lace and red muslin, more or less ragged and dirty. On either side of
the altar, facing each other, hung crosses bearing wooden figures of
Christ crucified. These also were about half life size, and were naked,
except that one had a piece of cotton twisted about the loins, and the
other had a short skirt of dirty tarletan, suggesting the ballet. These
effigies were painted a dull white, and hung in the most agonizing
attitudes,--suffering intensified by the long-drawn lines of the haggard
faces, the slant of the eyes, and the dropping of the lower jaw. To
produce a more horrible representation still, the carver had given the
forms extreme emaciation, the ribs standing apart, the abdomen sunken,
the bones and cords of all the limbs dreadfully prominent. Add to this
cadaverous appearance a network of red streaks tracing the principal
veins, and great splashes and runlets of blood, and you have an image
awful beyond conception. Besides these large models, there was a little
one of the same style, which I should have been tempted to have
sacrilegiously stolen, had not the keeper been watching me closely; and
in several niches, small, tinsel-clothed puppets, which the man told me
were San Francisco, Patron of the Church, and our Lady of Guadalupe, who
heads the list of sanctified virgins in all the Mexican churches.
Standing in these little holes in the half-whitewashed wall of mud,
under their ragged little curtains, the corporal's guard of saints
looked very forlorn; and I do not wonder the peasants refuse to go into
the building after dark, no matter how fast they may mumble their
prayers.
More interesting than the images were some silken and fringed banners,
decayed almost to shreds, and the spear-points of their staves
well-rusted, which once belonged to the Spanish soldiery; for this
church is one of the oldest in the new world. Centuries have rolled over
its adobe walls, and its roof of closely-set logs and adze-carved
brackets, has echoed to the clank of men in armor, as well as to the
chant of half-Indian farmers and shepherds. It is rude and ugly and
barbaric, representing a phase of Christianity in some respects far
worse than the simple religion those Indians over at the Pueblos thought
good, a thousand years ago. But the little church is not to be despised,
and the awe-struck faith of its miracle-loving parishioners may be more
acceptable than the gilded worship of many a rich and learned
congregation nearer the sea.
VIII
EL MEXICANO Y EL PUEBLOANO.
Then they descended and passed through the luxuriant yellow plains,
the sunset blazing on the rows of willows and on the square
farm-houses with their gaudy picture over the arched gateway, while
always in the background rose the dark masses of the mountains, solemn
and distant, beyond the golden glow of the fields.--WILLIAM BLACK.
Home just in time from Ojo Caliente, we hooked our cars the same evening
to the never-tiring express, and trusted ourselves to its guidance
without a thought of danger. When daylight had fully come, and from the
"purple-blazoned gateway of the morn" the sun was begging entrance at
our curtained windows, somebody--I think it was the Photographer, a man
utterly without nervousness or regard for it in others--startled all our
tranquil slumbers by the shout, "_Comanche!_"
It was not Indians though--only a respectable sort of cañon, with great
black walls, and rugged hills wedged apart by the stream, and the train
hanging invisibly half-way betwixt top and bottom, always going in and
out of nooks and gulches, always gliding down nearer the water, until
finally, between strange farm-fields, the noble Rio Grande came in view,
and once more we ran upon a level track. Emerging from Comanche Cañon, a
bend to the southward is made along the western bank of the lower part
of the cañon of the Rio Grande. In many portions of this narrow valley,
only about twenty miles in length, features of great interest to the eye
occur, equaling the walls of Comanche, which was itself ignored until
the railway brought it to light. The river here is about sixty yards
wide, and pours with a swift current troubled by innumerable fallen
rocks. To-day it is swollen and yellow with the drift of late rains, but
in clear weather its waters are bright and blue, for it has not yet
soiled its color with the fine silt which will thicken it between Texas
and Mexico.
On the opposite bank, near the level of the river, runs the wagon road
that General Edward Hatch, formerly commander of the department of New
Mexico, cut some years ago to give ready communication between his
headquarters at Santa Fe and the posts in the northern part of the
Territory and in southern Colorado. This is the track now followed by
all teamsters, but the old road from the south to Taos ran over the
hills far to the eastward, passing through Picuris.
