But even after this ramshackle cell-like structure was built, Fray Domingo showed little inclination to do construction work at the church; his strength lay in his ability to talk Indians into becoming members of the mission so that they would do the work. At the end of the first two months, whereas Damián had performed wonders in getting the foundation footings dug and filled with rock, he had not brought in a single Indian, while Fray Domingo, whistling and singing in the fields, had lured more than a dozen into the system. Demanding of them only three or four hours’ work a day, ‘in the service of the Lord,’ he had his Indians cut the timbers for the roof of the adobe church in one-tenth the time Fray Damián had been taking.
The first confrontation between the two friars concerned this matter of adobes, for the making of these sun-dried clay bricks was a messy affair, and Fray Domingo flatly refused to step into the mixing trough himself and tread into the muddy clay the straw that bond the bricks together. ‘I won’t do it, and I can’t trust my Indians to do it,’ he wailed, so Damián, desperately needing a steady supply of the adobes for his walls, tucked his robes about his middle, kicked off his sandals, and entered the mixing trough, treading the clay and straw until it was ready for pouring into the wooden molds, where it would drain until firm enough to stack in the sun. All this he did himself.
Sometimes at night, when he lay exhausted from his arduous labors, he would listen as Fray Domingo explained about the Indians, whose languages he was learning: ‘The governor at Chihuahua had one of his scribes make a list of all the Indian tribes in the northern Spanish lands. And how many completely different tribes do you suppose there were? Hundreds of them. And they speak more languages than I could ever learn. Tell me, Damián, how many tribes in the two missions here at Béxar?’
Damián listened drowsily to the recitation: ‘Pampopa, Postito, Tacame, a few Borrado, Payaya, Orejone. And remember, Brother, each group has its own interests, its own animosities toward all the others.’ Damián did not hear this warning, for he had fallen asleep.
The first significant problem at Santa Teresa arose one day when Domingo rushed over to where Damián was laboring with roof beams: ‘Brother! Joyous news! My converts Lucas and María wish to be married in the church, roof or no roof.’
This was a portentous development and the friars knew it, the first visible proof that they were making some headway with the Indians: ‘I’m so delighted, Brother Domingo, that you have accomplished this.’
‘And he’s one of our best workers! He helps make our adobes.’
‘I shall prepare for the wedding immediately,’ Damián said. ‘I’ll put that big beam in place so that we can have at least part of a roof to stand under,’ but as he talked he realized that Domingo had drawn away, almost imperceptibly but definitely away, and when he met with the couple to be married he understood why, for in such Spanish as Domingo had taught them, they said: ‘We like this one … laughing … to say the prayers.’
Damián’s face betrayed no emotion, for he recognized the validity of this request; Domingo had converted them, had shown them the radiance of God’s love, had demonstrated the brotherhood of all who live in Christ. To them he was the shepherd; Damián, the taskmaster. Gravely the disappointed friar bowed to the request of these first converts; as founder of Misión Santa Teresa de Casafuerte, he had aspired to conduct the first marriage, the first baptism, the first prayers for a soul going to heaven, but it was not to be. At the Indian wedding held beneath the protection of the partial roof he had spurred into being, it was laughing, joking, singing Fray Domingo who performed the ceremony and blessed the couple.
The two friars did not allow this first contretemps to disrupt their relationship, for Domingo did not use his personal triumph at the wedding to color in any way his basic subordination to Damián, whom he acknowledged in all things as his superior; and Damián, although hurt, did not seek any petty revenge upon his assistant. The two men remained amiable and friendly, with Damián laboring each day more sturdily at the building of the church, and Domingo at building good relations with the Indians, who saw his darker skin as proof that he was one of them, partly at least.
