Lamy of Santa Fe (64 page)

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For the Pueblos

I
N THE MID-1870S, A COMPLEX CONDITION
involving the federal government, the Pueblo Indian culture, the state of education, and the Catholic and Protestant Churches in New Mexico and Arizona, gave
high concern to both Lamy and Salpointe. The federal government regularly appointed agents for Indian affairs in the various western regions. The agent was to supervise education, among other factors of Indian life. In New Mexico, the agent welcomed the natural interest of the Protestant Churches in missionizing Indians, and in certain pueblos appointed resident teachers who were non-Catholics. But the Indian religious conversion dating from the days of the conquistadors was Catholic; and everywhere vestiges of the Franciscan teachings were present in the pueblos. Inroads upon these alarmed Lamy, particularly since he found evidence of neglect of even the simplest educational duties—quite apart from religious instruction itself—by the lay teachers.

In Arizona, Salpointe had no resources with which to counter the vigorously active free public schools which with continuing emigration were springing up in his area. Both bishops wrote to their sustaining Society in France describing the threat to Catholic teaching, and also stating the need to provide Indians with education in common knowledge indispensable to the modern world whose styles and standards followed the United States culture wherever it went. “At great sacrifice” Lamy stationed extra priests in the pueblo missions, but his view of a solution was a more ample one than that of simply increasing his teaching assignments.

It was his hope that he, rather than a layman appointed by Washington, might be made actual agent for the Pueblos. If this could be managed, he could then revive not only the Catholic culture of the Indian towns, but he could also create a comprehensive system of schooling now sadly lacking among the Indians. He moved to lay his plan before the proper authority in Washington. This turned out to be Brigadier General Charles Ewing, who came of a family which had belonged to Lamy's parish in his early Ohio mission days; and now the general, who was a child of six years when Lamy had last seen him, was stationed at the War Department, Washington, in the bureau which superintended Indian affairs.

In 1873 Lamy had already sent Ewing a preliminary report about the Pueblos. To acquaint him more fully with the Pueblo nature and tradition, the bishop now gave much time to composing what he called a “Short History of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico,” which he addressed to Ewing in February 1874. It was an essay of about ten thousand words. In his opening lines, he declared, “Now I am prepared to give you information satisfactory, I think, for any candid mind, based upon history, old records, manuscripts, traditions, with citations of the author they are taken from. There are no facts of history better proved.' he went on, “than that the civilization of our
Pueblo Indians is contemporaneous with the discovery of New Mexico by the Spaniards who brought with them the Catholic faith and within a few years converted most of the Indians.”

The “Short History” then went on to give an account of Pueblo life in colonial New Mexico throughout the two and a half centuries before his own arrival at Santa Fe in 1851. He touched upon the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680, saying that “the expulsion of the Spaniards from the country was, no doubt,” caused partly by “the oppression and many abuses of the conquerors upon the Indians.” With the Spanish restoration of 1692, the Pueblo missions were resumed until the withdrawal of the Franciscans early in the nineteenth century. In his own time he had done what he could to revive them; but the management of Pueblo life by United States civil authority had not been helpful and in some cases had been disastrous.

For one thing, in a pueblo where a Protestant faction had grown up among the Indians, hostility between its members and those of the Catholic majority had come about, so that a miniature religious war divided the community once so unified in its Christian beliefs, even while the ancestral pagan religious practices continued—those ways which lay at the heart of the Pueblo design of life. Further, Lamy was convinced that Indians could only be taught, at first, through the Spanish language in which they were proficient, and that their knowledge of English would have to come later. But the government lay teachers spoke only English, and the Indian children comprehended little enough of what they heard in school. Finally, in one pueblo which he cited, and used as an example (it was Laguna), the lay teacher held class only a few times in eight months, and gave himself leaves of absence for weeks and months at a time, for which he drew a hundred dollars a month, and “had a fine time of it.” No wonder Lamy had been asked for Catholic teachers by some Pueblo authorities.