An odd conical hill (shown in our engraving) stands near the mouth of
the cañon, dividing the current of the river. Noticing its resemblance
to a funnel, the Mexicans called it Embudo, and the adjacent station
takes the same name. Embudo is chiefly important as the point of
departure for Taos, thirty miles distant.
While breakfast was preparing we were interrupted by the sudden
apparition at the side-door of our car of two long ears, then a
forehead, bulging by reason of the bushy hair that covered it, and
immediately afterward the neck and shoulders of a donkey. But if you say
_donkey_ down here few comprehend you. The proper word is _burro_
(boó-ro). This animal bore upon his round back a small saw-buck saddle,
from each side of which hung a square panier of wicker-work. These
paniers were not nailed, but the willow sticks of which they were made
were bound into place by thongs of rawhide. On top, between them, was
lashed a third square basket, which would hold a half-bushel. Though
this seemed very bulky, it really was a light load for the little beast,
and he stepped along briskly ahead of the wrinkled old Mexican who owned
him. Shining through the wicker receptacles we saw green rinds, and sang
out,--
"Melones?"
"Si, Señor," came the husky answer, whereupon the burro was seized by
the tail and brought very willingly to anchor. Slipping several of the
sticks out of their leather-loops, half a dozen long yellow specimens,
something between a melon and a cantaloupe, were held up for our
inspection. We hammered them with our knuckles, testing their soundness,
and finding some to suit, enquired the cost,--
"Cuanto pide vm. por estos melones?"
"Dos realles!" (two shillings) was the reply; so we bought three at an
outlay of seventy-five cents.
They proved muskmelonish and somewhat tough, but by no means bad. There
seems to be no reason why much better melons should not be raised, since
the conditions are favorable and every farmer does more or less at it.
This question _why_ served to spice our chat at luncheon. It was
ultimately concluded that the continued degeneracy was due to the fact
that all the good ones were stolen and eaten, only the very poorest
being left to mature their seeds; thus the worst, instead of the best,
were used to propagate from. I recite this, to show the thoughtful
reader that we are not always frivolous, but often introduce grave
themes into our discourse, and discuss them in a philosophic way.
Attaching ourselves to the locomotive of a working train, after the noon
repast, we were hauled down the valley three miles, and given an
opportunity to watch the men repair track that had been lately torn to
pieces by water, two or three culverts having been swept out and the
road-bed completely uprooted. The hills at that point slanted down to
the river in a long treeless sweep, sown so thickly with boulders of
basalt, from the size of a bushel to that of a barrel, that even the
sagebrush could find scanty footing between. Down this long slope,
from the mountains behind, had come one of those raging precipitations
of unmeasured rain to which the West has given the expressive name
"cloudburst." Truly, when one of these incidents of Rocky Mountain
meteorology occurs, "the windows of heaven are opened." To such a
torrent the natural rip-rap opposed a very slight obstacle. The heavy
and closely packed rocks were lifted and rolled and hurled headlong as
though they had been a child's marbles. Wherever any earth or mere
gravel was met, it was plowed up and dashed away in a moment, while as
for the railway bed, its embankments were demolished, its cuttings
filled, and such heaps of stones piled upon its distorted track in some
places that no attempt was made to dig it out, but new rails were laid
in a different spot. They were rough and irregular enough, but we went
safely over. Against these cloudbursts no railway in this region can
provide; and there is nothing to be done but rebuild as quickly as
possible. The skill, energy and marvelous speed with which the section
men do this, and the character of the temporary track over which they
run their trains until a better one can be constructed, excite the
surprise of every one. Railroading in the West is as unlike the similar
pursuit in the Atlantic States as a Colorado silver shaft is a contrast
to a commonplace granite quarry.
[Illustration: NEW MEXICAN LIFE.]
We had observed on the further side of the river, where the flat lands
were continually widening between the stream and the hills, signs of
Mexican habitancy, and at the washout discovered a chapel of the Society
of the Penitentes, into which the flood had broken a great gap near the
foundation. It was a rude little house of mud, but well plastered
within, and perhaps had been intended as a dwelling in former days.
