USA > California > The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions > Part 9
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It is too revolting to go more into detail concern- ing these rites. Enough has been said to give some idea of the moral barrier encountered by the Span- ish missionaries when they came to such blood- thirsty savages with a gospel which teaches love and the universal brotherhood of man. Such a creed was as unintelligible to the Indian as white black- ness would be to us ; and the struggle to make him understand was one of the most enormous and ap- parently hopeless ever undertaken by human teach- ers. Before the missionaries could make these
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savages even listen to-much less understand - Christianity, they had the dangerous task of prov- ing this paganism worthless. The Indian believed absolutely in the power of his gory stone-god. If he should neglect his idol, he felt sure the idol would punish and destroy him; and of course he would not believe anything that could be told him to the contrary. The missionary had not only to say, "Your idol is worthless ; he cannot hurt anybody ; he is only a stone, and if you kick him he cannot punish you," but he had to prove it. No Indian was going to be so foolhardy as to try the experiment, and the new teacher had to do it in person. Of course he could not even do that at first; for if he had begun his missionary work by offering any indignity to one of those ugly gods of porphyry, its " priests " would have slain him on the spot. But when the Indians saw at last that the missionary was not struck down by some supernatural power for speak- ing against their gods, there was one step gained. By degrees he could touch the idol, and they saw that he was still unharmed. At last he overturned and broke the cruel images ; and the breathless and terrified worshippers began to distrust and despise the cowardly divinities they had played the slave to, but whom a stranger could insult and abuse with impunity. It was only by this rude logic, which the debased savages could understand, that the Span- ish missionaries proved to the Indians that human sacrifice was a human mistake and not the will of "Those Above." It was a wonderful achievement,
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just the uprooting of this one, but worst, custom of the Indian religion, - a custom strengthened by cen- turies of constant practice. But the Spanish apostles were equal to the task; and the infinite faith and zeal and patience which finally abolished human sac- rifice in Mexico, led gradually on, step by step, to the final conversion of a continent and a half of savages to Christianity.
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VII.
THE CHURCH-BUILDERS IN NEW MEXICO.
T O give even a skeleton of Spanish missionary work in the two Americas would fill several volumes. The most that can be done here is to take a sample leaf from that fascinating but formid- able record ; and for that I shall outline something of what was done in an area particularly interesting to us, - the single province of New Mexico. There were many fields which presented even greater obstacles, and cost more lives of uncomplaining martyrs and more generations of discouraging toil ; but it is safe to take a modest example, as well as one which so much concerns our own national history.
New Mexico and Arizona - the real wonderland of the United States - were discovered in 1539, as you know, by that Spanish missionary whom every young American should remember with honor, - Fray Marcos, of Nizza. You have had glimpses, too, of the achievements of Fray Ramirez, Fray Padilla, and other missionaries in that forbidding land, and have gained some idea of the hardships which were common to all their brethren ; for the
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wonderful journeys, the lonely self-sacrifice, the gentle zeal, and too often the cruel deaths of these men were not exceptions, but fair types of what the apostle to the Southwest must expect.
There have been missionaries elsewhere whose flocks were as long ungrateful and murderous, but few if any who were more out of the world. New Mexico has been for three hundred and fifty years, and is to-day, largely a wilderness, threaded with a few slender oases. To people of the Eastern States a desert seems very far off; but there are hundreds of thousands of square miles in our own Southwest to this day where the traveller is very likely to die of thirst, and where poor wretches every year do perish by that most awful of deaths. Even now there is no trouble in finding hardship and danger in New Mexico; and once it was one of the cruellest wil- dernesses conceivable. Scarce a decade has gone by since an end was put to the Indian wars and harassments, which had lasted continuously for more than three centuries. When Spanish colonist or Spanish missionary turned his back on Old Mex- ico to traverse the thousand-mile, roadless desert to New Mexico, he took his life in his hands; and every day in that savage province he was in equal danger. If he escaped death by thirst or starvation by the way, if the party was not wiped out by the merciless Apache, then he settled in the wilderness as far from any other home of white men as Chicago is from Boston. If a missionary, he was generally alone with a flock of hundreds of cruel savages ;
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if a soldier or a farmer, he had from two hundred to fifteen hundred friends in an area as big as New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio com- bined, in the very midst of a hundred thousand swarthy foes whose war-whoop he was likely to hear at any moment, and never had long chance to for- get. He came poor, and that niggard land never made him rich. Even in the beginning of this century, when some began to have large flocks of sheep, they were often left penniless by one night's raid of Apaches or Navajos.
