anyone of even the slightest importance would wish to stay. It did contain a rude corral but had no barns or sheds or tool cribs, nothing but an endless expanse of grassland suitable for the untended grazing of cattle. Its effective area was about five leagues, but this meant nothing because if no other owner in the region gained title to adjacent lands, it could just as well have been five hundred.

  Its chief asset was that it lay within a sharp turn of the Medina, whence its name, Rancho El Codo (Elbow Ranch). Indeed, the Medina surrounded it on three sides, guaranteeing the cattle all the water they needed.

  Within a compound it had four miserable adobe-and-wattle jacales in which the Indian families who tended the cattle lived; two of the hovels were occupied by married men who had brought their wives and children with them, the other two housed unmarried men, and sometimes when Fray Domingo studied the six adults who worked for him he speculated as to why they so willingly submitted themselves to this arduous labor, for neither he nor Fray Damián had the authority to force them to work.

  He was pondering this question one August afternoon as the Indians were sweating over the branding of young stock while he rested in the shade. The branding was necessary because the rule from Madrid was stern: ‘In settled areas, any cattle unbranded promptly after birth remain the property of the king.’ The ranch at El Codo could have twenty thousand cattle if it wanted them, but it had to round them up and brand them, and that work was dusty and dirty and arduous, since each animal had to be wrestled to the ground before the red-hot brand could be applied.

  Why do they consent to such toil? Domingo asked himself as he watched the Indians. And for that matter, why does Fray Damián work so hard? And how about me? I could be in Mexico City enjoying myself.

  And it occurred to him that he and Damián were much like the Indians: We work because it’s the will of God. We build the mission because Jesus Christ wants it. This is honorable work, because my father and mother and the priest in Saltillo told me it was. The Bible says so, too. The Indians obey us because deep inside they know it’s right. They’re living better lives than their fathers, and they know it.

  Wherever he worked with Indians, Fray Domingo organized a choir, and the one at El Codo was among his finest, because three of the men had deep voices, Domingo a lilting tenor, and the fourth Indian man a strong voice which maintained a strict monotone in the middle, never moving up or down no matter how carefully the friar coached him. He was like a cello that could strike only one powerful note around which the other singers had to organize theirs, and when this choir sang on Sundays or in the evenings at prayer, the music glorified the countryside.

  It was a tradition of the Franciscans that ‘we never discipline the Indians except for their own good,’ and Domingo believed that his own rules were just and lenient. If his Indians lagged in their field work, he reproved them. If anyone persisted, he lectured that person severely, and if the error continued, he beat him or her with a leather strap reserved for that use. But as soon as the punishment was administered, he invited the culprit back to the choir, and after a few resentful moments the reproof was forgotten, except by a few who left, never to return.

  It was Domingo’s love for music which projected Misión Santa Teresa into a storm that nearly destroyed it. An enthusiastic friar newly arrived from the more traditional Franciscan center at Querétaro northwest of Mexico City, took vigorous exception to the fiery dances enjoyed by the Indians of Béxar, for he categorized these exhibitions as ‘licentious debauchery of the worst sort, calculated to induce venery and the most debased forms of sexual extravagance.’ With written approval from the authorities at Saltillo, who had never seen these dances, he proceeded to stamp them out.

  But when he eliminated them at Misión San José, they erupted at Misión San Antonio de Valero, and so on. However, with extraordinary vigor he succeeded for a while in halting them all except for those at Santa Teresa, where Fray Domingo’s lyric choir would start a celebration with hymns, move on to Spanish ballads he had taught them, and progress to some lively Indian chants, until they reached the point where all the listeners were stomping their feet and clapping their hands, and even dancing. Sometimes the noise grew so vigorous that the two friars deemed it best to retire.

  Fray Damián saw nothing intrinsically evil in such dancing, but the new friar thought differently, and backed by an official paper from the religious authorities in Guadalajara, he marched in to the officer in charge of the presidio at Béxar and demanded that he stop the dancing at Santa Teresa: ‘It’s an affront to God, who wants it stopped at once.’

  The officer had been searching for some excuse to discipline the two friars at Santa Teresa, for he found the senior man, Fray Damián, too aloof, and the junior, Fray Domingo, much too niggardly with the food his Indians grew. So he issued an edict: ‘No more dancing at Santa Teresa.’