Creeping in through the breach, we found no furniture, but a pile of a
dozen or more wooden crosses, which had been carried there by the doers
of penance at Easter. The smallest of these crosses was more than ten
feet in height, and its beams at least six inches in diameter. As to the
heaviest, I doubt if I could have lifted it fairly from the ground. Yet
the poor sinners had managed to get them across their shoulders, and so
had dragged them hither, with many pains of outward penance and fearful
flagellations of conscience, but with rich reward of pride before
earthly eyes, and promises of glory in the world to come. From where
they had been brought, or by whom, there was no record; but their ends
were worn diagonally to a sharp wedge by long scraping over the stony
soil. In addition to these were several small crosses of lath, which had
been borne by the priests, typically; some tin and wooden candle
holders, curious little lanterns, and one of those rude religious
portraits on woods, which are so common throughout this section, and
which are preserved reverently among the Mexicans for generations.
The Penitentes are a sect within the Church, which the priests are said
to have been discouraging. Perhaps this has had some effect, for the
custom is in decay, a result due more to the railway than to the
cathedral, I fancy. During the greater part of the year the Penitentes
sin and are sinned against like other people, but in the spring they
atone for it by wearing coarse clothes under a sort of sacrificial robe,
and by torturing and starving themselves nearly to death. Walking in
processions, masked beyond recognition, enduring constant castigations
from each other, bearing over the roughest roads and across country the
heavy crosses we have seen, and with the "pride that apes humility"
enduring the utmost suffering, they consider themselves to have laid in
a stock of grace sufficient to over-balance all possible crime during
the coming twelvemonth. The practice has a long history, but amounts to
an American survival of the Flagellants of Europe.
A few miles below, the Mexican farms and orchards became more frequent,
the little settlement of Joya was noticed, Plaza Alcalde passed by, and
the wide, fertile plain of San Juan opened to our view. Skirting the
western edge of this (for the river keeps close under the high bluffs on
that side), we ran five or six miles, until a triangular parting in the
bank opened to the westward, where we halted on a side-track near the
old adobe village, but new railway station, of Chamita. The Rio Chama
flows into the Rio Grande here, and a broad valley area is the result.
The whole of this, which is easily irrigated, is under tillage, and just
now looking its best. It is therefore a green and prosperous landscape
we gaze upon, bounded by reddish benches which the setting sun brightens
into splendor, and shut in by blue, lofty, cloud-capped hills, beyond
which stand the guardian summits of snowy ranges.
Up the Rio Chama cultivation extends almost uninterruptedly for many
miles, and there are several villages or _plazas_. Chamita itself is on
this side--a cluster of scattered houses along the bluff through which
the railway has made a deep cut. The top of this ridge commands a fine
view up and down the Rio Grande, and there idle figures of Mexican or
Indian are always to be seen watching for the train or studying the
movements of almost invisible people on the other side of the valley.
Draped in black, for the most part, motionless and immovable, they
remind one irresistibly of Poe's picture:--
"And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door."
This point, as I have intimated, is in the midst of the civilization of
northern New Mexico. Twenty-five miles up the Chama stands the large
town of Abiquiu, an important place in old times; nearer by another
plaza, Cuchillo, is a farming center. Not far away, in the Rio Grande
valley, are San Juan, Santa Cruz and Española, the latter on the western
bank of the river and the present terminus of the railway line
southward, whence stages depart regularly for Santa Fe.
A Mexican farmhouse or "ranch" looks like a small fort, and makes a very
pleasing picture, as you may observe in our sketch. It is square, rarely
more than one story high, is built of mud, and roofed with immense round
rafters, the ends of which protrude irregularly beyond the wall, because
the builders have been too indolent to saw them off. Over these
rafters,--above the line of which the wall extends a few inches,--are
laid some boards or a stratum of poles, and upon these dry earth is
spread a foot or more deep, with rude gutters arranged to carry away the
water. In the course of two or three seasons, such a roof will have
caught a supply of wind-sown seeds, and support a plentiful crop of
grass and weeds, which is no disadvantage. This novel result is
interfered with somewhat, however, by the habit of using the roofs of
the houses (reached by a short ladder) as a place for drying fruit and
sunning grain, and for a general lounging spot, whence a better view of
what is occurring in the world,--the going and coming of the neighbors,
the planting or gathering of the crops, the approach of a
stranger-horseman, or the movements of the cattle on the benches,--can
be obtained, than a seat on the ground affords. As the train dashes by,
the passenger notices two or three women and children standing on each
housetop, shading their eyes with their brown hands, and making an
unconscious _pose_ irresistibly alluring to an artist.
