Lamy of Santa Fe (48 page)

v
.

Quarrel with Durango

B
UT BEFORE
M
ACHEBEUF
reached Santa Fe in early summer, the continuing paper battle over the disputed southern areas of the diocese had flared alive again. Rome had sent Lamy a decree, in the hope that it was final, which recognized the cession granted by Bishop Loza, and equated it with Zubiría's action in yielding up “Doñana and Las Cruces.” In other words, Rome had given Lamy the entire
comitatus
or
condado
—the vast
county
of the entire Gadsden Purchase, assuming that Zubiría and Loza were in agreement in the matter.

Yet even now Zubiría had not agreed that he yielded all; he retained “La Mesilla,” simply because it was not
specifically itemized
in the Vatican decree. La Mesilla was far the most important area in the entire region—both the village of that name, and the long agricultural Mesilla Valley, which stretched southward along the Rio Grande for thirty miles and sustained the densest population of the region. As it lay within the boundaries of “Doñana” the county, i.e., the
Purchase, how could La Mesilla be kept as an enclave of Durango? But this was precisely what Zubiría demanded in a letter to Rome on 16 May. Lamy had assured him in April 1859 that Bishop Loza of Sonora had ceded the entire area,
including
La Mesilla.

Daily the matter was becoming more urgent, since a new American town called Franklin was growing up around Fort Bliss on the American side of the Rio Grande, opposite the old El Paso—a name which finally crossed the river to designate the new Franklin as it grew, while the old El Paso was eventually renamed Ciudad Juarez. The growing population of Franklin was Anglo-American—the Mexican priests of the old El Paso, or the parish of Santa Maria (as Zubiría always called it, after its tutelary saint the Virgin of Guadalupe), could not successfully serve the new English-speaking population.

Lamy at last was out of patience. If Durango did not accede to the Roman decree, he told Zubiría, “I will be obliged to notify the Holy See in Rome of the poor attention given to their Apostolic authority.” He hoped Zubiría would forgive him for speaking so frankly.

In an angry reply on 28 June the bishop of Durango confirmed that he had ordered his northern vicar at Santa Maria to retain La Mesilla, he disputed Lamy's interpretation of the meaning and extent of the
comitatus/condado
, and he bitterly took notice of Lamy's threat to report him to Rome for disobedience.

“This is not the first time,” he declared darkly, while the image of the old rebellious Vicar Juan Felipe Ortiz rose in the background, “nor the only proof made to me, of the discreditable image I seem to invite from the first Titular Bishop of Santa Fe of New Mexico”; but he thanked God that “in Rome they think very differently of me than you do.”

He then had an astonishing rebuttal to exhibit: only a week after receiving Lamy's offensive letter, into his hands had come a document from Barnabo which quoted the St Louis synod's petition for the aggregation of the southern territory to New Mexico. The Holy Father had seen it and approved it,
and there had been no mention in it of La Mesilla
, even though Lamy himself had been at the synod and could have made the specification. Moreover, how could Tucson, Tubac, and other localities of Arizona legitimately belong now to Santa Fe? Zubiría strongly implied that Bishop Loza had been the victim of “the lack of exact news” and what was more, had been given wrong information—
videlicet
, lied to.

Once again—the exasperating affair raged on all summer and winter in 1859—Lamy had to write Barnabo explaining the whole situation, declaring, as to Arizona, that Zubiría “goes so far as saying that the Bishop of Sonora was wrong and that we have no jurisdiction what so
ever in the places he has ceded to us”—this, even though Rome had directly charged Santa Fe with jurisdiction over Arizona. Pressing his claim later, “the Bishop of Durango still wishes to keep three-quarters of the same
‘condado'
(Doñana).” There was also the issue of the three small villages on the Rio Grande southeast of El Paso on the United States bank which lay at the extreme western tip of Texas. These, too, Zubiría still claimed, never having recognized their transfer to Lamy's care in 1851 by Odin of Galveston. The fact was, they also lay within the confines of the Gadsden Purchase, and should accrue to Santa Fe. But Zubiría in refusing to yield them declared, in truth, that their population was still largely Mexican, and required Mexican clergy. He went further, claiming that they were still territorially Mexican, which was not the case any longer, since the shift of the course of the Rio Grande—a notoriously vagrant river—had moved to the south of the villages, thus depositing them within United States limits. If Zubiría may have had a cultural claim to the three villages, they now belonged not only politically but geographically to the United States. Lamy therefore once more begged for a new decree for the whole of the
Condado de Doñana
, without excepting any of the places attached to Santa Fe or the county of El Paso in Texas.

Months later, Rome was still inviting contrary interpretations from Durango and Santa Fe; and a year later still, Lamy, writing to Barnabo, said, “I am afraid I have tired you of this affair” but “Durango had kept three quarters of the inhabitants of the county despite the decrees of the Holy See”—so slowly did some matters move between the hemispheres.

But not all.

Now struggling to meet the spiritual and cultural needs of Santa Fe, and all New Mexico and Arizona, Lamy on returning from a seven-week tour in the desert, was suddenly presented with a great new responsibility.

vi
.

“Pike's Peak”

W
HEN IN THE 1850S GOLD WAS DISCOVERED
in Colorado—or, as the whole area was popularly called, “Pike's Peak”—immigration was sudden and numerous. “Pike's Peak” was part of the huge vicariate apostolic
of the Indian Territory and the plains. The Kansas bishop—it was still J. B. Miège, the hunter who had turned up alone one day five years before in Lamy's prairie camp—was unable to visit Pike's Peak regularly, or send clergy in residence; and accordingly requested Archbishop Kenrick of St Louis and the other bishops of the province to ask Rome to assign the new gold country to Santa Fe, which was much nearer to it. Kenrick notified Lamy that he had petitioned Rome to make the new assignment to him.

It was an unwelcome surprise. Lamy was hardly able to manage what he already was responsible for. On hearing about the affair, he wrote immediately to Barnabo declaring that he had no “desire to extend the jurisdiction” of his diocese—though he had to agree that he was much nearer to Pike's Peak than Miège. Rather, said Lamy wryly, it would be far more suitable to have all of his own legitimate territory firmly assigned to him
all the way to the Mexican border
than to add another vast empire to the north. He regretted bringing the old nuisance up again, but there it was, even now not resolved. The Vatican, at its blandest, replied that they had received Lamy's letter in which—they quoted—''you indicated that you are unable to take any care of the spiritual needs of the Catholics in the territory of Pike's Peak.” Rome cited the reasons he gave; and then, with no further reference to his unwillingness, recalled that he had admitted that “a priest should be sent” to Pike's Peak, and firmly gave him “the information how to proceed legally” in this matter. Almost as an afterthought, the Vatican added, “As regards the county of Doñana, the question is already sufficiently settled and His Eminence, the Prefect of this Congregation, has sent his reply to the Bishop of Durango.” In whose favor? They did not say.

Rome then wrote to Miège, approving his proposal of the Pike's Peak transfer. Miège in his turn had sent Lamy a description of his recent visit to Denver City, the largest mining town of the area, and had done his best to have the people begin the building of a church. But there were 100,000 people in the region, more towns were going up, the need was severe, however exaggerated it may have been in Bishop Miège's reckoning of figures. Lamy told Barnabo, “It is true that I am much closer than is Mgr. Miège, and we have good routes going there as well as large towns all along the route. It is only five days in walking from one of our missions”—for Lamy and Machebeuf had both penetrated lower Colorado much earlier. There was nothing for him to do but agree, conditionally. “I consent to it until the new order,” he wrote, evidently expecting that the diocesan lines would soon be redrawn and he would be relieved of the Pike's Peak area.
Barnabo duly thanked him ‘‘sincerely.” Nothing more was said about Doñana.

