Kachina and the Cross (22 page)

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Authors: Carroll L Riley

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BOOK: Kachina and the Cross
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Page 106
describing the advances in astronomy or other sciences. Most books that reached New Mexico in the seventeenth century were religious tomes. In the extant lists, there is nothing much that could be called science, perhaps with the exception of a few medical texts and one on ''astrology, natural secrets and curious things [?].'' Friar Juan de Vidania, one of the missionaries involved in the Rosas affair, wrote a number of letters in 1640-41 concerning that controversy. In them he quotes various classic authors, including Aristotle. It is not clear to what extent these books were actually available to Vidania in Santa Fe. Books actually listed as belonging to the missionaries include mainly missals, breviaries, and manuals of instruction.
In some ways Pueblo Indian cosmological beliefs tended toward the practical. They attempted to establish the solstices and probably the equinoxes, and there is some evidence that they attempted to match full moons with the winter solstice. Since the Indians had no real understanding of celestial mechanics, they apparently never caught on as to why this particular undertaking was often unsuccessful.
The Christian belief in the origin and history of the earth is contained in Genesis and involves the creation of all things within a relatively short time, perhaps a handful of days. The rest of the universe, sun, moon, stars were put in place after the earth was created, and presumably all was done for the special benefit of humans, the last created beings. This happened only a few thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era.
At least in historic times, the Pueblo Indians had rather indefinite ideas about the primal earth. It was thought of as damp or soft, later hardening into rocks. There were spirits, but as yet, no human beings. The great central event in the Pueblo origin stories are the
emergence
of men and women from a series of underworlds to the earth's surface.
The mission period in the Americas, especially the Spanish mission effort, always seemed to have a strong tinge of Manicheism, and the missionaries saw themselves on the front lines in the eternal struggle of light against darkness. The good deities of the Franciscans were a trinitarian god, a divine virgin, and a host of lesser beings including angels and, especially, saints, many of whom were originally living men and women but who became power figures after death. Countering God and his angels and saints were the dark deities of the underworld led by the ex-angel Satan. The devil's adherents (in the eyes of the missionaries) included the gods, goddesses, and spirits of the Pueblo world, one reason why the Franciscans were so adamant in their struggle against Pueblo religion.
Within the Pueblo world there was a more confused situation, for different towns and groups of towns had somewhat different categories of supernatural
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beings; at least, this was true in historic times. In chapter 5, I have already speculated as to the Pueblo religion at the beginning of Spanish colonization. Important in the divine grouping was Coyote, a kind of Promethean figure and trickster who, along with Sun Father, was instrumental in introducing human beings to the surface of the earth. Also figuring were the moon, certain of the stars, the divine twins or twin war-gods, various ancestral beings (kachinas), cloud beings, earth spirits, wind spirits, water beings, and others. In fact, in the Pueblo way of thinking, all parts of natureincluding inanimate objects such as stones, water, houses, and pots, not to mention plants and all animalshave some sort of spirit reality. Although there was not a neat hierarchy of beings, it might be argued that Sun Father was somewhat of a "high god."
In ideal Christian theology, all people have souls of presumed equal worth; all human beings are brothers and sisters. In practice, the seventeenth-century Franciscans made pejorative racial and class distinctions, as did the secular society of the time. There was an indifference to animal and plant life, and to the earth generally, Christian dogma teaching that human beings were given domination over the earth to use and exploit. Only through Christianity would men and women find a satisfactory afterlife; non-Christians, and Christians who did not practice the doctrine of a particular sect (in this case Catholicism), were doomed to eternal punishment. This was also true of people who accepted favors from Satan and his minions; witches, warlocks, and the like. This attitude led to zealotry and to a certain callousness on the part of the clergy, though probably less so among the New Mexican Franciscans than among their contemporaries in, say, seventeenth-century Puritan New England.