Now what he proposed to Ewing was that the government grant him a modest subsidy to set up a system of education in the Pueblos—he gave a brief description of all those in the Rio Grande region—at a cost of five hundred dollars for each of the twelve principal towns, or a total of six thousand dollars. This would be enough to “pay a teacher in each village, and also to procure some benches, tables, stationery, books, etc. The conventos or priest's residences could serve for school-rooms.” For another six thousand dollars, he would be able to bring thirty or forty boys and girls a year to the sisters' and brothers' schools at Santa Fe and elsewhere, and pay for their room, board, clothing, and supplies. If the plan were approved, it would be well to include two thousand dollars more for an agency house in Santa Fe, where the Indian parents could stay when they came to town, “for if
the Government gives us the agency for the Pueblos, we are sure to have some Indians every week, if not every day.” One more detail: if the far-distant Moquis (seven pueblos) and the Navajos on their reservation were to be included, “it would take at least $4000 more.” He hoped that by the means suggested, “the schools would be well attended and good results could be obtained with good management, prudence, and”—a phrase which bespoke his character and practice—“entire patience.”

Lamy's proposal for his Indian agency came to nothing. Salpointe's alarm over free public (non-sectarian) education had no relief. Neither man had any deep experience of the American tradition of the separation of Church and State in all its implications. Lamy seemingly did not recognize that public tax monies could not be administered within the walls, actual or doctrinal, of the Church. But though he failed in his Indian plan, he once again revealed his sense of compassion, and his view of the needs of the community in his care.

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Hard Times

I
N THOSE LATER YEARS,
Lamy said many times that the great poverty of his people would never be relieved until the arrival of the railroad, making transport and export, communication and cheaper goods, possible. He looked eagerly to the day when Santa Fe would be connected to the world by the speediest form of travel. Six regional or local railroad lines were optimistically incorporated for New Mexico in 1870—the South Park, the Eastern Colorado, the Merino Valley, the San Juan, the Galisteo, and the Santa Rita railways—but there was little enough product within the state to make them succeed as feeder lines unless they could connect with a main transcontinental line.

In 1874 tracks from the East were nearing Trinidad, Colorado, on the very boundary of New Mexico. But how slowly they came! It appeared that local businessmen, who stood most to gain by the coming of the transcontinental railroad, held back when asked to contribute through local bond issues to the expenses of building the line. Eastern capital, accordingly, was not in a hurry to invest alone. It was odd—every place which had prospered already had the rails.

Denver had known prodigious growth with all its industrial components—gas lines, street cars, water power, fire department, even city beautification, though it was true that many of the thousands of miners who had roared into Colorado failed to “strike it rich,” and took their way out of the new state. But by then Denver relied on more than a single industry, and Machebeuf was as busy, ingenious, and lively as ever—though now and then his “passionate temper,” as he himself called it, marred the happy animation of his rule. He had a spat with a nun, who viewed him as “very impulsive,” One day she all but accused him of being a liar, or, as she put it, of “telling her a falsehood.” There was fake nicety in the language, and her own impulsiveness, to which she admitted, earned her a suspension by the bishop. He was on record as being against women's suffrage—a form of independence, after all—and had printed a sermon against it and its agitators, who were “short haired women and long-haired men.” In the end, Sister Fidelis agreed that she had gone too far.

Machebeuf's relative prosperity was in great contrast to the condition of New Mexico. In 1874 because of drought the harvest had failed so extremely that Lamy reported how one third of the population was suffering from famine. Resources were so scarce that not only was work on the cathedral threatened, but construction of a new hospital which Lamy had planned to build in four fine lots behind the cathedral had to be postponed.

In such hard times, it was, then, something of a surprise when added burdens were suddenly proposed for Santa Fe by Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick of St Louis. Writing to both Machebeuf and Lamy on the same day, he proposed the separation of the see of Santa Fe from the province of St Louis, and the erection of a new province under an archbishop at Santa Fe, with Colorado and Arizona, and possibly Montana, as its suffragan dioceses. Machebeuf immediately forwarded his letter from Kenrick to Lamy; and Lamy noted in its margins, as to Montana, “no,” and as to the whole proposal, “I would wait,” and returned it to Denver. He elaborated these views in a direct reply to Kenrick.