Lamy took the matter up in detail with Machebeuf. The problems were almost unthinkable: the extent of the new territory; the lack of civilized resources in rude frontier shack towns; the distance—almost four hundred miles—from Santa Fe, which was the responsible see; above all, the question of whom to send, and where to find him. At last, “I see but one thing to be done,” said Lamy to Machebeuf, and a sigh of resignation seems to breathe between his words. “You have been complaining because I sent for you and have kept you here at Santa Fe—now, don't you see that there was something providential in all this? I do not like to part with you, but you are the only one I have to send, and you are the very man for Pike's Peak.”

In his familiar impulsive way, Machebeuf replied,

“Very well. I will go! Give me another priest, some money for our expenses, and we will be ready for the road in twenty-four hours.”

It was the sort of flourish to make the bishop laugh at his closest friend, for nobody could be ready that soon. A companion in the field had to be found. Lamy appointed the young John B. Raverdy, who had come from Clermont as a deacon in 1858, and had lately been ordained. The equipage was presently in order: “a waggon with the necessaries of church service in [Machebeuf s] new field where he might have several chapels, a few personal effects, blankets and buffalo robes for their bedding, and provisions for the journey. This, with a lighter conveyance called an ambulance, for their personal comfort and for later travel among the mines, was the preparation, and four mules, including the span of mules, furnished the locomotion.” Once again Lamy, sacrificing his strongest friend and helper to the wants of others, would be left to govern New Mexico, Arizona, and now Colorado, from Santa Fe with only one or two priests in the capital.

On 27 September 1860, in his own hand, he wrote out two documents for the expeditioners. The first read, “To all those whom it may concern we make known by the presents that Very Rev. Joseph P. Machebeuf has received from us all the faculties necessary to administer the Sacraments of the holy Catholic Church in the various districts towns and settlements of Pike's Peak and also that he has the same extraordinary faculties which he has had as Vicar Genl in our Diocese these nine years.” The second stated, “This is to certify that Father John B. Raverdy has received from us all the faculties necessary to administer the Sacraments as assistant missionary to our Vicar Genl Very Rev. Joseph P. Machebeuf, in the new towns and settlements of Pike's Peak country.” Both were signed “
John B. Lamy, Bp of Sta
Fé.” In his own administration Lamy retained the Conejos River area of Colorado.

All the rest—one half great slow-rising plains, the other half the abrupt highest mountains of the Rockies, with their vast interior parks, great range systems, and uncountable secret valleys and canyons—now awaited Machebeuf and his assistant. There the rude, fast-growing settlements were small, obscure agitations of society to be sought out and civilized.

The bishop and his vicar general were colonists in the broadest sense, and the lands they must claim for the values they held had to be trodden upon by each in turn across the whole Rocky Mountain and desert Southwest. The pattern of Lamy's life was a slowly continuing opening out of widening space, from a closed village world in Auvergne, to metropolitan France, the Atlantic, the Middle West, the Texas Gulf country, New Mexico, Mexico, Arizona, and now Colorado. For him the future was explicit in every day of the present. The works of both needed his patience as well as his vision. Whatever the need, large or small, he seemed to meet it under the precept of a later teacher of his faith who said, “All our raw material of sanctity is in the now, just as it is.…” He saw the small, plodding, inadequate equipage of his deputies draw away up the road to Taos toward known and unknown Colorado. He would hear their news only now and then; but what they found and what they did belonged to him, the father, who must know all out of duty, and the friend, out of love.

Machebeuf and Raverdy came into the wide golden southern plains of Colorado, passed Fort Massachusetts (later Fort Garland), crossed the Huerfano River—a mild flow of reflected sky bordered with cotton-woods turning yellow and willows fox red for the coming winter—and saw mountains at great distance both east and west. Often they looked like clouds on the horizon, but what they saw was snow on the far crests. There was a year-old settlement called Eldorado City in the foothills of Pike's Peak, and there in camp they said the first Mass to be held in their new territory. As they walked their way again, pushing northward, the great splendor of the Rockies to the west—the “Front Range”—drew closer, and in the evening light of 29 October Machebeuf had his first sight of Denver City, a “village … composed of little [mining] works (
fabriques
), wooden cabins, Indian tents and wigwams on the banks of the Platte, and only two or three brick houses.”