Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 2

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 2

Close to the Plaza, too, cluster many of the historied spots of Santa

Fe; indeed, the Plaza itself is a chief one. On this bit of ground it is

confidently believed that Oñate must have camped in 1605—if it was

1605—when the capital was transferred from San Gabriel; and there is no

doubt whatever that here was the seething center of the famous Pueblo

revolt of 1680, when 3000 infuriated Indians cooped the entire Spanish

population of Santa Fe within the Governor’s Palace opposite, and kept

them there for a week. Then the whites made a brave sortie, caught and

hanged 50 Indians in the Plaza and escaped to Old Mexico—their exit

being celebrated shortly afterwards in this same Plaza by the Indians’

making a bonfire of all Spanish archives and church belongings they

could lay hands on. Here 13 years later came De Vargas, the re-conqueror

of New Mexico (bearing it is said the very standard under which Oñate

had marched in the original conquest), and with his soldiers knelt

before the reinstated cross. And it was in this Plaza in 1846, during

our Mexican War, that General Stephen Kearny ran up the Stars and

Stripes and took possession of the territory in the name of the United

States. It was the Plaza, too, that formed the western terminus of the

Old Santa Fe Trail—that famous highway of trade that bound New Mexico

with Anglo-Saxondom throughout the Mexican regime in the Southwest and

until the iron horse and Pullman cars superseded mules and Conestoga

wagons. At the old adobe hotel known as La Fonda, a remnant of which

still stands at this writing just across from the southeast corner of

the Plaza, travelers and teamsters, plainsmen and trappers found during

half a century that boisterous brand of cheer dear to the pioneer

soul—cheer made up quite largely of cards, _aguardiente_ and the freedom

of firearms, but gone now, let us trust, out of the world forever since

the world has lost its frontiers.

 

Facing the Plaza on the north is the ancient _Palacio Real_ or

Governor’s Palace—a long, one-storied adobe building occupying the

length of the block, and faced with the covered walk or portico (they

call such a _portal_ in New Mexico) which in former years was a feature

of every building of importance in Santa Fe. Within its thick walls for

nearly three centuries the governors of New Mexico resided—Spaniards,

Pueblo Indians, Spaniards again, Mexicans and finally Americans.[3] In

1909 the building was set aside as the home of the Museum of New Mexico

(since removed to a handsome edifice of its own in the New Mexico style

of architecture across the street), and of the School of American

Research.[4] Some careful restoration work was then done, necessary to

remove modern accretions and lay bare certain interesting architectural

features incorporated by the original builders, such as the handwrought

woodwork, the fireplaces, doorways, etc., so that the edifice as it

appears today is outwardly very much as it must have looked a century or

two ago. The festoons of dried Indian ears, however, which are said to

have been a rather constant adornment of the _portal_ in old times, are

now, to the relief of sensitive souls, humanely absent. Within, the

Palace is a mine of information for the curious in the history,

archaeology and ethnology of our Southwest, and a leisurely visit to it

makes a useful preliminary to one’s travels about the State. The

building is open to all without charge.

 

A short block from the Plaza is the Cathedral of San Francisco, whose

unfinished trunks of towers are a prominent feature in Santa Fe’s low

sky-line. You may or may not get something from a visit to it. It is a

modern structure, still incomplete, built upon and about an older church

believed to date from 1622. Beneath the altar reposes all that is mortal

of two seventeenth century Franciscan missionaries to the New Mexico

aborigines. Of one of these, Padre Gerónimo de la Llana, I cannot

forbear a word of mention. He was a true brother of Saint Francis, and

for many years ministered lovingly to the Indians of the long since

ruined pueblo of Quaraí, a place of which more later. At Quaraí he died

in 1659, and his body was interred in the old church there whose walls

still stand, one of the most striking ruins in New Mexico. To his

Indians he was no less than a saint, and when (under attacks from

Apaches, doubtless) they abandoned their pueblos about 1670, they bore

with them what remained of their dear _padre santo_ to Tajique, a pueblo

some 15 miles distant, and buried him there. But in those days Apaches

never ceased from raiding, and from Tajique, too, some years later,

those Pueblo folk were forced to flee—this time across the rugged Sierra

Manzano to Isleta on the Rio Grande. That was a journey of too great

hardship, I suppose, to admit of carrying the now crumbled padre with

them; so he was left in his unmarked tomb in a savage-harried land, to

be quite forgotten until 85 years later (in 1759) pious old Governor F.

