by Paul Horgan
He made a good stroke of business in St Louis by arranging for Father De Smet to act as his agent for all purchases and payments. He still hoped De Smet would presently come to New Mexico, but meantime, since Santa Fe was so far removed from financial or marketing centers, it was an advantage to have someone so able as De Smet to receive drafts from France, make payments, and place orders for supplies.
Before going westward, Lamy wrote out a legal instrument: “By these I authorize P. J. De Smet to sign for me, and negotiate any draft that comes from France. The house or bank which sends them is aware that I have appointed the same father as my agent, and that he can act in this respect as myself. John Lamy, Vic. Ap. of N. Mexico, St. Louis this 10th day of July 1852.”
He had already run up an account in orders and purchases, part of them incurred on his way eastward to the council in April. De Smet kept a careful reckoning for such items as a pair of slippers ($1.25), a box of water paint ($3.00), a gold watch ($5.00), clothes ($3.00), board and room at a St Louis hotel ($19.00), telegrams (75¢ to $1.10), a draft payable to Mgr Pur cell $500 [evidently a repayment], a horse at livery stable (85¢), books ($21.75), freight for a trunk of Mgr Machebeuf ($50.25), and more, the whole coming to $2103.00, which when paid left in his account “a balance in favor of Monseigneur Lamy, $849.84.”
He and Father De Smet hit it off agreeably, and it was an added advantage to have as his agent one who knew the frontier as well as anyone in America, and yet who could manage financial affairs, including international drafts, which could not be handled in Santa Fe. If Paris drafts should arrive in the absence of De Smet, they were to be processed by Lamy’s old teacher Father Murphy, who described his former pupil now as “an amiable and holy prelate.” The bishop now drew two hundred dollars to cover contingencies of his westward party, which consisted of twenty-one persons, and in addition, bought two carriages from Edgar’s of St Louis for five hundred and ten dollars.
His plans were careful in the face of the unknown, for he was the commander of the expedition, and though he had come East over the plains, he had travelled by stage, had had no experience of the long slow travel which a waggon train would take, and fast-rolling stages had given little of the real nature of prairie life. He would go West now with a heavy heart on one particular account—one who was to have gone with him, an old friend from the days in the Middle West, Father Pendeprat, died of cholera at the Jesuit College in St Louis. Sad, the event was also ominous, for the disease was everywhere and fear of it was as prevalent.
viii.
Westward Prairies
ON 10 JULY 1852 Lamy took his party on board the steamer Kansas at St Louis for the long, meandering voyage on the Missouri River to Independence, where the overland trail began. The river passage would take eight or ten days, through generally flat country. Lamy lost no time in beginning to teach Spanish to his nuns as the steamer went upstream on the winding river. There were hazards which had to be planned for, on a scheduled basis. The river steamers travelled only by daylight. Lacking navigational aids of a mechanical nature, they must keep watch for sand bars, “boils,” timber snags, or changes in the channel, which could not be seen by night. Further, anchoring for the night, the steamers hove to in midstream for safety, not so much from Indians as from bandits who roved the shallow banks expecting to rob passengers and cargo.
But a greater danger was at once upon the Kansas and her company. Cholera was aboard in epidemic proportions. Lamy’s little party of teachers fell victim to it. Two days short of arriving at Independence, after six days on the river, Sister Matilda, the superior of Lamy’s “little colony,” died and three other sisters “were attacked by the same epidemic.” Fear of contagion took hold. Lamy and all his party were ordered to leave the ship at Todd’s Landing, six miles east of Independence. There, he declared, they were obliged to “lodge in an old store”—a warehouse—”stripped of its merchandise.” It was the only shelter in the neighborhood, and there, “during a dark night,” he told Paris, “with the mortal remains of the sister superior, and another dying, a magistrate of the nearby town [of Independence] was sent to me to forbid us from passing through town, even to bury the dead.” Expenses, he said, were enormous—it was next to impossible to find draymen and others for service jobs because of their fear of the sick.
