ROUNDABOUT ALBUQUERQUE
Albuquerque is the metropolis and trade heart of central New Mexico, and
the talk of its solid citizens runs naturally on cattle and wool, mines
and lumber, grapes and apples and the agricultural glories of the Rio
Grande valley. The average tourist gives it only the half-hour during
which the train stops there, and remembers it mainly for the noteworthy
Harvey Indian collection at the station (a liberal education, by the
way, in the handicraft of the Southwestern aborigines) and for the
snap-shots he tried to take (and was foiled in) of the picturesque
Pueblo pottery sellers on the platform.[18] In itself, indeed, the busy
little city has not a great deal that is distinctive enough to interest
tourists excepting the Spanish quarter known as Old Albuquerque, on the
outskirts—a picturesque survival of the Hispanic regime. There stands
the old church dedicated to the city’s patron saint, San Felipe. As a
base to visit certain other places, however, Albuquerque is very
convenient. For instance, there is the pueblo of Isleta, 12 miles south.
It is from Isleta that many of the pottery makers come whom you see
offering their wares on the railway platform at Albuquerque, and a
pleasant day may be put in rambling about the streets of the pueblo,
chatting and trafficking with the hospitable people, who are a very
wide-awake, independent sort of Indians. You may go thither by train; or
you may drive (a much better way), following the west bank of the Rio
Grande, and enjoying the beauty of a typical bit of rural New Mexico,
now austere and sun-scorched, now relenting in vineyards, fields of corn
and lush alfalfa, and orchards of apple and peach, sandwiched between
sleepy little Mexican villages smothered in trees and old-fashioned
flowers. Much of New Mexico is as foreign in aspect as Spain, and the
flat-roofed, eaveless ranch houses, low and rambling, with enclosed
plazitas, and high-walled corrals adjoining, into which the teams are
driven at night and the gates shut to the outer world, bring to you the
atmosphere of Don Quixote or Lazarillo de Tormes. Architecturally,
Isleta differs widely from the orthodox pueblo type, its houses being
usually of one story and extended over a liberal area, as must needs be
to shelter its thousand or so of people. They are quite up-to-date
farmers, these Isleteños, and the pueblo is as busy at harvest time as a
beehive, what with fruit drying, corn husking, and alfalfa baling.[19]
Their homes are generally neatly kept, often adorned within with
bright-colored blankets, pretty water ollas, and the whitewashed walls
hung with pictures of Virgin and saints—impressing you as homes of a
thrifty and well-doing race. Indeed these people are reputed the richest
of all the Pueblos. It is, I believe, a matter of record that in 1862,
when a detachment of the United States army was stranded penniless in
New Mexico, an Isleta Indian loaned it $18,000 cash, simply taking the
commander’s receipt as evidence. After waiting patiently for twelve
years for the government to have the politeness to return the money
without being asked for it, and hearing nothing, he and the governor of
Isleta, accompanied by the local United States Indian agent, made a trip
to Washington to see about it. Through the personal interest of
President Grant, the money was at last returned.
On August 28, St. Augustine’s Day, occurs the annual public fiesta, with
the usual open air Indian dances after mass in the church. The large
circular _estufa_, or native ceremonial chamber, entered by a ladder let
down through an opening in the roof, is a conspicuous feature of the
pueblo. You will find such places, in one form or another, in all the
Pueblo villages, and in the Cliff Dwellers’ towns. They were originally
used as the sleeping apartments of the men. Nowadays the men sleep at
home, but the _estufas_ are still resorted to by them as a sort of
club-room or lounge when religious ceremonies are not going on inside.
Despite membership in the Roman Catholic Church the average Pueblo’s
main hold on the unseen that is eternal is through his primitive pagan
faith, whose rites he still practices. Entrance to the _estufas_ is not,
as a rule, readily granted to white people, and should never be
undertaken without permission first obtained. As a matter of fact, there
is on ordinary occasions nothing to see but a dimly lighted chamber with
bare floor and walls, and a small, boxed-in fire-pit near the base of
the ladder.
To the big old adobe church of Saint Augustine in the center of the
pueblo, there attaches a queer legend sure to delight the traveler whose
interest is less in historical verities than in the fanciful flights of
the human mind. I refer to the tradition of the Rising of Padre
Padilla’s Coffin. Among the Franciscan friars who accompanied Coronado
on his famous march to what he called Quivira—the country of the Wichita
Indians in Kansas—was Padre Juan de Padilla. This intrepid servant of
God (when Coronado turned homeward), remained with two lay brothers on
the Kansas plains with the view of Christianizing those Indians. The
outcome of the matter was that he was killed by them on November 30,
1544. Now tradition has it that somehow in the heavenly ordering, the
body of the martyred padre got miraculously transferred from Kansas to a
place under the church altar at Isleta; and it is firmly believed (and
the belief is backed up by the circumstantial testimony of solid
citizens) that periodically the coffin, which is a section of a hollowed
cottonwood trunk, rises plainly to view in the church, disclosing to
whomsoever may then be present, the padre rather mummified but still in
his black whiskers. To prove it there are people who will show you bits
of his gown nipped off surreptitiously by eye-witnesses and preserved as
precious amulets.[20]
Northward from Albuquerque for 40 miles, the beautiful valley of the Rio
Grande contains much of appeal to the student of history and of Indian
life. That is the region called in the chronicle of Coronado’s
expedition, the Province of Tigüex (pronounced _tee-wesh_); and here
that doughty conquistador spent his first New Mexican winter (1540-41)
at a pueblo now vanished, in the neighborhood, it is believed, of the
picturesque town of Bernalillo[21] 17 miles north of Albuquerque. It was
a winter so marked with wanton deeds of deviltry by the soldiery towards
the peaceably disposed natives, that the whole region was soon seething
in revolt—but helpless revolt because of the guns and horses of those
profligate swashbucklers, who disgraced the Christianity they professed.