We are on rather uncertain ground when discussing the moral theology of the Pueblo religion of the seventeenth century. Today, both the Pueblos and the various Apachean groups see human beings as striving not for domination over their environment but for harmony with the natural universe. This idea is so widespread that there seems to be a good chance that it has roots deep in antiquity. It was not borrowed from Christianity since it is antithetical to the Christian idea about humanity's place in nature. Pueblo religion in the historic period is tightly focused on group welfare, providing rain for the crops at the appropriate time, and promoting the health and well-being of the people as a whole. It seems a near certainty that such an attitude was also true in the seventeenth century, and probably for many hundreds of years before. A dark side of Pueblo supernaturalism today is the widespread belief in witchcraft and the savage attitude toward people believed to be witches. Part of this attitude may have derived from the Spanish culture, in which fear of witches was a very old tradition. It seems likely, though, that a belief in malevolent spirits predated the Spaniards in New Mexico. But
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whereas Pueblo Indians still hold very strong views about witches, the Christian attitude has softened somewhat since the seventeenth century. That is to say, certain modern Christian sects may give lip service to witchcraft and demonic possession, but generally they do not see witches around every corner.
Taken all in all, there seems to have been no particular superiority of seventeenth-century Christianity over Pueblo Indian religionthough from a purely objective point of view the reverse might be argued. Both religions had views of cosmology and of human origins not supported by modern scholarship, and both had destructive elements, especially a belief in witchcraft. The Pueblo faith, however, offered specific solutions to immediate and pressing problems, relating especially to the growing of food, something Christianity did not do as efficiently, at least in Pueblo eyes. Both religions granted something to believers after death, but the Pueblo idea of the dead becoming kachinas and continuingon a supernatural planeto function in Pueblo life was more emotionally satisfying. Among many Pueblo Indians, it remains so today.
The Order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans, who were given New Mexico as a mission field, had been founded by Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, known in the English-speaking world as Francis of Assisi (ca. A.D. 1181-1226). Devoted to poverty and good works, Francis collected a group of disciples and formed them into an order in 1209, further authenticated by a Papal Bull in 1223. A second order for nuns was formed in 1212, and a tertiary or third order for laymen and laywomen in 1221. Francis was canonized in 1228, less than two years after his death. After a somewhat stormy period following Francis's death, the Franciscans became an extremely influential order within the Catholic Church. Originally functioning as ministers to the poor, the order quickly adapted itself to missionization. Franciscans were among the first missionaries in Asia, Africa, and especially the New World.
Although we sometimes think of the Jesuits as the "intellectuals" of the Catholic clerical world, the Franciscans, particularly during their formative period, were extremely important in the development of Western science. Note, in particular, Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1175-1253), Roger Bacon (ca. 1220-ca. 1292), and William of Occam or Ockham (ca. 1285-1349), the latter man giving us the famous phrase now called "Occam's Razor."
By the time the Spaniards began exploring America, the Franciscans were organized into a series of
provinces
, with their chief officer, the
provincial
. In newly missionized areas, however, the convents were organized into custodia headed by a custodian. These, in turn, formed
convents
, groups of friars who lived together, the smallest unit of the order. In New Spain, a Custodia of the
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Holy Gospel was set up in Mexico City in 1523. Outlying custodiae were organized in Michoacán, Yucatán, Tampico, and Guatemala, and other areas as the need for them arose. In 1535 the custodia in Mexico City was raised to the status of the Province of the Holy Gospel, and eventually various other custodiae were elevated to provincial status, with a commissary-general of New Spain as the chief officer over them all.
In New Spain, the only two exceptions to the evolution of custodia to province were the organizations in Tampico and New Mexico. Although the seventeenth-century New Mexican custodia may possibly have had as many as sixty-six friars, it remained under charge of the Province of the Holy Gospel in Mexico. Also, contrary to the usual pattern of local election, the custodian throughout that century was elected not by the local group but by the mother province. Indeed, the New Mexican custodia never did receive provincial status.
As mentioned in chapter 7, the New Mexican custodia was probably formally established in 1617 with Friar Esteban Perea as the first custodian. Before that time the head of the New Mexico missions had been given the more general title of
comisario
, or commissary. Shortly after the establishment of the custodia, one of the friars, often but not always the custodian, was given the separate title of Commissary of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, Alonso de Benavides being the first Franciscan to receive this title. This powerful office became important in the struggle between church and state, although it was not fully utilized until after mid-century (see chapters 7 and 10).
The first two decades of Spanish control saw only a modest increase in missionization. During the Oñate period, only the area of the Rio Grande near the Spanish settlement was missionized. Oñate's interests, after all, were focused primarily on the economic development of the area. Although friars were assigned to most of the Pueblos, there were only eight missionaries (a number that dwindled during the Oñate years), and the assignments were for the most part on paper only. The headquarter pueblo of Santo Domingo received a mission, as did San Ildefonso and San Juan (Yungue), though the San Ildefonso mission may not have been put on a firm footing until the arrival of Fray Andrés Bautista in 1609. There was some small building activity at Jemez by Fray Alonso de Lugo, but this failed, probably by 1601. Pecos had a missionary as early as 1598 but seems to have been a rather insecure foundation until around 1619 or 1620. The first permanent church in the province, as mentioned in chapter 6, built probably in the year 1600, was at Yungue. It functioned for both the Spanish settlement and for the nearby Tewa Indians of San Juan but may have been deserted when the Spaniards moved their capital to Santa Fe, being reestablished after A.D. 1640.
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Visita at San Cristóbal (photograph by the author)
The arrival of Peralta brought additional missionaries and new pressures to spread the missionization program. With Peralta, New Mexico changed from a proprietary to a royal colony with a primary role for the missionaries. Sandia in the old Tiguex region was missionized in 1610, and Isleta received a missionary (Juan de Salas) and convent around 1612 or 1613. Puaray and Alameda, however, were relegated to the status of
visita
a chapel visited at more or less regular intervals by missionaries stationed elsewhere. Also, between 1610 and 1612, a convent was established at Zia with Cristóbal de Quirós as missionary, and a year or so later a convent was built at Nambé with Fray Pedro Haro de la Cueva in charge.
At some point between 1610 and 1612 a permanent mission was established at the pueblo of Galisteo in Tano country, but the missionary is unknown. A mission station at San Lázaro, set up in 1613, had been turned into a visita by 1621. Meanwhile, a mission was built at nearby San Cristóbal, though soon it, too, became only a visita. As mentioned in chapter 7, Chililí, the first mission east of the Manzanos, was set up probably in 1613 with Fray Alonso de Peinado as the missionary.
In 1616 there were sixteen friars (thirteen of them priests) in New Mexico, and at the end of that year seven additional missionaries arrived in the province.
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Mural on the east wall of Giusewa pueblo in the Jemez area
(courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, neg. no. 6430)
In the next decade, the mission effort was expanded to San Felipe in the Keresan region, the Jemez towns, Taos, Picurís, and a more permanent mission at Pecos. During this same period the first Tompiro pueblo, Abó, received a missionary when Fray Francisco Fonte was assigned there in 1622. A mission at Picurís was founded between 1621 and 1625, and the one at Taos, with Pedro de Ortega serving as missionary, in 1622. Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón, whose book on New Mexico has made him better known than most Franciscans of the period, founded Giusewa near modern Jemez Pueblo in 1621 or 1622, perhaps originally as San José. The church was destroyed around 1623 and then rebuilt a year or so later under the name of San Diego. The great church at Pecos, in its time one of the most ambitious European structures in all of North America, was begun around 1621 and completed, perhaps in 1625, by Andrés Suárez.
Several missionaries were reassigned during the period 1616-21, but six additional Franciscans arrived in the fall of 1621. The mission effort, however, had its next great leap forward in 1625 with the coming of twelve new missionaries led by Alonso de Benavides, bringing the total number to twenty-six. Benavides, the new custodian, was especially interested in the Manzano Tiwa, the Tompiro, and in the Jumano groups to the east, and he extended the missionization program

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