The caravan soon moved out of the warehouse and camped with tents in the woods near Independence, and there they were beaten by torrents of rain which destroyed many of their supplies and damaged some of their cargo. Lamy “lost nine of his best animals”—his two waggons were pulled by mules. The other nuns attacked by the cholera slowly recovered, but one was too weak to go on later to Santa Fe and had to be returned to St Louis, to Lamy’s “great regret.” He must look forward to nine hundred miles of prairie travel with his reduced party, and with two of his six teachers lost to him and the future. He was himself “very much fatigued,” but his “strong constitution” had withstood the “labor and care” of his concerns. He could not help remembering that two years ago, when he had asked Bishop Odin in Galveston to visit him one day in New Mexico, Odin had replied that this would be impossible “unless he had 30,000 francs to cover travelling expenses,” and now Lamy—for the benefit of the Paris Society—had to declare that from his own experience he could agree with Odin’s estimate.
Toward the end of July the saddened little caravan began to organize again for the westward advance. From the camp near Todd’s Landing, Lamy once again appealed for Jesuits to join him in New Mexico—again directly to the General of the order, at Rome. He spoke of De Smet, and the “generous hospitality” of the St Louis Jesuits, and he made a strong if veiled suggestion when he said that De Smet “has a particular grace for the conversion of the Indians.… And so I entreat you for God’s glory and the salvation of souls, do all in your power to send some of your Fathers to a field where the harvest is already so ripe, but is being lost for lack of workers.…” In the event, Jesuits were not able to come to New Mexico for many years.
Before moving on with the westward journey, Lamy called one of the nuns, Sister Mary Magdalen, to join him for a little talk. They sat together on the bank of the Missouri River, and there he asked her to succeed Mother Matilda in the post of mother superior of the establishment he planned for Santa Fe. She agreed, subject to the approval of her motherhouse in Kentucky, and he forthwith invested her with the pectoral cross of her office, and in due course she was confirmed by Nerinckx.
Once more organized, the bishop’s party moved westward again on l August 1852. One of the party—a Mexican priest—was still so weak that he must be carried in one of the ten waggons. They bypassed Independence, but within a few miles, an axle broke on one of the waggons, and a day was lost in making repairs. That night the open country was swept by such a storm of thunder, lightning, and wind that the party was unable to pitch tents. The women stayed all night in the waggons, which were buffeted like boats at sea by the gale, and the limitless prairie darkness was repeatedly shattered by the lightning. By dawn all was quiet if drenched, the axle was repaired, and the little train moved on. When Sunday came—8 August—they halted during the morning while the bishop said Mass and preached on charity, and the nuns renewed their vows before receiving communion. It was an act which gave them strength for the unknown which lay ahead, after all they had heard of the hazards of the prairie voyage.
Yet they were all now part of that great adventure of the time, which had its beauties and exhilarations, its curiosities and its rewards, as well as its dangers. Many a person found health itself in the open life of the trails West. The new lay everywhere about them. Where before, except upon the ocean, was such a vista to be seen? The endless grass rolled like waves under the wide movements of the air. Many chroniclers of the prairie experience used metaphors of the sea to describe their travel. Landmarks were few, and after the third day out from Independence, when they passed the one called the Lone Elm—a great solitary tree visible for miles—first voyage
rs had nothing ahead to measure distance by except their daily reckoning. It was those whose work took them back and forth on the trails, soldiers and traders, who came to know the lay of the land—its creeks and rivers hidden until the traveller was almost upon them, the deceptive gradual rises low enough to be lost against the level horizon yet deep enough to conceal an Indian band, the illusory watering places caused by mirages, the actual water catches so few and far between. It was an ocean of extremes, between the blasts of winter and the beating heat of summer; the splendors of the sun at rise and set, and the vacant sky by day; the simple breezes of clear weather and the searing dust storms and the electric tempests wildly playing between all horizons.
