TUCSON
What school child reading of the Pilgrim’s landing, of Montcalm’s
Defeat, and the Revolutionary War, but thinks he is learning the
whole of America’s colonial history? Studying from text-books eastern
professors wrote about the time when the Mississippi held back the
lurking savage, he skips over the brief mention of Coronado and Cortez
as of sporadic explorers who kindly lessened home work by changing
the map as little as possible. He reads of Independence Hall in
Philadelphia, and Faneuil Hall in Boston, and the Old South Church. Yet
in the land of Coronado, the uncharted wilderness his mind pictures,
rise the white turrets and dome of a Mission beside which the Old South
is as ordinary as a country Audrey compared with a lady of St. James’
court. Who of his elders can blame him, who pride themselves on their
familiarity with the cloisters of San Marcos and Bruges, Chartres and
the ruined giant Rheims, and have heard vaguely or not at all, of the
pearl set by devout Spaniards against the blue enamel sky of Arizona
and dedicated to San Xavier?
As it lies relaxed on the tinted desert carpet, dome and tower so light
that they seem great white balloons, kept from floating away into the
vivid sky by substantial anchors of buttress and arch, compare it with
the neat smugness of our Bulfinch and Georgian meeting-houses in New
England. Even at its best, the latter style has the prim daintiness
of an exquisite maiden lady, while the Mission is like the Sleeping
Beauty, with white arm curved above her head, relaxed and dreaming.
Without claiming to speak with authority, I consider San Xavier the
loveliest ecclesiastical building in America. Certainly its obscurity
should be broken more frequently than now by pilgrimages, its outlines
as familiar in school histories as Independence Hall or Washington
Crossing the Delaware.
In its fashion this mission personifies a sort of Independence Hall of
the first Americans,--the Papagoes, who might be termed Red Quakers.
Founded in 1687 by Father Kino, a Jesuit priest of the royal house of
Bavaria, the original mission suffered from Indian rebellions, Apache
massacres, and the expulsion of the Jesuits. Abandoned for awhile,
it fell a century later to the Franciscans, who erected the present
building, which represents the almost single-handed conquest by some
eighteenth century padre of engineering difficulties which might well
baffle a Technology graduate. It became the Rheims of the Papagoes,
Christians, in their peculiarly pantheistic fashion, since the advent
of Father Kino. Mildest of all Indians, in their whole history they
went on the war-path but once,--after hostile Apaches had thrice
desecrated their loved San Xavier and murdered its priests. The Apaches
never returned.
Nine miles from Tucson, on a wide plain which the Santa Rita mountains
guard, the Mission lies cloistered, exquisite souvenir of the Moors
and Spaniards, its arched gateway a legacy from Arabia. Little Papago
huts of wattled reeds and mud, scarcely different in construction from
prehistoric cliff-dwellings, lie scattered over the plain. Out in the
sunshine, Papagoes in blue overalls and brilliant bandas mended tools
or drove a primitive plow, and the women caught the wind and the light
in billowing scarves of purple, green and red. They smiled broadly and
sheepishly at us, proudly exhibiting blinking, velvet-eyed progeny
in wicker cradles, who bore such good Catholic names as Clara, Juan,
Madelina. Some women were busy covering reeds with split yucca fiber,
intertwined with the black of the devil’s claw, a vicious curving
seed-pod which more than once had clamped about our feet in our desert
travel. Others baked round loaves in rude outdoor ovens of mud. Across
the plains, sheep grazed, and an occasional horse: the omnipresent
mongrel beloved of the Indian snarled and yapped as we drove to the
Mission doorway.
Here we stepped into another world. An Irish Mother Superior welcomed
us, her soft brogue tempered to the hushed stillness within, and
offered us trays of cold milk. Hers was the mellow presence which long
ripening in cloisters sometimes,--not always--brings. Walls four feet
thick shut out the yellow sunlight, save where it fell in dappled
patterns on the flags, or filtered through green vines covering open
arches.
[Illustration: SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, TUCSON, AND THE RAPAGO INDIAN
VILLAGE.]
The central dome of the mission roofs the nave of the church. Inside,
it lights the obscurity with a rich gleam of gold leaf, put on with
barbaric lavishness. Paintings and frescoes of Biblical stories add
to the ornate effect; painted-faced Holy Families in gauze and lace
stare from their niches unsurprised; two great carved lions of Castile,
brought in sections from Old Spain, guard the altar treasures. Rightly
did the Jesuits and Franciscans gage the psychology of their dusky
converts. Never eliminating the old religion, but grafting to it
the vigorous shoots of the new, they made it appeal to the Indian’s
love of pomp and color. Pictorial representations of the saints bridged
the gap between the two languages, and the glitter of the decadent
Renaissance style was gilded the brighter to attract the curious minds
of the red children. At least two artists of some gifts decorated the
nave, for two styles are apparent. One artist was fairly unimaginative
and conventional; the other painted with a daintier flourish his flying
angels, who float about in their curly ribbons with a Peruginian
elegance, hinting too, in their fragility, of the more perfect
creatures of Fra Angelico. Certainly, this latter artist had a touch,
but who he was or what he did so far from the studios which trained
him, I do not think is known.
