by Paul Horgan
The chief difficulties in his mission lay in maintaining connections with the outside world, and of these, the greatest was the passage of the immense plains which isolated the diocese from the rest of the United States. After crossing the ocean, and then travelling six hundred leagues by rail, the most trying and costly part of the journey had yet to be passed. Up to that point, he and his people had been able to make use of the comforts of civilized countries; but from there on, they had to travel nine hundred miles without seeing a hut or even a bridge, all the while being exposed to Indian arrows. The savages rarely failed to attack caravans, even very large ones. He remembered how in the autumn of 1855 six of his Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, coming to found schools, crossed the plains. As a precaution they joined a train of five hundred open waggons, loaded with provisions and merchandise for New Mexico. The prairie voyage took two and a half months, and the travellers were attacked several times by Indians, despite the defense offered by the twelve hundred men of the caravan, and a number of people were killed or wounded. The expenses of such travel were enormous—one had to buy everything, animals, waggons, provisions, camping equipment. In New Mexico, they had only the most rigorously necessary things to sustain life, and he meant, literally, bread and meat. There were no factories. Most of the inhabitants raised sheep and cattle—at little profit, probably because of the Indians who stole the flocks and herds, and killed the shepherds and cowmen, or took them prisoner. Yet the prairies were vast and beautiful, and Providence had placed countless droves of buffalo upon them, which provided food and hides for half a million people—the Plains Indians.
Three territories comprised the diocese of Santa Fe at present. The Catholics numbered between 130,000 and 140,000, divided between New Mexico (110,000 Mexicans, all Catholic, and 15,000 Catholic Indians), Colorado (8000 Mexicans and Americans), and Arizona (7000 Indians and Mexicans among whom, as on all sides, there were some good and some bad). He had fifty-one active priests where he had come to find nine. Eleven were either retired or deprived of their priestly functions. Fourteen were Mexican, thirty-one French, and six others from different European countries. He expected to take eight or ten back to Santa Fe with him now. With his present number of priests who administered to a Catholic population so spread out, they could hardly make visits to the villages at any great distance from the missionary residence. He could use more than a hundred priests if he could maintain them once they had arrived in the diocese. In New Mexico, besides the enumerated Catholics, there were four to five thousand Americans, more atheist than Protestant, three or four hundred Jews, and thirty thousand unsettled Indians, barbarous and “almost cannibalistic.” There were thirty-one missions or jurisdictions. In seven churches and five chapels the priest was in residence and kept the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle.
He had made three pastoral visits to Colorado, only one into Arizona. On that one he travelled over three thousand miles on horseback. In many places, he and his companions had to sleep under the stars, and often had to go sixty or seventy-five miles without water, when he would walk to rest his horse. Despite all such endurances there was reward in meeting faithful souls in the wilderness who had not seen a priest for many years.
He told of the Christmas Mass on the snow-covered side of that mountain in Arizona, and brought the account of the journey full circle until he came to Tucson and San Xavier del Bac, whose history and condition he described. He noted Aztec ruins, and those left also by Spaniards who had been forced to abandon Arizona in the eighteenth century because of the ferocity of Apache warfare. One of his strongest impressions of Arizona found its way into the report as he described the great saguaro cactus, and recalled that travellers had told how the word “Arizona” was the Indian word for “land of the cactus,” and he thought “the etymology sounds truthful enough.” Anyhow, the gigantic cacti, by their beauty, form, and great height, were the most interesting of their species, often taking the form of a many-branched candelabrum, with the circumference of the trunk measuring a metre. The plant yielded an exquisite fruit, which the Indians gathered by means of a long pole to which a sickle was lashed. At a distance, immense forests of these cacti “appeared like a troop of giants armed for a battle.”
Colorado was much colder than Arizona. Out of its cold heights its great rivers came pounding out into wide valleys to cool the meadows. Thousands of farmers were already in possession of its most beautiful valleys, and the cereals they grew were among the territory’s main resources, along with gold and pasture lands. Silver fir and cedars covered the towering mountains up to the timberline.