  He expected Fray Domingo, who started his music with proper gravity but allowed it to deterioriate quickly, to object, but to his surprise it was tall, thin Fray Damián who came quietly to
the presidio, speaking softly and with obvious deference: ‘Captain, the Indians have always danced, and while I admit it sometimes leads to excesses, as the new friar claims, I have found no great wrong in it and much good.’

  ‘But I’ve issued an order.’

  ‘I think you might want to reconsider your order,’ Damián said gently.

  ‘Where Indians are concerned, I never reconsider.’

  Damián did not wish to argue, but he did voice an important judgment: ‘Captain, when we move in upon the Indians with our missions and our presidios we ask them to surrender a great many things they love, traditions which have kept them strong … in a most inhospitable land, I may point out. They’ve been gracious here in Tejas in making such surrender. Don’t ask them to sacrifice everything.’

  ‘But the dances are against the will of God. The new friar said so.’

  ‘I think our laughing Domingo represents the will of God, too.’ Before the captain could destroy that specious argument, Damián said: ‘I sometimes fear his singing accomplishes more than my prayers.’

  ‘There will be no more dancing.’

  ‘Very well,’ Damián said obediently. And when he returned to the mission he waited till his companion returned from the ranch, herding along several steers that were to be slaughtered there.

  ‘The dancing …’ Damián fumbled.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘The captain has ordered it stopped.’

  ‘He has no authority …’

  ‘He has.’

  ‘The captain is an ass.’

  ‘That we know,’ Damián conceded. ‘We’ve known it for better than a year. But he has the civil authority to preserve the peace.’

  ‘Our hearts beat faster … with delight. I’ll not stop it.’

  ‘You shall. It’s my order, too.’ And Damián spoke with such unprecedented force that Domingo gasped, and the dancing was halted.

  The three soldiers watched very carefully, on orders from the captain, and sometimes the new friar himself stopped by to check on the observance of the edict, and all had to agree that Fray Damián had restored order to the mission.

  But one day some weeks later, when gaiety had been stilled in Misión Santa Teresa, the captain and a retinue of soldiers were inspecting the lands west of Béxar to see for themselves how much of the range the mission had expropriated for its cattle, and as they approached the four shacks where the Indian herdsmen lived, they heard much revelry. When they followed the noise they saw that in one of the jacales six Indian adults, three children and a Franciscan friar in a long, dusty habit were dancing in a circle, clapping hands and singing at the top of their voices.

  ‘Look!’ shouted a child, and the dancers halted, one by one, and looked toward the outraged captain and his men.

  The legal papers were filed next day, a formal complaint signed by the captain of the presidio charging Fray Domingo Pacheco with insubordination, misuse of royal lands, venery and conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy. All the animosity of the presidio versus the mission exploded in this diatribe, and it was expressed so forcefully and in such proper terminology that Mexico City had to respond.

  Since ancient Spanish legal tradition provided that members of the clergy could be tried only in courts staffed by fellow clerics, a solemn priest, born in Spain, was dispatched to Béxar, and he started his investigation not by examining the accused friar at Santa Teresa but by moving through the little community and listening to whatever gossip the soldiers and the friars from the other missions wished to reveal. When he was finished he had accumulated enough petty accusations against both friars to charge them with almost anything, and grimly he announced: ‘Tomorrow I shall examine the culprits.’

  When the two friars stood before him they made a poor impression, for they were not the neat, well-shaved clerics he was accustomed to on the streets of Zacatecas; Damián appeared in a faded, dusty blue habit, and Domingo’s unkempt beard wandered over his chubby face. Ill-matched—Damián tall, thin and fiery-eyed; Domingo short, fat and marked by a silly grin—they should have stood in silence as he abused them, but to his astonishment, they showed every inclination to defend their actions.

  Fray Damián was particularly vigorous in his self-defense: ‘I have labored day and night to build this mission … to make it self-sufficient, to bring Indians into our fold. Some men might have accomplished more, but none could have worked more diligently in the service of our Lord and our king.’

  ‘But you did allow the dancing?’ the judge asked.

  ‘I did. I worked my Indians from dawn to dusk, and I thank God that Brother Domingo taught them to sing, for it made them better workers in God’s cause.’

  ‘Were you not ordered by the civil authority to stop the dancing?’

  ‘I was. And I did.’

  ‘But was there not continued dancing at the mission’s ranch?’

  ‘I’m told there was.’

  ‘And did not your Fray Domingo join in the dancing?’

  ‘I’m told that he did.’

  ‘Are you not responsible for what your friars do?’

