[Illustration]
Finding the Worth While
in the Southwest
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS
Author of “Finding the Worth While in California,”
“The Indians of the Terraced Houses,” etc.
_WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS_
“The Sun goes West,
Why should not I?”
_Old Song._
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
Robert M. McBride & Co.
Published May, 1918
TO
M. H. R.
Kinswoman most dear
This little volume is affectionately inscribed.
PREFACE
No part of the United States is so foreign of aspect as our great
Southwest. The broad, lonely plains, the deserts with their mystery and
color, the dry water courses, the long, low mountain chains seemingly
bare of vegetation, the oases of cultivation where the fruits of the
Orient flourish, the brilliant sunshine, the deliciousness of the pure,
dry air—all this suggests Syria or northern Africa or Spain. Added to
this are the remains everywhere of an old, old civilization that once
lived out its life here—it may have been when Nineveh was building or
when Thebes was young. Moreover, there is the contemporary interest of
Indian and Mexican life such as no other part of the country affords.
In this little volume the author has attempted, in addition to outlining
practical information for the traveler, to hint at this wealth of human
association that gives the crowning touch to the Southwest’s charm of
scenery. The records of Spanish explorers and missionaries, the legends
of the aborigines (whose myths and folklore have been studied and
recorded by scholars like Bandelier, Matthews, Hough, Cushing,
Stevenson, Hodge, Lummis, and others) furnish the raw material of a
great native literature. Painters long since discovered the fascination
of our Southwest; writers, as yet, have scarcely awakened to it.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Santa Fe, the Royal City of St. Francis’s Holy Faith 1
II The Upper Rio Grande, its Pueblos and Cliff Dwellings 20
III Roundabout Albuquerque 43
IV The Dead Cities of the Salines 56
V Of Acoma, City of the Marvellous Rock; and Laguna 68
VI To Zuñi, the Center of the Earth, via Gallup 82
VII El Morro, the Autograph Rock of the Conquistadores 93
VIII The Storied Land of the Navajo 102
IX The Homes of the Hopis, Little People of Peace 116
X The Petrified Forest of Arizona 130
XI Flagstaff as a Base 137
XII The Grand Cañon of the Colorado River in Arizona 150
XIII Montezuma’s Castle and Well, Which Montezuma Never Saw 162
XIV San Antonio 176
XV In the Country of the Giant Cactus 188
XVI Southern California 204
A Postscript on Climate, Ways and Means 222
Index 227
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
An Acoma Indian Dance 72
Laguna, the Mother Pueblo of Seven 73
Bead Maker, Zuñi Pueblo 82
A Street in Acoma Pueblo 83
Old Church, Acoma Pueblo 88
A Sunny Wall in Zuñi 89
Casa Blanca or White House 116
El Morro or Inscription Rock, N. M. 117
In the North Petrified Forest 135
A Corner in Santa Fe, N. M. 136
Old Governor’s Palace, Santa Fe, N. M. 162
Montezuma’s Castle 163
San José de Aguayo 184
San Xavier del Bac, Arizona 185
CHAPTER I
SANTA FE—THE ROYAL CITY OF SAINT FRANCIS’S HOLY FAITH
Someone—I think it was that picturesque historian of our Southwest, Mr.
Charles F. Lummis—has summed up New Mexico as “sun, silence and adobe;”
and of these three components the one that is apt to strike the Eastern
newcomer most forcibly is adobe. This homely gift of nature—hard as
brick in dry weather, plastic as putty and sticky as glue in wet—is the
bulwark of the New Mexican’s well-being. His crops are raised in it; he
fences in his cattle with it; he himself lives in it; for of it are
built those colorless, square, box-like houses, flat-roofed and eaveless
which, on our first arrival in New Mexico, we declared an architectural
abomination, and within a week fell eternally in love with. An adobe
house wall is anywhere from two to five feet thick, a fact that conduces
to coolness in summer, warmth in winter, and economy at all seasons.
