A few miles below, the Mexican farms and orchards became more frequent, the little settlement of Joya was noticed, Plaza Alcalde passed by, and the wide, fertile plain of San Juan opened to our view. Skirting the western edge of this (for the river keeps close under the high bluffs on that side), we ran five or six miles, until a triangular parting in the bank opened to the westward, where we halted on a side-track near the old adobe village, but new railway station, of Chamita. The Rio Chama flows into the Rio Grande here, and a broad valley area is the result. The whole of this, which is easily irrigated, is under tillage, and just now looking its best. It is therefore a green and prosperous landscape we gaze upon, bounded by reddish benches which the setting sun brightens into splendor, and shut in by blue, lofty, cloud-capped hills, beyond which stand the guardian summits of snowy ranges.
Up the Rio Chama cultivation extends almost uninterruptedly for many miles, and there are several villages or plazas. Chamita itself is on this side—a cluster of scattered houses along the bluff through which the railway has made a deep cut. The top of this ridge commands a fine view up and down the Rio Grande, and there idle figures of Mexican or Indian are always to be seen watching for the train or studying the movements of almost invisible people on the other side of the valley. Draped in black, for the most part, motionless and immovable, they remind one irresistibly of Poe’s picture:—
“And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door.”
This point, as I have intimated, is in the midst of the civilization of northern New Mexico. Twenty-five miles up the Chama stands the large town of Abiquiu, an important place in old times; nearer by another plaza, Cuchillo, is a farming center. Not far away, in the Rio Grande valley, are San Juan, Santa Cruz and Española, the latter on the western bank of the river and the present terminus of the railway line southward, whence stages depart regularly for Santa Fe.
A Mexican farmhouse or “ranch” looks like a small fort, and makes a very pleasing picture, as you may observe in our sketch. It is square, rarely more than one story high, is built of mud, and roofed with immense round rafters, the ends of which protrude irregularly beyond the wall, because the builders have been too indolent to saw them off. Over these rafters,—above the line of which the wall extends a few inches,—are laid some boards or a stratum of poles, and upon these dry earth is spread a foot or more deep, with rude gutters arranged to carry away the water. In the course of two or three seasons, such a roof will have caught a supply of wind-sown seeds, and support a plentiful crop of grass and weeds, which is no disadvantage. This novel result is interfered with somewhat, however, by the habit of using the roofs of the houses (reached by a short ladder) as a place for drying fruit and sunning grain, and for a general lounging spot, whence a better view of what is occurring in the world,—the going and coming of the neighbors, the planting or gathering of the crops, the approach of a stranger-horseman, or the movements of the cattle on the benches,—can be obtained, than a seat on the ground affords. As the train dashes by, the passenger notices two or three women and children standing on each housetop, shading their eyes with their brown hands, and making an unconscious pose irresistibly alluring to an artist.
On a line with the front of the house a wall will probably extend a little distance in each direction, and then backward, enclosing a garden and diminutive orchard. Everything is square. The idea of a curve seems rarely to enter the Spanish-Indian mind. For graphic effect, this is highly gratifying, since the bends in the river, the rounded outlines of the mountains, the undulations of foliage, are all in curves, to which the angular lines of the buildings present a most pleasing contrast. Now and then you will see a better house—one whitewashed outside, and having a balcony running around the second story. The outbuildings, in any case, are only a few mud huts, used for storage, and some rough pens where the animals are kept. Anything like the barns of an Eastern farmer is unknown.
The isolated dwelling, however, is largely a modern innovation. The general plan is to live in compact, block-like villages, surrounded by a wall, or what amounts to that. This results partly from the need in early days of united protection against the Indians, but chiefly from following the traditional custom of their red ancestors; for the New Mexican of to-day is a half-breed, or a mongrel of some degree between the Spaniard who “came over with the conqueror” and the Indian of whatever tribe happened to be accessible. Remote from civilized influences, the common people have tended always toward barbarous ways, and are more Indian than Spanish, albeit the dialect they speak is not so far removed from the Castilian as one would expect. There are local differences and idioms, of course, which are at once noticeable; but the usual tongue is not very bad Spanish.
Though Mexican hamlets and farms are scattered everywhere about here, in the fertile valleys, there is a class of towns along this part of the valley of the Rio Grande which are primarily Indian, and situated upon reservations each ten miles square, secured to them by the government. Each of these present villages, now commonly known by a Spanish name, was the site of an ancient native pueblo, and the fields which were deeded to them by the United States are those their fathers cultivated before the white men appeared at all. Some, however, yet retain their Indian names, as Taos, Picuris, Pecos, Pojuaque, Acoma and Tesúque. San Juan, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and others have been given new names by the conquerors and priests. South and west of Santa Fe lie many other pueblos, some of them very populous, as Jemez, Zia, Santo Domingo, and San Felipe. In all of them substantially the same sort of life is found, and as it is impossible for me to cover the wide territory they embrace, the reader must be content with the type of the whole to be seen here at Pueblo San Juan. It is a phase of humanity and conduct rapidly passing away—melting under the steady sun of modern progress; and the traveler who does not take an early opportunity to study it will miss not only that which is extremely interesting and suggestive, but what in a few years will become a matter of history and romantic tradition.
Here at Chamita the river is divided by a large, flat island into two branches, each perhaps a hundred yards in width. Over the first one, at the time of our visit, stood a good bridge, built by the railway company; a second bridge had spanned the other branch until the high water carried it away. Formerly there had been a ferry, but the boat was out of order, and nobody cared to repair it, for could not the stream be forded?