by Paul Horgan
Lamy, writing to Purcell afterward, said, mistakenly, “No bones were fractured, the doctors say that he will get well.” But they were wrong. Machebeuf would be a cripple for life, could never ride again, and would have to go about all his work by carriage. With his characteristic habit of adding interest to events, he was inclined, in his letters thereafter, to say, “Pray always for the poor cripple.”
The bishop spent five davs with him, touring the area, visiting Central City again, where there were more parishioners than at Denver, and if they as yet had no church, they had a “fine bell.” He blessed the neat brick church of Denver, with “quite a number of Protestants” present, and gave a homily at the end of the pontifical Mass. The choir deserved “great credit.” Everything had grown. “What a change from my first visit two years ago,” wrote Lamy. All of it required “all the energy of Father Machebeuf (and you know he is not lacking in that) to attend to all the wants … in Colorado Territory.”
Reassured about his confrere, Lamy left again for Santa Fe, going now by way of Ute Pass, the Fountain Valley, and the Garden of the Gods. Once again at the Huerfano, he saw settlers from the south, all of whom were learning English. Again the overland travel was the same—unremitting alertness on the road, not only for Indians, but for outlaws, who, taking advantage of the state of war, were on the increase; spare rations and hunter’s luck, now good, now poor. Salpointe said he thought “this mode of life exceedingly hard, because I was still young in the missions.” But looking at Lamy, he saw that all of it “seemed of familiar occurrence to my Bishop.” In the end, the younger priest spoke for them both when he said, thinking gratefully of unseasoned rabbit meat cooked on a stick in the open air after a day’s ride in distance that seemed hardly to diminish by nightfall, “so good a cook is hunger.”
As Lamy returned home in late summer, the authorities in New Mexico were putting into action a strong, often pitiless program of defense against the Navajos and Apaches which included plans to gather them on reservations where their constantly mounting warfare against the Mexican and Anglo-American citizens and the peaceful Pueblo Indians would be impossible; or if that should fail, then—but the words of the territorial governor, himself a long-time New Mexican resident, and of General Carleton, in command of the military department, stated the case flatly. Governor Connelly declared that the aim of the government “should be so directed as to keep these sons of the forest within proper limits and either maintain them as paupers, teach them the arts of civilized life and oblige them to sustain themselves, or, on the other hand, exterminate them.” The general said, “It may be set down as a rule that the Navajo Indians have long since passed that point when talking would be of any avail. They must be whipped and fear us before they will cease killing and robbing the people.”
Colonel Kit Carson was called from Taos to active service and given troops to wage a war of attrition and spoliation against the Navajo. He burned their wheat and corn fields, chopped down their peach and other bearing trees, systematically working to starve the Indians. Indians inclined to be peaceful had been given until 20 July of that summer to surrender. Through the summer and winter many gave up and trudged in great misery to Fort Canby in eastern Arizona, later to be moved, along with thousands more, to the newly established fort named for General Sumner, in southeastern New Mexico, at a site called the Bosque Redondo (or “circular grove”). Carleton defined his purpose in this move: “to send all captured Navajos and Apaches to” the reservation “and there to feed and take care of them until they have opened farms and become able to support themselves, as the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are doing.” It was to be an experiment in changing a whole culture. For the rest—resistant Apaches—Carleton issued orders that: “All Indian men of the Mescalero tribe are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them … If the Indians send in a flag and desire to treat for peace, say to the bearer that … you have no power to make peace; that you are there to kill them wherever you find them … The Indians are to be soundly whipped, without parleys or councils, except as I have told you.”
Lamy was among those who most deplored the savageries which made the diocese, and its territories, almost ungovernable in both civil and religious affairs. A year earlier one of his young French priests, the Abbé Martin, as he called him, was murdered by Navajos who attacked a caravan in whose vanguard he rode. He had been wearing a cloak over his cassock, and if they had seen him as a priest, said Lamy, they would not have harmed him. As it was, instead of robbing his body in their usual way, they “respected him and left.” Lamy had known Indian warfare for twelve years, and yet he felt for the marauders, and he prayed that the death of young Martin might “deserve the conversion of his murderers and of the whole tribe.”
