Lamy of Santa Fe (15 page)

Lamy's head was now bound with a white cloth; Spalding knelt facing the altar and began to intone the hymn
Vent Creator Spiritus
,
calling upon the Holy Spirit to be upon them all, as He had come to the apostles at the first Pentecost. As the hymn proceeded, Spalding anointed Lamy upon the head with the chrism, and upon the hands, at great length reciting manifold duties and invoking graces. He then blessed a crozier and presented it to Lamy, and then blessed his episcopal ring—it was a large amethyst surrounded by small pearls—and placed it upon the ring finger of his right hand, and once again gave him the book of the Gospels; and finally raised him up and gave him the kiss of peace, saying,
“Pax tibi.”

Lamy returned to his altar, cleansed his head and hands of the holy oil with bread crumbs presented to him in a dish, and resumed the Mass, and when the time for the sermon arrived, Purcell preached on the appropriate theme of the apostolic succession. At the end of the Mass proper, Lamy was again presented to Spalding, who, having blessed a mitre, placed it upon Lamy's head, with the weighty words of commitment,

“We, O Lord, place on the head of this Thy bishop and champion, the helmet of protection and salvation, so that his face being adorned and his head armed with the horns of both testaments”—the front and rear spires of the mitre—”he may seem terrible to the opponents of truth, and through the indulgence of Thy grace may be their sturdy adversary, Thou who didst mark with the brightest rays of Thy splendor and truth the countenance of Moses thy servant, ornamented from his fellowship with Thy word: and didst order the tiara to be placed on the head of Aaron Thy high priest. Through Christ our Lord,” and all replied “Amen” to this second invocation of the powers in the Hebraic Old Testament. Spalding then blessed the new bishop's ceremonial gauntlets and placed them upon his hands, and Lamy, now fully vested as a bishop, turned to the people and gave them his first episcopal blessing, making the sign of the cross over them three times, “May the Almighty God bless you, the
Father, the
Son, and the Holy
Ghost.” After this, he faced Spalding and intoned three times, at a rising pitch with each utterance, and genuflecting three times, “For many years …”

And now he was released from the passive role of victim of the ancient powers enacted upon him throughout the three-hour ceremony; and wearing his mitre and walking with his crozier, he went to his separate altar and recited the Last Gospel,
“In principio erat verbum”
at the end of which he was divested of his ceremonial garments. He turned and bowed to his consecrators with thanks, and all departed “in peace.”

In St Peter's, the people moved, the church was emptied, the episcopal colleagues and their friends—along with Lamy's sister and his
niece (surely Machebeuf was present)—gathered to sit down together at table, and the concerns of the common day were eagerly resumed after the timeless impersonality of the just completed ritual.

Bishop Rappe undertook to do “all possible to persuade the new bishop to go to Europe” (instead of setting out for New Mexico) “to seek after new priests who knew Spanish.” The attempt was useless. Lamy was firm in his plans. He would leave tomorrow for New Orleans, and then he would begin his arrangements for his long journey westward. At New Orleans he would wait for his new vicar general to join him whenever Machebeuf should have resolved his affairs at Sandusky, and they would then set out together for Santa Fe.

III

TO SANTA FE

1850–1851

i
.

New Orleans

O
N
25 N
OVEMBER
1850, Lamy sailed from Cincinnati by river on the first of the several long stages of his way to the Far West. His ultimate destination was that whole immense area of the Rocky Mountains and the high plains which was lettered in a sweeping arc on early- and mid-nineteenth-century maps as “The Great American Desert,” Since the end of the war in 1847, and the discovery of gold in California in 1848, travel to the West had increased vastly, by many alternate routes, including trails straight westward overland; Atlantic travel by ship to Mexico or the Isthmus of Panama, followed by an overland passage to the Pacific, and again by ship north to the California gold fields; or, by ship, all the way around Cape Horn. News came eastward, not too much of it accurate, but people responded. Inevitably settlements took root along the westward trails, and new details soon came to light on later maps. But beyond the Mississippi much was still alive only in the imagination, and impressions owed as much to legend as to fact. Lamy had little detailed knowledge of the continent, other than that known at second hand to the fellow bishops who had elected him.

How full, as preparation, had been his work in the intimate forest villages and their confined landscape during the past ten years? He had no way yet to measure this, and it was not in his nature to indulge in imaginative speculation, and in any case he had little enough to go on to form any true idea of what lay ahead. Habitually he met the occasion of the day, under the calm sense of confidence and guidance which animated him.

His river steamer wound slowly away from Cincinnati, taking the great double bend of the Ohio to the south and west of the city. The populated slopes were soon lost to sight. Wilderness America followed, with its rolling hills and winding valleys, broken only now and then by wide flat fields on each side of the river, and an occasional farm
house in Indiana and Kentucky. On the Ohio and the Mississippi, the river voyage to New Orleans would take nine days. The paddle steamer would pass many others of her general sort. They all made a brave sight, with their fancifully crowned stacks, showing dense smoke by day, and sparks and even flames by night. They were capacious ships—some had room for over fifteen hundred passengers—with luxurious fittings and flattering service which were meant to rival those of the wooden scroll-saw hotels in the inland cities.

