Lamy of Santa Fe (43 page)

But Martínez could not long remain silent in his impotent rage. On 13 April 1857 another enormous missive descended upon Lamy, scolding him for ignoring Martínez's previous letters; declaring his own suspension “a nullity” because it had not been preceded by “canonic admonitions” and proclaiming his immunity under “canonic rights”; declaring himself “free of suspension,” who was to be “recognized as the rightful priest of Taos,” and demanding the removal of Father Taladrid as pastor—all of which was elaborated repeatedly, and with vehemence, while, kissing the bishop's hands, he remained “the servant and follower” of His Illustrious Reverence.

When there was, as usual, no reply to this, Martínez wrote to Machebeuf, attacking the bishop once again for his pastoral promulgations and Church rules, and flatly stating that Lamy in suspending him was guilty of “disobeying the laws of the Church.” (It was no wonder that Taladrid, writing in his turn to the
Gaceta
, called him “a Voltaire, a Rousseau, … egotism personified,” with his “depraved maxims.”) Martínez went on to complain that there were tensions in Taos, with rumors that he was to be threatened by civil authority, and that “armed forces” of certain inhabitants seemed to be ready to move against his personal safety.

What he referred to in the last instance was ominously true; for, tried beyond further patience, Bishop Lamy had come to the end with Martínez, and his ally, Lucero. In June 1857, he set in motion formal proceedings of excommunication against both Father Martínez
Father Lucero; and when Machebeuf arrived to publish on three successive Sundays, at both Taos and Arroyo Hondo, the “canonic” admonitions demanding for the last times the submission of the defiant recusants, excitement and emotion among the people threatened to explode into violence. Martínez had his partisans, Lamy his. The pastor mounted a guard over his oratory, which he heard had been threatened with arson. Serious members of a strong faction which supported Lamy had made known their intention of preventing expected danger to Machebeuf from Martínez's followers, by armed force, if necessary.

Those who stood with Lamy and Machebeuf included both American and Mexican Catholics, whose leaders—all residents of Taos—were formidably determined and known for their prowess. One was Céran St. Vrain, a famous scout and trader, another was the French Canadian Charles Beaubien, whose son Narciso had been murdered in the Taos Massacre of 1847 in which Martínez had been a prime mover, and the third was General Kit Carson. Beaubien said, “Martínez had always been treacherous, and is now afflicted with the bighead. Let him look out!” and Carson said, “We shall not let them do as they did in 1847, when they murdered and pillaged. I am a man of peace, and my motto is: Good will to all; I hate disturbances among the people, but I can fight a little yet, and I know of no better cause to fight for than my family, my Church and my friend the Señor Vicario.”

Martínez knew his people—their emotional loyalty to their own race, to him as their great man, and their resentment of the “foreigners” who had come to dominate them—and he was not now slow to arouse their anger in his defense when Machebeuf began to carry out his dangerous duty. For his part, Martínez made no response to Machebeuf's public calls to retreat from his revolt, nor did Lucero. Taos, under its dark mountain, and in its habit of violence, was waiting.

On the final Sunday, with Martínez still within his own silence, Machebeuf appeared in the Taos church to celebrate High Mass and to pronounce the excommunication. Tension was almost tangible. The church was filled, and people stood outside to hear the ceremony and to watch each other, and to see who had guns. When time came for the sermon, Machebeuf explained the meaning of excommunication, of which most of the people had no understanding except that it was the Church's ultimate discipline; and then he read the instrument itself to a hushed congregation, finished the Mass, and announced that he would remain in Taos for several days to help Taladrid in hearing confessions—a calm invitation to any who had joined the schism to return to the bishop's fold. In silence, the listeners dispersed. There was no disturbance, though everyone had felt the precarious
atmosphere, and later, at Beaubien's house, when he and Carson and the others commended Machebeuf for his courage, they heard him answer, with the effect of a shrug, “Why should I be afraid? I only did my duty.” Taos was left with two churches—one licit under the bishop, the other illicit under Martínez, who would keep his followers and would never give up his independent parish while he lived.