The vast land had its intimacies, too, in plant and creature life. There were creeks where thick grass grew whose edges were lined with sharp teeth which could cut when grasped. Insects abounded. Worst were the mosquitoes which came to sing and sting all night. Mosquito nets were needed, and often in the morning were heavy with dew. Horseflies tormented the hauling animals, and myriads of grasshoppers cracked underfoot and flicked through the air. Crickets came to the camp. They were uncommonly large—a soldier once measured one an inch and a half long. The travellers saw a wonderful quantity and variety of birds. There was an abundance of quail—the little birds whirred up through the steps of the mules and horses, which shied. By day meadowlarks sang, and owls hooted by night, and the bishop’s party could see and hear in the wide country a marvellous variety of other birds—crows, doves, bluebirds, flickers, buntings, cowbirds which rode on the backs of the waggon mules, screaming catbirds, robins, bluebirds, high-diving hawks, plovers, thrushes, the kingbird, grouse, and even parrakeets. Of animals, the most curious were the little prairie dogs who watched passers-by from the tiny hillocks of their sandy towns. The coyote, the rabbit, the famous rattlesnake, the antelope, the deer, were all to be seen, and wild horses; though if anyone in the party sighted the solitary white stallion which roamed the plains, appearing and disappearing like someone’s thought—which is all it may have been, yet one so powerful as to become a well-loved legend—no one recorded the vision. Of all animal creation, it was “those numberless ferocious animals,” wrote the new Mother Superior to her sisters back home in Kentucky, “called cibolos or buffaloes” which “told us of the power and greatness of the Creator.” Hunting parties returned to camp with buffalo meat. She wrote also of how for the most of one day the bishop’s caravan was watched by over three hundred Indians who rode along a little distance away; never came nearer; and finally, after giving the travellers a day of uncertainty and some fear, vanished. Thereafter, the bishop ordered that they would rest in the daytime and travel by night, “as the Indians did not usually attack after dark.”
On the road one day Lamy’s train saw far ahead another which seemed to have halted. Overtaking it, he saw that someone from the train—it had twenty-five waggons—was being carried by Mexican teamsters into an abandoned sod hut. Lamy asked questions of others in the earlier party. This, they explained, was a merchant trader from Santa Fe. His name was Levi Spiegelberg. Lamy knew who this was—he had already met Levi and his four brothers, whose general emporium did a thriving business in the Santa Fe Plaza. What was being done to Levi now? The Mexicans explained—they were sure he had cholera, and out of fear, they refused to travel any further with him. Lamy went to those who were carrying Levi away to leave him in the ruined hut and spoke to him.
“Good friend,” he said, “we willingly make room for you in our covered waggon, and we will nurse you until you regain your strength, for we could not think of leaving you here in this lonely prairie cabin. We do not believe you have cholera, and [even] if you [have] we are not afraid of contagion.”
The orders were given. Spiegelberg was taken into the bishop’s train, which then moved on. In a week he was cured, and had a story to share later with his brothers—handsome and cultivated men—which bound the Spiegelbergs to Lamy in lifelong friendship.
In their slow time, they reached the Arkansas River, and crossed it safely, though the Arkansas fords were often the sites of sudden attacks by Indians, and moved on to the Cimarron River, where they paused for two days of rest. A few days later, on 14 September, about six weeks after starting out, they came to the Red River, saw horsemen, looked cautiously, and then recognized Machebeuf with an escort and fresh horses. It was a gallant welcome, still so far from Santa Fe. In three or four more days they came to an Army outpost, a fort where they slept “under a roof for the first time in two months.” On the following day they came into the meadow town of Las Vegas, and the nuns had their first sight of Mexican adobe houses, clustered around a clay chapel. All went to Mass there, and at the elevation of the Host, the nuns heard what they thought was faraway thunder; but it was only the sound made by the devout Mexicans as they thumped their breasts at the sight of God’s body. How foreign it all was, with men in their striped serapes, the women wrapped in their long black shawls, head and body.