In the field it was often an unequal struggle. A young officer wrote from Fort Craig on the Rio Grande to his wife in California on 24 August 1863:
My Dear Wife
On Saturday last, the 22nd inst, I returned from my Indian Expedition, having been absent since July 23rd, just 31 days. It was a very tedious march, travelling all the time through mountains and valleys, having no other roads than Indian trails to follow—and nearly the whole country which my command passed over had never been seen by white men before. My expedition did not accomplish much, as I saw the Indians but once—they were driving about 8,000 sheep which they had stolen. I chased them for 31 miles, when I overtook them, and fought them for half an hour. I only had with me five soldiers, two Mexicans, and myself—eight in all, whilst they numbered between sixty and eighty. When I overtook them it was almost dark, and I was nearly a hundred miles from the rest of my command; so after fighting them for half an hour, I could do nothing more than let them go without getting the sheep. The only casualty on my side was a horse shot, while we killed two probably three of the Indians.… So you see I have smelt gunpowder, and come out of it safe. The[y] are the Navajo tribe.…
Across such country, amidst such hazards, Lamy, a few weeks afterward, was on his way for a journey of half a year which would give him his first sight of Arizona, and beyond.
VIII
THE PAINTED LAND
1863–1867
i.
Across Arizona
HE RESOLVED TO GO AS FAR as San Francisco, where he would respond in person to the Jesuit inquiries about Arizona and New Mexico, and ask for men. With Father Coudert, the pastor of Albuquerque, as his secretary and companion, he set on his longest overland journey since Durango. On 20 February 1863, Arizona had been separated from New Mexico as a territory when Lincoln signed the act of establishment voted by Congress. This creation did not affect Arizona as a part of the diocese of Santa Fe. Now Lamy, who knew the western lands only by hearsay, would see for himself this great new third of his spiritual domain.
Leaving Santa Fe on 27 October with Coudert, he went down the river to Albuquerque, stayed a day or two, and then, from Isleta, turned west across the tawny desert. He came to Inscription Rock, also called El Morro, and found carved in its sandstone face many names of other travellers, including that of Juan de Oñate, the colonizer of New Mexico, who recorded that he had “passed by here (pasó por aquí).” If, as once stated, another name was scratched into the rock—“Bishop J. B. Lamy, 1863”—no trace of it remains.
The two riders turned north to Fort El Gallo, where the garrison was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Don Francisco Chaves. The bishop spent a few days there while three companies of dragoons, Major Willis commanding, made ready to march westward. Lamy and Coudert were to join the troop movement. They went by way of the pueblo of Zuñi, where Lamy spent a week. He was joyfully received, administered the sacraments, including confirmation, and slept on the flagstone floor of the pueblo governor, Juan Séptimo. The stone floor, intended as the ultimate in hospitality, resulted in an attack of rheumatism for the visitors. They saw the Zuñi scalp dance, which went on continuously during their visit, to celebrate the recent killing of Navajo marauders. The Zuñis called the
bishop “Tata,” and watched him leave with the troops for a long open crossing to the next known watering place, which was thirty-six miles away. But in the flat desert, unseen from even a little distance, with no sign of a watercourse, they came upon a fresh natural well rising from a spring deep down within almost perpendicular walls, and so ample that even the horses could pick their way to the water. They called it Jacob’s Well, and stayed by it for two days, to rest men and horses. On the third morning they woke under a quiet fall of four inches of snow, which was melted by the great sun during the day as they moved on.