New Mexico had an older non-Indian population than either of his other two territories. Generations of families had been born there to raise their children, their flocks, and keep their lands. These—the Mexicans of Spanish descent—were well disposed toward religion, wanted the sacraments, revered their clergy, and willingly went about the tasks of building the church whose plan had been drawn and given them by their pastor. If the church building was of “a poor style, nevertheless it is the best monument of the place.” Indians in the pueblos, he said, were very fond of their priests. In one pueblo, when the pastor was to be moved elsewhere, they pleaded with the bishop that he stay in such a way that he could not refuse them. The young priest, alas, was not destined to remain with them much longer—he died of a brain fever soon afterward. In respect of the roving tribes, the government had a plan to maintain them on reservations. He had already sent priest-teachers to one such with some success.
As to general observations—social abuses mainly in the moral sphere would be the hardest to cure. Their main causes arose from the bad examples which the worshippers of his diocese had witnessed, scandals emerging particularly from the old clergy. A larger number of priests, good priests, would be the best cure for this, as well as for ignorance. He regretted to report that he had neither chapter house nor cathedral canons. Item: no neighboring bishop had interfered in the exercise of his jurisdiction. Item: he had held three diocesan synods in the past twelve years. Item: regular visitations in the diocese could not be made to accord with Canon Law because of the great distances, the conditions of the roads, and the dangers of Indian attacks which often destroyed caravans and killed travellers. Still, as circumstances allowed, episcopal visits were made each year to one or another part of the diocese. Item: some income reached the chancery from the raising of animals which certain parishioners gave instead of actual money in tithes—four thousand dollars, approximately.
Communication was still difficult between New Mexico and the rest of the United States, and transportation was exorbitantly expensive. But looking to the future, the bishop (older now, fifty-two years of age, gray-haired, more gaunt and weathered than ever) felt the excitement of all who built in harmony with the forces of their times. Railroads were advancing from the west in California and from the east in Missouri and Texas; and when they should meet, the condition of things would be entirely changed. Mines could be worked, stock raised and shipped, cultivation of produce increased; laborers would be better paid, they could construct houses and churches as in the East. Factories might well be established—woolen mills to use the product so plentiful in that country. In time his mission would without doubt find extension and a way of sustaining the great, heavy loads which were always found in new undertakings. “Providence will never abandon us”—his conviction was clear.
Through all his report there seemed to show a love of the desert and mountain Southwest which had gradually cast its spell over him. Knowing his immense land in the same terms as any other frontiersman, he loved it the more for seeking out, and surviving, its hazard and its challenge. The report was taken under advisement less for this value than for its hard facts.
While in Rome, in his endless pursuit of new helpers, Lamy asked Barnabo for his influence in recruiting Jesuits for Santa Fe, saying he had without avail been asking the Society of Jesús for men for thirteen years. The cardinal, an administrator, tol
d him to put the request in writing. Undoubtedly it was then forwarded to the current general of the Jesuits, Father Beckx, who, when Lamy called on him a few days later, at once assigned him three priests and two brothers, out of the province of Naples. They were Fathers L. Vigilante, as superior, Rafael Bianchi, and Donato M. Gasparri; and brothers Prisco Caso and Rafael Vezza. They were to sail for America with the bishop in May.
ii.
Madame Bontesheim and Bureaucracy
LAMY HAD A FEW MORE DETAILS of business to complete with Barnabo, and one of historical piety—which cardinal or prelate, he asked, could tell him where to find the keys to the chapel which contained the chains of St Peter?
Oh, surely Cardinal Clarilli would know, replied Barnabo.
But Clarilli did not know, nor did others whom Lamy asked, for he was given several different directions. Nobody seemed to know how to reach the great relics.