On a line with the front of the house a wall will probably extend a
little distance in each direction, and then backward, enclosing a garden
and diminutive orchard. Everything is square. The idea of a curve seems
rarely to enter the Spanish-Indian mind. For graphic effect, this is
highly gratifying, since the bends in the river, the rounded outlines of
the mountains, the undulations of foliage, are all in curves, to which
the angular lines of the buildings present a most pleasing contrast.
Now and then you will see a better house--one whitewashed outside, and
having a balcony running around the second story. The outbuildings, in
any case, are only a few mud huts, used for storage, and some rough pens
where the animals are kept. Anything like the barns of an Eastern farmer
is unknown.
The isolated dwelling, however, is largely a modern innovation. The
general plan is to live in compact, block-like villages, surrounded by a
wall, or what amounts to that. This results partly from the need in
early days of united protection against the Indians, but chiefly from
following the traditional custom of their red ancestors; for the New
Mexican of to-day is a half-breed, or a mongrel of some degree between
the Spaniard who "came over with the conqueror" and the Indian of
whatever tribe happened to be accessible. Remote from civilized
influences, the common people have tended always toward barbarous ways,
and are more Indian than Spanish, albeit the dialect they speak is not
so far removed from the Castilian as one would expect. There are local
differences and idioms, of course, which are at once noticeable; but the
usual tongue is not very bad Spanish.
Though Mexican hamlets and farms are scattered everywhere about here, in
the fertile valleys, there is a class of towns along this part of the
valley of the Rio Grande which are primarily Indian, and situated upon
reservations each ten miles square, secured to them by the government.
Each of these present villages, now commonly known by a Spanish name,
was the site of an ancient native pueblo, and the fields which were
deeded to them by the United States are those their fathers cultivated
before the white men appeared at all. Some, however, yet retain their
Indian names, as Taos, Picuris, Pecos, Pojuaque, Acoma and Tesúque. San
Juan, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and others have been given
new names by the conquerors and priests. South and west of Santa Fe lie
many other pueblos, some of them very populous, as Jemez, Zia, Santo
Domingo, and San Felipe. In all of them substantially the same sort of
life is found, and as it is impossible for me to cover the wide
territory they embrace, the reader must be content with the type of the
whole to be seen here at Pueblo San Juan. It is a phase of humanity and
conduct rapidly passing away--melting under the steady sun of modern
progress; and the traveler who does not take an early opportunity to
study it will miss not only that which is extremely interesting and
suggestive, but what in a few years will become a matter of history and
romantic tradition.
Here at Chamita the river is divided by a large, flat island into two
branches, each perhaps a hundred yards in width. Over the first one, at
the time of our visit, stood a good bridge, built by the railway
company; a second bridge had spanned the other branch until the high
water carried it away. Formerly there had been a ferry, but the boat
was out of order, and nobody cared to repair it, for could not the
stream be forded?
[Illustration: A PATRIARCH.]
In the cool of the evening the whole party went down to the river bank,
trusting to good fortune for transportation. Thus challenged, good
fortune stood by us in the person of a citizen and his broncho.
Chartering the latter, the Artist, his sketching haversack slung over
his shoulder, mounted, and then the Madame was invited to ascend, the
pillion being a shawl thrown over the horse's haunches. When there she
declared she could not stay--would certainly slip off the Gothic back of
the beast the instant he moved.
"Then take it Anna Dickinson fashion," remarked her unfeeling spouse;
whereupon there was a frantic lurch, a twinkle of crimson suspected to
be hosiery, and a cheery "All right!" to let us know she was ready to
brave the passage. The landing was safe, and then the patient horse
returned and repeated the fording until we all were across.
