Lamy of Santa Fe (59 page)

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Madame Bontesheim and Bureaucracy

L
AMY HAD A FEW MORE DETAILS
of business to complete with Barnabo, and one of historical piety—which cardinal or prelate, he asked, could tell him where to find the keys to the chapel which contained the chains of St Peter?

Oh, surely Cardinal Clarilli would know, replied Barnabo.

But Clarilli did not know, nor did others whom Lamy asked, for he was given several different directions. Nobody seemed to know how to reach the great relics.

If only he had consulted an example of that living institution in Rome, who reappeared with every generation—the pious and tireless matron who was often in her self-created system more effective at getting things done in the grand confusions of the Vatican bureaucracy than the members of the Curia. At the time, there was a Madame Bontesheim whom Father McCloskey described as “a General of division, who summons us Captains and marches us hither and thither. She is indeed a famous woman” to whom the chains of St Peter would have been a trifle to manage. But gossip had it that she was busy with what she called “a respectable scrape” concerning “one of those wandering nuns” who was trying to enlist members for a new convent which consisted only of herself as Mother Superior and one other nun, in Liberty, Texas. A young American girl was greatly drawn to the venture; Madame Bontesheim tried to prevent her going, but “failed most signally in effecting a separation between the Mother Superior and the girl.”

In any case, Lamy saw her in another affair when she marched him to recite his “experiences” to a hall full of novices of an order of nuns. How ever had she discovered him in a city full of bishops? But her skill was famous. He was ready enough to describe his distant life for Madame Bontesheim, and also for his fellows at the North American College, whose rector said, after he departed Rome, “we miss very
much his interesting and graphic descriptions of his missionary life among the Indians. He is full of Americanisms, and his imperfect knowledge of English and his quaint way of describing things afforded us many a hearty laugh. With all his dove-like simplicity he has quite enough of the Serpent's cunning, and it would have amused one to see the skill with which he evaded the approaches of an Italian who wished to go to Santa Fe, believing it, no doubt, to be an appendage of New York or Philadelphia, the only places a large number of these gentry ever heard of.”

In the third of the audiences which he granted Lamy, Pius IX gave him permission to leave Rome and it was remarked that “the Holy Father has been very kind to him.” Toward the end of January 1867, Lamy sailed for France from Civitavecchia. He would spend three months preparing for his homeward expedition in Paris and Lyon—and also in replying to certain critical comments on his report which came from Barnabo three months later. The cardinal granted that pastoral visits in the Santa Fe diocese might be difficult, but “wishing to encourage your solicitude,” he suggested to Lamy that his visitations be made more often and more thoroughly. He thought the same about holding diocesan synods. As for education—teaching skills and the fine arts were well enough, but the cardinal “was surprised in not finding any mention in the proposed study schedule about the instruction in Religion.” There were other, lesser criticisms.

If Lamy briefly despaired of making anyone halfway around the world see his lands and their problems, he preserved his “dove-like simplicity” and promptly replied from Paris. Concerning pastoral visitations, he said that now with his new increment of Jesuits he hoped to be freer to travel about his territories more regularly, and also to hold synods every two years. In the matter of religious education—he had simply neglected to make specific mention of what perhaps “it was not necessary to explain”: that in all nine of his establishments of schools or orphanages, religion was being taught regularly with “great success”; the teachers were “clerics themselves.” Disposing of the few remaining inquiries, he was respectful—and swift: for it had been noted in Rome that he thought matters there moved too slowly. “The Roman
piano, piano
, does not suit the Bishop of the Navahoes….”

Working between Paris and Lyon to complete his homeward party, Lamy with evident satisfaction was finally able to catalogue its members: in addition to the five Italian Jesuits, he had enlisted a priest and a deacon at Rome, six seminarians from Clermont, and two more Brothers of the Christian Doctrine—twenty-one in all, not counting himself and Coudert, his secretary. In America he would add several
more nuns from Loretto, Kentucky, to his charges. It was a grand increment, and in Rome, by the tone of his letter describing his efforts, they thought he was “making hay while the sun shines.”