Lamy's sister Margaret, and Marie, the daughter of his brother Etienne, saw with him much to wonder at during the voyage, now with amusement, at other times with sorrow and distaste—and so did Machebeuf, who followed on a river steamer some weeks later in January 1851. Machebeuf was a lively and constant letter writer, and his own observations of river travel captured the typical.

There was always a mixed passenger list—American, Dutch, English, French, Pole, Italian, Irish, Catholics and Protestants, priests, laymen, and Negro servants who were slaves. The crews were both white and black. To the animation of the persons aboard was added the dense animal presence of more than 160 mules or horses, 100 beef cattle, 400 sheep, 60 or 80 fighting cocks which had been bought for twenty-five francs each at Louisville and were destined to amuse the spectators of New Orleans. There was other cargo: 400 bales of cotton, 200 or 300 tons of wheat—and Negro slaves for sale.

Lamy used river-time to study a new language. English or French would not, it was supposed, be generally useful to him where he was going. Spanish was the language of the people, and had to be learned, as English had had to be mastered for Ohio. As the wide, fancy-decked, scroll-sawed steamer wound slowly southward Lamy would work at his Spanish, and later he and Machebeuf were amused to compare notes on the resemblances they found between that language and much of the common speech of Auvergne, despite differences in pronunciation.
“La vida”
seemed to them close to
“la vie” “aqua”
to
“l'eau” “la mitad”
to
“la moitié”
Putting the language together in discourse would, however, be another matter, as they would learn.

The steamers hove in for passengers and cargo all down the river. While the ship was docked for several hours at Memphis, there was an event not to be forgotten by strangers, though it was familiar enough to others. In the evening her cargo of slaves was taken to the slave market by the trader in charge, who, in a “revolting scene,” sold two young black women to a local customer. This buyer examined his prospective goods thoroughly. He directed them to walk, to speak, asked them what they could do, why their previous owner had sold them, and, finally assured that he would get his money's worth, paid
650 piastres each for them and led them away in their rags. It moved the observer to compassion to see them walking slowly off behind their new master. (Machebeuf naively felt obliged to add—having no doubt heard as much from cordial southern passengers—that many slave-owners took great care of their human property, and that even if offered their freedom many slaves would never leave them.)

Here and there when the steamer tied up at the bank to take on wood for her furnaces, the travellers could see some of the great Mississippi plantations, which often looked like small villages, centered about the great two-storey brick mansion of the master, with the slave quarters set to one side, where they stood thirty or forty feet from each other. Each Negro family had its own cabin and little garden, and the inhabitants were obliged to work for nothing in exchange except their food and coarse clothing.

As the voyage proceeded, the climate gradually changed—overcoats even in mid-winter were no longer needed, the trees bore leaves, and the land was green, and as they drew close to New Orleans, the travellers would see orange groves before nightfall. The river widened. The city would be both a destination and a point of departure. Lamy's sister was ailing so rapidly that on arrival he must enter her into the hospital of the Sisters of Charity, where she could await the sailing of the ship which would take her home to France, back to her motherhouse, for she was no longer able to be active in America. Little Marie Lamy would go to school to the New Orleans Ursulines with the blessing of her uncle the bishop. He cared greatly for her, and during all his life she would be devoted to him.

They docked at New Orleans in early December and carried out their arrangements. Lamy was lodged with Archbishop Blanc, who had a lively interest in his affairs. From Blanc's experience and the letters of Bishop Odin of Galveston, Lamy could draw on a great fund of advice. Blanc had already written to Purcell at Cincinnati that he expected Lamy, and would receive him as a “friend and brother,” but could not understand why he had to go to Santa Fe by way of New Orleans, as the St Louis route was so much quicker. It may have been that those who always raised the question did not know of Lamy's sense of responsibility for taking proper measures himself for his sister and his niece at New Orleans, or if they knew, did not feel so strongly as Lamy in this duty. Another possible reason for the New Orleans route was that soon after arriving there, he was to go to Mobile, Alabama, to assist at a consecration; and New Orleans was the most suitable place from which to go to Mobile.

Once in New Orleans to plan his next steps westward, Lamy had plenty to do. The city was busy—an ocean and river port both. The
waterfront was clustered with steamers for the river trade, and also with others which voyaged into the Gulf of Mexico and into the oceans. The Mississippi was as wide as a sizable lake. Signs of industry lined her shores. Canal street was like one half of a great Parisian boulevard with two traffic lanes separated by a park with walks, lawns, lamps, and trees. Horse-drawn passenger cars moved along parallel to the river; and in the inner streets, winding between gas lamps and houses with lacy iron balconies, the glass hearses and black broughams of funeral processions bearing away cholera victims could frequently be seen by people on the sidewalks—men in frock coats who bared their heads at the sight, bonneted women who said a prayer, a black woman carrying on her head a round basket of flowers for sale. Facing the river across a formally planted park, in the midst of which General Jackson in bronze doffed his cocked hat while his charger reared beneath him, was the Cathedral of New Orleans. Its tall central spire and two lesser ones were almost black in color, above an ornate façade of pale plaster. Behind the cathedral was an enclosed garden with great trees and flowering bushes. There Lamy, like his host, could read his daily office, or enter the rear door of the church to say his Mass.