Where Death Came for the Archbishop

If you have been to Santa Fe, New Mexico lately, the incredible expense of the things in the shops near the Plaza may possibly have put you off as it did me.  It has become the playground of the filthy rich, who seemingly have nothing better to do with their money than to clothe themselves from head to toe in haute couture, eye-popping jewelry and (of course) Lucchese boots and fill their palatial homes with gorgeous sofas upholstered in rare Chinese robes.  Further from the Plaza, we find affordable baskets, designed by local folk but made in India. 

            But only another half-block of walking brings you to real places:  a real house, the oldest in North America, part of a pueblo established long before Columbus.  Across the street from that house is Mission San Miguel, the oldest surviving church in North America, where the stuff you buy (if you must buy stuff) goes to fund a bell-tower strong enough to hang a massive bell, cast four hundred years ago in Spain.  They say that the sweet, true tone of the bell (which you can ring for yourself) can be traced to the silver and gold jewelry and plate that was put into the metal at the time of casting, offerings of Spanish villagers who threw their prayers in along with them.  It is a fine use for silver and gold jewelry and plate, don’t you agree?

            If you have read Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, you already know that bell:  it is the one striking the Angelus when Bishop Latour returns from Durango, the bell with a sound of the east to it.  And if you read the book as you visit Santa Fe, suddenly the whole landscape of the region springs to life in your imagination, or the book comes to life before your eyes.  Because the reason for all that expensive stuff, of course, is that Santa Fe is full of art.  Georgia O’Keeffe worked not far from here, in the gorgeous hills of Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, not the first artist to discover the area and by no means – all those studios on Canyon Road! – the last.  Finery has been made for thousands of years, for that matter:  the mountain of turquoise near Madrid, NM that fueled continental trade for feathers from Central America and seashells from the Gulf has been whittled down to mere tailings, but still inspires local artists to make what they can with what they have.  The Santa Fe trail took stuff back and forth for much longer than just pioneer times.

            Along that trail, at “the other Las Vegas,” we explored a town where the church shrank into the background, where the lawless gringos had their way for a decade or so on a street lined with dives with names like The Toe Jam Saloon.  Their Plaza once held a handy platform used for lynching drunken cowboys or anyone else whom the people of Las Vegas, NM were too impatient to bring to trial.  But some others of those cowboys became Rough Riders, and one of them saved the life of Teddy Roosevelt, as he rushed up Kettle Hill and then San Juan Hill, that great lover of national parks and the great outdoors… Today the Plaza is graced with a bandstand and a stand of trees, a great old hotel, and a cool café with live music, where folks make plans to go for a soak in the local hot-springs.

            But better than any and all hot-springs, art, six-guns or stuff is an hour in the company of a young father from the Santa Clara (not its real name) Pueblo named Elijah. His other name translates to White Eagle Tail, and he is the best possible guide to the Puya Cliff Dwellings, not far from Black Mesa, and just across the valley of the Rio Grande from Santa Fe.  His gentle, unironic way of speaking, his fond references to his elders and his pride in the ancestors whose ingenuity formed these dwellings in these cliffs and protected them from raiders since time immemorial, all were worth the long wait in wind and snow to hear.  Ask him about arrowheads, and he will tell you exactly how each arrow was made and why, therefore, each one was shot with such care.  Each stripe on those sherds of pottery has a story of dye-making plants and firing, and the whole landscape around furnishes both food and stories.

            It is a harsh, beautiful part of the earth, which the long-suffering meek have nevertheless inherited.