Such was New Mexico when the missionaries came, and very nearly such it remained for more than three hundred years. If the most enlightened and hopeful mind in the Old World could have looked across to that arid land, it would never have dreamed that soon the desert was to be dotted with churches, - and not little log or mud chapels, but massive stone masonries whose ruins stand to-day, the noblest in our North America. But so it was ; neither wilderness nor savage could balk that great zeal.
The first church in what is now the United States was founded in St. Augustine, Fla., by Fray Fran- cisco de Pareja in 1560, - but there were many Spanish churches in America a half century earlier yet. The several priests whom Coronado brought to New Mexico in 1540 did brave missionary work, but were soon killed by the Indians. The first church in New Mexico and the second in the United States was founded in September,
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1598, by the ten missionaries who accompanied Juan de Oñate, the colonizer. It was a small chapel at San Gabriel de los Españoles (now Chamita). San Gabriel was deserted in 1605, when Oñate founded Santa Fe, though it is probable that the chapel was still occasionally used. In time, how- ever, it fell into decay. As late as 1680 the ruins of this honorable old church were still visible ; but now they are quite indistinguishable. One of the first things after establishing the new town of Santa Fe was of course to build a church, -and here, by about 1606, was reared the third church in the United States. It did not long meet the growing requirements of the colony; and in 1622 Fray Alonzo de Benavides, the historian, laid the founda- tions of the parish church of Santa Fe, which was finished in 1627. The church of San Miguel in the same old city was built after 1636. Its original walls are still standing, and form part of a church which is used to-day. It was partly destroyed in the Pueblo rebellion of 1680, and was restored in 1710. The new cathedral of Santa Fe is built over the remnants of the still more ancient parish church.
In 1617 - three years before Plymouth Rock - there were already eleven churches in use in New Mexico. Santa Fé was the only Spanish town; but there were also churches at the dangerous Indian pueblos of Galisteo and Pecos, two at Jemez (nearly one hundred miles west of Santa Fé, and in an appalling wilderness), Taos (as far north),
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San YIdefonso, Santa Clara, Sandia, San Felipe, and Santo Domingo. It was a wonderful achievement for each lonely missionary - for they had neither civil nor military assistance in their parishes - so soon to have induced his barbarous flock to build a big stone church, and worship there the new white God. The churches in the two Jemez pueblos had to be abandoned about 1622 on account of incessant harassment by the Navajos, who from time immemorial had ravaged that section, but were occupied again in 1626. The Spaniards were confined by the necessities of the desert, so far as home-making went, to the valley of the Rio Grande, which runs about north and south through the middle of New Mexico. But their missionaries were under no such limitation. Where the colonists could not exist, they could pray and teach ; and very soon they began to penetrate the deserts which stretch far on either side from that narrow ribbon of colonizable land. At Zuñi, far west of the river and three hundred miles from Santa Fe, the missionaries had established themselves as early as 1629. Soon they had six churches in six of the " Seven Cities of Cibola " (the Zuni towns), of which the one at Chyánahue is still beautifully preserved; and in the same period they had taken foothold two hun- dred miles deeper yet in the desert, and. built three churches among the wondrous cliff-towns of Moqui.
