Lamy of Santa Fe (55 page)

To the south lay the old Mexican garrison of Tubac, and a few miles farther on the same road, the abandoned mission of Tumacácori. In his turn, Lamy visited both places, passing near Tubac the rusting witness to an Indian raid on a mining supply train: an old boiler by the roadside which never reached Tubac, where gardens and groves of acacias, peach trees, and willows, and flowing water once sustained a northern Mexican mine, and where now all was “ruin and desolation wherever the eye rests.” Tumacácori also gave evidence of a once beautifully designed and maintained outpost on the Santa Cruz River. But now its farm buildings, corrals, fences, bake-houses, and the large mission church with its little clay burial chapel within the cloister, were empty to the wind and sun and drifting desert, as Machebeuf had seen, and Lamy now saw.

He was now, by his own observation, master of the realities of all his spiritual empire; and in the second week of April, he and Father Coudert, with their little party, joined with a detachment of several companies of dragoons who were setting out for the Rio Grande forts. The eastward passage was as slow as all the others, but was without unusual incident; and at La Mesilla (“a town a little larger than Los Angeles, and built in the same style—adobes—and peopled by the same nation—Mexicans,” according to an officer of Carleton's earlier march) Lamy took his leave of the Army escort and moved a few miles upriver to spend a few days at Las Cruces, where he “was warmly received by the people.” There he gave confirmation, and then moved on to Doñana (the village) and Fort Selden, for the same sacrament.

One final hard lap of the six-month journey and its three thousand
miles still lay ahead. It was the Dead Man's March—that ninety-mile stretch of waterless desert separated from the Rio Grande by a mountain range. Lamy, Coudert, and the train started from Selden in the evening and rode until midnight, when they stopped at Perrillo a little while, and then moved on to the Dead Man's Spring for the next day. From there they paid a call at Fort McRae three miles from the river—for the long desert march was over; and paused next at San Marcial on the river itself. Fort Craig lay a little way farther north, and there Lamy and Coudert left their companions and rode on alone toward the village of San Antonio.

It was late in the day—the fourth day since leaving Mesilla. Coudert, glancing at the bishop, became alarmed. Lamy was suddenly so weak that he could not stay in the saddle. Coudert helped him to dismount. He seemed hardly to breathe. He lapsed into a semi-coma. Coudert did what he could for him, but there was every sign that Lamy was about to die, lying on the earth as night fell. It was as if the past six months had exhausted him forever. It seemed certain that he could not travel any farther.

But mysteriously, the complete prostration receded as quickly as it had come. Lamy became conscious; he could breathe and move again. Presently—it must have been by a supreme act of will—he remounted his horse, and soon, with Coudert, was fording the Rio Grande to the west bank and moving toward Socorro, where they came to the parish rectory at three o'clock in the morning. The rector, Father Bernard, was absent, but they entered to sleep, and Bernard returned during the morning and cared for his guests. By mid-afternoon, Lamy felt ready to ride again; went upriver to Jojita for the night, forded the river again next day to the east bank, paused at Tomé, and reached Albuquerque to spend the night. On the day following, they halted at Bernarillo, and late in the next day, rode into Santa Fe. It was the twenty-eighth day of April 1864. The bishop with his aide had been absent for six months and two days. Now in his very bones, he had the new lands of the West; and he had seen the parish of Tucson have its beginning. He was within a few months of turning fifty years old. His spare, weathered body had been almost spent in the journey.

Welcoming him home, the
New Mexican
newspaper said, “The Bishop is an energetic, working and faithful steward. Favored are the spiritual flocks, who have so thoroughly upright, just and wise a shepherd.… We learn he procured from California, two Italian priests, of qualifications and usefulness, who have come to Tucson.… Much good, we trust, will result from his labors.… Though somewhat weather-beaten, he appears in fine health and spirits. His friends, and the members of his church, rejoice to see him again.”

All the harder, then, when he learned in August that Father Bosco, at Tucson, in failing health, had returned to California and, since the one could not safely cross the desert alone, nor the other alone tend the whole mission, had taken Father Messea with him. Arizona, after all, was once again abandoned.

ii
.