Several pueblos are still extant in that stretch. There is Sandia, a
moribund little place 10 miles from Albuquerque, and within walking
distance of Alameda Station on the railway, but hardly worth the trip.
North of Bernalillo a couple of miles is a summer pueblo, Ranchitos de
Santa Ana (the little farms of Santa Ana), occupied during the growing
season by Indians whose home pueblo, Santa Ana, is a dozen miles to the
northwest in a virtual desert overlooking the saline flats of the Jemes
River. Thither they go to dwell in winter and eat up the crops raised in
summer beside the great river. In the same direction 13 miles beyond
Santa Ana (25 from Bernalillo) is the important pueblo of the Jemes
(_Hay´-mes_) Indians, about 500 in number.[22] The village is
beautifully situated at the mouth of San Diego Cañon. Its public fiesta
is held on St. James’s Day, November 12, and is much attended by
Americans, Mexicans, Pueblos, Navajos and Apaches. The region nearby is
sprinkled with ruins of old pueblos which are the subject of
considerable literature of the antiquarian sort. A capital and reliable
popular article on the Jemes Indians by Mr. A. B. Reagan, appeared in
the April, 1917, issue of “El Palacio,” the journal of the
Archaeological Society of New Mexico. A few miles before reaching Jemes
the traveler passes the once powerful, but now small pueblo of Sia
(_See-a_), with a population of barely 100. Its decline is attributed in
part to remorseless inter-killing on suspicion of witchcraft, a sort of
superstition that the Pueblos, unlike ourselves, have not yet outgrown.
Its festival is on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady,
and is attended by many visiting Indians, especially Navajos, who give
it a special tinge of picturesqueness. From Albuquerque Jemes may be
reached directly by auto-mail stage which passes the pueblo and then
proceeds 13 miles further to Jemes Springs postoffice in San Diego
Cañon. Near this place are some medicinal springs of local repute—iron,
soda and sulphur—and a modest hotel of the country sort. The stage
leaves Albuquerque daily except Sunday, and if you do not mind a bit of
roughing it, the trip (about 50 miles to Jemes pueblo) will be an
experience to talk about.
Continuing up the Rio Grande from Bernalillo, you next come (10 miles
from Bernalillo, or 3 from Algodones Station on the Santa Fe) to the
pueblo of San Felipe at the foot of a long, black, treeless mesa on the
west bank of the river. Its fine, white Mission church, dating back some
200 years, is a prominent sight from the car windows of Santa Fe trains.
The ruins of a previous church and pueblo of the San Felipeños are
visible on the summit of the mesa, and a climb to them will reward you,
at least with a fine view of the Rio Grande valley. San Felipe’s
principal public fiesta is held May 1.
Another dozen miles up the river—but now on the east side—is the pueblo
of Santo Domingo, whose 800 Indians are about the most set-in-their-ways
of any in New Mexico. This conservatism serves, however, to make their
Green Corn Dance (held on August 4, the feast day of their patron Saint
Dominic), of especial worth, because the ceremony has been comparatively
little debased by the hybrid innovations which are spoiling many of the
native rites of the Pueblos. There are some preliminary ceremonies the
afternoon before, which it is interesting to view. The pueblo is easily
reached, as it is but a couple of miles from Domingo station on the
Santa Fe railway. The visitor is forewarned that there is a particularly
strong objection at Santo Domingo to picture-taking and cameras are
blacklisted. Even artists of the brush have been ejected from the
village. In passing, it should be stated that the dances of the Pueblos
are not jollifications as among white people, but religious
ceremonials—expressions of thanksgiving to their supernal protectors for
blessings received and prayers for favors to come, as rain and bountiful
crops. Santo Domingo is famous for its beautiful pottery—a heavy ware,
but remarkable for an almost Greek grace of form, adorned with geometric
designs in black on pink or creamy white.
Still ascending the Rio Grande, you reach (by a pleasant drive of 10
miles from Domingo Station) the pueblo of Cochití (_co-chee-teé_), where
the ethnologist Bandelier once lived for a time, and studied the race he
came to know so well. It has more the appearance of a Mexican village
than of an Indian pueblo, for the houses are generally of one story and
detached one from another. The people, too (there are about 250), seem
more or less Mexicanized, but are hospitable and good-natured. The local
tradition is that it was the ancestors of the Cochiteños who occupied
the cliff dwellings of the Rito de los Frijoles. One who is robust
enough for horseback tours may secure a guide at Cochití and ascend to
that wild and beautiful region by immemorial trails through a rugged
mountain country dotted with ruins of several former homes and shrines
of the Cochití people, who in prehistoric times seem to have been
confirmed wanderers. The principal public fiesta at this pueblo occurs
on July 14, Saint Bonaventure’s Day, and is well worth attending, though
I know of no especial features distinguishing it. Pottery is made here,
too—some of it of a queer type running to animal forms, corpulent and
impossible. Both Cochití and Santo Domingo may be readily visited in one
day, if arrangements are made in advance through the Santa Fe agent at
Domingo. They are equally easy of access from Santa Fe and Albuquerque.