Lamy of Santa Fe (56 page)

CONVENT OF OUR LADY OF LIGHT.

This Institution is under the direction of the Most Rev. Bishop John B. Lamy.

The establishment for the education of Misses, is located in the most beautiful part of the city. The building is commodious and is surrounded by a large garden which affords ample room for the scholars to take exercise in.

The culture of the intellectual faculties of youth and the training of them in the paths of virtue, being the important duties confided to the Sisters, they will take every care to instruct their pupils in those branches which constitute a useful and refined education, and above all, in the principles of the Catholic Religion and the duties which it imposes.

The discipline is mild and parental, and at the same time strict and positive. The Sisters will take particular care of the health and welfare of scholars.

The branches taught in this Institution are: Orthography, Reading, Writing, Grammar, Arithmetic, Geography, History; and for the more advanced; Astronomy, with the use of the globes, Natural Philosophy, Botany, &c. &c; also Needle Work, Bordering, Drawing, Painting, Music on the Piano and Guitar, Vocal Music and French.

Pupils are taught and speak in the English and Spanish languages, equally.

TERMS
.

Boarding and tuition one year $300; one half payable in advance.

The scholastic year begins on the first of November and ends on the last Thursday of August.

The correspondence of pupils is subject to inspection.

No deduction in charges is made except in cases of absence for three months.

Parents or Guardians of scholars will furnish them with clothing, bed and bed clothes, napkins, knife, fork, spoon, tumbler, plate, cup, towels, wash basin, combs, brushes, &c. &c.

For all information in regard to this Institution, call upon, or address by letter, the Mother Superior,
M. MAGDALENA.

Santa Fe, September 17, 1865

What was more, the Santa Fe Lorettines, now with several members to spare, colonized Mora, Taos, and Denver with new convent schools across the diocese, where such refinements as instruction in astronomy (“with the use of the globes”), bordering, Italian painting, and artificial flowers, along with more basic subjects, had never been known. Lamy's nuns were as indefatigable as he in crossing the open country
on miserable roads, and when they set up their little schools far away, children, and the future, responded. At Mora, where Father J. B. Salpointe was pastor, it was thought “very creditable to [the sisters] that they are making so many efforts to instruct and elevate the characters of the young girls who are advancing to womanhood.' and it was hoped that “the teachers will receive the support and kindness of the people.”

The schools for boys were also advancing with the arrival of additional Christian Brothers; and Lamy was particularly encouraged when Ussel, the pastor of Taos, arrived in Santa Fe, bringing twelve seminarians from Lyon. They had come by way of Denver, after a rousing journey. In the Atlantic, they had met a fearful storm lasting four days and nights; crossing the plains—in winter, a poor time to try it—they had been attacked twice by Indians, and had skirted peril in a snowstorm. But all were in good health,
“grace à Dieu”
and what was more, four Christian Brothers came with the party. Lamy could not adequately tell his gratitude to the Paris Society for their helping in paying for the passage of such invaluable additions to his human resources.

It would seem that Paris understood his problems better than Rome; for in March 1865 he was obliged to write to Barnabo at the Propaganda: “In your letter of November 9, 1864, you gave me hope that the affair”—was it possible that this was still being agitated?—”of Doñana county would soon be decided. Last December I visited our possessions in this county, but as half is under the jurisdiction of Durango, I saw that there were difficulties arising from policy differences, especially for marriages. Here are the names of the places that Mgr. de Durango does not want to cede: La Mesilla, Picacho, Los Amoles, La Mesita, La Ysleta, San Elizario. There are about 4000 people in all. The American military commandant in New Mexico told me recently that I should take possession of these places for since the new regime in Mexico [i.e., the administration of Benito Juarez's anti-clerical party] the difficulties will be greater between the priests under the jurisdiction of Durango, but residing in New Mexico, and the American civil authorities. To avoid this trouble it is urgent that the county of Doñana be put under the jurisdiction of Santa Fe in the necessary places.