The same day Machebeuf led the main party ahead to the small way station which Lamy kept at the place which long later became the railroad junction bearing his name. The bishop had matters to attend to in Las Vegas, but soon joined them for the entry into Santa Fe on 26 September. Once again this was treated as an occasion, for the arrival of Santa Fe’s first nuns was something to celebrate. Writing to De Smet four days later, Lamy said “the people made them a grand reception. A great number of persons, more than a thousand, went out to meet them,” and conducted them into town and through “triumphal arches” to the old cathedral of St Francis, while the bells in its twin adobe towers rang out over town. It was “a reception such as we had never seen before,” reported Mother Mary Magdalen.
At the cathedral door the rural dean awaited them. Vested in surplice and stole, Vicar Ortiz offered them the asperges, and then all proceeded to the altar to sing the Te Deum to the baile music of violins, guitars, and drums, which was now given sacred intention by being played in a slow wailing tempo. At the end, Lamy gave his newcomers the episcopal blessing, and with that, the first move toward building his new era was made and sanctified.
The second, which followed almost at once, broke over the diocese and himself with the echoing fury of a high mountain storm.
V
THE ANTAGONISTS
1852–1856
i.
The Pastoral Letter
THE FEES WERE “ENORMOUS,” Lamy exclaimed. He was referring to the levies laid upon the New Mexicans by the priests for the occasions which both marked the stages of life and supported the clergy. His intention to reform abuses included this one, and he seemed to have given it much thought during his long travels East and West during the summer of 1852. If a couple asked to be married they were charged from twenty to twenty-five piastres (a coin, or its equivalent in goods, equal to the Mexican peso, then worth more than ten of today’s United States dollars). If they wanted a child baptized, the fee was one and a half piastres. If they must bury the dead, each interment cost sixteen piastres. In the pathetic values of most families such fees in the aggregate of a lifetime’s pious needs amounted to a fortune. What was more, the native clergy kept for themselves most of such revenue, and made extraordinary charges for other occasions—there was that pastor who said Mass only once a year for his people and then charged eighteen dollars for it. Again, the collection of “tithes” yielded money equivalents for the diocese of Durango, yet with a great share retained by the local clergy. The worst of penalties were imposed upon people who refused to pay, or simply could not: they were deprived of the spiritual formalities without which they believed their lives were not blessed.
The problem for Lamy was, accordingly, in part ethical, in part practical. In the first place, the Church was the most wanted of institutions among the New Mexicans; it was one designed to serve human good, and Lamy was committed to this purpose; but if it was to function, it must be supported materially. In the second place, how could material suppor
t best be obtained? He would always receive some aid from Paris—but by no means all that was needed. The rest of it must come from the direct beneficiaries of the Church—the people. He must bring them whatever relief he thought just, he must ask for some share of their goods for the continued support of the whole of his diocese (Durango’s share no longer existed) and even like his predecessor, he must impose firm means of insuring such support. As he worked toward his solution for the problem in the autumn of 1852, it became clear that the people must gain by it, and the clergy lose their direct control of their benefices which they had abused and enjoyed through custom so long established as to seem a vested personal right.
Once he knew in detail what he would command, he gave it substance in his first pastoral letter, to be read in all the churches as soon as possible. Printed as a pamphlet for distribution, and appearing in the columns of the Gaceta de Santa Fe for 1 January 1853, it confirmed what he had verbally announced in part on other occasions. It revealed his own character even as he devised that of the reforms he proposed.
Addressing his “much beloved brothers,” he began his letter by reminding all of his establishment of the school for boys, and the convent school for girls. Both schools, especially the new one for girls, had not yet called for great expense, compared to those which had been needed for repair of the old garrison chapel of the Castrense. Whatever had been undertaken so far was for the spiritual and temporal good of the faithful of the territory, and for the seemliness of divine worship. Let all put their trust in God, who knew the purity of “our intention,” without which nothing could prosper; and at the same time let it be hoped that the faithful would take advantage of opportunity now given them to give their children a decent and religious education; for “the greatest heritage which parents could leave their children is a good education which is worth far more than the most brilliant success, since riches without education do more harm than good.”