A. Marin del Valle heard of him. A search was speedily set on foot and

after a long quest the bones of Padre Gerónimo were found, brought to

Santa Fe, and becomingly once more interred. Then, alas! the poor

brother dropped out of mind again until in 1880, when during some work

upon the new Cathedral, the discovery of an inscription set in the wall

121 years before by Governor del Valle led to the finding of the grave.

I think you will be interested to read the quaint Spanish epitaphs of

this fine old friar, and of his companion, too, Padre Asencio de Zárate,

sometime of Picurís pueblo. They may be found behind the high altar,

which hides them.

 

Also in the Cathedral, it is believed, rests the mortality of Don Diego

de Vargas, _el Reconquistador_, but unmarked. You will find many an echo

of him in Santa Fe, for he it was who in 1692 re-conquered New Mexico

for Spain after the Pueblo uprising of 1680 had swept the Spaniards out

of the province and for twelve years kept them out. Every year in June

Santa Fe celebrates its De Vargas Day, when a procession, bearing at its

head an image of the Virgin, marches from the Cathedral to the little

Rosario Chapel that is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary (or as Santa

Féans sometimes call her, _La Conquistadora_, the Lady Conqueror). It

occupies the spot, on the city outskirts, where according to tradition

De Vargas knelt on the eve of his second entry into the capital

(December 16, 1693), and invoking the blessing of the Virgin upon his

arms, promised her a chapel if she vouchsafed him victory on the morrow.

It is a scant half-hour’s stroll thither from the Plaza, and you will

enjoy the walk through the city’s half foreign scenes, though the

building itself is disappointing because of its handling by tasteless

renovators. Much more picturesque, though modernized with an astonishing

steeple, is the little church of Guadalupe, standing amid Lombardy

poplars on the south bank of the river. A quiet, reposeful, little

temple, this, with beautifully carved ceiling beams and a curious, if

crude, altar-piece representing the appearances of Mexico’s Heavenly

Patroness to Juan Diego.

 

Of the churches in Santa Fe, however, the one that is made most of by

visitors, is the square-towered adobe of San Miguel. It is a pleasant

twenty-minute walk from the Plaza (and, by all means, do walk when you

go, for the way thither is too picturesque to be whisked over in an

automobile)—through quiet, unpaved streets lined with one-storied adobe

houses and often too narrow to accommodate any but a mere thread of

sidewalk, where you bump into burros and, like as not, have utter

strangers tip their hats to you with a _buenos dias, señor_. You pass

the Bishop’s sequestered gardens and the high-walled grounds of the

Convent and Academy of the Sisters of Loretto, with glimpses through a

postern gate of old-fashioned flower beds; and further on, the touching

little cemetery of the Sisters, each simple grave marked by a cross

whereon vines and fragrant flowers lean lovingly; and so, on stepping

stones, to the south side of the little Rio de Santa Fe. Then mounting

the hill past more gardens where hollyhocks—_la barra de San José_ (St.

Joseph’s rod) the New Mexicans call them—nod at you over the walls, and

children prattle in Spanish and women sing at their work, there you are

before old San Miguel.

 

Your first feeling is a bit of a shock, for the renovator’s hand has

fallen heavily upon San Miguel and, frankly speaking, it is a rather

hideous old church as viewed from the street. When, however, you have

rung the sacristan’s bell and a Christian Brother from the adjoining

Catholic college has come with the keys to usher you within, you pass in

a twinkling into the twilight heart of the Seventeenth Century. Here are

blackened, old religious paintings said to have been carried by the

Conquistadores as standards of defense in battle; a wonderful old bell

inscribed with a prayer to St. Joseph and bearing an all but illegible

date that looks surprisingly like 1356, and maybe it is; a charming old

wooden cross-beam supporting the _coro_, or choir gallery, its color

mellowed by time and its surface carved with rude but beautiful flutings

and flourishes by some long-vanished hand of the wilderness; and so

on—all delightfully embellished by the naïve expositions of the kindly

Brother who acts as cicerone. And do not leave without a glimpse through

the side door of the sunny quiet garden close, that lies between the

church and the college building. As to the age of San Miguel, there has

been much misinformation given—claims of its dating from 1543 being

quite groundless. The known fact is that it was established as a chapel

for the Mexican (Tlascalan) Indians who were part of the original Santa

Fe colony. It therefore dates from some time on the hither side of 1605.