Machebeuf next had to proceed to Arroyo Hondo. Carson and the others proposed to go along to protect him in the foothill village; but he declined their help, and again, in a tense but quiet scene, he imposed the excommunication on Father Lucero, who left to join Martínez in spiritual exile. Father Ussel now presided alone at Arroyo Hondo. Done with his difficult and dangerous assignment, Machebeuf said to Ussel before returning to Santa Fe and Albuquerque,

“It is always the way. Bishop Lamy is sure to send me when there is a bad case to be settled; I am always the one to whip the cats (
fouetter les chats)”

Before the excommunications, Lamy had seen the necessity of replacing not only Lucero with Ussel, but Taladrid with Eulógio—the young priest (brother of the old belligerent vicar) who had, in all loyalty, travelled abroad with the bishop. Taladrid was reassigned to Isleta. As the new pastor of Taos, Juan Eulógio Ortiz, a native New Mexican, could do more to keep the peace in Taos parish than the Spaniard Taladrid. In early July, he tried to report to Lamy in Santa Fe, but the bishop was absent, visiting outlying parishes, including that of El Vado de San Miguel, on the Santa Fe Trail. Ortiz wrote him subsequently, and had a curious tale to tell.

One day Martínez sent him a message asking if he would go so far as to receive a visit from an excommunicant. Ortiz replied that since he was now the rightful pastor, with all proper faculties, he was of course able to receive “even the condemned.” Martínez came and they talked for an hour, inevitably about the recent events of his disgrace. Ortiz asked him “hard questions,” evidently to give him opportunity to admit the justice of his penalty, to which Martínez replied each time in affirmation of his guilt, “Amen, amen, amen.” When asked why he had so furiously opposed the bishop, Martínez said he had “done it out of pure caprice,” in hostility to Father Taladrid, and then handsomely added that now, since circumstances were not the same, he recognized Ortiz as the rightful pastor, and would not again interfere in any act of the ecclesiastic administration. It was a gesture of ingratiation.

But it meant nothing, reported Ortiz; for Martínez forthwith returned to his own chapel to continue his old ways. Ortiz felt, though, that these could not continue forever, for Martínez was “
weaker.” To comfort the bishop, Father Eulógio Ortiz declared that he, though naturally under suspicion by his own brothers in the Ortiz family who opposed Lamy, would always serve him loyally. “Even though I am not of much use, I will be on your side.… It is true, Most Illustrious Lord, that I have other faults, but of that sort which can be publicly condemned, I want none.”

It was a measure of the pathetic degree of poverty, in regard to tithes over which Martínez—and others—raised such furor, that Ortiz in the same letter declared that when he came to Taos to assume his pastorate, it was an unpropitious time, since Martínez had already predisposed everyone against Taladrid, and little had been contributed; so that now there remained for the bishop only seventy-five sheep, a young bull, and a calf. Was he to send them to Santa Fe, or sell them, and remit the proceeds?

But it was still evident that Martínez and his allies among the clergy were not yet subdued, even after the excommunication; and Lamy foresaw what would ensue if he should die, leaving the bishropic vacant: the native clergy would at once surge back into power and life would revert to the state of ignorance and worse, which he had found six years ago. To counter such a possibility, he asked his metropolitan, Archbishop P. R. Kenrick of St Louis, to forward a petition to Rome proposing the creation of a chapter of cathedral canons for Santa Fe. Their appointment would rest under the discretion of the bishop. They would of course be members of the clergy loyal to him and his reforms. It was the custom in Mexican dioceses that the chapter elect its vicar, who would temporarily succeed a bishop until his successor was named by Rome. As vicar general, without the chapter, Machebeuf would succeed Lamy; but the Mexican clergy would surely refuse to respect his authority. In that case the cathedral canons would govern in any interim. Since the matter seemed so urgent, Kenrick added the suggestion that, if a chapter were not approved by Rome, at least a council of consultors might be created under his archdiocese which would hold the authority to act in place of a chapter at Santa Fe, to protect the see of Santa Fe in the event of Lamy's death. Cardinal Barnabo duly forwarded the proposal to Pius IX.

That it was not acted upon at once was an indication of how difficult—how almost impossible—it was to make real the actual state of affairs, the vast extent of the land and its scattered needs, the primitiveness of all conditions, to those across the world who could see only through clerkly reports, and who, in their great bureaux and palaces, must consider most affairs as abstractions, in a world-wide structure which had to be governed as a whole, rather than in terms of its parts.

vi
.