Once again he had to appeal to the French Society for increased financial help in paying for the transport of his people. All expenses had increased, and while grateful for the unfailing aid he had always received from Paris and Lyon, he thought it necessary, in asking for more, to repeat his familiar description of the conditions of westward travel in the United States—its distances, costs, dangers, and hardships. At last he was ready; and with his twenty-one
“sujets”
(“individuals”), as he always called them, he sailed from Le Havre on 9 May 1867, on the “magnificent sail and steam vessel”
Europa
. The crossing was mild until on 19 May the
Europa
encountered a violent storm off Newfoundland in a “gulf” which the sailors referred to as “The Devil's Place.” For a while the ship was in extreme peril, and all on board suffered; but she made port safely on 23 May, coming up the Narrows to New York early in the morning. There before Lamy's new collection of strangers, lay unknown America and their separate fates.

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Homeward

T
WO DAYS LATER
they were at Baltimore, where Lamy left the seminarians, including his nephew Anthony Lamy, who was Marie's brother, for further study with the Sulpicians, and boarded the railroad train to St Louis for three days of “remarkable” luxuries and comforts. By 2 June they were in St Louis, where three Loretto nuns and two Christian Brothers joined the party. After four days of shopping and outfitting, the bishop was ready to lead the way West. He had twenty mules, two small waggons, and five “light ambulances,” and two saddle-horses. “This outfit,” he said, “cost us near $5000” (in today's money at least twenty thousand). June seventh found the party in Leavenworth, as guests of Bishop Micge, who now had a large house where all the men were put up, and where he gave them every comfort. The nuns—two Sisters of Charity and the three Lorettines—stayed at St Vincent's Academy. Two Jesuits joined the group there—including one of the Italians from Naples—and also going along were
a student, Paul Beaubien, from St Louis University, the bishop's young business agent, Jules Masset, and two Mexican servants, Antonio and Antonito: twenty-six in all.

Lamy considered which trail to follow over the plains. He had hoped to take the northern fork of the Santa Fe Trail, by way of the Smoky Hill River, Bent's Fort, and the Las Animas River in order to meet with Machebeuf in Colorado. But all reports indicated that the warring Indians were more active there than elsewhere. Through that summer, the whole prairie seemed continuously afire with Indian furies; for after the Civil War, emigrants were again pouring to the West, threatening the Indian supremacy in his own domain; and the Indian was striking back with ferocity and skill. So continuous was the struggle, so active was the Army in newly established forts along the westward trails, that the eastern papers carried every day a regular news report with the running headline of “The Indian War.”

Lamy decided it would be prudent to abandon the northern route and to set out directly to the southwest toward the familiar ford of the Arkansas River to the west of Fort Dodge, Kansas, at a place known as Cimarron—one of two crossings a few miles apart, the other being near the later settlement of Ingalls. This was the path most often used by the waggon trains for Santa Fe and Chihuahua; and in the summer of 1867 Lamy heard that there were many such caravans on the plains. In the company of one or another of these westbound his people would be safer than alone.

The party left from Leavenworth on 14 June. Four days later they reached a Jesuit mission at St Mary's of the Pottawatomies, where in good company they rested for six more days. Leaving there on the Feast of SS Peter and Paul—29 June—they moved on across the southern reach of the Smoky Hill River, and there they entered upon the prairies proper, bidding “adieu to civilization.” That river, said one of the missioners—it was Father J. Brun, who wrote letters based on his diary—”marked the boundary of the Indian territory, a river sadly famous for the piracies and massacres committed by the savages.”

Soon after that crossing, while the bishop's party were encamped, four mounted Indians suddenly appeared. They were painted, wore loops of necklaces and feathered headpieces; and at their belts each had a little mirror which he always carried. Asking for tobacco and coffee, they sharply scrutinized the waggons and the people of the caravan, and departed in silence as suddenly as they had come. “They were spies,” said Brun.

