After a battle in which the Indians seemed guided by some supernatural power, the Spaniards were vanquished. Then Cheetwah and his men vanished into the mountains, there to keep vigil through all the centuries that no alien should prosper from the mineral wealth of their land. Eventually the pale-faces came back, but it was further decreed by the Great Spirit that for all time the face of Cheetwah should remain upon the peak [[132]]whence he had issued his great call, a reminder that, though conquered outwardly for a time, the Indian shall yet come back into his own and rule the mighty country that his ancestors possessed in freedom. Thus stands Cheetwah today, aloof and majestic, biding his time.
THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN IN BLUE
By Charles H. Heimsath
So far as I know, the first mention of the legend of the “Blue Lady” is in the Memorial of Fray Alonso de Benavides, 1630. Benavides was (1621–1629) Father Custodian of the province of New Mexico, and his Memorial was written to present Philip IV of Spain an account of the “treasures spiritual and temporal” which that remote province contained. In the course of this highly entertaining document Benavides recounts at length, and with pious zeal, the miraculous conversion of the Jumano tribe of Indians. Benavides was at that time (probably 1629) somewhere in the upper Rio Grande valley. In this region, he states, the Jumano Indians had been demanding missionaries for “years back.” Finally he granted the missionaries.
“And before they went,” to quote the document literally, “[we] asked the Indians to tell us the reason why they were with so much concern petitioning us for baptism, and for Religious to go and indoctrinate them. They replied that a woman like that one whom we had there painted—which was a picture of the Mother Luisa de Carrion—used to preach to each one of them in their own tongue, telling them that they should come and summon the Fathers to instruct and baptize them, and that they should not be slothful about it. And that the woman who preached was dressed precisely like her who was painted there; but that the face was not like that one, but that she [their visitant] was young and beautiful. And always whenever Indians came newly from those nations, looking upon the picture and comparing it among themselves, they said that the clothing was the same but the face was not, because the face of the woman who preached to them was that of a young and beautiful girl.”[1]
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Another early reference to this mysterious lady appears in a letter of Fray Damian Manzanet to Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Gongora, 1690. In it the writer goes on to say as follows:
“At that time I was living in the Mission Caldera, in the province of Coahuila, whither I had gone with the intention of seeing whether I could make investigations and obtain information about the country to the north and northeast, on account of facts gathered from a letter now in my possession, which had been given in Madrid to the Father Antonio Linaz. This letter treats of what the blessed Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda made known to the Father Custodian of New Mexico, Fray Alonso de Benavides. And the blessed Mother tells of having been frequently to New Mexico and to the Gran Quivira, adding that eastward from the Gran Quivira are the kingdoms of the Ticlas, Theas, and Caburcol. She also says that these are not exactly the names belonging to these kingdoms, but come close to the real names. Because of this information brought by me from Spain, together with the fact of my call to the ministry for the conversion of the heathen, I had come over and dwelt in the missions of Coahuila.”[2]
And in the same letter a little further on Manzanet recounts this incident: