by Paul Horgan
XI
ARCHBISHOP
1875–1880
i.
The Archbishop
KENRICK AND HIS ASSEMBLED BISHOPS, meeting in St Louis, went counter to Lamy’s advice, and sent their recommendations to the Vatican: Santa Fe should become a metropolitan see, with Lamy as its first archbishop, and the apostolic vicars Machebeuf of Colorado and Salpointe of Arizona as his suffragans. On 12 February 1875, Pius IX, in consistory, decreed the establishment as proposed, named Lamy for the pallium, and bestowed a red hat upon an American for the first time. This was Archbishop John McCloskey of New York.
Lamy was absent on a ten-day pastoral visit when a letter came from Purcell to congratulate him on the promotion; but Lamy had not yet received any official notification. By April the news was general, and Machebeuf pointed out to his sister that the new province of Santa Fe had three bishops, all of them Auvergnats.
Affairs took Salpointe to New York during the spring, and there he was given a papal mission to carry out; for Monsignor Caesar Roncetti, who had arrived in New York to present the cardinal’s biretta to McCloskey, brought also the pallium for Lamy, but after his voyage from Rome did not feel equal to the further journey to Santa Fe to bestow upon Lamy the badge of his new office. Instead, discovering that a bishop suffragan to Santa Fe was in town, Roncetti asked Rome :o approve his giving the pallium to Salpointe for delivery to Lamy. The permission was granted, and Salpointe returned to New Mexico carrying the visible symbol of the rank of archbishop, with which Lamy would be solemnly vested.
The pallium signified that its wearer participated “in a particular way” in the very institution of the Pope’s supreme pastoral office. It was worn only by patriarchs, primates, and archbishops. Unchanged since the sixth century, its form consisted of a collar made of a white woolen band “three fingers wide” which could be placed over the head upon the shoulders of the wearer. Lappets of the same width as the band hung from it front and back. It was woven and made according to ancient ritual and symbol. The wool was taken from two white lambs representing Christ, the Lamb of God, and the Good Shepherd. The lambs were blessed on the feast of St Agnes, 21 January, in the saint’s basilica on the Via Nomentana at Rome, and the bands were woven from their wool by the Benedictine nuns of St Cecilia in Trastevere, who completed the fabric by embroidering six black crosses of silk on collar and lappets. The finished pallium was blessed by the Pope in St Peter’s on 28 June, the eve of the feast of SS Peter and Paul, and was then placed in a silver urn, and the urn deposited in a cabinet under the Altar of the Confession over the tomb of St Peter, there to remain until taken away for presentation. An investiture of the pallium always followed celebration of the Mass and taking of an oath of allegiance to the Pope by the new recipient. The Latin word meant both cloak and pall. The pallium was buried with its holder. All arrangements went forward for Lamy’s reception of it on 16 June 1875.
ii.
Jubilation
AT DAYBREAK nine puffs of cannon smoke followed by the thump of shots broke over Santa Fe from Fort Marcy on its height. The salute was followed by strains of music sounding from the bishop’s garden, where the band of St Michael’s College serenaded him in front of his house. Newly placed evergreen trees traced the lines of the streets. Since early morning, the living elements of a procession were seen gathering in the side streets where sodality banners stirred and shone in the fine air—it was a beautiful spring day. At nine o’clock there was movement around the cathedral. Clergy in vestments were gathering there, twenty priests who had been able to come from their distant missions, and the two bishops from Denver and Tucson, and the new archbishop himself. The old cathedral, within the yet incomplete shell of the new, was too small to receive the great crowd which was expected; and the investiture would take place in the open courtyard at the rear of St Michael’s College next to the ancient chapel of San Miguel in College street.