If only he had consulted an example of that living institution in Rome, who reappeared with every generation—the pious and tireless matron who was often in her self-created system more effective at getting things done in the grand confusions of the Vatican bureaucracy than the members of the Curia. At the time, there was a Madame Bontesheim whom Father McCloskey described as “a General of division, who summons us Captains and marches us hither and thither. She is indeed a famous woman” to whom the chains of St Peter would have been a trifle to manage. But gossip had it that she was busy with what she called “a respectable scrape” concerning “one of those wandering nuns” who was trying to enlist members for a new convent which consisted only of herself as Mother Superior and one other nun, in Liberty, Texas. A young American girl was greatly drawn to the venture; Madame Bontesheim tried to prevent her going, but “failed most signally in effecting a separation between the Mother Superior and the girl.”
In any case, Lamy saw her in another affair when she marched him to recite his “experiences” to a hall full of novices of an order of nuns. How ever had she discovered him in a city full of bishops? But her skill was famous. He was ready enough to describe his distant life for Madame Bontesheim, and also for his fellows at the North American College, whose rector said, after he departed Rome, “we miss very much his interesting and graphic descriptions of his missionary life among the Indians. He is full of Americanisms, and his imperfect knowledge of English and his quaint way of describing things afforded us many a hearty laugh. With all his dove-like simplicity he has quite enough of the Serpent’s cunning, and it would have amused one to see the skill with which he evaded the approaches of an Italian who wished to go to Santa Fe, believing it, no doubt, to be an appendage of New York or Philadelphia, the only places a large number of these gentry ever heard of.”
In the third of the audiences which he granted Lamy, Pius IX gave him permission to leave Rome and it was remarked that “the Holy Father has been very kind to him.” Toward the end of January 1867, Lamy sailed for France from Civitavecchia. He would spend three months preparing for his homeward expedition in Paris and Lyon—and also in replying to certain critical comments on his report which came from Barnabo three months later. The cardinal granted that pastoral visits in the Santa Fe diocese might be difficult, but “wishing to encourage your solicitude,” he suggested to Lamy that his visitations be made more often and more thoroughly. He thought the same about holding diocesan synods. As for education—teaching skills and the fine arts were well enough, but the cardinal “was surprised in not finding any mention in the proposed study schedule about the instruction in Religion.” There were other, lesser criticisms.
If Lamy briefly despaired of making anyone halfway around the world see his lands and their problems, he preserved his “dove-like simplicity” and promptly replied from Paris. Concerning pastoral visitations, he said that now with his new increment of Jesuits he hoped to be freer to travel about his territories more regularly, and also to hold synods every two years. In the matter of religious education—he had simply neglected to make specific mention of what perhaps “it was not necessary to explain”: that in all nine of his establishments of schools or orphanages, religion was being taught regularly with “great success”; the teachers were “clerics themselves.” Disposing of the few remaining inquiries, he was respectful—and swift: for it had been noted in Rome that he thought matters there moved too slowly. “The Roman piano, piano, does not suit the Bishop of the Navahoes….”
Working between Paris and Lyon to complete his homeward party, Lamy with evident satisfaction was finally able to catalogue its members: in addition to the five Italian Jesuits, he had enlisted a priest and a deacon at Rome, six seminarians from Clermont, and two more Brothers of the Christian Doctrine—twenty-one in all, not counting himself and Coudert, his secretary. In America he would add several more nuns from Loretto, Kentucky, to his charges. It was a grand increment, and in Rome, by the tone of his letter describing his efforts, they thought he was “making hay while the sun shines.”
Once again he had to appeal to the French Society for increased financial help in paying for the transport of his people. All expenses had increased, and while grateful for the unfailing aid he had always received from Paris and Lyon, he thought it necessary, in asking for more, to repeat his familiar description of the conditions of westward travel in the United States—its distances, costs, dangers, and hardships. At last he was ready; and with his twenty-one “sujets” (“individuals”), as he always called them, he sailed from Le Havre on 9 May 1867, on the “magnificent sail and steam vessel” Europa. The crossing was mild until on 19 May the Europa encountered a violent storm off Newfoundland in a “gulf” which the sailors referred to as “The Devil’s Place.” For a while the ship was in extreme peril, and all on board suffered; but she made port safely on 23 May, coming up the Narrows to New York early in the morning. There before Lamy’s new collection of strangers, lay unknown America and their separate fates.
iii.