Hospital and Schools

L
AMY RETURNED
from the arduous freedom he loved to administrative affairs of the sort which had long plagued him. He was obliged once again (as years ago) to write Barnabo that six or seven “miserable priests” whom he had had to suspend might send “a certain petition” against him to the Vatican, which was accordingly warned. “The good is done through a great deal of pain and opposition of all sorts; Providence permits it to try us and to keep us in humility.” The Propaganda duly noted and circularized his alert within the Vatican bureaux.

In another familiar matter—”Allow me to remind you of the claim I made once or twice [
sic
] concerning certain places between the diocese of Durango and that of Santa Fe. Five years ago I obtained a decree from Rome on this subject but Mgr. of Durango wished to interpret it in another way”—and the old wrangle went on again: Lamy repeated his arguments that all territory, including the three river villages southeast of El Paso which belonged to New Mexico for civil administration, must belong to the bishop of Santa Fe for ecclesiastical affairs. A Roman secretary duly digested the letter for his superiors: “He asks that—” and silence followed.

The bishop reported to the Society at Paris about the progress in erecting new churches and chapels, described once again the process of making sun-dried bricks of clay, and noted that some of the new buildings could hold as many as a thousand people. The earthen cathedral of St Francis had undergone only repairs to its interior. “As soon as it is possible,” he wrote, referring for the first time to one of his greatest desires, “we hope to be able to begin a new church that would look more like a cathedral than the present one …” That, of course, lay some years in the future. Another matter could not wait for long. There was “still a greater need of a hospital.”

It was, then, necessary to find the people for a hospital staff. There was already a building—his own second residence. It stood in the enclosed park behind the cathedral and ran along eastward from the Governor's Palace. This he would give over to those whom he would ask to establish the hospital, if only they would come.

He wrote to Mother Josephine, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity at Cedar Grove, near Cincinnati, opening his correspondence with an offer of terms and conditions if she could spare some of her sisters for Santa Fe. Under routine administration, she would raise the matter with her archbishop—Lamy's old friend Purcell, who would pose no objections. Preparations followed through the year. He wrote to Spalding at Baltimore, to say that in the previous autumn—before his departure for Arizona—he had expected a group of Sisters of St Joseph to arrive at Santa Fe to open an orphan asylum, but none came, though the motherhouse had offered their services. Could Spalding help him to find nuns for the purpose?—a discreet way of suggesting that a word from him to the Josephines might suffice.… Meanwhile, Father Ussel had gone to France seeking Christian Brothers and priests: would the Society in Paris see to his expenses?

In the north, Machebeuf, lame but busy, was establishing chapels and congregations in the new Colorado towns which were “springing up on all sides.” He hoped that when Colorado should become a diocese, as it must, its new bishop would find all prepared for him. In his duty, Machebeuf planned to make a trip to raise money. Lamy gave him papers of authorization, but in the end, Machebeuf sent Raverdy, and himself remained at home, as he did not feel equal to strenuous travel.

In 1 August, having taken stock, Lamy asked Rome to excuse him from the required visit
ad limina
to the Pope—his absence would seriously impede progress just then in New Mexico, and more than that—he had no money to pay for such an expensive journey. In the same letter, he felt a new opportunity should be exploited: Zubiría, whether dead or retired, was no longer bishop of Durango. Now, “there is a chance to clear up” the long-standing territorial problem, “as there will be a new bishop in Durango.…
Please reread
my former letters in which I explained all my reasons.… please see that we get a new decree.…” Greater patience seemed called for at his desk than in the slow passages over the barren distances with all their sudden mortal strikes—a year ago a young priest had been murdered by Indians, another only two months ago.

After three months at home, he was again in the field, going now to visit the Navajo and Apache Indians gathered on the reservation of
the Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner on the Pecos River in southeastern New Mexico. He travelled in company with General Carleton and staff. The general, as author of the reservation plan to pacify and reeducate the bellicose Indians, was to make an inspection of the more than eight thousand Navajos and Mescalero Apaches at the Bosque, and the four hundred soldiers who kept them under control while trying to teach them new habits of dwelling, farming, and living together. Education in the white man's terms was to be given the captives.

