by Paul Horgan
Lamy and his people came into Santa Fe during the evening of Assumption Day, 15 August. Despite a heavy rainstorm, people began to assemble to ride out “on the States road” to meet him, and as he entered the city he was greeted by all the bells of Santa Fe, and a Te Deum in the cathedral sung by Vicar General Eguillon. The bishop had been absent for almost a year, and his plains voyage, with all its storms, had taken sixty-two days. “His whole caravan was saved through his foresight, nerve, and kindness,” Defouri told Paris. Lamy himself wrote the Society that in a few days he would send the details of the “long, laborious, and dangerous voyage across the prairies,” but now he would merely report his arrival, as, at the moment, he felt “a little tired.”
X
INCREASE
1868–1874
i.
A Quiet Conscience
LIKE HIMSELF, SO LONG AGO, coming in his youth to the alien land of Ohio, his newcomers were soon assigned to duties, whether in church, mission, school, convent, hospital. Time, in his absence, finally brought peace to Taos, for three weeks before his return, so Lamy was told, Padre Martínez had died in Taos on 27 July. The New Mexican declared him “universally loved by all who knew him. Taos county has lost one of her most worthy citizens and will sadly lament his loss.’ He had been buried, according to his wish, in his own oratory, with Father Lucero “acting as pastor of the schismatics.”
In his will, listing his property and its disposition, Martínez revealed himself as one of the richest natives of New Mexico, for his holdings of farming and grazing land, and sheep, cattle, and goats. In a codicil made a month before his death, he reaffirmed his view of himself. “… I have complied with my ecclesiastical ministry with fidelity and good faith, in whatever I could, to the best of my knowledge; many years I dedicated myself to interested study of the science of religion, to learn to serve my God, Creator, and Saviour, that my body may descend in tranquillity to the silence of the grave, and my soul may appear and rise up to the divine tribunal, with clear satisfaction that I have done all that I could to teach the minds of my fellow citizens, bringing them temporal good, and, above all, their spiritual benefit; all because that is the way it has been dictated by my Christian religion that I profess, convinced of its truth and sanctity. My conscience is quiet and happy. God knows this to be true. If any of my fellow citizens and neighbors complain that I have injured them this may have been through mental error; but not with the intention of my heart. A human creature is weak but I have never had any intention of injuring anybody. In my nature I have been inclined to do good. I will present the testimony of my works in documents, So Help Me God.”
ii.
Two New Bishops
BY THE NATURE of where he worked, the bishop’s life showed a constant alternation between the physical life of the outreaching land and a binding duty to the desk in his whitewashed office in the adobe house on the cathedral grounds where, almost entirely in his own hand, he kept up a flow of letters to Paris, Lyon, Cincinnati, St Louis, Rome. Soon after his return he was reporting to Paris that he was immediately opening in very important places two new schools for boys, with the four new Christian Brothers who had come home with him. Counting the one already at work in Santa Fe, this made three such schools. In Santa Fe and elsewhere the sisters already had four schools and were about to open a fifth. The hospital was progressing, if with “mediocre materials.’ In mid-autumn thirty priests assembled from all quarters of the diocese for a pastoral retreat—some came through dangerous territory from as far away as a hundred fifty and two hundred miles to attend, and two of the new Jesuits had given a mission in the cathedral city with the church full, day and evening. With all such successes to recount, Lamy felt justified in citing the extraordinary expenses of his latest journey westward, which had been ruinous: he was obliged to ask for an advance of twelve thousand francs out of the Society’s allotment to him for the next year. He had a good record of repayment; and his work spoke for itself.
Of Barnabo, at year’s end, he felt it was time to ask whether the proposed separate establishments of Colorado and Arizona each with its own bishop, as proposed by Baltimore and discussed at Rome, had been approved. The reasons had already been given, it was clear that no single bishop could properly attend to the growth of the three territories together. There was a limit to any man’s strength. Lamy would continue to spend his as long as it was there; still sinewy, strong, and effective, he was prematurely worn; and the robust good looks which gleamed forth during his early times as bishop were now tempered by permanent signs of hard endurance. His eyes were still brilliant but were set deeper in his head, his cheekbones showed more sharply, his jaws more squarely.