First describing the character of the populations, and the numbers of Catholics in the Southwest, Lamy went on to state his opinion: “… it is safer to wait a few years.” At the moment, apart from Denver, the Church's population was overwhelmingly Mexican. He thought that increasing immigration would bring more Anglo-American and German constituents to create a broader base of growth in the new society slowly emerging in the western territories. He believed that new natural boundaries would create themselves—the southern portion of Colorado combining with the northern part of New Mexico,
and the northwestern portion of Texas with the southern portion of Arizona; and then each of these would require a new vicariate apostolic with its own bishop, in addition to those prelates already established in Santa Fe, Denver, and Tucson. Concerning Montana, he was decidedly of the view that it was much too far away from Denver, even, not to mention New Mexico, to be appropriately joined to Santa Fe. But he said, otherwise, “when these changes are made, then Sta F. will be the proper loc. for an archbc”—sending to Machebeuf his abbreviated notes for the full reply to Kenrick.

He had given, quite impersonally, his advice. Whether it would be followed no one could yet say. Episcopal synods and Vatican consistories would make their own decisions. Meanwhile, to celebrate Lamy's twenty-fifth anniversary—his silver jubilee—as bishop, Santa Fe was witness to ceremonies, both sacred and social, held with “pomp and rejoicing.”

He had other quieter pleasures. On a fine hillside in the Tesuque Cañon about three or four miles from town, he had acquired in 1853 the small country property where he could retire for rest, meditation, concentrated work. There he had built a small lodge, consisting of two rooms—one a tiny chapel with its altar for his daily Mass, the other his combined sitting room and bedroom. He called it the Villa Pintoresca. It had a vast view of the Jemez Mountains, and nearer, the golden-pink barrancas of the eroded sandstone screens above Espanola. The play of light over all these at any time was marvellous, but especially so in early morning and in evening. The little
estancia
was his delight. He liked to receive people there. The road to it between the foothills and in the Cañon of the little Tesuque River gradually grew more passable. “Good work has been done on the Bishop's ranch road.' said the newspaper. “It forms one of the best rides out of the city. This is the work, we presume, of Bishop Lamy.” Though other people rode, Lamy often walked the whole way to the lodge.

XI

ARCHBISHOP

1875–1880

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The Archbishop

K
ENRICK AND HIS ASSEMBLED BISHOPS,
meeting in St Louis, went counter to Lamy's advice, and sent their recommendations to the Vatican: Santa Fe should become a metropolitan see, with Lamy as its first archbishop, and the apostolic vicars Machebeuf of Colorado and Salpointe of Arizona as his suffragans. On 12 February 1875, Pius IX, in consistory, decreed the establishment as proposed, named Lamy for the pallium, and bestowed a red hat upon an American for the first time. This was Archbishop John McCloskey of New York.

Lamy was absent on a ten-day pastoral visit when a letter came from Purcell to congratulate him on the promotion; but Lamy had not yet received any official notification. By April the news was general, and Machebeuf pointed out to his sister that the new province of Santa Fe had three bishops, all of them Auvergnats.

Affairs took Salpointe to New York during the spring, and there he was given a papal mission to carry out; for Monsignor Caesar Roncetti, who had arrived in New York to present the cardinal's biretta to McCloskey, brought also the pallium for Lamy, but after his voyage from Rome did not feel equal to the further journey to Santa Fe to bestow upon Lamy the badge of his new office. Instead, discovering that a bishop suffragan to Santa Fe was in town, Roncetti asked Rome
:o
approve his giving the pallium to Salpointe for delivery to Lamy. The permission was granted, and Salpointe returned to New Mexico carrying the visible symbol of the rank of archbishop, with which Lamy would be solemnly vested.