Given possession of a bit of ground, you grub up a few square yards of
the earth, mix it with water and wheat chaff, and shovel the mixture
into a wooden mold. You then lift the mold and lo! certain big, brown
bricks upon the ground. These the fiery New Mexican sun bakes hard for
you in a couple of days—bricks that are essentially the same as those of
ancient Babylon and Egypt, and the recipe for which (received by the
Spanish probably from their Moorish conquerors) is one of Spain’s most
valued contributions to America. Old Santa Fe was built entirely of this
material, and most of latter day Santa Fe still is, though there is a
growing disposition on the part of the well-to-do to substitute burned
brick and concrete.
As a rule these adobe dwellings are of one story, and the more
pretentious are constructed partly or entirely about an inner court,
such as in Spain is called a _patio_, but in New Mexico a _plazita_,
that is, a little plaza. A cheerful sanctuary is this _plazita_, where
trees cast dappled shadows and hollyhocks and marigolds bloom along the
sunny walls. Upon it the doors and windows of the various rooms open,
and here the family life centers. By the kitchen door Trinidad prepares
her _frijoles_ and chili, while the children tease her for tidbits; upon
the grass the house rugs and _serapes_ are spread on cleaning days, in
kaleidoscopic array, and beaten within an inch of their lives; here, of
summer evenings Juan lounges and smokes and Juanita swings in the
hammock strumming a guitar, or the family gramophone plays “La
Golondrina.”
Comparisons are always invidious, but if there be among the cities of
the United States, one that is richer in picturesqueness, in genuine
romance, in varied historic, archaeologic and ethnologic interest, than
Santa Fe, it has still I think to make good its claims. The distinction
of being the oldest town in our country, as has sometimes been claimed,
is, however, not Santa Fe’s.[1] Indeed, the exact date of its founding
is still subject to some doubt, though the weight of evidence points to
1605. Nor was it even the original white settlement in New Mexico. That
honor belongs to the long since obliterated San Gabriel, the site of
which was on or near the present-day hamlet of Chamita, overlooking the
Rio Grande about 35 miles north of Santa Fe. There in 1598 the conqueror
of New Mexico, Don Juan de Oñate (a rich citizen of Zacatecas, and the
Spanish husband, by the way, of a granddaughter of Montezuma)
established his little capital, maintaining it there until the second
town was founded. To this latter place was given the name _La Villa Real
de Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís_—the Royal City of Saint Francis of
Assisi’s Holy Faith. Naturally that was too large a mouthful for daily
use, and it was long ago pared down to just Santa Fe, though Saint
Francis never lost his status as the city’s patron. In point of
antiquity, the most that can justly be claimed for it is that it is the
first permanent white settlement in the West.
The situation of Santa Fe is captivating, in the midst of a sunny,
breeze-swept plain in the lap of the Southern Rockies, at an elevation
of 7000 feet above the sea. Through the middle of the city flows the
little, tree-bordered Rio de Santa Fé, which issues a couple of miles
away from a gorge in the imposing Sierra Sangre de Cristo (the Mountains
of the Blood of Christ), whose peaks, often snow-clad, look majestically
down in the north from a height of 10,000 to 13,000 feet. The town is
reached from Lamy[2] by a branch of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railway, which climbs due north for 18 miles through an uninhabitated
waste dotted with low-growing piñon, juniper and scrub. At the station a
small army of bus, hack and automobile men greet you with enthusiasm,
and to reach your hotel you have only the choice of them or your own
trotters, for street cars there are none. In Santa Fe, however, no place
is far from any other place—the population is but a scant 8500. Of these
a large percentage is of Spanish blood, and Spanish speech and Spanish
signs engage your attention on every hand.