The answer from Rome soon came.
Machebeuf was notified by Barnabo informally of his designation as vicar apostolic of Colorado and Utah, with the title of Bishop of Epiphany in partibus infidelium. Before the Roman bulls reached him with his official appointment, he was full of reasons for declining it. Physically he was feeling miserable—his old injury was acting up, he had to use a cane, saying Mass was a great problem. Moreover, the Irish in his parish were actively hostile to him, for one reason because of “my quick and passionate temper,” as he said, and for another, because he had asked Lamy to dismiss the Irish priest at Central City a few years earlier. For still another, he had on the orders of the archbishop of St Louis opposed the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish-American secret society devoted to political agitation for the independence of Ireland from England. This was a costly position for Machebeuf to take, for it meant that the Fenians—and the Irish immigration to the mines had been large—refused to contribute to the upkeep of the church. Worst of all, Machebeuf’s finances were in dreadful trouble, and would continue to be throughout his active work. In a word, he was uneasy about becoming a bishop under all such disadvantages until a Jesuit friend persuaded him that his duty was to accept, and his self-respect required him to work to balance his financial affairs rather than leave this to a successor.
Soon, then, he was off to Montreal looking for a priest to elevate to the post of his vicar general; and in mid-summer, he was consecrated in Cincinnati by Purcell with two other Auvergnats as co-consecrators—Bishops Rappe and De Goesbriand, who had come to America with him and Lamy decades before. Lamy was not present in St Peter’s in Cincinnati—he would have been, but the journey was “so far and so costly” that he could afford neither time nor money for it. By that time Machebeuf was reconciled to his “heavy burden,” and, in the regular practice of the western bishopric, he was soon homeward bound with a new increment of five Loretto sisters to add to the seven already at work in Denver.
For Lamy it was a lightening of his own load when he could send a paper on 21 September 1868 to Machebeuf to say officially that he was “happy to turn over to [Machebeuf’s] jurisdiction the Catholics of Colorado Territory who were before in our diocese.” Soon after arriving in Denver, Machebeuf made a tour of his own vicariate, and extended it with a visit of a few days to see Lamy at Santa Fe. Both now bishops—who were those untried youngsters who had run away one day before dawn in Clermont in their early twenties?
But Arizona and the nuisance of the boundary quarrel were not so promptly settled as the status of Colorado. Bishops for both territories had been proposed in Baltimore, and supported by arguments in Rome, and Lamy urgently had put forward Salpointe to be elevated to the mitre and given a vicariate apostolic in Arizona. The Propaganda seemed ready to act on Lamy’s advice—but Salpointe had somehow heard of what was being readied for him, and immediately wrote to Barnabo begging that the erection of an episcopate for Arizona be deferred. While Lamy argued for it, giving strong territorial reasons for its establishment, and endorsing Salpointe in all personal matters, Salpointe presented such disclaimers of his own unworthiness and such a different picture of the actual conditions in Arizona that the Vatican abided by his advice and the matter lay dormant.
Lamy refused to leave it at that. He offic
ially renewed his proposal for Arizona. His first choice was still Salpointe (“very successful in studies at Mont-Ferrand, received no degrees, had not been a professor, efficient as a missioner, spoke French, English, Spanish, Latin, Greek; exhibited the highest degree of prudence as vicar general of Santa Fe; in good health, honest, patient, able in financial affairs; persistent; excellent reputation, never any kind of moral trouble; mild and loved by all”). Father Lawrence Bax of St Louis came second (“native of Holland, spoke Dutch, French, English, Latin and Greek, prudent, thrifty, stable in character, never involved ‘contra mores,’ zealous builder of churches, excellent administrator”). Third was Father John Baptist Rallière (“highest honors at the Clermont seminary though holding no academic degrees, eleven years a most successful missionary in New Mexico, spoke French, Spanish, English, Latin, Greek, efficient pastor of souls, excellent health, honest, discreet, prudent; never anything in his actions against moral principles, built several churches and schools”).