During Lamy's long absence in the West, Eguillon, his vicar general, had been asked by “the officers'' to “establish schools to civilize” the Indians “by means of Christianism. The government work is done, but not ours.” On his return, Lamy had sent a priest and two assistants in minor orders to Fort Sumner, and told the Society “we have great hopes to do good amongst them. The Government seems determined to make them live in these reservations and nowhere else. They (the Indians) see the missionaries with a good eye, and no doubt we shall succeed with them, especially the youth …”

But a sad spectacle met him at the Bosque Redondo. The Indians were subdued enough, except among themselves—the Navajos (by far the larger Indian contingent) and the Apaches were hostile to each other. Both tribes were survivors of furious vengeance brought against them by the Army and the citizenry, whose spirit had been expressed in the Santa Fe press—”Go it citizens! Give the enemy no rest. Chase him, fight him, subdue him, kill him when necessary in defense of life, family, property and security”—the same purposes long held by the Indians in their own terms, whether against Spaniard, Mexican, or eastern American. Once he had the Indians, Carleton gentled his policy, fought for their protection, sustenance, and future, against civilian factions both in New Mexico and in Washington. Seeing them with a vain and proprietary eye, he said they were now “the happiest people I have ever seen.”

But “My dear wife,” wrote a soldier from Fort Sumner, “this is a terrible place … The Rio Pecos is a little stream winding through an immense plain, and the water is terrible, and it is all that can be had within 50 miles, it is full of
alkili
, and operates on a person like castor oil—the water, heat it a little, and the more you wash yourself with common soap the dirtier you will get.…” It seemed an insuperable task to haul supplies for twelve thousand people—soldiers and Indians—over the plains during wartime. Carleton sent strong appeals to Washington: “These Indians are upon my hands. They must be clothed and fed until they can clothe and feed themselves”—for he still hoped they would take up the agrarian life of the ancient Pueblo
people. He called for cattle drives to bring beef to the reservation over the empty plains—the actual beginning of the cattle trails of New Mexico. Though a major of volunteers selected the site on the Pecos, with its groves of cottonwoods, and saw the construction of fine officers' quarters and barracks, and thought it “the most beautiful Indian fort in the United States,” the wretchedness of the interned people was plain to see.

Lamy was moved. What he might hope to do was help to give a future through education to the three thousand Indian children of the Bosque. He saw his school, with its priest, begun. But when—as throughout his active lifetime—he appealed for federal funds to pay teachers, they were not granted; and in any case the experiment of the reservation on the Pecos was abandoned when after five years the reservation was relinquished by order of Secretary of War U. S. Grant. The Navajo people went back to their mountain and desert homes. Lamy saw them as human beings, “interesting, intelligent, and laborious.' They saw themselves in the spirit of their place, for going home in 1868 at the end of what they always called “the long walk,” they said, “When we saw the top of the mountain [Mt Taylor] from Albuquerque we wondered if it was our mountain, and we felt like talking to the ground, we loved it so, and some of the old men and women cried with joy when they reached their homes.”

When he returned to Santa Fe, Lamy heard from Rome that he was excused by Pius IX from making his obligatory
ad limina
visit for another three years. Astonishingly, the same letter assured him that the Doñana dispute had long since been settled in his favor. Could this be so? Would word from Durango be required also? But if there was anything which could not be expedited, it was that issue. In one more responsive to his touch, Lamy saw his own schools proliferate, even if, as he said, “we have to proceed a little at a time”—so he declared at the end of 1865.

Though there were no public schools in the territory, Lamy and his teachers were reaching out to more and more young people by the month. The Santa Fe schools had five hundred pupils, and the Loretto Academy of Our Lady of Light had to enlarge its rooms and grounds every few years. The demands were ahead of certain supplies—Lamy had to ask Archbishop Spalding to investigate why his order for school books had not been filled by Messrs John Murphy, though he had sent them three payments. The newspaper said editorially that the nuns had “the complete confidence of the community at large.” The Mother Superior gave the character and terms of her establishment in a decorous advertisement in the paper: