Chapter IX: Santa Fe and the Sacred Valley

Ages are made up
Of such small parts as these, and men look back,
Worn and bewilder'd, wond'ring how it is.
--JOANNA BAILLIE.

I have referred to Española as the southern terminus of the railway. From this point, however, another company is actively engaged in constructing a line to Santa Fe, a distance of thirty-four miles by the survey, and its prospective early completion will afford a direct and desirable connection with the ancient capital. At present the communication is by means of stages, which run in conjunction with the trains, and, not being restricted in the matter of grades, accomplish the trip in about twenty-five miles. The journey is interesting, and is made comfortably.

Santa Fe claims the distinction of being the oldest town in the United States, a claim that is readily admitted when we consider that it was a populous Indian pueblo when the first Spaniards crossed the territory now known as New Mexico, less than forty years after the discovery of the western continent by Columbus. The earliest European who penetrated this region was Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, a Spanish navigator, whose vessel was wrecked on the coast of Texas in 1528, and who, with three of his crew, wandered for six years through the plains and mountains, until finally he joined his countrymen under Cortez in Mexico. His report of the section through which he passed led to an expedition, in 1539, by Marco de Niça, a Franciscan friar, who was frightened away by the Indians, and returned to Mexico with a marvelous account of the extent, population and wealth of the country, the magnificence of its cities, and the ferocity of its people. In 1540 the famous expedition of Vasquez de Coronado passed through the pueblo where Santa Fe now stands, crossed the range, and traversed the plains until he came to the Missouri river, at a point probably near the present site of Atchison or Leavenworth. In 1581, Friar Augustin Ruyz, with one companion, reached a village called Poala, a few miles north of Albuquerque, where they were killed by the Indians. Antonio de Espejo came with an expedition, in 1582, to seek Ruyz, and discovered Zuñi, Acoma and other pueblos. In 1595 Juan de Oñate founded a colony near the junction of the Rio Chama with the Rio Grande, in the immediate vicinity of Española. It was about this date that a Spanish settlement was formed in Santa Fe, and the church of San Miguel erected. In 1680 there was a great uprising of the natives, who entirely drove out the Spaniards, and obliterated as far as possible all evidences of their occupation, dismantling, among other buildings, the old church. Twelve years later they were reconquered by Diego de Bargas. From that time to the present Santa Fe has had an eventful career. The Mexicans, in 1821, declared their independence of Spanish rule, and after that there were numerous insurrections, until the occupation of the territory by the United States, in 1846. Then came the War of the Rebellion, in 1861-65, in the course of which Santa Fe was captured by the confederates, and recaptured by the Union forces.

During all these years Santa Fe has changed its character but little, and is to-day, in general appearance, very much the same old Mexican town that it has been for nearly three hundred years. There is the same broad plaza, with the same adobe buildings nearly all the way around it; the same one-story houses, surrounding the same plazitas; the same suburban fields and gardens; and the same swarthy, dark-eyed population, still speaking the musical Spanish tongue. Wood is still brought into town on the backs of burros, and by this conveyance can be left inside the dwellings. Among the other objects of attraction to the stranger, are the governor's palace; the ruins of old Fort Marcy, on a bluff, from which is had a fine view of the city; and the extensive and beautiful garden of Bishop Lamy. The famous chapel of San Miguel, the oldest in America, still rears the same mud walls that have stood for three centuries, and internally is well preserved and in presentable shape. It has no exterior beauty and no interior magnificence, its only interest being in its age and the sacred uses for which it has been kept up during almost the entire period of American civilization. On a great beam, as plain as if made but yesterday, is the Spanish inscription, traced there one hundred and seventy-four years ago, to the effect that "The Marquis de la Penuela erected this building, the Royal Ensign Don Augustin Flores Vergara, his servant, A.D. 1710." Original documents show that this refers to its restoration after the wood-work was burned by the rebel Indians. A dark picture of the Annunciation, on one side of the altar, bears on its back a notation, seemingly dated A.D. 1287, leading to the belief that it is one of the oldest oil paintings in the world. By the side of the church is a two-story adobe house, which tradition says was in existence when Coronado marched through the town. The neighborhood of Santa Fe is rich in precious stones, including turquoise, bloodstone, onyx, agate, garnet and opal. The manufacture of Mexican filigree jewelry, largely carried on here, will be found interesting. The work is done by natives, to whom the trade has been handed down by their ancestors, who derived it from the Italians. The primitive Spanish records of the aborigines of all tropical America say that there were "no better goldsmiths in the world;" so that the Indian blood mixed in the veins of most of the modern artisans may have increased their skill.