Homeward
TWO DAYS LATER they were at Baltimore, where Lamy left the seminarians, including his nephew Anthony Lamy, who was Marie’s brother, for further study with the Sulpicians, and boarded the railroad train to St Louis for three days of “remarkable” luxuries and comforts. By 2 June they were in St Louis, where three Loretto nuns and two Christian Brothers joined the party. After four days of shopping and outfitting, the bishop was ready to lead the way West. He had twenty mules, two small waggons, and five “light ambulances,” and two saddle-horses. “This outfit,” he said, “cost us near $5000” (in today’s money at least twenty thousand). June seventh found the party in Leavenworth, as guests of Bishop Micge, who now had a large house where all the men were put up, and where he gave them every comfort. The nuns—two Sisters of Charity and the three Lorettines—stayed at St Vincent’s Academy. Two Jesuits joined the group there—including one of the Italians from Naples—and also going along were a student, Paul Beaubien, from St Louis University, the bishop’s young business agent, Jules Masset, and two Mexican servants, Antonio and Antonito: twenty-six in all.
Lamy considered which trail to follow over the plains. He had hoped to take the northern fork of the Santa Fe Trail, by way of the Smoky Hill River, Bent’s Fort, and the Las Animas River in order to meet with Machebeuf in Colorado. But all reports indicated that the warring Indians were more active there than elsewhere. Through that summer, the whole prairie seemed continuously afire with Indian furies; for after the Civil War, emigrants were again pouring to the West, threatening the Indian supremacy in his own domain; and the Indian was striking back with ferocity and skill. So continuous was the struggle, so active was the Army in newly established forts along the westward trails, that the eastern papers carried every day a regular news report with the running headline of “The Indian War.”
Lamy decided it would be prudent to abandon the northern route and to set out directly to the southwest toward the familiar ford of the Arkansas River to the west of Fort Dodge, Kansas, at a place known as Cimarron—one of
two crossings a few miles apart, the other being near the later settlement of Ingalls. This was the path most often used by the waggon trains for Santa Fe and Chihuahua; and in the summer of 1867 Lamy heard that there were many such caravans on the plains. In the company of one or another of these westbound his people would be safer than alone.
The party left from Leavenworth on 14 June. Four days later they reached a Jesuit mission at St Mary’s of the Pottawatomies, where in good company they rested for six more days. Leaving there on the Feast of SS Peter and Paul—29 June—they moved on across the southern reach of the Smoky Hill River, and there they entered upon the prairies proper, bidding “adieu to civilization.” That river, said one of the missioners—it was Father J. Brun, who wrote letters based on his diary—”marked the boundary of the Indian territory, a river sadly famous for the piracies and massacres committed by the savages.”
Soon after that crossing, while the bishop’s party were encamped, four mounted Indians suddenly appeared. They were painted, wore loops of necklaces and feathered headpieces; and at their belts each had a little mirror which he always carried. Asking for tobacco and coffee, they sharply scrutinized the waggons and the people of the caravan, and departed in silence as suddenly as they had come. “They were spies,” said Brun.
He had a stranger’s eye and word for the disturbing newness of all that the party encountered. After the eastern travel and its comforts, he now saw “the reverse of the medal.” The miseries of the sea were replaced now by those of the land, and they were worse than the ocean storms. He had his list: to sleep on the bare earth under open sky; to use your boots for a pillow; to live in the mud (they met with two weeks of almost unceasing torrential rains); to hump along on a horse all day under a burning sun; to be on the alert at every instant for savages; then, to sleep without supper; to rise and depart without breakfast; to suffer torture by mosquito; to go ten or twelve miles looking for a ford at a river before making camp, fighting the currents which might carry away waggon and cargo. And the exhaustion! What would be the worst misery in ordinary life counted for nothing in the most usual events of the journey. “We asked ourselves,” he noted, “whether to laugh or cry.” But pleurer?—No! he declared stoutly.