Schism

A
ND STILL CONTINUING
was the nagging indecision about Doñana—the
Condado
—La Mesilla (the interchangeable terms which helped to confuse the Vatican for years). Lamy wrote to Barnabo in January 1857, begging once more for the final assignment of the great strip of territory across southern New Mexico/Arizona, making the point now that an area under the civil control of one nation (the United States) could never be satisfactorily managed in ecclesiastical matters under the control of another nation (Mexico). The bishop added, “Please note that the priest who is administering these areas was the one [Ortiz?] who revolted against my authority and who has sought refuge in these parts.” The implication was strong that Zubiría was content to have him there to hold the district for Durango.

Barnabo replied to Lamy in February that he had never had an answer from Zubiría to his letter of three years earlier asking for Durango's view of the dispute, and said that it was the Vatican's wish to help Lamy “in any way possible.” Lamy then wrote asking for a copy of Zubiría's letter of 1854, which Barnabo sent, asking for Lamy's comments on it. Lamy's arguments were familiar, and again, in May, he asked for news of a settlement by Rome; but now he went further: he declared that in his opinion the bishop of Durango was “hardly able to write because of his age,” and, added Lamy, “I have very strong reasons for suspecting that one of the vicars from the neighborhood of El Paso is allowed to interpret various orders after his own fashion, even to the decrees from the Holy See.” Yet once again a silence of months descended upon the affair.

Lamy spent much of the summer in the open land, visiting distant missions. He returned to Santa Fe to carry the Blessed Sacrament in the procession of Corpus Christi, when the garrison band marched and played ahead of him, and “the discharge of cannon balls also added much to the solemnity,” and to the felicity of the Mother Superior.

On the following day Machebeuf left for the Mississippi to meet two new priests from the diocese of Le Mans, in France, and others who would return with him to Santa Fe. He travelled by the mail carrier'
coach. There was no armed escort. He thought Indians on the whole were well disposed, though when gathered in great numbers were emboldened to do ill, but generally they were “indolent, they stole out of need, and rarely attacked except in self-defense, or to avenge those of their people who had been killed!” So far, he had never had a misadventure with Indians, and felt entirely safe with them.

For all his courage and gaiety, Machebeuf's sense of what was fun had on at least one occasion that streak of mockery or cruelty which newcomers often showed to races whom they saw as inferior. One day a dozen or so Indians appeared in the mail carrier's camp during the halt for a meal of ham and biscuits. As one of them already knew Machebeuf, he brought friends to join him for dinner on the ground. Machebeuf offered them salty meat, which they refused. An Indian then saw “a little gray powder and he wanted some of that. I gave him a spoonful of it, and he gave us a free exhibition of facial contortion which was interesting and amusing. The powder was pepper! Another spied a bottle half full of what he thought was whiskey, and he wanted a taste. I gave him a big spoonful, which he swallowed, but he threw the spoon away and began to cough. He said that such whiskey was good only for dogs. He had tasted of my vinegar!” When his little jokes were done with, Machebeuf gave his guests some coffee, sugar, and biscuits.

He met with a disappointment at St Louis—the bishop of Le Mans had at the last minute withdrawn permission for the two expected priests to sail for America. He went on to Louisville, where Lamy's niece Marie, and another girl her age—she was then fourteen—were waiting for him. Both would return with him to Santa Fe, to enter the Loretto convent there, first as students, later as postulants. Marie by now had spent six years with the New Orleans Ursulines. She was a lovely, round-faced child, with the dark hair and brilliant dark eyes of the family. She wore discreet little gold earrings, and when dressed up for a daguerreotype to send home to France, a short-caped black bombazine dress. Gravity, charm, and intelligence shone in her expression. Joining her uncle out West was the great adventure of her life. She was, said Machebeuf, “innocent as an angel.”

His westward party included also a French gardener from Versailles, who had already spent two years at Santa Fe and was now going back again, three Mexican servants to attend to the vicar general's two carriages and equipment, two Frenchmen from Besançon, an Irish seminarian, and others to the number of ten. Two caravans had started out on to the trail on 7 September, but they went slowly, and Machebeuf with his people would leave on the tenth to overtake one of them which had an Army detachment of four hundred and fifty men,
whose commanding officer he knew well. It was not in his nature to fear anything for himself, but with the two girls in his care, he was glad to have the protection of the soldiers. “You will understand the reason,” he wrote to his sister. A few days out from Kansas City they passed the Last Chance Store at Council Grove—a one-storey stone building by a single cottonwood tree—and slowly drew away into the empty distance of the prairie crossing.