Lamy was a good rider, erect in the saddle. Patient in travel as in other things, he still pressed forward as well as he could, to make the hard country yield up to him its blind ways. He was now in Arizona, somewhere in the northern third of the territory. It did not look like the New Mexico he knew, with its pale grass plains, its long green thread of the Great River valley, its wooded mountains. Here in Arizona the immense distances showed other colors—blue far away, but nearer to, the mountains often looked like frozen fire, under bare colors of rose and ochre and char, and the desert was more barren, and its earth too recalled dead fire in its hues. It looked like a painted land. The valleys showed walls striped like agate. One mountain range after another seemed to deny future escape. Those colossal earth wrinkles from afar made grand statements of beauty in form and atmosphere; but once entered, presented endlessly tortuous ways, caprices of weather, and repeated barriers to progress, all inducing a sense of captivity on a dishuman scale. How was progress measured in such lands? In the open desert, how slowly the mountains ahead seemed to change and come closer—day after day the rider would seem always to be within sight of the same mountains. Often the way ahead vanished through heat waves into the very sky. The pace of travel was so slow as to compel contemplation in anyone given to thought in any degree, and, in some, could serve as an awesome entry into the religious spirit in a time when the work of God was admittedly divine and, on that account alone, wonderful to behold. How ten-fold desirable then, to conquer, or at least survive, hardships in the midst of wonders in honor of a purpose believed in beyond one’s own life.
Lamy’s military escort had other duties than those of protecting him, for they had reconnoitering to do, and reports to investigate, which made their pace of travel slower than Lamy’s needed to be. Coming to the Little Colorado River, he met a train of goods waggons belonging to one of the Armijos of Albuquerque; and bought from the party a waggon with mules and all its merchandise. The waggon drivers entered his service with their vehicle, and Lamy took leave of the troops in order to travel faster. He now had his two saddle-horses, an ambulance with two mules, the waggon with its eight mules, two men with two mules, and a tent, and he led his party out on its own across a wild land in a state of uncontrolled Indian warfare. He kept everyone on the lookout at all times, for the Apache used the bare country itself for cover as no one else could, and might appear between one minute and the next out of nowhere. The party could go no faster than the fastest mule’s walk; but they were not subject to delays of days at a time.
They suffered from cold, for they were in high altitudes and winter was drawing on. One night Lamy and Coudert were nearly killed by noxious air caused by live coals in a pan set inside their tent by a solicitous Mexican to keep them warm. They reached fresh air only just in time. Another night, Lamy had to walk about until daylight to keep his feet from freezing, for an icy storm was raging and no fire burned. One day they joined a party of Mexican raiders bound for Cañon del Diablo, which Coudert thought ill-named as it was so cold and far from hell.
For two hundred miles they had been gazing at San Francisco Peak and at last were on its foothill slopes. There they were met by Major Willis’s command, who had arrived earlier by another route; and one night in the black silence they heard an unearthly scream. It was the hunting cry of a mountain lion who was only fifty feet from the camp and its animals.
Moving again, Lamy and his people met a Tonto Apache party who, being outnumbered, kept the peace, saying only, “How do you do, tobacco?”; and the caravan crept on to the great labor of crossing the Cañon de la Vivora. Its near side could be descended only with the utmost labor, for it was precipitous—the waggon wheels had to be lashed immovable and each vehicle held back in the descent by forty soldiers. Going the reverse way, this canon wall could never be ascended. It was a place of no returning. Lamy amiably said that they had crossed the Rubicon, and sold his ambulance forthwith to Major Willis, who was ordered to establish Whipple Barracks and remain. It was to be a new Army post erected to protect the gold and silver miners at nearby Walker (later Prescott) in the very center of Arizona, amidst formidably enclosing mountains.
Until 20 December Lamy remained there, exploring the neighboring mines, and fishing for trout, and then with his little caravan he set out for Granite Creek near the very crest of Granite Mountain. Coming through a heavy snowfall he arrived there on Christmas Eve. A miner offered him his own cabin, eight feet square, which was put up out of parts of wooden packing boxes. The snow blew in through the cracks. It was where Lamy and his seven men would take shelter.
It was also where, on the next morning, Lamy offered the Mass for Christmas Day.