Down the Rio Grande there was similar activity. At the ancient pueblo of San Antonio de Senecu, now nearly obliterated, a church was founded in
RUINS OF CHURCH AT PECOS
1
ant
:
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1629 by Fray Antonio de Arteaga; and the same brave man, in the same year, founded another at the pueblo of Nuestra Señora del Socorro, -now the American town of Socorro. The church in the pueblo of Picuries, far in the northern mountains, was built before 1632, for in that year Fray Ascen- cion de Zárate was buried in it. The church at Isleta, about in the centre of New Mexico, was built before 1635. A few miles above Glorieta, one can see from the windows of a train on the Santa Fé route a large and impressive adobe ruin, whose fine walls dream away in that enchanted sunshine. It is the old church of the pueblo of Pecos; and those walls were reared two hundred and seventy- five years ago. The pueblo, once the largest in New Mexico, was deserted in 1840; and its great quadrangle of many-storied Indian houses is in utter ruin ; but above their gray mounds still tower the walls of the old church which was built before there was a Saxon in New England. You see the "mud brick," as some contemptuously call the adobe, is not such a contemptible thing, even for braving the storms of centuries. There was a church at the pueblo of Nambe by 1642. In 1662 Fray Garcia de San Francisco founded a church at El Paso del Norte, on the present boundary-line between Mexico and the United States, -a dangerous frontier mis- sion, hundreds of miles alike from the Spanish settlements in Old and New Mexico.
The missionaries also crossed the mountains east of the Rio Grande, and established missions among
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the Pueblos who dwelt in the edge of the great plains. Fray Geronimo de la Llana founded the noble church at Cuaray about 1642 ; and soon after came those at Abó, Tenabo, and Tabirá (better, though incorrectly, known now as The Gran Qui- víra). The churches at Cuaray, Abó, and Tabirá are the grandest ruins in the United States, and much finer than many ruins which Americans go abroad to see. The second and larger church at Tabirá was built between 1660 and 1670; and at about the same time and in the same region - though many thirsty miles away - the churches at Tajique 1 and Chilili. Acoma, as you know, had a permanent missionary by 1629; and he built a church. Besides all these, the pueblos of Zia, Santa Ana, Tesuque, Pojoaque, San Juan, San Marcos, San Lazaro, San Cristobal, Alameda, Santa Cruz, and Cochiti had each a church by 1680. That shows something of the thoroughness of Spanish missionary work. A century before our nation was born, the Spanish had built in one of our Territories half a hun- dred permanent churches, nearly all of stone, and nearly all for the express benefit of the Indians. That is a missionary record which has never been equalled elsewhere in the United States even to this day ; and in all our country we had not built by that time so many churches for ourselves.
A glimpse at the life of the missionary to New Mexico in the days before there was an English- speaking preacher in the whole western hemisphere
1 Pronounced Tah-hee-ky.
CHURCH, PUEBLO OF ISLETA
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is strangely fascinating to all who love that lonely heroism which does not need applause or compan- ionship to keep it alive. To be brave in battle or any similar excitement is a very easy thing. But to be a hero alone and unseen, amid not only danger but every hardship and discouragement, is quite another matter.
The missionary to New Mexico had of course to come first from Old Mexico, - or, before that, from Spain. Some of these quiet, gray-robed men had already seen such wanderings and such dangers as even the Stanleys of nowadays do not know. They had to furnish their own vestments and church furni- ture, and to pay for their own transportation from Mexico to New Mexico, - for very early a " line " of semi-annual armed expeditions across the bitter intervening wilderness was arranged. The fare was $266, which made serious havoc with the good man's salary of $150 a year (at which figure the salaries remained up to 1665, when they were raised to $330, payable every three years). It was not much like a call to a fashionable pulpit in these times. Out of this meagre pay - which was all the synod itself could afford to give him - he had to pay all the expenses of himself and his church.
Arriving, after a perilous trip, in perilous New Mexico, -and the journey and the Territory were still dangerous in the present generation, - the mis- sionary proceeded first to Santa Fé. His superior there soon assigned him a parish; and turning his back on the one little colony of his countrymen,
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the fray trudged on foot fifty, one hundred, or three hundred miles, as the case might be, to his new and unknown post. Sometimes an escort of three or four Spanish soldiers accompanied him ; but often he made that toilsome and perilous walk alone. His new parishioners received him sometimes with a storm of arrows, and sometimes in sullen silence. He could not speak to them, nor they to him ; and the very first thing he had to do was to learn from such unwilling teachers their strange tongue, - a language much more difficult to acquire than Latin, Greek, French, or German. Entirely alone among them, he had to depend upon himself and upon the un- tender mercies of his flock for life and all its neces- sities. If they decided to kill him, there was no possibility of resistance. If they refused him food, he must starve. If he became sick or crippled, there were no nurses or doctors for him except these treacherous savages. I do not think there was ever in history a picture of more absolute loneliness and helplessness and hopelessness than the lives of these unheard-of martyrs ; and as for mere danger, no man ever faced greater.