But even quaint old Santa Fe is catching the spirit of the age, and now boasts a colony of northern residents, cultivated society, and many handsome structures, among which are a new hotel, a large public hospital built of stone and brick, a Methodist church, Santa Fe Academy, and San Miguel College. The tendency of this innovation will be to rapidly dissipate the aroma of antiquity and sentiment which has hitherto attached to the town's romantic history.

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On the return northward, our cars were again set out at Embudo, the gentlemen of the party having determined not to omit from this itinerary the Taos pueblos, possibly the most antiquated, and certainly the best preserved of all, and whose people are still awaiting with pathetic patience the returning Montezuma, who shall restore their pristine glory, and the kingdom that stretched from river to sea. When questioned as to her desires, the Madame did not advance the staple feminine excuse, a council with the dressmaker, but boldly proclaimed her aversion to the thirty-mile equestrian trip. So we left her behind reluctantly, with many injunctions to our _chef de cuisine_ and still more trustworthy railway friends.

After no little wrangling, a sufficient number of spiritless quadrupeds were procured from the natives, and we turned our faces to the north. And right here let me advise the reader who may hereafter contemplate this pilgrimage, to address, in ample season, Mr. Henry Dibble, Fernandez de Taos, New Mexico, who will undertake to have a team in waiting at Embudo, thus saving the traveler much time and even more bad Spanish. The ride was thoroughly enjoyable, and formed a fitting prelude to the novel experiences that followed. I have said "ride," though the statement is not altogether exact, since we took pity,--and largely from necessity,--on our miserable under-sized and under-fed ponies and ourselves, and walked a full third of the distance. Occasionally we passed small Mexican villages, which seemed as peacefully asleep in the afternoon sunshine as we could ever have pictured them. Flocks of ugly yellow-spotted goats, attended by dusky urchins in scanty attire, browsed on the near hill-slopes. Over the eaves of almost every one of the low adobe houses hung great ropes of red peppers,--the _chili colorado_ of the Mexican,--that gave the one brilliant dash of color to a perspective whose tones were otherwise the most subdued. Not unfrequently, however, an entire family would be seen ranged along in a row on the shady side of the house, the women generally dressed in gay colors, solid red, blue, or green, and all as silent as the scene on which they looked. But for the dogs, these hamlets might have passed for the ruins they appeared. The _caretta_, or great, clumsy, two-wheeled cart, and the plow made of a pointed stick, were here and there reposing before the abodes, not seeming like implements of daily use, but as appropriate details in the worn-out landscape.

To pick one's way through Taos valley, even by daylight, might be a task; in the darkness, which at length overtook us, success was a lucky chance. The very populousness of the locality was against us. How many times we took the divergent road and brought up against the fence of some ranchero's threshing-floor; or crossed the stream _not_ at the ford; or engaged in a broil with some awakened native who persisted in misunderstanding our gesticulated inquiries, may never be related. The houses, too, were a mystery. To find the front door of the rectangular heap of mud; to determine in what part of its cavernous recesses the inmates might now be residing; or to decide whether, after all, it was not the stable, taxed our ingenuity and tempers through several hours of that memorable evening. Finally, in the plaza of a great communistic ranch-house, that covered an area half as large as a city block, we managed to secure the services of a _muchacho_, who preceded us on horseback, and led us into one of the narrow and crooked streets of Fernandez de Taos, where we soon found the hostelry of "Pap" Dibble.