But Lamy was determined upon Salpointe. He wrote the Baltimore archbishop, now Martin John Spalding, to urge the cause upon Rome. Salpointe’s “humility” must not be allowed to stand in the way. Moreover, Arizona actually had more Catholics now than Colorado; and, surely, the Roman creation of Arizona as a vicariate apostolic with its own bishop would necessarily define the actual boundaries of his territory, and there, at one final stroke, the assignment of the Condado [Mesilla] Doñana could be specified, and the old tiresome boundary indecision be resolved. “It would be a very fair way to cut short that question which has caused and still causes many troubles and misunderstandings,” wrote Lamy. It was a pity that Salpointe in his protest had “represented the state of affairs in a different light.” But the fact remained that what would belong to Salpointe consisted of two counties, “one of Texas, the other of New Mexico.” Finally, Lamy stated that “I am too far distant to visit those places.”
He was, in the end, persuasive. Rome declared Arizona separate from New Mexico as a vicariate and named Salpointe after all, on 25 September 1868, and the effective instruments reached Lamy two months later. He forwarded them at once to Salpointe in Tucson, but an additional document still was not included, and Lamy wrote to request it: it should be a bull authorizing Salpointe to take jurisdiction of “the two counties.’ El Paso in Texas (i.e., the American town of that name and its downriver villages) and the famous Condado of Doñana which reached all the way across both New Mexico and Arizona.
But the old issue was not yet to be settled. Rome had written a few months ago asking the new bishop of Durango—it was now José Vicente Salinas succeeding Zubiría and inheriting the struggle—asking (once again!) for “a report” about those territories, but had received no reply. Even before his elevation, Salpointe himself had twice journeyed to Durango (in the pattern of Lamy and Machebeuf before him) to see Salinas and persuade him to yield on the strength of papal documents long since sent to Lamy. But both journeys—dangerous as always, each requiring fifty days’ round trip from Tucson—had resulted in nothing, as Bishop Salinas had been absent both times. The problem, now by its protraction attaining the dignity of a scandal, must continue. Nevertheless, Lamy had fostered “two religious colonies” for “Mgr Machebeuf and Mgr Salpointe,” making “great sacrifices” to establish them; for both territories would prosper materially more rapidly than New Mexico as the years advanced. Salpointe, receiving word of his elevation, began to make plans to go to France for his consecration. In a final orderly transfer, Machebeuf would be relieved, in 1871, of his responsibility for Utah, when Archbishop Alemany of San Francisco agreed to add that territory to his own.
To put an end to isolation—it was the goal of the whole desert West, and Lamy, with everyone else, saw the need of this, and welcomed every advance in communication, saw its portents, and rejoiced with measured calm when the telegraph reached Santa Fe in the second week of July 1868. News would come more quickly. There was also now a daily mail which connected with the advancing railhead now three days away to the East (at Sheridan, Kansas), and three times a week the four-horse Concord coaches of the Denver and Santa Fe Stage Line connected the two cities by a three-and-a-half-day run. “But with all this,” he told Purcell, “Santa Fe is dull, we might say almost dead, that there is nothing doing except two small newspapers which seem to predict great things for the future of New Mexico.”
