Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 4

Finding the Worth While in the Southwest 4

To return to Española. Ten miles to the eastward in the valley of the

Santa Cruz river is the quaint little church of Santuario, a sort of New

Mexican Lourdes, famous these many years for its miraculous cures. A

trip thither makes a noteworthy day’s outing. It may be done by

automobile over a road of many tribulations, but a horse and buggy are

more satisfactory and far more in keeping with the primitive country. My

own visit was achieved on foot, eased by a lift of a couple of miles

from a kindly Mexican on horseback, who set me up behind him, _en

ancas_, as they call it. It was mid-August—a season which in northern

New Mexico is as sunshiny and showery as a sublimated Eastern April. The

intense blue of the sky was blotted here and there with piled-up cloud

masses, which broke at times in streamers of rain upon the purple ranges

of the Sangre de Cristo ahead of me—and after that, descending shafts of

light. As soon as I had crossed the Rio Grande and Española was behind

me, I was in pure Mexico. The Santa Cruz Valley is an agricultural

region, but it is the agriculture of centuries ago that is in vogue

there. Wheat, for instance, is trodden out by horses, sheep or goats, on

outdoor threshing floors of beaten earth, winnowed by tossing shovelfuls

into the air, washed of its grit and dirt in the nearest _acéquia_, then

spread out in the sun to dry, and finally ground in primitive little log

mills whose rumbling stones are turned by tiny water wheels. Little New

Mexican Davids, bare of foot and dreamy-eyed, loiter along behind their

nibbling flocks in the stubble of the shorn fields or the wild herbage

of the river bottom. Peaches and melons, onions and corn, lie drying on

the roofs, and strips of meat hang “jerking” from stretched lines in the

_plazitas_ of the houses. The cross is still a dominant feature in this

land of yesterday. Now it glitters on the belfry of the family chapel

among the trees of some ranch; now it is outlined against the sky on the

crest of a hill, a _calvario_ of the Penitentes;[16] now it crowns a

heap of stones by the wayside, where a funeral has stopped to rest.

 

Of the villages strewn along this delightful way, some are hamlets of

half a dozen straggling little adobes drowsing under their rustling

cottonwoods. Others are more important. One particularly I

remember—Santo Niño. That means “village of the Holy Child,” and His

peace that placid morning seemed to rest upon it. The streets were

narrow shady lanes, where irrigation ditches running full made a

murmuring music, flowing now by adobe walls, now by picket fences where

hollyhocks and marigolds and morning-glories looked pleasantly out. It

was a village not of houses merely, but of comfortable old orchards,

too, and riotous gardens where corn and beans, chilis and melons locked

elbows in happy comradery. I think every one I met was Mexican—the women

in sombre black rebosos, the men more or less unkempt and

bandit-appearing in ample-crowned sombreros, yet almost without

exception offering me the courtesy of a raised hand and a _buenos dias,

señor_. Santa Cruz de la Cañada—another of these villages—deserves a

special word of mention, for next to Santa Fe it is the oldest

officially established _villa_ (a form of Spanish organized town), in

New Mexico, dating as such from 1695, though in its unincorporated state

antedating the Pueblo Rebellion. Long a place of importance, its ancient

glory paled as Santa Fe and Albuquerque grew. Today it numbers a scant

couple of hundred inhabitants, but it is interesting to the tourist for

its fine old church facing the grassy plaza of the village. The church

interior is enriched with a number of ancient pictures and carvings of

an excellence beyond one’s expectations.

 

Then there is Chímayo, into which you pass just before crossing the

river to Santuario. To the general public Chímayo appeals because of its

blankets and its apricots, but to me it remains a place of tender memory

because of a certain hospitable _tienda de abarrotes_ (or, as we should

say, grocery store). Entering it in the hope of finding crackers and

cheese, wherewith to make a wayside luncheon, I was given instead a

characteristic Mexican meal as exquisitely cooked as ever I had; yet it

was but a couple of corn tortillas, a bowl of pink beans done to

liquidity, and a cup of black coffee. As to the blankets of Chímayo,

they are woven in sizes from a pillow-cover to a bed-spread, of

Germantown yarn, and you find them on sale everywhere in the curio shops

of the Southwest, competing in a modest way with the Navajo product. The

weaving is a fireside industry, prosecuted in the intervals of other

work both by women and men, and the bump-bump of the primitive looms is

the characteristic melody of the place.