Deus firmavit [he intoned in the Collect],
orbem terrae, qui non commovebitur:
parata sedes tua, Deus, ex tune,
a saeculo tu es,
and praying to God on a wintry mountain of granite, the words told him of how the Lord founded the solid earth, and how it would abide immovable, and how firm was the throne of God even before the world began, and how God was from all eternity.…
For as he wrote to Paris, “On Christmas Day, we were able to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, attended by twenty or twenty-five people kneeling on earth covered with the nighttime’s snow. We were on the slope of a mountain, surrounded by forests of russet oaks, silver firs and cedars.” The altar was improvised from old planks and set up within his cabin, and was canopied by freshly cut evergreen boughs. Only a few men could kneel inside the cabin—the rest were outside in the cold. It was so cold that a fire was lit in the cabin, and several times Lamy had to bring the chalice with its wine and water to be thawed by the stove. Snow was falling, and so much came through the packing-box walls to fall on the altar that continually it had to be brushed away. Enacting the center of his belief and surrounded by the natural Gothic of the mountain heights—pointed firs and pinnacles of rock—he was a countryman at home.
It was soon time to move on again. He had distributed mail entrusted to him at Santa Fe to bring to some of the miners. He doubted—and so did Major Willis—that gold in great quantities would be taken at Walker, because of a scarcity of water. The miners put much hope on spring freshets to bring them what they needed to wash out the gold. Lamy left his vestments and Mass vessels and two horses with a local resident, Don Manuel Irrizarri, provisioned his small party for six days, bought fresh horses from miners, and set out for the Mojave Indian country. This lap of his journey would take him across the great Mojave Desert, and before he reached the Indian village he had gone along for thirteen days.
One night an Indian tried to steal the horses of Lamy and Coudert. If he had succeeded, the bishop and his people would surely have died trying to cross the desert on foot. They came safely to Fort Mojave and rested for a few days; then with new mounts and supplies were taken across the Colorado River by ferry to continue the journey to California. They had expected natural forage on the way, but no grass grew, and meeting by chance a Californian on his way eastward to Fort Mojave were able to buy fifty pounds of corn from him for twenty-five dollars. They passed across great mountain rises, thinking each might be the last; but another always loomed ahead. They saw a curious desert tree—the palm of St Peter—which grew as high as fifty feet; and they found on one of the plateaus so many hares and rabbits that they could catch them with their hands. But at last they reached the last plateau, and looking d
own the abrupt slope to the west, saw at its base a fair-sized California city. It was San Bernardino, a town built by the Mormons, which they reached by way of a well-made road down the mountain.
There Lamy found an old parishioner of his from Ohio who had gone to settle in California, an Irishman called Quinn. In his happiness at the reunion, Quinn gave every hospitality to Lamy and Coudert, and when they had to leave by stage coach for Los Angeles, he assumed the care of Lamy’s men until he should return. The trip to Los Angeles was luxurious after weeks in the saddle.
In Los Angeles, Bishop Amat was glad to see Lamy, but when asked about the business of obtaining priests for Arizona, for which Lamy had made his extended journey, replied that two Jesuits had already gone to Tucson—one of them Father Bosco, who had written to Lamy, the other Father Messea. It was gratifying news, and there was now no reason for Lamy to go up the coast to San Francisco on the same mission. The travellers remained eight days with Amat, who showed them the whole vicinity, took them to see the Pacific at San Pedro, and to visit the mission of San Gabriel, with its great groves of orange and lemon trees, which showed together scented flowers, unripe fruit and ripened. It was a place of ease, the air then pure, the light clear, the land beguiling.
But now Tucson awaited. Returning to San Bernardino, Lamy and Coudert found Mr Quinn again, and with his help stocked all equipment for a hard entry into another wilderness, now to the southeast. Once again it was the familiar succession of desert and mountain, repeated through weeks. They noted that one lone passage was across a desert below the level of the seacoast they had left—Death Valley. They proceeded by way of minuscule settlements no longer on the map—La Paz, White Water, Aguas Calientes, Indian Wells, Weaver. Their route lay in a great diagonal across lower Arizona from the Colorado River toward Tucson. They met almost no one, saw few settlements, once came to a cluster of only two families to whom Lamy brought the Mass.