Gradually the procession took form in Cathedral Place, and in its slow march went swaying down San Francisco street, glistening in color, sparkling with the gold of fringes and passementerie and bright ribbons and flowers carried in baskets, on the earthen street between the low adobe houses with their always flaking and always renewed walls. Over the low roofs rang the music of the Eighth Cavalry Band at the head of the march. The long line reached all the way back to the bishop’s garden. Its head turned left to cross the little river of Santa Fe and proceed up College street. In the college patio the colonnades of the porticoes were twined with garlands of pine bough. An altar, backed by draped American flags, was waiting. Tribunes for the prelates and tents for the clergy and civil and military dignitaries were ranked near the altar. Holy societies with their banners, and girls in white, and boys wearing red ribbons, and nuns and brothers in their habits, and men and women of the laity, all escorted the archbishop, who walked beneath a “magnificent” purple canopy lately received from France. The college patio was large, and five thousand people filled it when the prelates were in their places of honor.
Hobbling his way to the altar, Machebeuf, who had come from Denver part-way by train, part-way by “a wretched coach,” began to sing the pontifical High Mass, and the long chant of the liturgy drifted upon the open air. In all decorum and in such degree of splendor as the old poor city could provide, the solemn celebration brought pride to all present. After the Gospel the vicar general, Monsignor Eguillon, preached in Spanish, drawing a parallel between the ascent of David to the throne of Israel and the elevation of Lamy to the rank of metropolitan of the new province of Santa Fe. Salpointe gave a sermon in English. At the end of Mass, Machebeuf reminisced in English, speaking of his lifelong friendship with Lamy and his work side by side with him, and thirty-seven years found voice in his words.
Then the slender, fine figure on the central throne came forward to be robed in pontifical vestments. He knelt before Salpointe, who stood at the altar on which the pallium lay under a veil of red silk. Salpointe intoned the papal documents he had brought from New York, and finishing with those, took the pallium and faced the kneeling archbishop, on whose shoulders he placed it, saying,
“For the honor of Almighty God and the Blessed Mary, ever virgin, of the holy apostles, Saints Peter and Paul, of our Lord Pope Pius IX of the Holy Roman Church, and of the Church of Santa Fe confided to your care, we deliver to you the pallium taken from the tomb of Saint Peter, which signifies the plenitude of episcopal power, with the title and name of Archbishop, which you shall use within your church on certain days, as is determined in the privileges granted by the Apostolic See.”
After bowing to Salpointe, Lamy turned to the people, and, thanking them all for the esteem and respect their presence showed for him, he spoke of what had come that day from Rome.
“If such honors,” he said, with diffidence which was noticed, “had been the lot of such cities as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, which count their Catholics in hundreds of thousands, even by the half million, in the forefront of progress, which breathe wealth and life through every pore of the social body, what would be astonishing about that? But that the universal Father of the faithful has deigned to cast his eye upon our poor town of Santa Fe, lost in deserts and unknown to the whole world, is a favor which should arouse our feeling of the most lively gratitude toward the Sovereign Pontiff.” He then paid a “neat tribute to the free republican institutions of the country,” and the ceremony ended with the singing of the Te Deum, after which the excited throng conducted Lamy to his residence.
The day of celebration was one third finished. In the garden, a pavilion with tables had been set up for one hundred particular guests invited by the attending clergy. A fountain played between the tables, while the Eighth Cavalry musicians, in full-dress dark blues with light blue trousers and white gloves, provided continuous music. Many toasts sounded over the grand boards, and reached their climax when Acting Governor William G. Ritch (it was seen as meaningful that he, a Protestant, was warm in his praise of Catho
lic affairs) rose to speak a grave, courteous address containing learned allusions. The acting governor also later wrote a dispatch on thirty pages of foolscap for the New York Herald, doing the event, and his own efforts, full justice.