But when the tasks of building became more arduous and difficult than even Damián’s exceptional energy could manage, he did feel it necessary to draft a careful letter to his superior back in Zacatecas:
Esteemed Father-Guardian. It is my pleasure to inform you that so far affairs at the Misión Santa Teresa de Casafuerte are progressing according to the schedule you proposed and in obedience to God’s will. We have baptized several Indians of the Orejone and Yuta tribes and arranged Christian marriages for two couples who are now living within God’s grace.
Fray Domingo Pacheco accomplishes wonders with his charges and is already talking about establishing a large ranch some leagues to the west. I encourage him in this because he has exceptional skill in working with Indians, who seem to love his friendly ways.
The building of the mission is left largely to me, since Fray Domingo must attend to other matters, and I am afraid that I shall soon fall behind schedule. But you have with you in Zacatecas an excellent carpenter, name of Simón Garza, who is married to the woman Juana Muñoz, and I wonder if you would send him to help me in the building of this mission? I sorely need a carpenter, and Garza is one of the best.
Please give this request your prayerful consideration.
S.S.Q.B.L.M. de V.R.
P.A. Dios G. a V.R.M. Añs.
The formalized signature was to be read: ‘Su servidor que besa la mano de Vuestra Reverencia. Pido a Dios guarde a Vuestra Reverencia muchos años.’ (Your servant who kisses the hand of Your Reverence. Pray to God that Your Reverence may have many years.)
The forthrightness of Fray Damián’s plea and the double touch of formalized humility at the closing apparently impressed the authorities at Zacatecas, because when the next caravan from Saltillo approached the mission two small horses moved forward, bringing into Tejas a pair of the hardest-working citizens that state would ever know, the carpenter Simón Garza and his wife, Juana.
They were given a corner of the mission compound, in which they built themselves a small jacal, and it was here that Juana had her first child. Her husband worked many hours a day on the mission buildings, and told his wife one night: ‘Strange. I was sent here to be an assistant to Fray Damián, but it turns out that he is my assistant.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I lay out the work. Where the beams should go and how they should be fastened. But he does all the lifting, the really hard work.’
Garza was correct. Fray Damián, thirty-nine years old, labored like a man possessed: first, dwelling places for his charges, then a dwelling place for the Lord, then a warmer, dryer jacal for Fray Domingo, who worked so diligently among the heathen, then a better barn for the cattle, then a stockade around the entire to protect it from the fierce Apache who fought the mission’s intrusion, seeing it as an encroachment on their territory, and now his most important project of all, the one that would ensure the prosperity and safety of the fledgling settlement.
Bringing Fray Domingo and Garza together one evening when that day’s work was done, Damián said: ‘We shall never prosper until we bring a little canal from the river, across our fields, where we need water, and directly into our compound, leading it along this depression and out through that part of the wooden fence. Can we do this?’
Garza deferred to Fray Domingo, who disappointed him by saying: ‘It would require far too much work and we don’t have enough shovels.’ When Damián looked at the carpenter, Garza said: ‘Domingo’s right. Huge effort. And we have only two shovels. But I can make some. For without secure water we can’t live.’
So Damián and Garza laid plans for the building of a canal that would eventually run almost a mile, five feet wide and three feet deep, meaning that an immense amount of earth would have to be moved. But like many of the great accomplishments of the world—the building of a pyramid or th
e digging of a tunnel—it was a measurable job in that one started it, worked for a couple of years, edged it along as best one could, and realized one happy day that it could be finished. The digging of this canal, which would vitalize the mission, was not a gargantuan task that staggered the imagination of those obligated to build it; it was a day-to-day job of moving earth, and the two planners with their Indian helpers attacked it with that understanding.
Garza, forging all the spare bits of metal he could find, and using oak limbs for handles, fashioned two extra shovels, which were converted into badges of honor to be conferred on particular Indians who worked well: ‘Juan Diego, you can have a shovel today. Esteban can keep the one he had yesterday. But only if he digs well.’
