Chapter 31. Santa Fe

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_ CHAPTER XXXI. SANTA FE

I made haste to present Captain Summerhayes with the shoulder-straps of his new rank, when he joined me in New York.

*****

The orders for Santa Fe reached us in mid-summer at Nantucket. I knew about as much of Santa Fe as the average American knows, and that was nothing; but I did know that the Staff appointment solved the problem of education for us (for Staff officers are usually stationed in cities), and I knew that our frontier life was over. I welcomed the change, for our children were getting older, and we were ourselves approaching the age when comfort means more to one than it heretofore has.

Jack obeyed his sudden orders, and I followed him as soon as possible.

Arriving at Santa Fe in the mellow sunlight of an October day, we were met by my husband and an officer of the Tenth Infantry, and as we drove into the town, its appearance of placid content, its ancient buildings, its great trees, its clear air, its friendly, indolent-looking inhabitants, gave me a delightful feeling of home. A mysterious charm seemed to possess me. It was the spell which that old town loves to throw over the strangers who venture off the beaten track to come within her walls.

Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy (a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the trouble to stop over to visit it. "Dead old town," says the commercial traveller, "nothing doing there."

And it is true.

But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic town.

The Governor's Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the antiquated customs, the Sisters' Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all.

There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone peacefully on, through winter and summer alike. There was no cold, no heat, but a delightful year-around climate. Why the place was not crowded with health seekers, was a puzzle to me. I had thought that the bay of San Francisco offered the most agreeable climate in America, but, in the Territory of New Mexico, Santa Fe was the perfection of all climates combined.

The old city lies in the broad valley of the Santa Fe Creek, but the valley of the Santa Fe Creek lies seven thousand feet above the sea level. I should never have known that we were living at a great altitude, if I had not been told, for the equable climate made us forget to inquire about height or depth or distance.

I listened to old Father de Fourri preach his short sermons in English to the few Americans who sat on one side of the aisle, in the church of Our Lady of Guadaloupe; then, turning with an easy gesture towards his Mexican congregation, who sat or knelt near the sanctuary, and saying, "Hermanos mios," he gave the same discourse in good Spanish. I felt comfortable in the thought that I was improving my Spanish as well as profiting by Father de Fourri's sound logic. This good priest had grown old at Santa Fe in the service of his church.

The Mexican women, with their black ribosos wound around their heads and concealing their faces, knelt during the entire mass, and made many long responses in Latin.

After years spent in a heathenish manner, as regards all church observations, this devout and unique service, following the customs of ancient Spain, was interesting to me in the extreme.

Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon I attended Vespers in the chapel of the Sisters' Hospital (as it was called). A fine Sanitarium, managed entirely by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity.

Sister Victoria, who was at the head of the management, was not only a very beautiful woman, but she had an agreeable voice and always led in the singing.

It seemed like Heaven.

I wrote to my friends in the East to come to the Sisters' Hospital if they wanted health, peace and happiness, for it was surely to be found there. I visited the convent of Our Lady of Loretto: I stood before a high wall in an embrasure of which there was a low wooden gate; I pulled on a small knotted string which hung out of a little hole, and a queer old bell rang. Then one of the nuns came and let me in, across a beautiful garden to the convent school. I placed my little daughter as a day pupil there, as she was now eleven years old. The nuns spoke very little English and the children none at all.

The entire city was ancient, Spanish, Catholic, steeped in a religious atmosphere and in what the average American Protestant would call the superstitions of the dark ages. There were endless fiestas, and processions and religious services, I saw them all and became much interested in reading the history of the Catholic missions, established so early out through what was then a wild and unexplored country. After that, I listened with renewed interest to old Father de Fouri, who had tended and led his flock of simple people so long and so lovingly.

There was a large painting of Our Lady of Guadaloupe over the altar--these people firmly believed that she had appeared to them, on the earth, and so strong was the influence around me that I began almost to believe it too. I never missed the Sunday morning mass, and I fell in easily with the religious observances.

I read and studied about the old explorers, and I seemed to live in the time of Cortez and his brave band. I became acquainted with Adolf Bandelier, who had lived for years in that country, engaged in research for the American Archaeological Society. I visited the Indian pueblos, those marvellous structures of adobe, where live entire tribes, and saw natives who have not changed their manner of speech or dress since the days when the Spaniards first penetrated to their curious dwellings, three hundred or more years ago. I climbed the rickety ladders, by which one enters these strange dwellings, and bought the great bowls which these Indians shape in some manner without the assistance of a potter's wheel, and then bake in their mud ovens.

The pueblo of Tesuque is only nine miles from Santa Fe, and a pleasant drive, at that; it seemed strange to me that the road was not lined with tourists. But no, they pass all these wonders by, in their disinclination to go off the beaten track.

