by Paul Horgan
In the Weaver Mountains southwest of Walker he halted while Coudert, with a companion, went fifty miles to the north to retrieve the vestments, vessels, and horses left at Walker with Don Manuel Irrizarri. On his route north Coudert and his companion went with particular caution, for there was news of Indians about. On reaching Granite Creek safely, they were asked immediately by Don Manuel,
“Where do you come from?”
“From Weaver.”
“What news have you of the massacre on the road?”
“We heard of no massacre.”
But word had come to the Creek the night before of how three Americans and five Mexicans, who had left Walker to go to Weaver, had been killed, scalped, and mutilated by a band of Tonto Apaches.
At a certain point, the road between Weaver and Walker divided, one part passing to the east, the other to the west, of a great hill. Which route had Coudert taken? The eastern side, said Coudert, which explained the survival of himself and his companion; for the massacre had occurred on the western side, where they would have met the Tontos. At Weaver, Lamy heard of the massacre and mourned Coudert and his rider as surely lost. But after a week they were safe again in Weaver, having passed on the way—this time they chose the western road of the hill—the graves of the victims, buried there by a large party of men from Walker who were out on the land now to avenge their dead friends. Coudert brought the sacred objects with him—but not the horses, for these, and all the livestock belonging to Don Manuel, had been stolen by Indians on a raid.
Tucson was still two hundred and fifty miles away. The monotony of danger—danger from the desert nature, with its sky heat doubled by its reflection from the hard barren crust of the earth; the scarcity of water; and, as attested by abandoned ranches seen now and then, and the remains of mine machinery and overland waggons left to rust and rot, danger from the always travelling Apaches—was unremitting. Campers often travelled during much of the night when the temperature dropped; and with the return of the sun, which heated the air so that it scorched the mouth and throat, the travellers would pause to rest during the hottest part of the day. As a mountain drew clouds together out of its vast exhalations of transpiration, so the desert called forth violent hot winds which rose and carried choking dust over whole provinces.
But if progress was unimaginably slow, there was something stronger than what tried to impede it. A lone dweller in the Arizona wilderness wrote of Lamy: “He stopped a day with us as he was returning from California, a frank agreeable fascinating gentleman with the bonhomie of the Frenchman and the earnestness of the typical Christian.” He saw Lamy clearly. “A man of works rather than words, whose field of work is an empire, his diocese stretching from Denver to Mexico, from the Rio Grande to the Colorado.”
At last, on 19 March 1864, Lamy and his party drew into El Charco del Yuma, thirteen miles from Tucson, and were met by Father Messea, one of the two who had come from Santa Clara. A mounted squad fired rifle salutes, and they all proceeded to Tucson to be met two miles from the village by Father Bosco, “with as much pomp as the city could afford.” They proceeded to the unfinished church, whose sanctuary Bosco had roofed with canvas, while the rest was open to the sky. The bishop’s blessing came upon the little crowd assembled to receive him.