Taos valley is widest near its head, where the several streams that form the river issue from the Culebra range. About the center of the fertile expanse lies the old Mexican town of Fernandez de Taos, with a present population of 1,500. Two miles northeast of it, and under the shadow of Taos mountain, stand the two great buildings known as the Pueblo de Taos, and inhabited by about 400 Indians. Three miles south of Fernandez lies still another Mexican village, named Ranchos de Taos, in contrast with whose adobes the traveler finds a newly-erected flouring mill. The middle settlement has the greatest commercial importance, and is likewise possessed of considerable historic interest. Here was the seat of the first civil government of the territory by the United States, after it had been acquired as a result of the Mexican war of 1846. Here Bent, the first governor, was killed in the revolt of the following year, and the ruins yet remain of the old church on whose solid mud walls the howitzers of the troops could make no impression, and from which the band of insurgent Indians and Mexicans were only finally dislodged by means of hand-grenades. The widow of the murdered governor still lives in her modest adobe, and shows to visitors the hole in the wall made by the fatal bullet. Fernandez de Taos was likewise for years the residence of Colonel Kit Carson, and in the walled graveyard at the edge of town his body is buried.

All this and much more is communicated the following morning by the genial Dibble, who fills our idea of what a host should be. For twenty years has he lived in this quiet valley, among an alien people, leaving it only once for a trip to Santa Fe, content to preside over his curious aggregation of rambling adobes, and make each chance guest feel himself under paternal care.

But to us the great interest centers in the Indian carnival at the pueblo, which is to occur on the morrow. On the last day of September of each year the Taos Indians celebrate the festival of their patron saint, San Geronimo (the Spanish St. Jerome), by ceremonies altogether unique, and which few Americans have as yet witnessed. Some hours are still at our command, in which to study the country in its every-day aspect, and we early start out in the direction of the pueblo. Already the roads converging toward the old stronghold show signs of the assembling throng. Little bands of Indians, gaily blanketed and with uncovered heads, who have walked from pueblos perhaps fifty miles away, driving before them shaggy burros, with many-shaped packs; and Mexican fruit-vendors, their trains of donkeys laden with well-filled wicker baskets, form the vanguard of the unique procession. The valley across which we pass is all under cultivation, and the ground is now covered with the yellow stubble, while along the roadside we come upon the regulation threshing-places.

The Pueblo de Taos consists of two great mud buildings (of the larger of which an engraving is given) facing each other from opposite banks of a stream, and perhaps two hundred yards apart. They rise to a height of about fifty feet, and seem to have attained their present size by accretions during the ages since they were founded. They are of an irregular pyramidal form, and made up of about five stories or terraces. Each new story is built a distance from the edge of the one immediately beneath, so that both the length and breadth of the building diminish as the height is increased. To enter the rooms we must ascend one of the many ladders that lean against the wall, and then descend another ladder through a hole in the roof. Everything was quiet and silent about this great human wasps' nest. Nude children tumbled on the ground in the warm rays of the sun; men strolled lazily hither and thither, their bodies wrapped in gaudy blankets and legs encased in close-fitting sheepskin leggings, while to their hair, black as jet and brought down in a lock on each side, hung great bunches of zephyr or other gay material; women, dressed in much the same manner, carried on their heads the earthen water-jars, or large baskets of bread, which had been baked in the oval mud ovens ranged in front of the pueblo. Everybody treated us with quiet respect, and seemed pleased to respond to our salutations. We climbed over one of the ancient piles, mounting to its topmost story on shaky ladders, peering into its rooms, which we were courteously invited to enter, and where we found sometimes as many as a dozen Indians sitting on the floor, engaged in adding some last touches to the holiday garments. We saw few young men, but afterwards learned that they were in the _estufas_, or underground council-chambers, preparing for the next day's spectacle.

To give anything like an adequate account of the festival would require a small volume. Early on that resplendent September morning the human tide began to pour in, till, from our position on the summit of the north pueblo, we looked down to the plaza below on a surging mass of fully three thousand Indians and Mexicans, in every gay and fantastic garb. The fruit-vendors had established themselves in scores of little stalls scattered over the plaza, and with their burros standing patiently by, added a picturesque feature to the scene. Three hundred mad young Mexicans, mounted on excited ponies, charged among the crowd in a body, dared each other in feats of horsemanship, or "ran the _gallo_" on the opposite bank. The padre from Santa Fe first held service in the little church, after which came the event of the day. One hundred naked and painted Indians issued in solemn march from an _estufa_, and began the race, two by two, over the straight track a thousand feet long. For an hour and a half they sped up and down in front of the pueblo, amid the wildest excitement of the spectators. Then the march of the victors, to the music of a wild chant, while bread is showered upon them from one of the roofs of the pueblo under which they pass, closes the morning's ceremonies.

