Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan

Author:Paul Horgan
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Published: 2012-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

VII

THE COLONISTS

1858–1863

i.

Niceties of Geography

“LA COUR DE ROME”—in Machebeuf’s words—”dont les lenteurs sont bien connues,” had yet to resolve, in its “well-known procrastination,” Lamy’s official claim to his Gadsden Purchase lands. In the spring of 1858, nobody yet had a clear legal right to act as spiritual proprietors of Doñana (the village or the county), Las Cruces (the town), La Mesilla (the valley or the village), or the comitatus or condado (the whole ill-defined “county”). None of the parties to the dispute understood in common what these terms precisely designated. Rome heard them referred to interchangeably by Durango, and such was the practice of the local people themselves. Lamy knew exactly what he himself meant—all that land granted to the United States under the final boundary survey, by which he should control the religious aspects of everything from El Paso-Fort Bliss on the Rio Grande west to “Arizona,” and north in a parallel line which passed through Las Cruces at the southern end of the Dead Man’s March. All the rest of New Mexico was already in his diocese, which was taken unofficially to include what later was demarked as Arizona. It was not that the Vatican was ignoring the issue, but that all its machinery moved in such agonizing indecision. The affair was under study there in March, in an exhaustive review of the whole problem, and the Propaganda Fide slowly concluded that Lamy’s claims were the more legitimate, and recommended to the Pope that his petition be granted, and that the disputed lands be assigned to him. Pius was inclined to agree, and the bureau was gratified to learn at last that Zubiría seemed willing to yield out of his knowledge of his earlier visits to the area. But he and Lamy and Rome were still all talking about different niceties of geography, thanks to the old confusion of place names. Debate on these points consumed months and a firm decision was not yet promulgated.

Meanwhile, nearer to home, other old trials had their reminders. Martínez wrote from Taos in March to say that his successor, Eulógio Ortiz, was committing sacrileges, acts of hypocrisy, and persecution against him; and he was therefore proclaiming anew his own ministry, in his own chapel, giving sacraments, and in general treating with the bishop who had unfrocked him quite as though with his proper ordinary. There being no other arm to use against him, Lamy in silence left him to the opinion of Providence. Gallegos, in his turn, had come back to Santa Fe, was living in a fine house in Washington street near the cathedral, “trying to do all the mischief he can.” Lamy, hearing from the northern territory “between us and the Mormons,” recorded that “the Utahs, a powerful tribe … are going to give us some trouble this year.…” It had been a “very hard Spring.” Extreme drought held the country. Over a hundred thousand lambs were lost “for cold and want of grass.” Lamy had spent four months travelling in the open lands and had seen the hardships of the rancheros, which he took to heart.

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