  Fray Damián considered this probing question for some moments, standing erect, his eyes staring straight ahead, his hands clasped at his chest. It would be both easy and correct for him to claim that what happened at the distant ranch was beyond his control, but to deny his long-time companion would be worse than craven; it would be against the rule of the Franciscans.

  ‘I’m responsible.’

  ‘If I were a vengeful man,’ the priest said, ‘I would add you to this indictment. You have failed miserably in your duty.’

  ‘I demand that you include me,’ Damián said, and he took a step forward.

  ‘Stand where you are!’ the inquisitor ordered, his face reddening. But Damián kept moving forward until he reached the desk behind which his judge sat. Once there, he reached for a quill and would have inscribed his name on the indictment had not the priest knocked the quill away and bellowed: ‘Soldiers, arrest this man!’

  So what had been intended as an orderly hearing ended in a general debacle, for as soon as Fray Domingo saw his protector dragged toward the exit door, he leaped at the guards and began pummeling them. A general melee ensued, in the midst of which the enraged priest shouted: ‘Chain them both!’

  In a tiny cell behind the presidio, no beds, no water, food only once a day, the two friars remained in manacles for three days, and when released, they had to promise both the priest and the captain that they would henceforth permit no Indian dancing.

  They had resumed their now somber duties when a convoy arrived from Saltillo with an unexpected member, a young officer bringing a commission that installed him as the new commander of the Presidio de Béxar and retired the former incumbent.

  As Damián came from the mission to greet the officer he saw from a distance that the new man was Alvaro, and ran forward to embrace him: ‘Dearest brother! You are needed here.’ But before Alvaro could respond, Damián asked: ‘How is Benita?’

  ‘Fine. If permission is given, she could be coming here.’

  Fired by this hope, and supported by an understanding commander, Fray Damián launched what could be called the golden years of Santa Teresa, for with assistance from the soldiers, the walls of the mission were completed, its canal and, most important, its adobe church; and at the ranch Fray Domingo increased his herds until they taxed the ability of his Indians to control them; and the dancing resumed.

  If Fray Domingo had been required to pacify only the relatively amenable Indians at the ranch near Béxar, he would have succeeded, but the Franciscans had had the bad luck to place their missions on land which was more or less claimed by Indians of a much different type.

  The Apachería was not a specific land area, nor was it a highly organized brotherhood of tribes. The word represented a mystical concept, the region and union of the Apache. The imprecision was twofold: the specific territory was never defined and membership was so elastic
that any Apache tribe could be included or excluded, as it preferred. One thing was certain: in recent decades the Apache had come to consider the lands around Béxar as part of their Apachería, and evicting the white intruders became an obligation.

  Even so, a kind of truce might have been negotiable—Spaniards to the east, Apache to the west—had not another warrior tribe of Indians invaded the western plains at about this time. The newcomers were the dreaded Comanche, horse Indians from the Rocky Mountain areas, who considered all other humans their enemies. Apache and Comanche, what a sadly mismatched pair: the former somewhat sedentary, the latter constantly roving; the former without many horses, the latter the finest horsemen of the plains; the former a loose confederation of many differing tribes, the latter fearfully concentrated; and both wanting to occupy the same lands.

  No Comanche had yet been seen at Béxar; they would not appear in force for nearly fifty years, but their unrelenting pressure on the western reaches of the Apachería meant that the Apache were forced to move eastward, and this brought them into conflict with the Spanish at Béxar. But for the time being, a kind of rude accommodation did exist, as proved by an enthusiastic report on conditions at the mission submitted at this time.

  In 1729 an investigative priest from Zacatecas, whose name Espejo fortuitously meant glass or, as some said, spyglass, visited all parts of Tejas on an inspection tour. After dismal experiences in Nacogdoches and the coastal areas, he reached Béxar in an uncompromising mood, but here he saw how ably the Saldaña brothers cooperated in governing the place:

  At the end of September 1729, I came at last to Misión Santa Teresa de Casafuerte del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, and all the unpleasantness of preceding days vanished as if God had set down in the wilderness a great shining lantern.

  The mission was guarded by two exemplary friars, Damián de Saldaña of good family and superior orders who manages all, and Domingo Pacheco, a mestizo of lower orders who performs wonders with his Indians, of whom 234 Pampopa, Postito and Tacame reside in the mission. About three Indians per year have been formally converted, the rest behaving as Christians but not belonging to the church.