The hub of the city is the Plaza—warm and sunny in winter, shady and
cool in summer. Seated here on a bench you soon arrive at a lazy man’s
notion of the sort of place you are in. Here the donkeys patter by laden
with firewood—dearest of Santa Fe’s street pictures; here Mexican
peddlers of apples and _dulces_, _piñones_ and shoe-strings ply their
mild trade, and Tesuque Indians, with black hair bound about with
scarlet _bandas_, pass by to the trader’s, their blankets bulging with
native pottery, or, in season, their wagons loaded with melons, grapes,
apples, and peaches. Of afternoons the newsboys loiter about crying the
papers, and you have a choice of your news in English or Spanish; and on
Sundays and holidays the band plays athletically in its little kiosk,
the crowd promenading around and around the while very much as in Old
Mexico, and strewing the ground behind it with piñon and peanut shells.
Close to the Plaza, too, cluster many of the historied spots of Santa
Fe; indeed, the Plaza itself is a chief one. On this bit of ground it is
confidently believed that Oñate must have camped in 1605—if it was
1605—when the capital was transferred from San Gabriel; and there is no
doubt whatever that here was the seething center of the famous Pueblo
revolt of 1680, when 3000 infuriated Indians cooped the entire Spanish
population of Santa Fe within the Governor’s Palace opposite, and kept
them there for a week. Then the whites made a brave sortie, caught and
hanged 50 Indians in the Plaza and escaped to Old Mexico—their exit
being celebrated shortly afterwards in this same Plaza by the Indians’
making a bonfire of all Spanish archives and church belongings they
could lay hands on. Here 13 years later came De Vargas, the re-conqueror
of New Mexico (bearing it is said the very standard under which Oñate
had marched in the original conquest), and with his soldiers knelt
before the reinstated cross. And it was in this Plaza in 1846, during
our Mexican War, that General Stephen Kearny ran up the Stars and
Stripes and took possession of the territory in the name of the United
States. It was the Plaza, too, that formed the western terminus of the
Old Santa Fe Trail—that famous highway of trade that bound New Mexico
with Anglo-Saxondom throughout the Mexican regime in the Southwest and
until the iron horse and Pullman cars superseded mules and Conestoga
wagons. At the old adobe hotel known as La Fonda, a remnant of which
still stands at this writing just across from the southeast corner of
the Plaza, travelers and teamsters, plainsmen and trappers found during
half a century that boisterous brand of cheer dear to the pioneer
soul—cheer made up quite largely of cards, _aguardiente_ and the freedom
of firearms, but gone now, let us trust, out of the world forever since
the world has lost its frontiers.
Facing the Plaza on the north is the ancient _Palacio Real_ or
Governor’s Palace—a long, one-storied adobe building occupying the
length of the block, and faced with the covered walk or portico (they
call such a _portal_ in New Mexico) which in former years was a feature
of every building of importance in Santa Fe. Within its thick walls for
nearly three centuries the governors of New Mexico resided—Spaniards,
Pueblo Indians, Spaniards again, Mexicans and finally Americans.[3] In
1909 the building was set aside as the home of the Museum of New Mexico
(since removed to a handsome edifice of its own in the New Mexico style
of architecture across the street), and of the School of American
Research.[4] Some careful restoration work was then done, necessary to
remove modern accretions and lay bare certain interesting architectural
features incorporated by the original builders, such as the handwrought
woodwork, the fireplaces, doorways, etc., so that the edifice as it
appears today is outwardly very much as it must have looked a century or
two ago. The festoons of dried Indian ears, however, which are said to
have been a rather constant adornment of the _portal_ in old times, are
now, to the relief of sensitive souls, humanely absent. Within, the
Palace is a mine of information for the curious in the history,
archaeology and ethnology of our Southwest, and a leisurely visit to it
makes a useful preliminary to one’s travels about the State. The
building is open to all without charge.