But our peace of mind, or our _amour propre_--which is much the same
thing--was disturbed by a suspicion that we were being laughed at, for a
party of Mexican women from Chamita came down to the brink while we were
there, and, chattering merrily over our slow and undoubtedly ludicrous
progress, unconcernedly pulled off their shoes and stockings, gathered
their skirts in a bunch about their waists, and gaily waded through as
though in contempt of our fear of water and the conventionalities.
The large island was gravelly and liable to be inundated, so that it was
given over to the pasturage of sheep, goats, cattle, horses and donkeys.
On the eastern bank we found ourselves at once in the midst of grain
fields and garden plats. Tall Indian corn alternated with short wheat,
hay and alfalfa, or patches of potatoes, melons and vegetables. Fences
were few, but the road was defined by a line of upright brush, bound
into cohesion by withes of bark, so that it resembled a thoroughly dead
hedge. Here and there stood a _casa chiquita_, but the main town was on
the bluff marking the old bank of the river, half a mile from its
present current.
[Illustration: MAID AND MATRON.]
_Pueblo_ in Spanish simply means "a village." When the first explorers,
Cabeça de Vaca, Coronado and the early lieutenants and friars whom
Cortez sent northward, in search more of gold than geography, penetrated
what is now New Mexico and Arizona, they everywhere found Indians more
or less nomadic, but the larger part of the natives belonging to a
different class, and living in settled communities of permanent houses.
To these the Spaniards naturally gave the name of "village," or "pueblo"
Indians, which, by a common process of lingual change, has become
shortened into Pueblos, though Puebloans is a far better word. Their own
tribal names have disappeared except in a few cases, such as the Zuñis
and the Moquis, and the Spanish word covers all Village Indians
distinguished from the roving Apaches, Mojaves and Utes, that surround
them and centuries ago wrested from them much of their former territory.
At present there are in all New Mexico but nineteen towns of the Village
Indians, whose aggregate population in 1880 was only 10,469, as follows:
Taos 391
San Juan 408
Santa Clara 212
San Ildefonso 139
Picuris 1,115
Nambé 66
Pojuaque 26
Tesuque 99
Sochiti 271
San Domingo 1,123
San Felipe 613
Jemez 401
Silla (_or_ Zia) 58
Santa Aña 489
Laguna 968
Isoleta 1,081
Sandia 345
Zuñi 2,082
Acoma 582
Ascending the high bank along a road greatly gullied by the rains, we
found ourselves in a large group of houses, each of which was joined to
its neighbor as continuously as in a city block, but only one story
high; or if there was a second story, it did not come out flush with the
front wall, but was ten or fifteen feet back, the roof of the lower
story serving as a portico to the upper floor, which was reached by an
outside ladder.
These dwellings were built of mud bricks, called _adobes_, and in many
cases the floors were lower than the level of the street--a matter of
small concern, since the door-sill was so high as to shut out any water
which might be running outside. Mixing in a little broken straw, rough
blocks about twice the size of ordinary bricks are moulded, dried
somewhat in the sun, and laid up in the form of a wall. Space is left
for a door and some small holes for windows, quite high up. That is
about all there seems to be of it, yet the inexpert find it not so easy
to build a "doby" as they supposed. The consistency of the clay must be
right, and I am told the wall must be laid so that the blocks somewhat
brace each other by beveled sides, or else the great weight which rests
on the top, otherwise wholly unsupported, will cause the middle of the
wall to bulge. That these ancient houses stand so plumb and uncracked
shows how proficient the Indians are at this peculiar architecture; and
ought they not to be, for did not they invent it?
All the buildings are smoothly plastered outside and in. This is done
some weeks after they are built, and after they have thoroughly dried.
To obtain the necessary material for the outer "stucco" coat, the floor
of the interior of the unfinished house is dug up and mixed with water
until it becomes a soft paste. Then it is taken by the handful, dashed
against the unchinked adobes, and spread smoothly with the palms, just
as a town mason would use a trowel. The women do all this, and I
remember surprising three damsels, as pretty as the New Mexican
peasantry have to show, down on their knees and up to their elbows in
seal-brown mud, plastering the new house, while father and mother were
busy in the fields.