FATHER RAMÍREZ AT ÁCOMA
_Though an host of men are laid against me, yet shall not my
heart be afraid; and though there rose up war against me yet
will I put my trust in Him._—PSALM 27.
Having first escorted Father Romero and Muñoz to the “bellicose and
warlike Apaches” to the east, Governor Silva prepared to conduct the
friars assigned to Ácoma, Zuñi, and Moqui. This, too, was enemy country,
and soldiers were taken along. Governor Silva was evidently proud of
his part in the re-establishment of the faith in the west, for on his
way both to and from Zuñi, he carved his name on Inscription Rock (July
29 and August 9, 1629), where it is still plainly to be seen. Silva’s
zeal for the faith is shown likewise by his deeds in Zuñi. There he
issued an edict that no soldier should enter any house of the pueblo,
nor transgress by ill-using the Indians, under forfeit of his life.
“Moreover, to make these people understand the veneration due to the
priests, wherever they met with Indians, the governor and soldiers knelt
to kiss the feet of the fathers, admonishing them to do likewise, which
the Indians did; so much as this the example of a Superior can achieve.”
From Santa Fé a cavalcade of thirty soldiers filled with a spirit of
high adventure, fully armed, and mounted on good horses gay with the
trappings of that period, set forth on June the twenty-third, 1629. Perea
writes that the soldiers were well armed in body, but the eight friars
were “much better armed in spirit.” Four hundred extra cavalry horses
followed close. Behind came ten wagons on which were loaded all the
essentials of food, munitions, and church equipment for such a journey.
They took the desert trail, marked out through the ages by the unshod
feet of the Indian himself—a trail we of to-day must likewise follow
almost as blindly since everywhere its course is blurred by drifting
sand. Watchful and wary of ambush, but stirring up great clouds of dust,
the cavalcade crossed the Rio Grande, and continued its way southwest. In
due time the weary hundred miles or more were covered, and the Peñol was
reached.
To their relief the Spaniards were given a friendly welcome. Probably the
spectacle of such a force, and a still potent memory of the tragedy of
the Crag in Oñate’s time caused the Ácomas to reflect, and to conclude
that, for the moment at least, discretion was the better part of valor.
The friendly reception was gratifying, for as Perea wrote, “by force or
by siege it would appear to be impossible to enter the place because of
its impregnable site. It is a cliff as high as Mt. Amar in Abasia or the
insuperable steep which Alexander won from the Scythians.”[76]
Governor Silva and his party continued west. At the Crag Father Ramírez
“remained at the avowed peril of his life—though this had been already
surrendered in sacrifice unto God—among these so-valiant Barbarians who
had on other occasions fought so well that the Spaniards knew to their
sorrow the courage and skill of their opponents.”
Born at Oaxaca, in the valley of Antequera, Juan Ramírez had taken holy
orders in the famous convent of Mexico. There his zeal in religious
teaching had brought him distinction, so “that he shed lustre upon the
Province” and was chosen to go with others of his Order to New Mexico in
1628. Vetancur expressly says that the march was made on foot over the
greater part of the six hundred leagues of the wild country, and that
because the supplies for their maintenance, furnished by the Crown, were
insufficient, “he and the other Religious lived upon what was given them
in charity along the way.”
When Father Ramírez heard that the fiercest and most rebellious of all
the tribes were those upon the Peñol at Ácoma, he besought the custodian
to be sent thither. This intrepid priest believed himself so endowed with
grace of heaven that he could succeed where during forty years Spanish
arms had failed. The legend is that he ascended the cliff, though with
great difficulty, having no other defence than his breviary and his
cross, and that so soon as he was seen by the savages, they pelted him
with enough arrows to destroy a dozen men, but not one even pierced his
habit—a thing so strange that even his would-be murderers thought it a
miracle and were sore afraid. Moreover, it happened that a little girl
of eight years was accidentally pushed over the brink in the tumult of
the riotous savages on the summit, and fell among the cruel rocks sixty
feet below. Ramírez went to her, knelt beside her, and prayed over her,
and soon led her quite unharmed up to her amazed kinsfolk, who received
her with fond caresses. Now they looked upon the Father as one more than
human and soon became his disciples. History does not always sustain the
poetic overlay of fact, for in this case the records say positively that
Ramírez was escorted to the Peñol by Governor Silva.