He had a stranger's eye and word for the disturbing newness of all that the party encountered. After the eastern travel and its comforts, he now saw “the reverse of the medal.” The miseries of the sea were
replaced now by those of the land, and they were worse than the ocean storms. He had his list: to sleep on the bare earth under open sky; to use your boots for a pillow; to live in the mud (they met with two weeks of almost unceasing torrential rains); to hump along on a horse all day under a burning sun; to be on the alert at every instant for savages; then, to sleep without supper; to rise and depart without breakfast; to suffer torture by mosquito; to go ten or twelve miles looking for a ford at a river before making camp, fighting the currents which might carry away waggon and cargo. And the exhaustion! What would be the worst misery in ordinary life counted for nothing in the most usual events of the journey. “We asked ourselves,” he noted, “whether to laugh or cry.” But
pleurer?
—No! he declared stoutly.

They had trouble with straying animals, and herders who got lost looking for them and had to be searched for as well. Once, far off, they thought they saw in a great dark mass far ahead of them an army of Indians massed for the attack. Lamy climbed up on a waggon wheel and gazed through his telescope—it was a relief to see that it was a large caravan bound east from Santa Fe whose members had been as frightened and for the same reason as Lamy's party.

Eventually they overtook a large caravan of eighty waggons, including those of Jewish merchants of Santa Fe, with men well armed, going their way; and the two parties joined together. The better to protect Lamy's people and provisions, Captain Francisco Baca, who commanded the traders' train, divided it into two columns, assigning one to each side of the bishop's party.

According to Captain Baca's scouting parties, there were evidences of a great body of Indians—perhaps a thousand strong—coming together for attack. A hollowing sense of increased danger pervaded the caravan.

On Sunday, 14 July, Lamy said Mass and preached on two seriously related topics—one was “the necessity of bearing with fortitude the evils of this world,” and the other was the absolute requirement that all must give “strict obedience to orders.” For now they began to see little detached parties of Indians reconnoitering and retreating, over and over again, “not unlike those wolves which are said to gather far and near to attack strayed sheep in the desert.”

But now another trial—one familiar to prairie voyagers—came to afflict the train: cholera was epidemic on the plains—almost all trains were infected, including a few of Lamy's waggoners, and presently the disease was spreading up and down the straggling and slow-going line, chiefly among the Mexican carters. A priest who travelled part-way with Lamy saw how he “was always the same, affable, in good spirits, stout-hearted, passing his courage along to his missioners.” Such steadiness
was needed in the atmosphere of uncertainty and in the face of obstacles which the party encountered. Lamy had been assured of military escort from Fort Harker. He sent a detachment to notify the commander that the train was approaching; but the rivers were in flood after the weeks of heavy rainfall and Lamy's men never reached Harker. He went on toward Fort Larned. A detail of troops came to meet him, but because of the cholera, their officer imposed a quarantine and sent the train on a detour away from the fort. Once again, without soldiers, the long train resumed the plodding march to the southwest, drawing away into the low undulations of the distance, where the heat of the sky and the reflected heat of the earth met in a glassy waver which absorbed the line of the horizon and which either enlarged any object entering the mirage, or erased it from sight, as if it had never existed.

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Prairie News

R
EADERS
of the New York
Herald
, on Friday, 19 July 1867, turning to page four where the running headline of
THE INDIAN WAR
appeared as usual, were shocked to read a “Special Telegram to the Herald” announcing

Capture of a Train near Fort Larned, with a Bishop, Ten Priests and Six Sisters of Charity—The Men killed and Mutilated, and the Women Carried Away.

The dispatch went on to particulars:

Leavenworth, Kansas, July 18, 1867

(6 o'clock P.M.)

A train was captured last Sunday, near Fort Larned, by the Indians. Bishop Lamy, ten priests and six sisters of charity accompanied the train as passengers, en route to Santa Fe. The men were killed, scalped and shockingly mutilated. The females were carried away captives. This information comes through reliable sources.