There was another disappointment in territorial affairs—the restoration of the mission of Arizona. Mindful of the dangers he had both seen and heard of, Lamy hesitated to make an assignment there a matter of ordering anyone to go. Without prejudice, he left it to volunteers; and ii\ the spring of 1865 three proposed themselves. One could not be spared—he was building two schools at Mora. But two others, Fathers Lassaigne and Bernal, proposed themselves, and were sent off
down the Rio Grande to Las Cruces, there to find an expedition west-going, which they could join, since to go alone would be the utmost folly. In Las Cruces, they found no organized trains willing to face the Apaches. All travel had been stopped, and after three weeks of trying to find a way westward, they returned to Santa Fe and their old duties. Arizona must wait again.

But life was quotidian—small matters as well as large made up its fabric. A busy man noted his reminders anywhere. On the back of a letter which Machebeuf had sent on to him from the Messrs Daugherty, Carriage Makers, of St Louis, regretting that Denver had cancelled its order for an overland ambulance, Lamy jotted down in pencil his reminders for Holy Week 1865:

Cathedr. vespers

*

Meeting ladies society

*

Festival Easter tuesday

*

ladies for Reath [wreath]
for decorations Monday & Tuesday

*

Mass every day in h. at 8 (Confessions)

*

Attend high Mass on thursday
—
at 8

*

prayers, lecture & Benediction at
7—
(Candles) Good Friday at 9
—
acl. at 8 o.c.
14 Stations
—
H. Saturday
H. water
—
from E.S.
I Mass at 8
—
h.m. at 10

But if affairs naturally centered in one's own life, the larger world must enter also. “We have a weekly mail which crosses the plains in fifteen days, from Leavenworth to Sta. Fe.” Local society kept its own flavor, however, and the Santa Fe paper regretted that “at a fandango, a few evenings since, two of the females became insulted and enraged at each other,” and further deplored “that American men and women present endeavored to inflame the ill will and violence of the two women, the one against the other, and that a ring was formed and knives placed in the hands of each, for a desperate fight.” The event was known in frontier parlance as a “lady-fight.”

iii
.

Christmas Eve: Attempted Murder

A
LITTLE OVER A YEAR
after negotiations had begun between Santa Fe and Cedar Grove, four Sisters of Charity arrived in Santa Fe on 14 September 1865 to begin the realization of yet another of Lamy's long views. They were Sister Superior Vincent, and Sisters Pauline, Theodosia, and Catherine. The bishop was away when they appeared, but all preparations had been made for them, and they moved into his own large house which had been readied for them. He retained two rooms for his own use until he should find other quarters. They had come by rail and boat from Cincinnati to Omaha; and from there to Denver by stage coach. Sister Catherine had sharp memories of the stage trip. The coach was built for four people, eight were crowded into it, the heat was great, they all suffered from thirst, the jolting was worse than that of a runaway freight train, she was sure, and with all that, there was the unceasing and exhausting alert against Indian attacks. For “the luxury,” she recalled, they had to pay twenty-five cents a mile. In Denver the four nuns stepped down at Planter's Hotel, but when Machebeuf heard of their arrival, he sent his carriage to take them to the comforts of his Loretto Convent. From Denver they had a coach all to themselves with only the Indians to worry about.

What they found in Santa Fe was described by one of their community who came later but heard much. This was Sister Blandina, who by her own animated account was for a long time at the center of leading events in the diocese. “Imagine,” she told, “the surprise of persons coming from places where houses are built with every convenience and sanitary device, suddenly to find themselves introduced into several oblong walls of adobe, looking like piled brick ready to burn, to enter which, instead of stepping up, you step down onto a mud floor; rafters supporting roof made of trunks of trees, the roof itself of earth which they were told had to be carefully attended, else the rain would pour in; door openings covered with blankets; the whole giving you a prison feeling; a few chairs, handmade and painted red; a large quantity of wool which they were assured were clean and for their use; no stoves, square openings in corners where fires could
be built—all those things were to constitute their future home. Where the bare necessities of life were to come from was an enigma to them. Strangers to the country, the customs, and the language, do you wonder that a lonesome feeling as of lingering death came over them?” Blandina always valued vivid overstatement to obtain her effects, for she went on to say: “Can you doubt that it would have required the presence of an angel to convince them that the preparations made for them were princely? Yes,” she cried, “so they were, for the time and country. This had been the Bishop's Palace, which he had given up, so that the Sisters might have easy access to the Cathedral!”

