CHAPTER X
THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE OF SANTA FE (Continued)
Of all the traditions clinging round the old Palace at Santa Fe, those connected with Don Diego de Vargas, the reconqueror of New Mexico, are best known and most picturesque. Yearly, for two and a quarter centuries, the people of New Mexico have commemorated De Vargas' victory by a procession to the church which he built in gratitude to Heaven for his success. This procession is at once a great public festival and a sacred religious ceremony; for the image of the Virgin, which De Vargas used when he planted the Cross on the Plaza in front of the Palace and sang the Te Deum with the assembled Franciscan monks, is the same image now used in the theatrical procession of the religious ceremony yearly celebrated by Indians, Spanish and Americans.
The De Vargas procession is a ceremony unique in America. The very Indians whose ancestors De Vargas' arms subjugated, now yearly reënact the scenes of the struggles of their forefathers to throw off white rule. Young Mexicans, descendants of the very officers who marched with De Vargas in his campaigns of 1692-3-4, take the part of the conquering heroes. Costumes, march, religious ceremonies of thanks, public festival—all have been kept as close to original historic fact as possible.
De Vargas, himself, was to the Southwest what Frontenac was to French Canada—a bluff soldier animated by religious motives, who believed only in the peace that is a victory, put the fear of God in the hearts of his enemies, and built on that fear a superstructure of reverence and love. It need not be told that such a character rode rough-shod over official red-tape, and had a host of envious curs barking at his heels. They dragged him down, for a period of short eclipse, these Lilliputian enemies, just as Frontenac's enemies caused his recall by a charge of misusing public funds; but in neither case could the charges be sustained. Bluff warriors, not counting house clerks, were needed; and De Vargas, like Frontenac, came through all charges unscathed.
The two heroes of America's Indian wars—Frontenac of the North, De Vargas of the South—were contemporaries. It will be remembered how up on the St. Lawrence and among the Mohawk tribes of New York, a wave of revolt against white man rule swept from 1642 to 1682. It was not unnatural that the red warrior should view with alarm the growing dominance and assumption of power on the part of the white. In Canada, we know the brandy of the white trader hastened the revolt and added horror to the outrages, when the settlements lying round Montreal and Quebec were ravaged and burnt under the very cannon mouths of the two impotent and terrified forts. The same wave of revolt that scourged French Canada in the eighties, went like wild fire over the Southwest from 1682 to 1694. Was there any connection between the two efforts to throw off white man rule? To the historian, seemingly, there was not; but ask the Navajo or Apache of the South about traders in the North, and you will be astonished how the traditions of the tribes preserve legends of the Athabascan stock in the North, from whom they claim descent. Ask a modern Indian of the interior of British Columbia about the Navajos, and he will tell you how the wise men of the tribe preserve verbal history of a branch of this people driven far South—"those other Denes," he will tell you. Traders explain the wonderful way news has of traveling from tribe to tribe by the laconic expression, "moccasin telegram."
Whether or not the infection of revolt spread by "moccasin telegram" from Canada to Mexico, the storm broke, and broke with frightful violence over the Southwest. The immediate cause was religious interference. All pueblo people have secret lodges held in underground estufas or kivas. To these ceremonies no white man however favored is ever admitted. White men know as little of the rites practiced in these lodges by the pueblo people as when Coronado came in 1540. To the Spanish governors and priests, the thing was anathema—abomination of witchcraft and sorcery and secrecy that risked the eternal damnation of converts' souls. There was a garrison of only 250 men at the Palace; yet already the church boasted fifty friars, from eleven to seventeen missions, and converts by the thousands. But the souls of the holy padres were sorely tried by these estufa rites, "platicas de noche," "night conversations"—the priests called them. Well might all New Spain have been disturbed by these "night conversations." The subject bound under fearful oath of secrecy was nothing more nor less than the total extermination of every white man, woman and child north of the Rio Grande.
Some unwise governor—Trevino, I think it was—had issued an edict in 1675 forbidding the pueblos to hold their secret lodges in the estufas. By way of enforcing his edict, he had forty-seven of the wise men or Indian priests (he called them "sorcerers") imprisoned; hanged three in the jail yard of the Palace as a warning, and after severe whipping and enforced fasts, sent the other forty-four home. Picture the situation to yourself! The wise men or governors of the pueblos are always old men elected out of respect for their superior wisdom, men used to having their slightest word implicitly obeyed. Whipped, shamed, disgraced, they dispersed from the Palace, down the Rio Grande to Isleta, west to the city on the impregnable rocks of Acoma, north to that whole group of pueblo cities from Jemez to Santa Fe and Pecos and Taos. What do you think they did? Fill up the underground estufas and hang their heads in shame among men? Then, you don't know the Indian! You may break his neck; but you can't bend it. The very first thing they did was to gather their young warriors in the estufas. Picture that scene to yourself, too! An old rain priest at San Ildefonso, through the kindness of Dr. Hewitt of the Archæological School, took us down the estufa at that pueblo, where some of the bloodiest scenes of the rebellion were enacted. Needless to say, he took us down in the day time, when there are no ceremonies.