The provision made for the support of the mis- sionaries was very simple. Besides the small salary paid him by the synod, the pastor must receive some help from his parish. This was a moral as well as a material necessity. That interest partly depends on personal giving, is a principle recognized in all churches. So at once the Spanish laws commanded from the Pueblos the same contribution to the
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church as Moses himself established. Each Indian family was required to give the tithe and the first fruits to the church, just as they had always given them to their pagan cacique. This was no burden to the Indians, and it supported the priest in a very hum- ble way. Of course the Indians did not give a tithe ; at first they gave just as little as they could. The "father's" food was their corn, beans, and squashes, with only a little meat rarely from their hunts,- for it was a long time before there were flocks of cattle or sheep to draw from. He also depended on his unreliable congregation for help in cultivating his little plot of ground, for wood to keep him from freezing in those high altitudes, and even for water, - since there were no waterworks nor even wells, and all water had to be brought considerable dis- tances in jars. Dependent wholly upon such sus- picious, jealous, treacherous helpers, the good man often suffered greatly from hunger and cold. There were no stores, of course, and if he could not get food from the Indians he must starve. Wood was in some cases twenty miles distant, as it is from Isleta to-day. His labors also were not small. He must not only convert these utter pagans to Chris- tianity, but teach them to read and write, to farm by better methods, and, in general, to give up their barbarism for civilization.
How difficult it was to do this even the statesman of to-day can hardly measure ; but what was the price in blood is simple to be understood. It was not the killing now and then of one of these noble men by
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his ungrateful flock, - it was almost a habit. It was not the sin of one or two towns. The pueblos of Taos, Picuries, San YIldefonso, Nambe, Pojoaque, Tesuque, Pecos, Galisteo, San Marcos, Santo Do- mingo, Cochití, San Felipe, Puaray, Jemez, Acoma, Halona, Hauicu, Ahuatui, Mishongenivi, and Oraibe -twenty different towns - at one time or another murdered their respective missionaries. Some towns repeated the crime several times. Up to the year 1700, forty of these quiet heroes in gray had been slain by the Indians in New Mexico, - two by the Apaches, but all the rest by their own flocks. Of these, one was poisoned ; the others died bloody and awful deaths. Even in the last century several mis- sionaries were killed by secret poison, - an evil art in which the Indians were and are remarkably adept ; and when the missionary had been killed, the Indians burned the church.
One very important feature must not be lost sight of. Not only did these Spanish teachers achieve a missionary work unparalleled elsewhere by others, but they made a wonderful mark on the world's knowledge. Among them were some of the most important historians America has had; and they were among the foremost scholars in every intel- lectual line, particularly in the study of languages. They were not merely chroniclers, but students of native antiquities, arts, and customs, - such histo- rians, in fact, as are paralleled only by those great classic writers, Herodotus and Strabo. In the long and eminent list of Spanish missionary authors
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were such men as Torquemada, Sahagun, Motolinia, Mendieta, and many others; and their huge vol- umes are among the greatest and most indispensa- ble helps we have to a study of the real history of America.
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VIII.
ALVARADO'S LEAP.
TF the reader should ever go to the City of Mexico, -as I hope he may, for that ancient town, which was old and populous when Columbus was born, is alive with romantic interest, - he will have pointed out to him, on the Rivera de San Cosme, the historic spot still known as El Salto de Alvarado. It is now a broad, civilized street, with horse-cars running, with handsome buildings, with quaint, contented folk sauntering to and fro, and with little outwardly to recall the terrors of that cruellest night in the history of America, - the Noche Triste.