 

I had to ford the little river, shoes and stockings in hand, to reach

Santuario, and was not sure when I got there. An old _paisano_, sitting

in the shade of a wall, informed me, however, that the little cluster of

adobes on a hillside, into which I soon came from the river, was really

the place—“of great fame, señor. Here come people of all nations to be

cured—Mexicans, Americans, Apaches—from far, very far.” The adobe

church, half hidden behind some huge cottonwoods, was open—of crude

construction without and within, but very picturesque. Passing within

the wooden doors, which are curiously carved with a maze of lettering

that I found it impossible to decipher, I was in a twilight faintly

illumined by the shining of many candles set upon the floor in front of

a gaudy altar. Upon the walls hung beskirted figures of saints in

various colors and wearing tin crowns. There were, too, crude little

shrines upon which pilgrims had scrawled their names. A figure of San

Diego on horseback with a quirt on his wrist, cowboy style, was

particularly lively, I thought. In a room adjoining the altar is a hole

from which pilgrims take handfuls of earth—red adobe, apparently—the

outward instrumentality that is depended upon for the cures.

 

The history of this queer chapel is interesting. Long before it was

built the efficacy of that hole of earth was believed far and wide, and

the place resorted to by health seekers. Finally in 1816 a pious

_paisano_ named Bernardo Abeyta, who had prospered greatly in his

affairs, was impelled to erect this church as a testimony of gratitude

to God. Dying he bequeathed it to Doña Carmen Chaves, his daughter, who

kept for all comers the church and its pit of healing, and lived in a

modest way upon the fees which grateful pilgrims bestowed upon her.

After her death, the property descended to her daughter, who maintains

it in the same way. It is said the fame of the spot is known even in old

Mexico, whence pilgrims sometimes come.[17] The earth is utilized either

internally dissolved in water, or outwardly made into a mud wash and

rubbed on the body. The chapel is dedicated to _El Señor de

Esquipulas_—the Christ of Esquipulas—Esquipulas being a little village

of Guatemala whose great church enshrines a famous image of the Lord

believed to perform miraculous cures.

 

For a glimpse in small compass of the unsuspected picturesqueness of

rural New Mexico, I know of nothing better than this little jaunt from

Española to Santuario.

 

NOTE: Horseback tours through the Pecos and Santa Fe National Forests

are practicabilities, with Santa Fe, Española or Buckman as a base.

There is a company or two at Santa Fe that make a specialty of

outfitting parties, furnishing riding and pack animals, cooks and all

needful accessories, for a fixed sum. Trout fishing is good in many of

the mountain streams. You may arrange your own itinerary, or if you do

not know what you want, trips will be outlined to suit your particular

interests. In the latter event, a consultation with the Supervisor of

the Santa Fe National Forest, whose office is in Santa Fe, would be

helpful. For people of sound wind who like to see the world from

mountain tops, a trip over the Dalton Trail to the Pecos River and

thence to the Truchas Peaks is repaying. From that elevation of about

13,000 feet, there is a magnificent outlook over much of New Mexico

and some of Colorado and Arizona.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

ROUNDABOUT ALBUQUERQUE

 

 

Albuquerque is the metropolis and trade heart of central New Mexico, and

the talk of its solid citizens runs naturally on cattle and wool, mines

and lumber, grapes and apples and the agricultural glories of the Rio

Grande valley. The average tourist gives it only the half-hour during

which the train stops there, and remembers it mainly for the noteworthy

Harvey Indian collection at the station (a liberal education, by the

way, in the handicraft of the Southwestern aborigines) and for the

snap-shots he tried to take (and was foiled in) of the picturesque

Pueblo pottery sellers on the platform.[18] In itself, indeed, the busy

little city has not a great deal that is distinctive enough to interest

tourists excepting the Spanish quarter known as Old Albuquerque, on the

outskirts—a picturesque survival of the Hispanic regime. There stands

the old church dedicated to the city’s patron saint, San Felipe. As a

base to visit certain other places, however, Albuquerque is very

convenient. For instance, there is the pueblo of Isleta, 12 miles south.