The Mother Superior led us out of the church and into the courtyard
flanked by what were once cells for the resident monks, and are now
schoolrooms for young Papagoes, intoning lessons to a sharp-faced nun.
At the end of the court a graceful gateway, triple-arched, harked back
again to Old Spain, and thence more remotely to Arabia, for it is a
copy of the “camel gates,” which at sunset closed their middle arch,
and left tardily arriving camel trains to crawl through side openings.
It is a far cry from Arabia to Arizona, yet there are camels in
Arizona, too, according to a creditable account. But that story belongs
elsewhere.
Framed through low white arches of the courtyard walls, against which
clusters of china berries make brilliant splashes of color, are
exquisite pictures of emerald green pastures leading out to white
topped crests. Toward sunset these peaks turn rosy, then red; the
somber, barren hills below them become deep purple, then chilly blue.
Over the plain, mingling with the tinkle of sheep bells float the
silver notes of the chimes brought from Old Spain, and little by little
darkness falls, and the fluttering veils of the Papago women vanish
from the scene.
Tucson is perhaps the most liveable town in Arizona. It boasts several
good hotels, macadam boulevards, a railway station so attractively
designed and placed it might be taken for a museum or library, an
embryo subway, and a university. The last may account for an atmosphere
of culture not perhaps remarkable in the West, yet not always found in
a provincial town of the size.
The University of Arizona is situated in the newer part of the town.
Its buildings are of classic architecture, well proportioned, their
simple, dignified lines suited to the exuberance of nature surrounding
them. Still new, its landscape gardening has been happily planned in
a country which aided the gardener rapidly to achieve his softening
effect. The grounds boast two attractions Northern colleges must
forego, an outdoor swimming pool and a cactus garden, in which all
known varieties of cactus grown in the state are found. The University
necessarily lacks some advantages of older colleges, but it owns a rare
collection of Indian basketry and pottery. The well-known archeologist,
Prof. Byron Cummings, who was the first white man to behold the Rainbow
Bridge in Utah, in winter has the chair of archeology, and in summer
leads classes through the cliff dwellings and prehistoric ruins which
stud the Four Corners of the United States.
[Illustration: DOORWAY OF SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, TUCSON.]
The old part of the town, where lived the “first families” who settled
the district when the Apaches raided, and the “bad man” frequented
saloons, and made shootings and lynchings common in the sixties and
seventies, has lost many of its thick-walled, verandahed houses in
the face of the builder’s fervor for bungalows. The inhabitants who
remember picturesque and bloody tales of the frontier days, and even
participated in them, are still in hale middle age.
Viewing the electric lights, the neat and charmingly designed
bungalows, the tramways and excellent garages, the cretonne lined
coupés, Toby and I decided we had discovered the West too late. We had
before us only a denatured California, and were, indeed, feelingly
reminded of that fact by the increasing numbers of Native Sons we
encountered. Some of the benefits long enjoyed by the Golden State have
seeped across the boundaries, and Arizona has become canny, and in the
health resort zone which embraces Tucson has learned to add in the
climate at the top of every bill. But Arizona’s boom is but a feeble
pipe when a real Native Son begins. Some of these have, for unknown
reasons, migrated to Arizona, and whenever such an individual, male or
female, saw our sign, after the customary greeting, he opened fire, “On
your way to California?”
“No.”
Following blank astonishment, “No?”
“No.”
Recovery, “Oh,--just come from there?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“And you’re not _going_ to California?”
“No.”
“Why aren’t you going?”
“Because we want to do this part of the country.”
“But there’s nothing here but sand. Look here, you can go to California
just as well as not. You’ll get a climate _there_. You won’t have any
trouble with the roads, if that is what is troubling you. The roads
are wonderful,--nothing like here. You’ll find a live state across the
border,--only ninety miles by Yuma. A little sand--then good roads all
the way.”
“Yes, but we don’t want good roads. We want to stay in Arizona.”
A long pause, “You want to stay in Arizona?”
“Yes.”
“But California is only ninety miles away.”
“But we like Arizona better.”
Wounded incredulity. “Oh, you can’t. You’ve got sand and cactus
here,--just a blamed desert. And look at California, the garden spot
of the world. Roads like boulevards, scenery, live towns, everything
you’ve got in the East, and a _climate_! Now, I tell you. Here’s what
you do. I know California like a book, born there, thank God. You let
me plan your route. You go to San Diego, work up the coast, see the
Missions, Los Angeles, San Francisco,--say, that’s a _town_,--and then
up to Seattle. You’ll have good roads all the way.”
“Yes, but we were planning an entirely different trip. Arizona and New
Mexico, the Rainbow Bridge, then north to Yellowstone and Glacier Park.”
“Well, it’s lucky I saw you in time. You go straight to Needles,--you
can’t miss the road, marked all the way. Good-by and good luck. You’ll
like California.”
Like Jacob with the angel they wrestled with us and would not let us
go. After several such encounters, we learned to recognize the Native
Son at sight, and when he opened with “Going to California?” we would
reply, with the courage of our mendacity, “Just left.” It saved us
hours daily.