He rapidly sketched New Mexican history, beginning firmly if inaccurately with the Aztecs, and proceeding through the conquistador period to the present, included a sketch of Catholic culture in America deriving from the colony of Lord Baltimore. It was an easy step to a reference to America’s freedom of religion. History obliged him to touch upon the condition of New Mexico at the time of Lamy’s arrival, which so many there present could well remember—”the entire absence of any institutions of learning worthy of the name, and, to state it mildly, the not very flattering state of society among priests and people alike”; since when, he was quite certain, it would not be regarded as undue commendation when he said the “reforms, the general elevation of the moral tone, and the general progress … are very largely, and in some cases, entirely due to the wholesome precepts and examples which have shone forth upon this people from the living presence of the later Bishop, now the Archbishop of Santa Fe … the conservator of the public good … to know whom was only to admire and respect.” By his presence and actions, Lamy, said the speaker, had brought recognition of the “worthiness of this people” from the Supreme Head of “the oldest and most numerous of Christian denominations,” a denomination which had been chronicled by a Protestant historian, as “a Church which was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot upon Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flowed from Antioch, when idols were still worshipped at Mecca. Gentlemen, I thank you for your kind attention.” The author telegraphed the Herald that “the address of Governor Ritch was delivered with distinct enunciation, and in a clear full voice; and was listened to with close attention and at the close cheered most spiritedly.”
Lamy replied with a few words of thanks, and extended his encouragement to his priestly colleagues there present, and the celebration was adjourned until four o’clock, when Lamy and people came together again for the consecration of the archdiocese to the Sacred Heart, a sermon, and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
The evening belonged to the people. The plaza, most of Santa Fe, was illuminated by farolitos and luminarios, the cathedral was fronted with four illuminated transparencies showing portraits of Pius, Lamy, Machebeuf, and Salpointe, the cavalry band filled the plaza with a fine blare, there was a balloon ascension, the sky was full of fireworks, and Major José Sena, who was largely responsible for the organization of the day, spoke in Spanish, and the Hon. William Breedon in English. Everyone was present, everyone had contributed: “Jews and Protestants rivaled each other in the breadth of their generosity.” The affair passed beyond a religious event, and was taken to heart as a “fête national.’ It ended with a torchlight procession which escorted Lamy from the plaza back to his garden house.
Dutifully expressing his thanks to the Pontiff and reporting the events of the day to Rome, Lamy contented himself with remarking that all of them were “equally brilliant,” and that the investiture had been accomplished “with all the solemnity which our poor capital allowed us.” He was soon concerned with simpler matters, for daily life had its claims also, and it was observed in a day or two that he was “painting and kalsomining his residence in a very tasteful manner … which gave a most pleasing relief to the primitive adobe.”
Anthony Lamy, the pastor at Manzano, Valencia County, had been unable to go to Santa Fe to see his uncle receive the pallium—in fact, had not even heard of the event until the archbishop mentioned it to him in a letter afterward. “We live here in Manzano,” wrote Anthony to his sister at the Santa Fe convent, “in a desert & separated from the rest of mankind at least in communication.… You must not forget to send me a good description of the great ceremony which took place in Santa Fe for I dont expect it from anybody else.” Sister Francesca kept him happy by writing often, for they had much feeling for each other, and she never forgot how she would play him a musical treat in his earlier visits to the convent. Late in 1875, he wrote her that he had been to the “Rio Bonito”—in the Capitan country southeast of Manzano—visiting the villages and Fort Stanton. At the fort he went to the cell of “a poor fellow condemned to death 8c stayed with him for more than an hour giving him all the spiritual consolation in my power.’ He had done this against advice, for there was fever about and he himself was not feeling well. But he continued to visit the condemned man and at the end, rode in the same cart with his body to consign it for burial. Already ill, Anthony was open to contagion; caught the fever; and died on 7 February 1876, at the age of twenty-nine.
The archbishop was notified. The bells of Santa Fe tolled for Anthony Lamy. The Loretto sisters knew who was dead, but none could face telling Sister Francesca. It was her uncle who came to her and said,
“Marie, the bells are tolling. They are tolling for your brother.’ The nuns said that she never again touched her piano.
iii.
