The Rosas Affair. Donald L. Lucero

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      “The pope is the head in Christian society,” he said. “Authority flows from Christ to Peter to the pope, and from him, to us. The members of the clergy are, therefore, heads of the body politic and supreme over all provincial matters. We, as the representatives of the Custody of Saint Paul, see our roles here—those of the governor, the priests, and the settlers—as constituting a type of mystical body, with the governor and soldier-settlers as the arms and hands, which protect the Church from heretics and other enemies, and the Indians as the feet, which sustain and carry the weight of the entire body. We look forward to your assistance and cooperation in our work with the Indians, the provision of escorts, the loan of oxen to haul rock and dirt for the construction of our missions, and your condemnation of Martinez’s misrule.”4

      * * *

      What followed was a silence more damning than words in which Rosas seemed to be studying the birds and the distant mountains. Then he said in a measured tone, “We see our roles very differently, Father. I see the king as a warrior who carries two swords, one temporal, the other spiritual, the spiritual blade in the form of concessions of royal patronage5 given to him by the pope almost 150 years ago. Therefore, it is he and not the pope who is the Vicar of Christ, a role that has been extended to the viceroy and through him, to me as provincial governor. Thus, jurisdiction over military, judicial, legislative, and commercial matters, as well as the administration of the Church, ultimately falls to me and not to you. But we’ll see,” he said. “We’ll have to see.” Then, changing the subject entirely, he asked, “And the Indians here at Santo Domingo, are they difficult?”

      Salas waited for a long moment before responding, questioning whether he should further pursue a clarification of their roles, but ultimately deciding against that course of action. Instead, he followed the governor’s lead in pursuing his discussion regarding the Indians. “The Keres of Santo Domingo are reputed to be the most difficult in the kingdom,” Salas responded, “secretive and withdrawn from the surrounding civilization. Occasionally, they still make us tortillas from urine and mice meat, but we’re getting used to the taste,” he said, smiling at Fray Manso. “We cut their hair as punishment, but we’ve been unable to stop them from making bread in that manner, for mice and urine abound.”

      Observing the other three as they ate their cheese and drank their wine in New Mexican sunshine, Salas sensed that there was nothing more to be accomplished by their meeting, or by attempting to further crush the grapes, knowing the mash to be sour. He asked, “Would you like to see the church?”

      On the outside of the principal church was a balcony formed by the projection of choir loft timbers and by the overhang of the nave roof. The balcony was available only through a small choir-loft window that was covered over with heavy timbers and barred from the inside. On the inside of the church the dimness of the nave was relieved by light provided by two small and inaccessible gridiron windows in which sheets of mica or talc had been set. These splayed apertures, presenting sloping or beveled surfaces, were placed high in the north wall. A transverse clerestory window also provided light. This was a source of illumination that was apparently of the friars’ invention, for Rosas had not previously seen a window of this construction. This window was placed where the nave joined the apse, its blue-tinged light masked by the grime of time.

      There was little decoration. An ornamented wooden bed molding, placed underneath the corbel course of the roof and upon which the corbels rested, was made of carved poles, laid end-to-end, projecting slightly from the surface of the wall. The molding, a rope motif patterned after the Franciscan cord symbolizing the vow of chastity, was ornamental and perhaps structural, too, serving to bind and strengthen the wall at its points of greatest load.

      The sacristy was a modest room with a cupboard, a small altar, a rack for liturgical instruments, and a small fireplace. There was also an internal well four varas wide and over 40 varas deep, with a curb of earth and stone, and a wooden bucket sitting precariously on its rim.

      In an anteroom near the front of the church there was a baptismal font built of adobes and consisting of a large olla, a wide-mouthed clay pot or jar that rose from the center of the earthen floor. There was little else, no pews, no hangings, nothing to burn.

      What Rosas had toured was a fortress with thick, high, adobe walls offering no projections to hide an enemy. It had been designed to offer shelter but also constraint, to inspire feelings of well-being, calm, awe, or oppression, as the friars wished. The enormous space provided them with the capacity required to enhance their word, gesture, or the musical accompaniment of Catholic ritual.6

      “One could hold out here forever,” the governor remarked. Salas looked at him and smiled but did not respond.

      * * *

      “Are we to prepare accommodations here for the governor while the men of the supply train repair their wagons?” asked Salas’s assistant.

      Salas, who had found in the new governor an arrogant, irreverent, and uncompromising person, rather than the cooperative, if not actually weak and pliant individual he had hoped to find, said, “I wouldn’t give him as much as an egg unless I was allowed to sprinkle it with ashes to dull his palate or dilute it with water to smother its taste. I don’t know where they find these men, Father,” he added in exasperation. “At least Governors Ceballos and Ossorio were admirals—even though we have no need for a navy here. But this one? What is he? A Frenchman from Auvergne? A Gavache from Gevaudon? God only knows! No wonder his wife and child deserted him while he was in Flanders,” he said, repeating a bit of gossip he had heard from Fray Manso. “Perhaps he’s a franchone, one of those foreigners who roams about Spain as a beggar, a peddler, a knife-grinder, or as a castrator of animals! No. We will not prepare accommodations. And if he rings the bell requesting entrance to the convento, Father, please pretend you don’t hear him. Perhaps he’ll go away.”

      6

      Nicolas and Maria

      After we leave Cochiti and have negotiated the cliffs at La Majada,” said Nicolas Ortiz to the wagon master, Francisco Gomez, “I ask for permission to ride ahead and to inform the senior judge and the members of the cabildo of our arrival.”

      “And to see your Maria, too, I assume,” said Blas de Miranda, smiling knowingly at his friend who had presented his request to Gomez.

      “I must admit that’s an added incentive,” Ortiz laughed, his large, luminous eyes glowing with delight. “But the welcome for a new governor is traditional,” he added, further justifying his request, “and Antonio Baca must be told.”

      “Well, I’m sure he knows we’re coming,” Gomez said, “although the exact day may still be unknown to him. Today’s Friday, is that right?” Gomez asked rhetorically, as he worked at rearranging the wood of their campfire with the heel of his boot. “We’ll need your help in climbing the cliffs tomorrow,” he said to Ortiz, “but once we’ve reached the mesa you may go ahead. Tell don Antonio that we’ll be there within two days.”

      “I owe you!” Ortiz said.

      “You owe me nothing,” Gomez replied laughingly. “Besides, you’ll be lucky if her papa doesn’t shoot you.”

      Nicolas laughed at Gomez’s remark, recalling these exact words as spoken by Blas de Miranda on the day he first met her.

      * * *

      In a stunning dawn, crisp and unblemished except for an enormous cloud hanging over the eastern mountains, Nicolas left his party on the mesa above La Majada, a sheltered place on the Camino Real (Royal Road) where shepherds with their flocks of sheep put up for the night. Riding ahead of the wagon train, which had just negotiated a series of black basaltic cliffs dividing the lower and upper regions of the Rio Grande, Nicolas, who knew how to press horses to their limit, bypassed the ancient lava beds of quemado.

      Nicolas approached the Tano pueblo at La Cienaga (The Marsh), where the Rio de Santa Fe, a tributary of the Rio Grande, completes its underground course and again comes to the surface. There he struggled through a forest of bogs, their odors a musky redolence of cedar and mildewed grass. The bogs, widened here by beaver dams,