A second quaint story of a “Religious” who can be no other than Ramírez
is told by Benavides. The Father, after recounting his own success among
the Indians of Taos, writes as follows of the Crag of Ácoma, at that time
apparently hostile to the invading Spaniards:
Returning, then, [once more] to the location of the Queres
nation,—[after] proceeding twelve leagues to the westward
of its last pueblo, Santa Ana, one arrives at the Peñol of
Ácoma which has occasioned the loss of so many lives of
Spaniards and Indian friends, both on account of its being
a sheer impregnable rock cliff, and because of the valor of
its inhabitants, who probably number two thousand souls. Last
year, 1629, God granted that we should convert them to peace,
so that to-day they have a Religious who is instructing them
in the Christian faith and baptizing them. And the Lord has
confirmed with a miracle the virtue of this holy Sacrament of
Baptism. It was thus: A year-old infant was already breathing
its last in the arms of its mother, who was even now mourning
it for dead. The Religious who was there teaching them, said
to her that if she loved her daughter so much she should let
her be baptized so that if she were to die she would enjoy
eternal glory in Heaven. And even though the mother was a
heathen, she believed the Father and begged him to baptize her
child. To this the Religious assured her, “Then have faith,
daughter, since this baptismal water is quite able to revive
your daughter.” And sprinkling it upon her and repeating the
words, a marvellous thing happened, for the child immediately
sat up well and sound, and took to her mother’s breasts. She
turned very smilingly and cooingly toward the Father, showing
by her actions her gratitude for the good he had done her since
she was too young to talk. Thereupon all those Indians were
confirmed to the Faith, and by devotion soon learned to pray
in order that they might be baptized. May God be praised for
everything.[77]
Some may discredit the two miracles of the children as treasured by the
Church; but others feel it to be equally miraculous that the personality
and ingenuity of one solitary human being could disarm the ferocity and
suspicion of barbarians such as these, win their confidence, make them
obedient to his teachings and induce them to adopt a better mode of life.
For in these things we have every reason to believe he succeeded so long
as he lived among them.
One wishes there were some vivid personal picture of this courageous
priest. The quaint phrase of the old chroniclers is too apt to convey
an idea of an elderly, grave, and wholly pious padre. But I suspect
that any man daring enough to undertake and carry through so hazardous
an adventure as this of Fray Juan was certainly in the prime of life. I
see him a lithe, muscular, forceful figure, resourceful in emergencies
and always fearless. We need not question nor minimize his zeal to save
souls if we also believe him gifted with a large share of practical
common sense, alertness to seize upon and adapt unusual incidents as they
offered, and a firm will that would impress and even awe the Indians.
A man in such circumstances must know a great deal besides the liturgy
and the confessional. Most of the Spanish priests were men of affairs in
one sense or another. They knew how to wield tools and guns as well as
the censer and the bell. They were adepts in a score of ingenious useful
ways of making life tolerable in the wilderness. How else could they have
endured the life there or taught their neophytes new methods of carrying
on improved horticulture, church building, and the like? Father Ramírez,
like other missionaries in this wild land, thought no danger too great,
no labor too mean or too arduous, no sacrifice too momentous, if only the
high purpose of civilizing and converting those entrusted to his charge
was achieved. All of them understood well that the first step toward
winning the confidence of these children of the forest and the desert was
to provide for their bodily welfare; and we may take for granted that
Father Ramírez was solicitous to give them more food and to teach them
how to use their natural resources to better advantage, even while he
was learning their language. Then would they in gratitude repay him by
repeating the prayers taught them and allow themselves to be “catechized
and baptized” as the chronicler tells us was the case. After a time, he
went down from the Crag, attended by his flock, apparently to visit some
of the other fathers at their posts. They, thinking he must long since
have met his death, were amazed to see these ferocious Ácomas changed
from “lions to meek sheep.”
We are next told that Father Ramírez built a great church on the top of
the mesa and enriched it with many decorations. Can we not visualize the
slow and laboring procession of moccasined men and boys coming painfully
up those difficult paths with loads of heavy adobe, and with huge timbers
from San Mateo Mountain to build their wonderful church? Fortunately
the Spanish padres allowed these new-found neophytes to combine in the
mission churches their own form of house-building with _motifs_ brought
from Spain. Consequently we find complete harmony in the simple lines of
the massive structures with their natural environment.
Dedicated as was the shrine on this bleak rock-island to St. Stephen,
we should like to think it had been consecrated in memory of the early
martyr whose stoning is described in the sixth and seventh chapters of
the Acts of the Apostles. Surely it would have been a fitting memorial;
but it is definitely stated that the patron saint of Ácoma was that King
of Hungary named for Stephen the Martyr, and canonized by Benedict the
Ninth because he had converted the Magyars from paganism to Christianity.
A monument which bears Ramírez’s name to-day is the roadway that he
caused to be constructed for easier access to the plain below. Down the
“Camino del padre” the visitor to-day may watch the burros go every
morning, to return at nightfall after a long day’s patient labor.
So the years wore on, twenty or more, years which we may picture among
the Ácomas as perhaps the most peaceful in their whole history since the
Discovery. Then, because of enfeebled age, the wise and good father was
carried back to Old Mexico and put into an infirmary to end his days, as
it was thought, in ease. But the old man yearned after his children and
could not be comforted. “Rivulets of tears coursed over his cheeks” as
he thought on the days of his active service among them. With prayer and
the Mass he filled his time as best he could, until, “full of years and
virtues he died in the year 1664 on the 24th of July, and was buried in
the Convent of Mexico.”[78]
In so many of the lonely places of service given by men like Fray Juan
a daily record was kept of what went on about them and of their own
progress with the Indians in their charge. None such has ever come to
light written of Ácoma. Is it possible that Fray Juan did not beguile his
infrequent leisure with any such jotting down of events? Will not some
one in some fortunate future day make the longed-for discovery of the
record of Ramírez’s life upon the Crag of Ácoma?