Invariably Fray Damián assigned himself the most difficult tasks, such as lifting the loosened earth from the trench, but he actually reveled in the hard work, believing that it made him more definitely a servant of God. On Sundays, when all others rested, he rose before dawn, prepared to sing the Mass, cleared his mind of mundane matters and reflected on the majesty of heaven. When the entire community had gathered in the rude church, with soldiers from the presidio often in attendance, he preached his simple message of salvation:
‘God willed that a mission be established here, and He did so for three reasons. First, he wanted His word brought to you Indians so that you might gain salvation. Second, He wanted a settlement erected in the wilderness where Christian families could establish themselves, as Corporal Valdez and his Elena have done with His blessing. And third, I think He wanted us to build our canal so that His children could have better gardens and more sheep and a secure fortress against the enemy.
‘In all these ambitions we prosper. Fray Domingo’s choir never sang more sweetly than it did this morning. The soldiers at the presidio eat better than last year. And soon our canal will deliver water right to the edge of our gardens. Faithful women to whom we owe so much, no longer will you have to haul the water from our wells. It will come gushing right into our furrows and we shall have more beans than we ourselves can eat. Then we can even share our prosperity with Misión Valero.’
In the latter months of 1726 he worked so strenuously on the canal that even when he was dead tired, his bones tingling pleasantly, he would be unable to fall asleep, and one night as he lay awake he recalled a special plea which Fray Domingo had pressed with unusual vigor: ‘Fray Damián, you’re the master here, no question about that, but I do think that you and I deserve better vestments than they allow us. We’re representatives of the church, of the king himself, and we should have proper dress in which to conduct prayers. You know that as well as I.’
It was a persuasive argument. If men at the farthest frontier, men on the battle line of civilization, represented the forces of civilization, they should be properly accoutered, which meant the friars who conducted church services ought to have blue robes of decent quality. But a decision to spend the money required for such robes, a considerable sum, could be made only in Madrid, and Damián could think of no reasonable process whereby he might force his petition all the way to the king, and so as he worked he pondered this problem.
Domingo was persistent: ‘Damián, I work six days a week out on the ranch we’re building so that our Indians can herd our cattle safely, and I don’t mind looking like a peasant when I’m building the little jacales my families will stay in …’ This was a silly petition, and Damián knew it as well as Domingo, for the latter did almost no work at the ranch; he sat astride his mule and directed his Indians to do it, but he was supervising the construction of a small settlement of four jacales in which the shepherds could take shelter when they guarded the remote pasturelands.
Through Domingo’s careful husbandry, Santa Teresa had accumulated a herd of more than a thousand long-horned cattle, for which he had paid nothing: ‘Any morning four good riders can go out on the range and collect a hundred good bulls and cows, free.’ But he had used mission funds to purchase from breeders in Saltillo a starting flock of sheep, a hundred goats and ninety horses, all of which were reproducing well. He had also acquired through ingenious stratagems a mixed complement of donkeys, mules and oxen, so that he was responsible for a substantial investment. It was he who traded the surplus to the army for services only the military could supply, and it was also he who arranged that some of the best horses be herded back to Saltillo and sold for coins which could be spent in Zacatecas for those things like tobacco, chocolate and sugar candies which helped make life bearable. He had a just claim on the Spanish government, for he served it well, and now he wanted a proper blue vestment for Sundays.
Fray Damián could not in clear conscience claim such a garment for himself; he visualized himself as a mere friar obligated to build a mission, and the kind of garment in which he appeared was of no consequence, for he could not believe that Peter or Matthew or Luke had bothered much about his dress when he served Christ. But if he himself lacked pretensions, he realized that other men were differently motivated. He had watched the subtle effect on the Indian Juan Diego when he was allowed to use a shovel—he became a better man when confidence was reposed in him. Domingo was the same; he had resigned himself to secondary orders, but within the limitations of his position, he served well and was entitled to perquisites. Accordingly, one morning Fray Damián drafted a letter intended for the very highest authorities, whether in Mexico or Spain.