Visiting the pueblos gets to be a craze. Governor and Mrs. Prince knew them all--the pueblo of Taos, of Santa Clara, San Juan, and others; and the Governor's collection of great stone idols was a marvel indeed. He kept them laid out on shelves, which resembled the bunks on a great vessel, and in an apartment especially reserved for them, in his residence at Santa Fe, and it was always with considerable awe that I entered that apartment. The Governor occupied at that time a low, rambling adobe house, on Palace Avenue, and this, with its thick walls and low window-seats, made a fit setting for the treasures they had gathered.

Later on, the Governor's family occupied the palace (as it is always called) of the old Spanish Viceroy, a most ancient, picturesque, yet dignified building, facing the plaza.

The various apartments in this old palace were used for Government offices when we were stationed there in 1889, and in one of these rooms, General Lew Wallace, a few years before, had written his famous book, "Ben Hur."

On the walls were hanging old portraits painted by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. They were done on rawhide, and whether these interesting and historic pictures have been preserved by our Government I do not know.

The distinguished Anglican clergyman living there taught a small class of boys, and the "Academy," an excellent school established by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, afforded good advantages for the young girls of the garrison. And as we had found that the Convent of Loretto was not just adapted to the education of an American child, we withdrew Katharine from that school and placed her at the Presbyterian Academy.

To be sure, the young woman teacher gave a rousing lecture on total abstinence once a week; going even so far as to say, that to partake of apple sauce which had begun to ferment was yielding to the temptations of Satan. The young woman's arguments made a disastrous impression upon our children's minds; so much so, that the rich German Jews whose daughters attended the school complained greatly; for, as they told us, these girls would hasten to snatch the decanters from the sideboard, at the approach of visitors, and hide them, and they began to sit in judgment upon their elders. Now these men were among the leading citizens of the town; they were self-respecting and wealthy. They could not stand these extreme doctrines, so opposed to their life and their traditions. We informed Miss X. one day that she could excuse our children from the total abstinence lecture, or we should be compelled to withdraw them from the school. She said she could not compel them to listen, but preach she must. She remained obedient to her orders from the Board, and we could but respect her for that. Our young daughters were, however, excused from the lecture.

But our time was not entirely given up to the study of ancient pottery, for the social life there was delightful. The garrison was in the centre of the town, the houses were comfortable, and the streets shaded by old trees. The Tenth Infantry had its headquarters and two companies there. Every afternoon, the military band played in the Plaza, where everybody went and sat on benches in the shade of the old trees, or, if cool, in the delightful sunshine. The pretty and well-dressed senoritas cast shy glances at the young officers of the Tenth; but, alas! the handsome and attractive Lieutenants Van Vliet and Seyburn, and the more sedate Lieutenant Plummer, could not return these bewitching glances, as they were all settled in life.

The two former officers had married in Detroit, and both Mrs. Van Vliet and Mrs. Seyburn did honor to the beautiful city of Michigan, for they were most agreeable and clever women, and presided over their army homes with distinguished grace and hospitality.

The Americans who lived there were all professional people; mostly lawyers, and a few bankers. I could not understand why so many Eastern lawyers lived there. I afterwards learned that the old Spanish land grants had given rise to illimitable and never-ending litigation.

Every morning we rode across country. There were no fences, but the wide irrigation ditches gave us a plenty of excitement, and the riding was glorious. I had no occasion yet to realize that we had left the line of the army.

A camping trip to the head-waters of the Pecos, where we caught speckled trout in great abundance in the foaming riffles and shallow pools of this rushing mountain stream, remaining in camp a week under the spreading boughs of the mighty pines, added to the variety and delights of our life there.

With such an existence as this, good health and diversion, the time passed rapidly by.

It was against the law now for soldiers to marry; the old days of "laundresses" had passed away. But the trombone player of the Tenth Infantry band (a young Boston boy) had married a wife, and now a baby had come to them. They could get no quarters, so we took the family in, and, as the wife was an excellent cook, we were able to give many small dinners. The walls of the house being three feet thick, we were never troubled by the trombone practice or the infant's cries. And many a delightful evening we had around the board, with Father de Fourri, Rev. Mr. Meany (the Anglican clergyman), the officers and ladies of the Tenth, Governor and Mrs. Prince, and the brilliant lawyer folk of Santa Fe.

Such an ideal life cannot last long; this existence of ours does not seem to be contrived on those lines. At the end of a year, orders came for Texas, and perhaps it was well that orders came, or we might be in Santa Fe to-day, wrapt in a dream of past ages; for the city of the Holy Faith had bound us with invisible chains.

With our departure from Santa Fe, all picturesqueness came to an end in our army life. Ever after that, we had really good houses to live in, which had all modern arrangements; we had beautiful, well-kept lawns and gardens, the same sort of domestic service that civilians have, and lived almost the same life. _

Read next: Chapter 32. Texas

Read previous: Chapter 30. Fort Niobrara

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