A short block from the Plaza is the Cathedral of San Francisco, whose
unfinished trunks of towers are a prominent feature in Santa Fe’s low
sky-line. You may or may not get something from a visit to it. It is a
modern structure, still incomplete, built upon and about an older church
believed to date from 1622. Beneath the altar reposes all that is mortal
of two seventeenth century Franciscan missionaries to the New Mexico
aborigines. Of one of these, Padre Gerónimo de la Llana, I cannot
forbear a word of mention. He was a true brother of Saint Francis, and
for many years ministered lovingly to the Indians of the long since
ruined pueblo of Quaraí, a place of which more later. At Quaraí he died
in 1659, and his body was interred in the old church there whose walls
still stand, one of the most striking ruins in New Mexico. To his
Indians he was no less than a saint, and when (under attacks from
Apaches, doubtless) they abandoned their pueblos about 1670, they bore
with them what remained of their dear _padre santo_ to Tajique, a pueblo
some 15 miles distant, and buried him there. But in those days Apaches
never ceased from raiding, and from Tajique, too, some years later,
those Pueblo folk were forced to flee—this time across the rugged Sierra
Manzano to Isleta on the Rio Grande. That was a journey of too great
hardship, I suppose, to admit of carrying the now crumbled padre with
them; so he was left in his unmarked tomb in a savage-harried land, to
be quite forgotten until 85 years later (in 1759) pious old Governor F.
A. Marin del Valle heard of him. A search was speedily set on foot and
after a long quest the bones of Padre Gerónimo were found, brought to
Santa Fe, and becomingly once more interred. Then, alas! the poor
brother dropped out of mind again until in 1880, when during some work
upon the new Cathedral, the discovery of an inscription set in the wall
121 years before by Governor del Valle led to the finding of the grave.
I think you will be interested to read the quaint Spanish epitaphs of
this fine old friar, and of his companion, too, Padre Asencio de Zárate,
sometime of Picurís pueblo. They may be found behind the high altar,
which hides them.
Also in the Cathedral, it is believed, rests the mortality of Don Diego
de Vargas, _el Reconquistador_, but unmarked. You will find many an echo
of him in Santa Fe, for he it was who in 1692 re-conquered New Mexico
for Spain after the Pueblo uprising of 1680 had swept the Spaniards out
of the province and for twelve years kept them out. Every year in June
Santa Fe celebrates its De Vargas Day, when a procession, bearing at its
head an image of the Virgin, marches from the Cathedral to the little
Rosario Chapel that is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary (or as Santa
Féans sometimes call her, _La Conquistadora_, the Lady Conqueror). It
occupies the spot, on the city outskirts, where according to tradition
De Vargas knelt on the eve of his second entry into the capital
(December 16, 1693), and invoking the blessing of the Virgin upon his
arms, promised her a chapel if she vouchsafed him victory on the morrow.
It is a scant half-hour’s stroll thither from the Plaza, and you will
enjoy the walk through the city’s half foreign scenes, though the
building itself is disappointing because of its handling by tasteless
renovators. Much more picturesque, though modernized with an astonishing
steeple, is the little church of Guadalupe, standing amid Lombardy
poplars on the south bank of the river. A quiet, reposeful, little
temple, this, with beautifully carved ceiling beams and a curious, if
crude, altar-piece representing the appearances of Mexico’s Heavenly
Patroness to Juan Diego.
Of the churches in Santa Fe, however, the one that is made most of by
visitors, is the square-towered adobe of San Miguel. It is a pleasant
twenty-minute walk from the Plaza (and, by all means, do walk when you
go, for the way thither is too picturesque to be whisked over in an
automobile)—through quiet, unpaved streets lined with one-storied adobe
houses and often too narrow to accommodate any but a mere thread of
sidewalk, where you bump into burros and, like as not, have utter
strangers tip their hats to you with a _buenos dias, señor_. You pass
the Bishop’s sequestered gardens and the high-walled grounds of the
Convent and Academy of the Sisters of Loretto, with glimpses through a
postern gate of old-fashioned flower beds; and further on, the touching
little cemetery of the Sisters, each simple grave marked by a cross
whereon vines and fragrant flowers lean lovingly; and so, on stepping
stones, to the south side of the little Rio de Santa Fe. Then mounting
the hill past more gardens where hollyhocks—_la barra de San José_ (St.
Joseph’s rod) the New Mexicans call them—nod at you over the walls, and
children prattle in Spanish and women sing at their work, there you are
before old San Miguel.
