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Authors: Carroll L Riley

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Page 119
called a groin vault, two semicircular arches intersecting at right angles and supported by massive columns. Another solution for the weight of the barrel vault was also quickly introduced: a row of arches running across either side of the nave. And as churches grew higher (especially with the coming of the Gothic order), there were introduced pointed (ogival) arches and the graceful flying buttress, which braced the nave vaults at their points of greatest thrust and which could be carried over side aisles of the church. The result of these engineering principles was broad naves and churches that towered majestically toward the heavens.
None of these things were available in seventeenth-century New Mexico. The laborers, largely or wholly Indian, under the direction of one or two missionaries, had to work with what was doable. There might be some advice and help from missionary experts in other areas or from trained Indians like the Pecos carpenters discussed below. For most of the missions there were nearby estancias with Hispanic families in residence. Still, the major responsibility rested on the shoulders of one or two missionaries. The result was a building in stone (or occasionally adobe) and timber that generally stood the test of time and produced attractive, albeit primarily functional, structures.
The first problem in these simplified buildings was to attain a width of nave sufficient to house a sizable congregation. Using neither the arch nor the vault, the Franciscans fell back on an ancient building technique, employed in the Near East and Mediterranean regions for ten thousand years or more, in which heavy walls support a flat beamed roof. This wall-and-beam type of construction not only spread widely in the arid portions of the Mediterranean Basin but also was in use, long before the Spanish came, in various of parts of arid America. In the Southwest this kind of building dated from the early Pueblo period. Basically it involved the building of rectangular walls, with roofing beams (to which the Spaniards gave the name
vigas
) supported by the heavy walls and forming the foundations for a flat or low-angle pitched roof. The stones were roughly shaped by hammering, and in some areas adobecrudely constructed blocks of clay placed in irregular courseswas used. Although the mission churches were more elaborate, the basic techniques had been known to the Indian parishioners for centuries.
When a mission station was established, the friar involved was sent out with a standardized kit of materials, including such tools as axes, adzes, hoes, saws, chisels, planes, and augers. Also included were large numbers of nails and tacks, and hinges and locks, plus various raw materials such as iron. The use of raw iron supposes a blacksmith, but it is not clear if the missionaries did their own blacksmithing or whether itinerant smiths, perhaps from Santa Fe or from one of the estancias, made their rounds of mission stations.
Page 120
The missionary, often newly arrived from New Spain, first requested a tract of land from the Pueblo officials on which to construct a church. Usually the friars preferred to build a mission and convento on suitable flat land near a main plaza, and this often took considerable negotiation with the town leaders. It was preferred that the church be oriented to the cardinal directions, and this was done either with a compass or by observation of the pole star, or of the sun using a gnomon, the shadow-casting element in a sundial. A simple gnomon (without its marked sundial base) was no more than a rod set vertically in the ground. The friar made a circle around this rod using a cord tied to the rod so that it served as a center point. He then marked the shadow of the rod where it intersected the circle at sunrise and again at sunset. The midpoint between these lines, sighting from the rod, would be a fair approximation of north.
Carpentry skills had diffused to the Indians very early in the Oñate period. At Pecos Pueblo, Fray Andrés Suárez introduced Spanish craftsmen to teach the natives, and Pecos quickly became recognized for the skills of its woodworkers. This, like other craft skills, seems to have spread rapidly among the Pueblos, though individual Pecos workmen were in demand for work on mission churches in other pueblos as well as in Santa Fe.
The basic ground plan of a church called for a rectangular nave and associated altar area that was raised above the level of the nave. Sometimes transepts, flanking buildings extending out from the sides of the nave, were used, giving the church a cruciform shape. The churches were usually built with a core-and-eneer construction, a rubble core with facing sandstone blocks set in mud mortar, or, as at Pecos, the construction material might be large adobe bricks. The walls were squared off using primitive measuring instruments, primarily a plumb bob, measuring line, and what was called a
nivel de albanil
, a device made of wooden arms and an attached plumb bob to establish true horizontal lines. Considerable attempt was made to ensure that walls forming the long axis of the nave were parallel, though this depended on the skill of the individual friarthus producing a certain amount of variation from one church to the next. In any case, walls were quite thick, averaging three or more feet, for they carried the weight of the roof vigas.