Though he thought that one day there would be a large population there, the town was then meagre in numbers and comforts. A survey and mining expeditioner in the same year saw it as “a city of mud boxes, dingy and dilapidated, cracked and baked into a composite of dust and filth; littered about with broken corrals, sheds, bake-ovens, carcasses of dead animals, and broken pottery; barren of verdure, parched, naked, and grimly desolate in the glare of a southern sun. Adobe walls without whitewash inside or out, hard earth floors, baked and dried Mexicans, sore-backed burros, coyote dogs, and terra cotta children; soldiers, teamsters, and honest miners lounging about the mescal-shops, soaked with the fiery poison; a noisy band of Sonoran buffoons dressed in theatrical costume, cutting their antics in the public places to the most diabolical din of fiddles and guitars ever heard.” The best accommodations one could possibly expect, he said, were the “dried mud walls of some unoccupied outhouse, with a mud floor for his bed; his own food to eat and his own cook to prepare it; and lucky is he to possess such luxuries as these.… The Apaches range within three miles of this place,” but the presence of troops, and the counter-raids by the usually peaceful Papago Indians of the region, kept a semblance of security over the village. But its general state, and the ruined remnants of happier times a century ago when it had been “a good-sized town” under Mexican rule, spoke plainly of how it had been reduced by the Sonora/Arizona Indians of the recent past. The days were so hot that a soldier reported how “from 11 o’clock in the morning until 3 or 4 in the afternoon everybody closes their windows and door and sleep, because it is too hot to move about. It is the sleepiest place I ever saw.…”
Lamy remained there almost a month, administering baptisms and confirmations to hundreds both at Tucson and at San Xavier del Bac, south of town, where Messea was pastor to its Indians, to the number of four thousand, as Lamy estimated. He thought the church with its adjacent convent “scarcely damaged,” and he found the church interior embellished with frescoes and well-executed sculpture. Machebeuf had begun its repair two years earlier. The wonder was that it survived so well as it did after its abandonment in the eighteenth century. In the 1740s a visiting Franciscan saw how that had to be, for reasons both practical and mysterious. “There are many and powerful medicine men here and they slay one another. The missionaries who have resided here have become bewitched and it was necessary to withdraw them before they should die.”
The mining engineer was “surprised to see such a splendid monument of civilization in the wilds of Arizona,” and he described the rich Churrigueresque façade, the two high bell towers, one of which was domed, and the high dome over the crossing. He saw the two Jesuits from California, who entertained him well, and gave him an “enthusiastic account” of all they planned to achieve in a lifetime of work there. He heard the Indian women “sing in the church with a degree of sweetness and harmony that quite surprised” him.
To the south lay the old Mexican garrison of Tubac, and a few miles farther on the same road, the abandoned mission of Tumacácori. In his turn, Lamy visited both places, passing near Tubac the rusting witness to an Indian raid on a mining supply train: an old boiler by the roadside which never reached Tubac, where gardens and groves of acacias, peach trees, and willows, and flowing water once sustained a northern Mexican mine, and where now all was “ruin and desolation wherever the eye rests.” Tumacácori also gave evidence of a once beautifully designed and maintained outpost on the Santa Cruz River. But now its farm buildings, corrals, fences, bake-houses, and the large mission church with its little clay burial chapel within the cloister, were empty to the wind and sun and drifting desert, as Machebeuf had seen, and Lamy now saw.
He was now, by his own observation, master of the realities of all his spiritual empire; and in the second week of April, he and Father Coudert, with their little party, joined with a detachment of several companies of dragoons who were setting out for the Rio Grande forts. The eastward passage was as slow as all the others, but was without unusual incident; and at La Mesilla (“a town a little larger than Los Angeles, and built in the same style—adobes—and peopled by the same nation—Mexicans,” according to an officer of Carleton’s earlier march) Lamy took his leave of the Army escort and moved a few miles upriver to spend a few days at Las Cruces, where he “was warmly received by the people.” There he gave confirmation, and then moved on to Doñana (the village) and Fort Selden, for the same sacrament.
One final hard lap of the six-month journey and its three thousand miles still lay ahead. It was the Dead Man’s March—that ninety-mile stretch of waterless desert separated from the Rio Grande by a mountain range. Lamy, Coudert, and the train started from Selden in the evening and rode until midni
ght, when they stopped at Perrillo a little while, and then moved on to the Dead Man’s Spring for the next day. From there they paid a call at Fort McRae three miles from the river—for the long desert march was over; and paused next at San Marcial on the river itself. Fort Craig lay a little way farther north, and there Lamy and Coudert left their companions and rode on alone toward the village of San Antonio.
It was late in the day—the fourth day since leaving Mesilla. Coudert, glancing at the bishop, became alarmed. Lamy was suddenly so weak that he could not stay in the saddle. Coudert helped him to dismount. He seemed hardly to breathe. He lapsed into a semi-coma. Coudert did what he could for him, but there was every sign that Lamy was about to die, lying on the earth as night fell. It was as if the past six months had exhausted him forever. It seemed certain that he could not travel any farther.