The afternoon is consumed by the antics of seven unclothed and curiously painted clowns. For three hours do they amuse that motley crowd with their mimic cock and bull fights, and their semblance of plowing, threshing, and other familiar labors. As the sun nears the west, the rabble gather about a pole, fifty feet high, over the cross-piece at whose top has been hung a living sheep, together with garlands of fruit and a basket of bread. After many pretended failures, the pole is climbed, and the bread and fruit are thrown to the ground. Last of all, the sheep, in which a spark of life still lingers, is detached, and strikes the earth with a sickening thud. With yells and strange cries the Indians rush in, the sheep is torn limb from limb, and with this, the only revolting part of the entire celebration, the _fête_ ends.

The lava-caps away down the valley were glowing golden as we rode back to Fernandez. Thought was busy with the strange events of the day. During how many centuries had these onlooking hills witnessed the gathering throngs of such festivals, since were laid the foundations of those dusky piles, now bathed in sunset glory, where tradition says the cultured hero Montezuma was born, and whence he set out on his prophetic career? And can this ancient people long withstand the civilization that is fast bearing down on them; or will it not soon engulf them and fill with modern life the sacred valley?

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On our arrival at Embudo we found the Madame in much tribulation. Not that any harm had befallen her; but the cook, from being an assistant after a fashion, had immediately on our departure developed into an absolute dependent. This personage had for some time been a subject of much solicitude and serious discussion in our family circle. We could sympathize with his infirmities, but when they became the ever-present shield to the most aggravated laziness, our philosophy weakened. And so, when the Madame had explained his apparently total collapse, our decision was speedily reached. In spite of his protestations and his phenomenal physical improvement, we lifted him by main force on to the first train, and shipped him northward without our blessing.

Concerning this Amos, the Madame wrote as follows to her friend, Mrs. McAngle: "He was the 'Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance,' in our vocabulary of nicknames. His face was a suggestion of martyrdom done in coffee-color, for he was a darkey of uncertain and speckled hue; and his religious possessions, a couple of books of devotion of the most melancholy kind, kept him up to his model. Everything had been put into our kitchen-car before leaving Denver, pell-mell; and when, at our first evening's halt, I went out to investigate, I found Amos sitting on a soap-box, in the midst of a chaos of utensils and packages of provisions, almost weeping at the water-splashed confusion, without making the least movement toward straightening matters. He brought with him two encumbrances,--a fifteen years' experience on the Sound steamer _Bristol_ (so he said), and his Rheumatism, with a very big R.

"He was a good enough cook when he tried to be, but wholly averse to neatness. Becoming tired of seeing things that bore no relation to one another on an intimate acquaintance, as the bacon and flour, for instance, I undertook, with fear and trembling, some mild expostulation. But I had not gone far before he raised himself to all his dignity, and exclaimed, 'I have served fifteen years as first cook on board the _Bristol_,' and then turned his back upon me. Somewhat stunned, but persevering, I continued meekly to tell him the things I wished him to attend to. Instantly his tone changed from indignation to supplication, and he described in feeling terms his rheumatism. 'He enjoyed a neat kitchen as well as anybody, but what could he do, having his joints all knotted up with this terrible disease?' and his face grew sadder than ever. I retired from the field vanquished, and reported progress.

"The gentlemen were not so easily silenced, however, and that very day began a little investigation. 'Amos, can you make a tapioca pudding?' cried one, at lunch. 'I have been fifteen years chief cook on the _Bristol_,' came the answer, with an upward roll of the prayerful eyes. A little later: 'Amos, bring up a pail of fresh water from the creek.' Very glad to oblige you, sir (a groan), but I've the rheumatics.' When one excuse wouldn't answer the other would. So we sent him off, and got Burt in his place,--a youth without rheumatism or record,--who proved to be a very bright, willing, and useful boy."