The vigas that formed the support and underpinning for the roofs were usually about thirty-five feet long. The preferred wood for vigas was spruce because of its lightness and strength; however, ponderosa pine was easier to obtain in many mission stations. In the missions of Abó and Quarai, for example, ponderosa could be found five or six miles away in the Manzano Mountains. Ponderosa worked quite well, but it tended to twist as it cured, and so ponderosa vigas needed to be seasoned for a year or more. They were usually left in the spot
Page 121
Model of Abó Pueblo mission, 1943 (courtesy
of the Museum of New Mexico, neg. no. 14461)
where they were felled for a period of seasoning, then roughly shaped to lighten them before being transported on carts to the mission. At the building site they were further trimmed and often decoratively carved. When the walls had been built up to their desired height, the roof beams were lifted into place with a primitive block-and-tackle device. Smaller poles were placed on the weight-carrying beams, and a layer of clay over that. Floors were usually of packed earth. Over the entrance door was a choir loft reached by a stairway, for the Franciscans in New Mexico stressed music as an adjunct to sacred instruction. A bell room was normally constructed high at one or the other end of the church. The bells were supplied from bell makers in Mexico (see below).
While supervising the church and the associated convento, the missionary normally took rooms in the adjacent pueblo, where he also set up a temporary altar. After completion of the convento, he moved into relatively spacious quarters. The convento was often built around a central patio surrounded by a covered walkway called the
ambulatorio
. Included in the convento structure was a
portería
, or reception hall, a kitchen and pantry, an infirmary, storerooms, and several
celdas
, or sleeping rooms, one of which might have an office attached for the use of the friar. The convents often included privies; the ones at Abó had a primitive flushing arrangement via a small stone-lined drain. Near the convento structures were the orchards and gardens cultivated by the friars. The orchard at Guadalupe produced "grapes, apples, quinces, plums, peaches, and figs." Gardens contained both native Southwestern and European-introduced plants for the mission kitchen and infirmary.
Page 122
Mission ruins, Quarai Pueblo, fall 1937 (courtesy
of the Museum of New Mexico, neg. no. 8086)
As the seventeenth century wore on, the missions obtained tremendous herds, many tens of thousands of stock animals, especially sheep. It is not entirely clear how the large amounts of land necessary to grazing animals were allotted or administered. By 1663 at least sixty mission estancias were in use, though some pueblos (for example, Abó and Quarai) did not have assigned estancias, the missionaries and the Indian population apparently using lands granted to the pueblos for grazing and agricultural purposes. There were also private estancias within a league or so of some of the Pueblos; to what extent these operated cooperatively with the missions is unclear. Often there seems to have been friction, as in the protest of the Quarai missionary in 1638 about the encroachment of cattle from a neighboring estanciero.
Keeping the missions supplied was a major reason for the supply trains up and down the Camino Real. Although these trains were organized by the Franciscans and were primarily for upkeep of the missions, they also became very important as the basic lifeline of the colony. I shall therefore treat the supply trains in the next chapter, discussing supplies in the context of the province as a whole.
Page 123
Each of the missions was supplied with sacramental wine (forty-five gallons every three years, the interval between supply trains), olive oil for votive lamps, cloth, and paper. Each friar received two blankets every three years, a hat and two pairs of wool stockings. For the mission infirmary there were bed clothes, various condiments, and instruments such as syringes, cupping devices for bleeding, lancets, scissors, brass basins, grindstones, and stills for water distillation. The kitchen received various cooking utensils including metates, iron spoons, sieves, graters, and spits. There were barrels for water, table cloths and napkins, and tallow candles. Ecclesiastical equipment at the missions included altar cloths, missals, gilded chalices, crucifixes, copal incense, chant books, carved Christ images, lamps, ciboria, and damask to cover the altar. Paper was a standard item, and ink for the locally produced quill pens also seems to have come from Mexico. It was made of tannic acid mixed with iron oxide, and when supplies ran low, it was increasingly diluted with water, making the color weaker and weaker. At some point the missionaries and probably also the governmental officials began to manufacture their own ink made with pulverized charcoal. It is not clear if this practice had begun by the seventeenth century.