If he sounded skeptical, not so the New Mexican, which, becoming a daily paper with the advent of the telegraph, printed a euphoric editorial contrasting the state of the desert West of twenty years ago with the present. “The idea that all this vast central half of the American continent was then or was ever to be valuable to man, had not gained much if any ground, and all west of the ‘Big Muddy,’ to most people, was a terra incognita. But these twenty years past have wrought wonderful revolutions in the mysteries of the ‘Great American Desert.’ New Mexico was certainly known as existing twenty years ago—that is all.… But, moving with the line of civilization through the wilderness … are the wonderful developments of the grand handiworks of man and the energies of capital, invigorated by enterprise. Santa Fe, that twenty years ago was seventy or eighty days travel from the Missouri river, is now within three days of the western terminus of the iron track and the railroad car.… Twenty years ago it is probable that there were not two thousand Americans in New Mexico. Today, there are not less than from twelve to fifteen thousand. The condition of the people native in New Mexico is greatly improved since that day. Life to them is, for the most part, of a more cultivated and more elevated character. Education struggles to break the bonds of ignorance, and religion moves onward with its wondrous softening and christianizing influences. ‘Westward the star of empire’ has taken ‘her course,’ and New Mexico is within the range of its glorious influences.…’
But if the bishop was paid indirect respects in the editorial, he must still report, not in a spirit of pessimism, for this was never his way, but in his sober realism, that “the thousand of emigrants that were to come to our territory don’t seem to have moved yet we have then to resign ourselves to go on slowly as in old times.” Meanwhile, a newspaper item reflected a new turn in the popular culture, with a listing of a “collection of select novels” to be had at two dollars a volume, including such titles as Dear Experience by Ruffini, Out of His Head, by Aldrich, The Alchemist, by Balzac, Who Breaks Pays (paper cover), LuLu, by M. C. Walworth, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Wa-Wa-Wanda (anon.), From Hay-Time to Hopping (anon.), Sprees and Splashes, by Morford, and Tactics; or, Cupid in Shoulder Straps, A West Point Love Story. A month later, the paper reported: “Bishop Lamy is making some much needed improvements around the ancient church of the Parroquia in this city”—referring to the old clay cathedral of St Francis.
The improvements were actually preparations in clearing the area of the old church for the beginning of construction on a new cathedral, to be built of native stone, of which Lamy had first spoken in 1864. For he had never changed his response to the mud constructions of New Mexico—though he understood as he deplored the necessity of making them from their humble materials. But to him a chapel, a church, a cathedral above all, should rise to the glory of God as more than a “stable of Bethlehem”; and with his own memory of the high architectural art whose tradition he had inherited, he must, whenever he could manage it, build his cathedral out of another vision than the local one. Byzantium and ancient Rome would still speak through him. There was suitable native stone to be had near Santa Fe. Ochreous limestone for the exterior could be quarried in the Arroyo Sais, and the light volcanic stone for the vaults in the Cerro Mogino within a few miles of the city; and for the interior walls, a heavy granite could be taken from the low hills in the country where the bishop’s land lay seventeen miles away on the Santa Fe Trail [the site of the present railroad junction of Lamy, New Mexico]. Preliminary donations were solicited, and the response, though modest, was enough to encourage Lamy to proceed with his plans. The New Mexican anno
unced that the cornerstone would be laid on Sunday, 10 October 1869.
In a general way, it was known what Lamy wanted—the Romanesque style was decided upon from the start. There were few detailed architectural plans, or engineering drawings; all that was technically certain was that the new cathedral would be constructed around and over the old earthen church, and foundation footings were accordingly placed outside the walls of old St Francis’s. As the new stone walls would rise, they would gradually hide the adobe elevations; there would for years be a complete church within one on the outside, unfinished. With that much to go on, a cornerstone could be set down as a promise.
The cornerstone contained gold, silver, and copper coins; newspapers of the day; official historical documents naming the public officers of the nation, state, and cathedral—President Grant, Governor Pile, and Bishop Lamy. Enclosed also was a list of the first donors to the building fund which gave the names of all those giving twenty-five dollars or more. Lamy led off with a donation of $3000. The sister of the late Rural Dean Ortiz gave $2500, and also presented to the cathedral many altar vessels and ornaments of great value, which brought to mind those missing ever since Vicar Ortiz had departed from his Santa Fe duties in 1852 taking with him certain religious articles of the parish church of St Francis, claiming them as his own. The list of first donors included the Mother Superior Mary Magdalen of the Lorettines ($500), the Spiegelberg brothers ($500) and many other non-Catholics, and members of the once-rebellious Armijo family of Albuquerque.