always wet with the most precious fluid on earth. In the bowl human
hearts smouldered. Black-robed wizards, their faces painted black with
white rings about eyes and mouth, their hair matted with blood, their
faces raw from constant self-torture, forever flitted to and fro,
keeping watch by night and day, ready always for the victims whom that
dreadful superstition was always ready to bring. The supply of victims
was drawn from prisoners taken in war, and from slaves paid as tribute
by conquered tribes; and it took a vast supply. Sometimes as many as
five hundred were sacrificed on one altar on one great day. They were
stretched naked upon the sacrificial stone, and butchered in a manner
too horrible to be described here. Their palpitating hearts were offered
to the idol, and then thrown into the great stone bowl; while the bodies
were kicked down the long stone stairway to the bottom of the great
mound, where they were seized upon by the eager crowd. The Mexicans were
not cannibals regularly and as a matter of taste; but they devoured
these bodies as part of their grim religion.
It is too revolting to go more into detail concerning these rites.
Enough has been said to give some idea of the moral barrier encountered
by the Spanish 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 blackness
would be to us; and the struggle to make him understand was one of the
most enormous and apparently hopeless ever undertaken by human teachers.
Before the missionaries could make these savages even listen to--much
less understand--Christianity, they had the dangerous task of proving
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 speaking
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 Spanish missionaries proved to the Indians that
human sacrifice was a human mistake and not the will of "Those Above."
It was a wonderful achievement, just the uprooting of this one, but
worst, custom of the Indian religion,--a custom strengthened by
centuries of constant practice. But the Spanish apostles were equal to
the task; and the infinite faith and zeal and patience which finally
abolished human sacrifice in Mexico, led gradually on, step by step, to
the final conversion of a continent and a half of savages to
Christianity.
VII.
THE CHURCH-BUILDERS IN NEW MEXICO.
To 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 formidable 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 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 wildernesses 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 Mexico 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; 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 combined, 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 forget. 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 Francisco 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,
1598, by the ten missionaries who accompanied Juan de Onate, the
colonizer. It was a small chapel at San Gabriel de los Espanoles (now
Chamita). San Gabriel was deserted in 1605, when Onate founded Santa Fe,
though it is probable that the chapel was still occasionally used. In
time, however, 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 foundations 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 Fe 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 Fe, and in
an appalling wilderness), Taos (as far north), San Yldefonso, 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 Zuni, 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 Chyanahue is still
beautifully preserved; and in the same period they had taken foothold
two hundred 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
1629 by Fray Antonio de Arteaga; and the same brave man, in the same
year, founded another at the pueblo of Nuestra Senora 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
Ascencion de Zarate 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 Fe 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 mission, 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 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 Abo, Tenabo, and Tabira
(better, though incorrectly, known now as The Gran Quivira). The
churches at Cuaray, Abo, and Tabira 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 Tabira 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[16] 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 hundred 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
is strangely fascinating to all who love that lonely heroism which does
not need applause or companionship 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 furniture, 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 missionary proceeded first to Santa Fe. His superior
there soon assigned him a parish; and turning his back on the one little
colony of his countrymen, 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 untender mercies of his
flock for life and all its necessities. 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 missionaries 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 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 humble 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 distances in jars. Dependent wholly
upon such suspicious, 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 Christianity, 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 his
ungrateful flock,--it was almost a habit. It was not the sin of one or
two towns. The pueblos of Taos, Picuries, San Yldefonso, Nambe,
Pojoaque, Tesuque, Pecos, Galisteo, San Marcos, Santo Domingo, Cochiti,
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
missionaries 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 intellectual line,
particularly in the study of languages. They were not merely
chroniclers, but students of native antiquities, arts, and
customs,--such historians, in fact, as are paralleled only by those
great classic writers, Herodotus and Strabo. In the long and eminent
list of Spanish missionary authors were such men as Torquemada,
Sahagun, Motolinia, Mendieta, and many others; and their huge volumes
are among the greatest and most indispensable helps we have to a study
of the real history of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Pronounced Tah-_hee_-ky.
VIII.
ALVARADO'S LEAP.
If 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 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 remember,--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 discovered 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 garrison 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 responsibility. But he was equal to the emergency. He
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 reinforcements, 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
divided 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.
[Illustration: CHURCH, PUEBLO OF ISLETA.
_See page 163._]