Music was not neglected by the missionaries. In fact, the training of native choirs was considered very important in the missionization effort. Musical instruments included trumpets, flutes, and organs. For example, we know of a "fine organ" installed at the mission of Abó sometime around 1660, but organs were common well before that date.
A portion of the interior heating was done, as in Mexico, by use of braziers filled with burning charcoal. Corner fireplaces, and occasionally fireplaces in the middle of walls, were used in the conventos, the fuel generally being wood. At Hopi, where wood was scanty, there may have been some use of coal, although the Franciscans generally were rather negative about the smelly, sulfur-laden local coal.
Each mission has a small signal bell and a two-hundred-pound bronze church bell. These latter bells were not tolled in the later sense of the word but were rung by pulling on the clapper with a rope or thong or by striking the outside of the bell. The bells were usually made in Mexico City, and many of the ones intended for the New Mexico missions were cast from the same mold.
The largest mission church in seventeenth-century New Mexico was built at Pecos during the 1620s by Andrés Suárez. Constructed partly on bedrock and partly on a rubble fill faced with sandstone, the adobe structure had a nave of 133 feet. Its width was even more amazing, tapering from 41 feet at the front of the church to 37.5 feet in the altar area. The thick, heavy walls were protected by buttresses, and there were several bell towers. Plastered white, the church seen by
Page 124
the traveler coming along the trail eastward from Glorieta Pass must have been a most impressive site. This church was so completely dismantled by the Pecos people during the Pueblo Revolt that it was lost until 1967, when National Park Service archaeologist Jean Pinkley rediscovered the footings outside the extant eighteenth-century church walls.
One interesting and still controversial aspect of early missionization was the use of Pueblo Indian kivas. In the patio or convento areas of Abó, Quarai, Pecos, and Awatovi are kivas that have been filled in. Various interpretations of these kivas have been given; that they represent superposition, building a Christian church over a native place of worship; that they were built during temporary absences of the friars by defiant factions in the pueblos; or that they were built by Indians after the Pueblo Revolt to celebrate the return of the kachinas. The kivas at Abó, Quarai, and Pecos, however, seem to have actually been incorporated into the patio area of the churches. Park Service archaeologist and historian James Ivey has pointed out that there is archaeological evidence that the convento kivas were built early in the mission period. He suggests that they represent examples of "halfway houses" where Pueblo Indian leaders could absorb elements of the new religion in settings that were hallowed and sacred in their own tradition. In all cases the kivas were later discarded. As might be expected, however, kivas were also constructed in the ruins of mission buildings after the Pueblo Revolt. In December 1680, at Sevilleta in Piro country, Governor Otermín's men came across a kiva in the chapel area made from wood from the chapel roof.
The courtyard kiva at the pueblo of Quarai is somewhat of an anomaly. It is atypical, being rectangular rather than round as are other kivas in the Tompiro and Manzano Tiwa country. Exactly what this means is not clear. Perhaps it represented an idiomatic choice by Juan Gutiérrez, the missionary in charge. Whoever introduced the Quarai structure included such standard kiva features as the ventilator shaft, a central firepit, entrance through the roof, and possibly a
sipapu
, the shallow depression that symbolizes the entry to the Pueblo underworld. This feature, however, may actually have been the footing for the entry ladder. Although not typical of the area, rectangular kivas would not be unknown to Salinas Indians because there was trade being conducted with the western Pueblos, who used this kind of kiva. I have no doubt that traders from Abó and Quarai occasionally visited Zuni and Hopi, and that these visits were reciprocated. One bit of evidence is the practice of cremation, used primarily at Zuni, which turns up in the Salinas area in contexts dating to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. There was also a certain amount of western Pueblo pottery in the Salinas area.
Although the Abó, Quarai, and Pecos convento kivas are the only ones to date that have been investigated with the idea of Spanish instruction in mind, it seems
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