In 1680 it suffered partial destruction in the Pueblo uprising, though

its walls survived; and, after some repairs by order of De Vargas, it

was finally restored completely in 1710, by the Spanish governor of that

time, the Marquis de la Peñuela. The record of this fact inscribed in

Spanish upon the main beam of the gallery is still one of the

interesting “bits” in the church. Probably it is safe to call San Miguel

the oldest existing building for Christian worship in the United States.

 

If you are in a hurry you may “do” Santa Fe and its immediate environs

in a carriage or an automobile in a couple of days, and departing

secretly think it a rather overrated little old place. To get into the

atmosphere of it, however, you should drop hurry at its gates and make

up your mind to spend at least a week there, and longer if you can.

Lounge in the Plaza and watch the ebb and flow of the city life that

gathers here; drop into the Indian trading stores and get a taste for

aboriginal art. White man’s schooling has brought about of late years a

decline in the quality of Indian handicraft, but there is still a lot of

interest in these Santa Fe curio shops—Navajo and Chímayo blankets,

Pueblo pottery, Navajo silver jewelry, Apache baskets, moccasins,

bead-work, quaint tobacco pouches, Spanish and Mexican things—_serapes_,

_mantillas_, rusty daggers, old silver snuff boxes—and what not. Mount

the hill at the city’s northern edge, and sit on the ruined walls of the

old _garita_ (where the Mexican customs used to be levied upon imports

by the Santa Fe Trail). There you get a magnificent bird’s-eye view of

the city in its mountain fastness, and if the day be waning you will

have a sunset for your benediction, long to remember. Extend your

rambles sometimes to the outskirts for unadvertised sights—the little

ranches with their outdoor threshing floors of beaten earth where in

August you may see the wheat tramped out by horses, sheep or goats, and

winnowed by tossing in the breeze; _paisanas_ washing their linen on

stones by the brookside as in Italy or Spain; and the gaunt _descansos_

or crosses of rest, marking stopping places of funerals, and carving in

illiterate Spanish scrawled upon the wood, prayers for the repose of

departed souls. If you are fortunate enough to have a little Spanish,

your enjoyment will be enhanced by stopping at humble doorways for a bit

of chat with Juan Bautista the woodchopper, or Maria Rosalía the

laundress. You will be civilly welcome, if you yourself are civil, and

be handed a chair, if there be one, and will be refreshed to learn

something of the essential oneness and kindliness of the human family

whether clothed in white skin or brown. It is this pervading air of Old

Worldliness that makes the peculiar charm of Santa Fe for the leisurely

traveler—its romance and its history are not altogether hidden away in

books, but are an obvious part of its living present.

 

Moreover, Santa Fe is the starting point for numerous interesting

out-of-town trips. These are story for another chapter.[5]

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

THE UPPER RIO GRANDE, ITS PUEBLOS AND ITS CLIFF DWELLINGS

 

 

Of course you must make the trip—a half day will suffice for it—from

Santa Fe to Tesuque, a village of the Pueblo Indians 9 miles to the

north, and you should pronounce it _Te-soo´kay_. If your knowledge of

Indians has been limited to the variety seen in Wild West Shows and

historical pictures, you will be surprised at those you find at Tesuque.

This is a quaint adobe village around a spacious plaza upon which an

ancient, whitewashed Catholic church faces. The houses when of more than

one story are built terrace-like, so that the roof of the first story

forms a front yard to the second. Ladders lean against the outer walls,

by which access is gained to the upper rooms. The population of about

150 live very much like their Mexican neighbors, raising by irrigation

crops of corn, beans, peaches, melons, and alfalfa, accepting meanwhile

from the liberal hand of Nature rabbits, _piñones_ and wild plums, and

pasturing sheep and cattle on the communal pueblo lands which Spain

granted them centuries ago and which our Government confirmed to them

upon the acquisition of New Mexico. Their method of town building is not

borrowed from the whites, but is their own; and because the Spanish

Conquistadores of the sixteenth century found the region sprinkled with

such permanent villages, called _pueblos_ in Spanish, they named the

people Pueblo Indians—a term which well characterizes them in

contra-distinction to the nomadic tribes, whose villages moved as the tribe moved.