 

It is from Isleta that many of the pottery makers come whom you see

offering their wares on the railway platform at Albuquerque, and a

pleasant day may be put in rambling about the streets of the pueblo,

chatting and trafficking with the hospitable people, who are a very

wide-awake, independent sort of Indians. You may go thither by train; or

you may drive (a much better way), following the west bank of the Rio

Grande, and enjoying the beauty of a typical bit of rural New Mexico,

now austere and sun-scorched, now relenting in vineyards, fields of corn

and lush alfalfa, and orchards of apple and peach, sandwiched between

sleepy little Mexican villages smothered in trees and old-fashioned

flowers. Much of New Mexico is as foreign in aspect as Spain, and the

flat-roofed, eaveless ranch houses, low and rambling, with enclosed

plazitas, and high-walled corrals adjoining, into which the teams are

driven at night and the gates shut to the outer world, bring to you the

atmosphere of Don Quixote or Lazarillo de Tormes. Architecturally,

Isleta differs widely from the orthodox pueblo type, its houses being

usually of one story and extended over a liberal area, as must needs be

to shelter its thousand or so of people. They are quite up-to-date

farmers, these Isleteños, and the pueblo is as busy at harvest time as a

beehive, what with fruit drying, corn husking, and alfalfa baling.[19]

Their homes are generally neatly kept, often adorned within with

bright-colored blankets, pretty water ollas, and the whitewashed walls

hung with pictures of Virgin and saints—impressing you as homes of a

thrifty and well-doing race. Indeed these people are reputed the richest

of all the Pueblos. It is, I believe, a matter of record that in 1862,

when a detachment of the United States army was stranded penniless in

New Mexico, an Isleta Indian loaned it $18,000 cash, simply taking the

commander’s receipt as evidence. After waiting patiently for twelve

years for the government to have the politeness to return the money

without being asked for it, and hearing nothing, he and the governor of

Isleta, accompanied by the local United States Indian agent, made a trip

to Washington to see about it. Through the personal interest of

President Grant, the money was at last returned.

 

On August 28, St. Augustine’s Day, occurs the annual public fiesta, with

the usual open air Indian dances after mass in the church. The large

circular _estufa_, or native ceremonial chamber, entered by a ladder let

down through an opening in the roof, is a conspicuous feature of the

pueblo. You will find such places, in one form or another, in all the

Pueblo villages, and in the Cliff Dwellers’ towns. They were originally

used as the sleeping apartments of the men. Nowadays the men sleep at

home, but the _estufas_ are still resorted to by them as a sort of

club-room or lounge when religious ceremonies are not going on inside.

Despite membership in the Roman Catholic Church the average Pueblo’s

main hold on the unseen that is eternal is through his primitive pagan

faith, whose rites he still practices. Entrance to the _estufas_ is not,

as a rule, readily granted to white people, and should never be

undertaken without permission first obtained. As a matter of fact, there

is on ordinary occasions nothing to see but a dimly lighted chamber with

bare floor and walls, and a small, boxed-in fire-pit near the base of

the ladder.

 

To the big old adobe church of Saint Augustine in the center of the

pueblo, there attaches a queer legend sure to delight the traveler whose

interest is less in historical verities than in the fanciful flights of

the human mind. I refer to the tradition of the Rising of Padre

Padilla’s Coffin. Among the Franciscan friars who accompanied Coronado

on his famous march to what he called Quivira—the country of the Wichita

Indians in Kansas—was Padre Juan de Padilla. This intrepid servant of

God (when Coronado turned homeward), remained with two lay brothers on

the Kansas plains with the view of Christianizing those Indians. The

outcome of the matter was that he was killed by them on November 30,

1544. Now tradition has it that somehow in the heavenly ordering, the

body of the martyred padre got miraculously transferred from Kansas to a

place under the church altar at Isleta; and it is firmly believed (and

the belief is backed up by the circumstantial testimony of solid

citizens) that periodically the coffin, which is a section of a hollowed

cottonwood trunk, rises plainly to view in the church, disclosing to

whomsoever may then be present, the padre rather mummified but still in

his black whiskers. To prove it there are people who will show you bits

of his gown nipped off surreptitiously by eye-witnesses and preserved as precious amulets.[20]