But submitting such a request was not a simple procedure. First, the petition had to be written on stamped paper, printed and distributed by the government; no request or report of any kind could be official unless at its head appeared the stamp of the Spanish government, a system comparable to the one which England would introduce into its colonies facing the Atlantic. Since such paper was jealously guarded and distributed in a niggardly fashion, careless requests rarely surfaced. Fray Damián could get his stamped paper only at the presidio, where the commanding officer had a low opinion of missionaries. For two months the latter refused to issue the paper, but Fray Domingo handled this by quietly suggesting to the commander that if the paper was not immediately forthcoming, there would be no more chickens from the mission farm.
Fray Damián wrote his petition on 21 January 1727:
Since my faithful assistant Fray Domingo Pacheco of excellent reputation represents the majesty of the Spanish Crown in Tejas, it would be proper for him to have a vestment of blue linen-and-wool, highest quality, and I beseech the authorities to allow him to have it. And since I labor constantly to finish the canal upon which the welfare of this mission depends, I ask for three shovels of first-class iron with handles of oak from Spain to match. If the oak cannot be spared, I can fashion handles here, but do prefer Spanish oak, for it is best.
The petition, properly folded, was sent down to San Juan Bautista on 29 January, and there it languished until a courier was sent to Monclova on 25 February. From there it went at a leisurely pace to Saltillo, arriving in mid-March in time to catch a messenger headed for Zacatecas, which it reached on the tenth of April.
The authorities at the Franciscan offices realized that they had no jurisdiction over such a special request, and they had learned through harsh experience not to take such matters into their own hands, not in the Spanish system, so they forwarded the petition to Mexico City, but they were bold enough to add an endorsement: ‘These are two good men, so perhaps they might have two vestments, one tall, one short.’
Franciscan headquarters in the capital received the document on 19 May and refused even to study it, referring it to the viceroy’s office. This authority kept it on file till the fifteenth of July, when it was forwarded to Vera Cruz for shipment to Spain with a second endorsement: ‘Fray Damián de Saldaña is the son of Don Miguel de Saldaña of Saldaña, a man to be trusted.’
A Spanish trading ship sailed from Vera Cruz at the end of July, but it stopped in both Cuba and Española, laying over in the latter port for two months and not sailing for Spain until the third of October. No
officials in these two ports were allowed to touch the pouch from Mexico, so Damián’s letter was delivered at the port of Sanlúcar at the end of a four-week crossing. From there it was sent to a section of the Council of the Indies holding session in Sevilla, where clerks studied the unusual request for three weeks. It was finally decided what should have been clear at the start, that this was a unique problem which could be solved only by the king, so belatedly a mounted messenger took the letter to Madrid. He arrived on the twenty-ninth of November, and at dawn on the next day the King of Spain eagerly reached for official messages from his dominions in the New World, reading each one meticulously and making upon it such advisory notes as he deemed fit.
In the afternoon he came upon Fray Damián’s stamped and endorsed paper: ‘A blue habit for Sundays and three iron shovels.’
The king leaned back, rubbed his tired eyes, and tried to visualize Mexico, a part of the empire for the last two centuries. It was difficult, for he was a newcomer to the throne of Spain. When the powerful Austrian Habsburg line—Charles V, Philip II and their successors—died out in 1700, the French Bourbons supplied the next king, Phillip V, a boy of seventeen.
Although no member of his royal family had ever visited Mexico, he had seen enough drawings and read enough reports to know fairly accurately what it was like; Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guadalajara and even Zacatecas were familiar locations, but when he tried to picture Tejas, his imagination failed, for it was the loneliest and least important of his frontiers.
‘How many Spaniards in Tejas?’ he asked the courtiers who brought him his belated lunch.
‘Born in Spain, sixteen, maybe twenty. Born in Mexico itself, perhaps two hundred, counting mestizos. Indians, of course.’
‘Sixteen Spaniards in the entire territory, and he wants a blue vestment. Notice that he is bold enough to ask for the best linen-and-wool. Who is this man?’