But mysteriously, the complete prostration receded as quickly as it had come. Lamy became conscious; he could breathe and move again. Presently—it must have been by a supreme act of will—he remounted his horse, and soon, with Coudert, was fording the Rio Grande to the west bank and moving toward Socorro, where they came to the parish rectory at three o’clock in the morning. The rector, Father Bernard, was absent, but they entered to sleep, and Bernard returned during the morning and cared for his guests. By mid-afternoon, Lamy felt ready to ride again; went upriver to Jojita for the night, forded the river again next day to the east bank, paused at Tomé, and reached Albuquerque to spend the night. On the day following, they halted at Bernarillo, and late in the next day, rode into Santa Fe. It was the twenty-eighth day of April 1864. The bishop with his aide had been absent for six months and two days. Now in his very bones, he had the new lands of the West; and he had seen the parish of Tucson have its beginning. He was within a few months of turning fifty years old. His spare, weathered body had been almost spent in the journey.
Welcoming him home, the New Mexican newspaper said, “The Bishop is an energetic, working and faithful steward. Favored are the spiritual flocks, who have so thoroughly upright, just and wise a shepherd.… We learn he procured from California, two Italian priests, of qualifications and usefulness, who have come to Tucson.… Much good, we trust, will result from his labors.… Though somewhat weather-beaten, he appears in fine health and spirits. His friends, and the members of his church, rejoice to see him again.”
All the harder, then, when he learned in August that Father Bosco, at Tucson, in failing health, had returned to California and, since the one could not safely cross the desert alone, nor the other alone tend the whole mission, had taken Father Messea with him. Arizona, after all, was once again abandoned.
ii.
Hospital and Schools
LAMY RETURNED from the arduous freedom he loved to administrative affairs of the sort which had long plagued him. He was obliged once again (as years ago) to write Barnabo that six or seven “miserable priests” whom he had had to suspend might send “a certain petition” against him to the Vatican, which was accordingly warned. “The good is done through a great deal of pain and opposition of all sorts; Providence permits it to try us and to keep us in humility.” The Propaganda duly noted and circularized his alert within the Vatican bureaux.
In another familiar matter—”Allow me to remind you of the claim I made once or twice [sic] concerning certain places between the diocese of Durango and that of Santa Fe. Five years ago I obtained a decree from Rome on this subject but Mgr. of Durango wished to interpret it in another way”—and the old wrangle went on again: Lamy repeated his arguments that all territory, including the three river villages southeast of El Paso which belonged to New Mexico for civil administration, must belong to the bishop of Santa Fe for ecclesiastical affairs. A Roman secretary duly digested the letter for his superiors: “He asks that—” and silence followed.
The bishop reported to the Society at Paris about the progress in erecting new churches and chapels, described once again the process of making sun-dried bricks of clay, and noted that some of the new buildings could hold as many as a thousand people. The earthen cathedral of St Francis had undergone only repairs to its interior. “As soon as it is possible,” he wrote, referring for the first time to one of his greatest desires, “we hope to be able to begin a new church that would look more like a cathedral than the present one …” That, of course, lay some years in the future. Another matter could not wait for long. There was “still a greater need of a hospital.”
It was, then, necessary to find the people for a hospital staff. There was already a building—his own second residence. It stood in the enclosed park behind the cathedral and ran along eastward from the Governor’s Palace. This he would give over to those whom he would ask to establish the hospital, if only they would come.
He wrote to Mother Josephine, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity at Cedar Grove, near Cincinnati, opening his correspondence with an offer of terms and conditions if she could spare some of her sisters for Santa Fe. Under routine administration, she would raise the matter with her archbishop—Lamy’s old friend Purcell, who would pose no objections. Preparations followed through the year. He wrote to Spalding at Baltimore, to say that in the previous autumn—before his departure for Arizona—he had expected a group of Sisters of St Joseph to arrive at Santa Fe to open an orphan asylum, but none came, though the motherhouse had offered their services. Could Spalding help him to find nuns for the purpose?—a discreet way of suggesting that a word from him to the Josephines might suffice.… Meanwhile, Father Ussel had gone to France seeking Christian Brothers and priests: would the Society in Paris see to his expenses?