The leap of Alvarado is among the famous deeds in history, and the leaper was a striking figure in the pioneering of the New World. In the first great conquest he bore himself gallantly, and the story of his exploits then and thereafter would make a fascinating romance. A tall, handsome man, with yellow locks and ruddy face, young, impulsive, and generous, a brilliant soldier and charming comrade, he was a general favorite with Spaniard and Indian alike. Though for some reason not fully liked by Cortez, he was the conqueror's right-hand man, and throughout the conquest of Mexico had generally
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the post of greatest danger. He was a college man, and wrote a large, bold hand, - none too common an accomplishment in those days, you will remem- ber, - and signed a beautiful autograph. He was not a great leader of men like Cortez, - his valor sometimes ran away with his prudence; but as a field-officer he was as dashing and brilliant as could be found.
Captain Pedro de Alvarado was a native of Seville, and came to the New World in his young manhood, soon winning some recognition in Cuba. In 1518 he accompanied Grijalva in the voyage which dis- covered Mexico, and carried back to Cuba the few treasures they had collected. In the following year, when Cortez sailed to the conquest of the new and wonderful land, Alvarado accompanied him as his lieutenant. In all the startling feats of that romantic career he played a conspicuous part. In the crisis when it became necessary to seize the treacherous Moctezuma, Alvarado was active and prominent. He had much to do with Moctezuma during the latter's detention as a hostage; and his frankness made him a great favorite with the captive war- chief. He was left in command of the little gar- rison at Mexico when Cortez marched off on his audacious but successful expedition against Narvaez, and discharged that responsible duty well. Before Cortez got back, came the symptoms of an Indian uprising, - the famous war-dance. Alvarado was alone, and had to meet the crisis on his own respon- sibility. But he was equal to the emergency. He
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understood the murderous meaning of this " ghost- dance," as every Indian-fighter does, and the way to meet it. In his unsuccessful attempt to capture the wizards who were stirring up the populace to massacre the strangers, Alvarado was severely wounded. But he bore his part in the desperate resistance to the Indian assaults, in which nearly every Spaniard was wounded. In the great fighting to hold their adobe stronghold, and the wild sorties to force back the flood of savages, the golden-haired lieutenant was always a prominent figure. When Cortez, who had now returned with his reinforce- ments, saw that Mexico was untenable and that their only salvation was in retreat from the lake city to the mainland, the post of honor fell to Alvarado. There were twelve hundred Spaniards and two thousand Tlaxcaltecan allies, and this force was di- vided into three commands. The vanguard was led by Juan Velasquez, the second division by Cortez, the third, upon which it was expected the brunt of pursuit would fall, by Alvarado.
All was quiet when the Spaniards crept from their refuge to try to escape along the dyke.
It was a rainy night, and intensely dark; and with their horses' hoofs and little cannon muffled, the Spaniards moved as quietly as possible along the narrow bank, which stretched like a tongue from the island city to the mainland.
This dyke was cut by three broad sluices, and to cross them the soldiers carried a portable bridge. But despite their care the savages promptly detected
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the movement. Scarcely had they issued from their barracks and got upon the dyke, when the boom of the monster war-drum, tlapan huehuetl, from the summit of the pyramid of sacrifice, burst upon the still night, - the knell of their hopes. It is an awe- some sound still, the deep bellowing of that great three-legged drum, which is used to-day, and can be heard more than fifteen miles; and to the Span- iards it was the voice of doom. Great bonfires shot up from the teocalli, and they could see the savages swarming to overwhelm them.
Hurrying as fast as their wounds and burdens would permit, the Spaniards reached the first sluice in safety. They threw their bridge over the gulf, and began crossing. Then the Indians came swarm- ing in their canoes at either side of the dyke, and attacked with characteristic ferocity. The beset sol- diers fought as they struggled on. But as the artil- lery was crossing the bridge it broke, and down went cannon, horses, and men forever. Then began the indescribable horrors of "The Sad Night." There was no retreat for the Spaniards, for they were as- sailed on every side. Those behind were pushing on, and there was no staying even for that gap of black water. Over the brink man and horse were crowded in the darkness, and still those behind came on, until at last the channel was choked with corpses, and the survivors floundered across the chaos of their dead. Velasquez, the leader of the vanguard, was slain, and Spaniard and Tlaxcaltecan were falling like wheat before the sickle. The second sluice, as well as
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