Lamy returned home a little over two weeks later and found the new sisters “well and cheerful.” He supposed they had written to Cincinnati about their new situation, and if everything appeared “strange to them,” he was sure they would “soon be reconciled.” They were already learning “the Castellano” and would soon be talking freely with everyone. Their energy was exemplary, they had barely arrived when they had placed an advertisement in the paper announcing that the Sisters of Charity had set about opening a hospital for the needy and infirm of the city. Two of the nuns had been nurses back East in the Civil War.

Their situation, as Lamy gave it, was encouraging—they had at least twenty rooms, “such as the country can afford,” and a garden and three large yards, all enclosed. The hospital joined the cathedral at the rear, so they would not have to go outside to enter the church. A little spring-fed stream ran through their property. The whole place was a monument to the memory of Father Avel, who, dying of the poisoned chalice, had left a legacy of three thousand dollars to found a hospital; and Lamy had used the fund to buy a piece of property which he later sold for a sum applied to the present establishment. In return for his house, the nuns were to pay him the first two thousand dollars they might have available. Purcell had advanced a thousand dollars for their westward journey. The four Sisters of Charity were living in “apostolic poverty.”

It was good to feel the response of Santa Fe to the hospital settlement. The American population was generous in support of it, the territorial legislature voted a subsidy of one hundred dollars a month to St Vincent's, and General Carleton offered the hospital two thousand dollars provided it would be available to sick soldiers. Talented citizens were getting up a benefit concert, with proceeds to go to St Vincent's. Lamy believed they would be ready to open the hospital in the coming January 1866.

It was a season of deep sncws. Santa Fe's mountains, all the slopes, were richly white against the gold and blue of the winter skies. Over
the whole town drifted the pungent scent of piñon smoke from the baked fireplaces of every house. The newspapers carried stories of great suffering on the plains. Six soldiers were killed or scalped four miles above Fort Dodge in Kansas. On the Arkansas River ice was twelve to eighteen inches thick. Two trainmen—the railroads were slowly advancing westward—froze to death on Bear Creek in Kansas. Twenty waggon trains were halted at one time by icy streams and high blizzards, a stage was delayed twenty hours at Pawnee Fork on the Arkansas, another was delayed for a day at Little Cow Creek near Fort Larned, and the oldest plainsmen believed this was “the hardest winter they [had] ever experienced.”

Christmas Eve at Santa Fe was bitter cold. Midnight Mass in the cathedral was over by two o'clock in the morning. Lamy was asleep in his room at one end of the hospital. Like the usual ground-floor rooms in adobe houses, it opened directly onto the covered
portal
. His
mayordomo
slept in the next room. In the cold and quiet of the un-lighted night, a man, hungry and freezing, perhaps even drunk after Christmas celebrations, opened the door of Lamy's room, entered, and said, showing a revolver,

“Give me fifty dollars or I will kill you.”

Lamy knew his voice, and so did the
mayordomo
, who was awakened by the sound, for the intruder was one of the bishop's employees. The
mayordomo
leaped out of bed and hurried into the bishop's room. Lamy said to him,

“Take him out and give him fifty dollars.”

The
mayordomo
took the man outside and sent him off, refusing him the fifty dollars. In a few minutes, the man broke into a room nearby where two priests lived. One was ill—”very much reduced and weak.” Both were asleep in the freezing cold. The wandering intruder went to their fireplace and began to fumble about to build a fire. It awoke the sick priest, who thought it was his companion who was striking matches.