In the north, Machebeuf, lame but busy, was establishing chapels and congregations in the new Colorado towns which were “springing up on all sides.” He hoped that when Colorado should become a diocese, as it must, its new bishop would find all prepared for him. In his duty, Machebeuf planned to make a trip to raise money. Lamy gave him papers of authorization, but in the end, Machebeuf sent Raverdy, and himself remained at home, as he did not feel equal to strenuous travel.
In 1 August, having taken stock, Lamy asked Rome to excuse him from the required visit ad limina to the Pope—his absence would seriously impede progress just then in New Mexico, and more than that—he had no money to pay for such an expensive journey. In the same letter, he felt a new opportunity should be exploited: Zubiría, whether dead or retired, was no longer bishop of Durango. Now, “there is a chance to clear up” the long-standing territorial problem, “as there will be a new bishop in Durango.… Please reread my former letters in which I explained all my reasons.… please see that we get a new decree.…” Greater patience seemed called for at his desk than in the slow passages over the barren distances with all their sudden mortal strikes—a year ago a young priest had been murdered by Indians, another only two months ago.
After three months at home, he was again in the field, going now to visit the Navajo and Apache Indians gathered on the reservation of the Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner on the Pecos River in southeastern New Mexico. He travelled in company with General Carleton and staff. The general, as author of the reservation plan to pacify and reeducate the bellicose Indians, was to make an inspection of the more than eight thousand Navajos and Mescalero Apaches at the Bosque, and the four hundred soldiers who kept them under control while trying to teach them new habits of dwelling, farming, and living together. Education in the white man’s terms was to be given the captives.
During Lamy’s long absence in the West, Eguillon, his vicar general, had been asked by “the officers’’ to “establish schools to civilize” the Indians “by means of Christianism. The government work is done, but not ours.” On his return, Lamy had sent a priest and two assistants in minor orders to Fort Sumner, and told the Society “we have great hopes to do good amongst them. The Government seems determined to make them live in these reservations and nowhere else. They (the Indians) see the missionaries with a good eye, and no doubt we shall succeed with them, especi
ally the youth …”
But a sad spectacle met him at the Bosque Redondo. The Indians were subdued enough, except among themselves—the Navajos (by far the larger Indian contingent) and the Apaches were hostile to each other. Both tribes were survivors of furious vengeance brought against them by the Army and the citizenry, whose spirit had been expressed in the Santa Fe press—”Go it citizens! Give the enemy no rest. Chase him, fight him, subdue him, kill him when necessary in defense of life, family, property and security”—the same purposes long held by the Indians in their own terms, whether against Spaniard, Mexican, or eastern American. Once he had the Indians, Carleton gentled his policy, fought for their protection, sustenance, and future, against civilian factions both in New Mexico and in Washington. Seeing them with a vain and proprietary eye, he said they were now “the happiest people I have ever seen.”
But “My dear wife,” wrote a soldier from Fort Sumner, “this is a terrible place … The Rio Pecos is a little stream winding through an immense plain, and the water is terrible, and it is all that can be had within 50 miles, it is full of alkili, and operates on a person like castor oil—the water, heat it a little, and the more you wash yourself with common soap the dirtier you will get.…” It seemed an insuperable task to haul supplies for twelve thousand people—soldiers and Indians—over the plains during wartime. Carleton sent strong appeals to Washington: “These Indians are upon my hands. They must be clothed and fed until they can clothe and feed themselves”—for he still hoped they would take up the agrarian life of the ancient Pueblo people. He called for cattle drives to bring beef to the reservation over the empty plains—the actual beginning of the cattle trails of New Mexico. Though a major of volunteers selected the site on the Pecos, with its groves of cottonwoods, and saw the construction of fine officers’ quarters and barracks, and thought it “the most beautiful Indian fort in the United States,” the wretchedness of the interned people was plain to see.