Your first feeling is a bit of a shock, for the renovator’s hand has
fallen heavily upon San Miguel and, frankly speaking, it is a rather
hideous old church as viewed from the street. When, however, you have
rung the sacristan’s bell and a Christian Brother from the adjoining
Catholic college has come with the keys to usher you within, you pass in
a twinkling into the twilight heart of the Seventeenth Century. Here are
blackened, old religious paintings said to have been carried by the
Conquistadores as standards of defense in battle; a wonderful old bell
inscribed with a prayer to St. Joseph and bearing an all but illegible
date that looks surprisingly like 1356, and maybe it is; a charming old
wooden cross-beam supporting the _coro_, or choir gallery, its color
mellowed by time and its surface carved with rude but beautiful flutings
and flourishes by some long-vanished hand of the wilderness; and so
on—all delightfully embellished by the naïve expositions of the kindly
Brother who acts as cicerone. And do not leave without a glimpse through
the side door of the sunny quiet garden close, that lies between the
church and the college building. As to the age of San Miguel, there has
been much misinformation given—claims of its dating from 1543 being
quite groundless. The known fact is that it was established as a chapel
for the Mexican (Tlascalan) Indians who were part of the original Santa
Fe colony. It therefore dates from some time on the hither side of 1605.
In 1680 it suffered partial destruction in the Pueblo uprising, though
its walls survived; and, after some repairs by order of De Vargas, it
was finally restored completely in 1710, by the Spanish governor of that
time, the Marquis de la Peñuela. The record of this fact inscribed in
Spanish upon the main beam of the gallery is still one of the
interesting “bits” in the church. Probably it is safe to call San Miguel
the oldest existing building for Christian worship in the United States.
If you are in a hurry you may “do” Santa Fe and its immediate environs
in a carriage or an automobile in a couple of days, and departing
secretly think it a rather overrated little old place. To get into the
atmosphere of it, however, you should drop hurry at its gates and make
up your mind to spend at least a week there, and longer if you can.
Lounge in the Plaza and watch the ebb and flow of the city life that
gathers here; drop into the Indian trading stores and get a taste for
aboriginal art. White man’s schooling has brought about of late years a
decline in the quality of Indian handicraft, but there is still a lot of
interest in these Santa Fe curio shops—Navajo and Chímayo blankets,
Pueblo pottery, Navajo silver jewelry, Apache baskets, moccasins,
bead-work, quaint tobacco pouches, Spanish and Mexican things—_serapes_,
_mantillas_, rusty daggers, old silver snuff boxes—and what not. Mount
the hill at the city’s northern edge, and sit on the ruined walls of the
old _garita_ (where the Mexican customs used to be levied upon imports
by the Santa Fe Trail). There you get a magnificent bird’s-eye view of
the city in its mountain fastness, and if the day be waning you will
have a sunset for your benediction, long to remember. Extend your
rambles sometimes to the outskirts for unadvertised sights—the little
ranches with their outdoor threshing floors of beaten earth where in
August you may see the wheat tramped out by horses, sheep or goats, and
winnowed by tossing in the breeze; _paisanas_ washing their linen on
stones by the brookside as in Italy or Spain; and the gaunt _descansos_
or crosses of rest, marking stopping places of funerals, and carving in
illiterate Spanish scrawled upon the wood, prayers for the repose of
departed souls. If you are fortunate enough to have a little Spanish,
your enjoyment will be enhanced by stopping at humble doorways for a bit
of chat with Juan Bautista the woodchopper, or Maria Rosalía the
laundress. You will be civilly welcome, if you yourself are civil, and
be handed a chair, if there be one, and will be refreshed to learn
something of the essential oneness and kindliness of the human family
whether clothed in white skin or brown. It is this pervading air of Old
Worldliness that makes the peculiar charm of Santa Fe for the leisurely
traveler—its romance and its history are not altogether hidden away in
books, but are an obvious part of its living present.
Moreover, Santa Fe is the starting point for numerous interesting
out-of-town trips. These are story for another chapter.[5]