A Mile a Day
THE DESERT NATURE at its best was held in a precarious balance of rainfall, the growth of grass and other vegetation, and the survival of people and animals. In good years, there was barely supply for modest enterprises. In bad, everything was sadly affected; and protracted drought such as held the land in a long sort of breathless pause in the seventies and eighties was a calamity touching upon the lives of all. Lamy repeatedly described such a condition to his lifeline in Paris. In a single season forty thousand lambs starved to death when the grasses failed. Other crops for human use died of the heat and the dry, with the result that a number of outlying missions had to be abandoned, for there was nothing to sustain the missioner when the people had all they could do to keep themselves alive. In the hot sandstorms which came with the drought, a diarist noted that the “bottom of the Rio Grande appeared as if smoking,” for the river itself was dry in many places. Pastoral visits were risky when water was scarce in the great overland stretches, and not only the settlements but the Apaches and other raiders felt the privations, and once again opened their persistent campaigns of depredation, for they were not people who grew food for themselves, but ranged to prey upon the produce of the town Indians and the villages and ranches of the old settlers. The Army mounted expeditions, notably against the leader of the southern New Mexico Apaches, the notorious and skillful Victorio, and Fort Stanton was in a state of constant alert, as troopers rode out to do battle in the White Mountains and the Capitan Range, and the deserts which lay athwart the Rio Grande.
And, too, in the desert and mountain nature, lay the opposite excess—that of sudden cloudburst when the drought gave way to violent floods which did faster and even greater damage in a few days than a decade of drought. The rude bridges of the Rio Grande were often destroyed in spring floods and some had to be renewed annually; and if a promising little crop was rising in the valley fields, it was wiped out by the tearing waters, and the riverside villages of earth were sometimes engulfed and melted away into the fast, tumbling muddy flow of the river into which all mountain tributaries were tipped so violently. In one town five hundred families were flooded out in 1884.
Again, then, travel to certain of his districts was impossible at such times for Lamy; and for all the causes of his troubles of a material nature, he was certain that the principal cure would be the completion of the railroads, transcontinental and local. The lines would immediately unite communities now separated by hazardous journeys made alone and in the open. Indians would be far less effective against iron locomotives and thickly ribbed wooden coaches and heavy speed. Goods and produce could be brought quickly to needy populations. A web of easy communication would appear. In the nation, railroads had followed the pioneer waggon trains; and settlement and prosperity and stability had followed railroads. The same must come—he knew it would come—to New Mexico, as it had come already to Colorado, and even, from the west, to Arizona. But h
ow slow was the progress, and how great the obstacles, while he continued to make his exhausting trips by horseback, with his black leather sling bag, or in a buggy, which held his travelling trunk of slats of pale wood covered with horsehide to which the hair still clung, and which was lined with printed wallpaper, which he had bought in Lyon from Mm Condamin Fils, in the Quai St Antoine, the Fabrique de malle et articles de voyage en tous genres.
It was no wonder, then, that he was one of the strongest workers in the promotion of the railroads for New Mexico. As he summed it up for Paris, trying as always to make them see: “Our territory, although in U.S. is separated from other provinces owing to its remote situation and being surrounded by Indian tribes with no railways, no navigation, scarcely a few bad roads. The nearest seaport is about 450 leagues away, and the railway 100 leagues.”
But in 1875, coming in what seemed like agonizing slowness to the New Mexicans, but like titanic speed to the railroad workers, the line which was to be the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe was advancing at a rate of a mile a day after passing Las Animas, Colorado—the river settlement which Lamy had come to so often on his horse. In Boston, President Nickerson of the railroad wired orders in 1878 to the railhead at Topeka, “Goon as rapidly as possible to Raton Pass. When that is sure we shall organize this end and go through. We mean … business.… There will be no looking back.” A day later he had a shrewd, impersonal thought: “See if we can not save something by employing Mexican labor.” The New Mexican kept a sharp eye on rail progress, and saw with approval “the speedy extension of the rails southward as far as Santa Fe” which would open up “the wealthy regions of Southern Colorado, New Mexico and the San Juan mines.”