Through arrant cowardice he failed to protect the ranch of Misión Santa Teresa against the Apache, causing the Blessed Fray Domingo, may God smile upon his martyrdom, to lose his life most horribly. Later, acting without reason or military competence, he allowed the very Apache who killed Fray Domingo, may God smile upon his martyrdom …
He became so indignant as he composed this report, he ended by convincing himself that Alvaro was a cowardly incompetent: ‘Handcuff the recreant and throw him in jail, being sure that his legs are tightly chained.’
To demonstrate his own heroism, he organized a hastily put-together expedition to subdue the Apache—about fifty Spaniards and their poorly armed helpers against ten thousand scattered Apache—and his troops would have been annihilated had not Simón Garza and two Yuta scouts detected a concentration of warriors hiding in a mountain pass and prevailed upon the governor to beat a disorganized retreat. As it was, the Apache overtook three stragglers and tortured them viciously.
In this sad year of 1736, Tejas saw Spanish occupancy at its worst. Travel between Béxar and the distant capital at Los Adaes was interdicted by the Apache; food was scarce because the irrigation ditches, without Damián’s supervision, were not functioning properly; and all else was in disarray because so many of the able administrators languished in jail with chains about their legs.
It was in this ugly setting that Fray Damián proved what a quintessential Spaniard he was; the first responsibility of any man, even before his duty to God, was to protect his own family. Lands for his son, a husband for his daughter, a job for his nephew, an appointment for his brother-in-law—these were the obligations of a Spanish man.
He was so outraged by the arrest of his brother, and so distraught by what might happen to Benita and her three sons, who were, after all, like his own, that he devised a procedure that would have delighted Machiavelli, for he used stamped paper stolen from the presidio on which to press it:
Respected Archbishop Vizarrón. Congratulations on your great success as Viceroy of all Mexico. The King could have chosen no one better fitted for that exalted position, and I stand ready as a humble friar to assist you in all you do.
My brother, Captain Alvaro de Saldaña of the Saldañas of Saldaña, has served bravely on the frontier, and I believe there is a law which states that an officer who has seen active duty in any new territory is entitled to six leagues of Crown lands upon retirement. On behalf of my brother, now occupied with other matters, I beg you to make this award.
There is, a few miles west of here in a bend of the Medina, a stretch of land called Rancho El Codo, once occupied by the ranch of this mission. It has now been abandoned because of Apache raids and is of no practical use to anyone until the Apache are subdued. My brother and his wife, in years to come, can tame this land if you will cede it to them now in reward for the hard work they have completed on the frontier of your dominion.
In composing this seditious letter, Damián was aware of three crimes he was committing: The ranch belongs to the church, and I’m stealing it for my family. I’m drafting letters when Governor Franquis has forbidden anyone to do so. And I’m trying to slip my letters past the officials at San Juan Bautista, who have orders to prevent the entry into Mexico proper of clandestine letters. But then he thought of Benita and her children: I must take the chances.
In one of the other missions he found a Franciscan who was heading back to Zacatecas, and since this friar also hated Franquis, he volunteered to take the risk. The letter reached the archbishop, who was now viceroy, and when he inquired about the reputation of the Saldañas he found it to be exemplary, whereupon he signed a grant awarding former Captain Saldaña more than nine thousand leagues, twenty-five thousand acres, along the Medina.
Later, when he learned of Damián’s insubordination, he bore no resentment, for by this time it was evident even to Madrid that Governor Franquis was a horrendous mistake, and he was deposed after little more than a year of his reckless despotism. The unfortunate man had been correct, however, in some of his charges against Damián: he had been so preoccupied with building the mission that he had not attended to the winning of souls, and repeatedly he had left the mission without permission to go wandering through the Apachería. When it became apparent that he was to be removed from Santa Teresa, Damián recommended that Fray Eusebio be given permanent charge of the mission, but Eusebio protested that he was far too humble to warrant such an exalted position. Instead, Zacatecas sent up the trail to Béxar two young friars to assume control at Santa Teresa, one with major orders, to replace Fray Damián, and one with minor, to take over the work done by Fray Domingo.
Damián greeted the two with the warmest brotherhood and even relief, for he knew that his effectiveness had waned. He was fifty-one now, and extremely tired, so that rest in some quiet corner of the Franciscan empire seemed highly desirable, but as the father-principal in Zacatecas had proposed, he would stay on at Santa Teresa until the transition had been smoothly made.
The new friars were enthusiastic young men prepared to repair the situation in Béxar, as they phrased it, and their eagerness to take command provided Damián time to evaluate what he had accomplished on the frontier.
‘Nothing,’ he told Alvaro and Benita. ‘I feel my life’s been a waste.’ When they asked why, he replied: ‘Conversions to Jesus? I haven’t brought two dozen souls to salvation.’
‘That was Domingo’s task,’ Benita said consolingly.
‘But I’ve done so little.’ He felt old, and futile, and superseded.
‘Let’s look at what you and I have accomplished,’ Alvaro proposed, and he recited their litany of constructive deeds: ‘We brought order to a region which knew it not. And we’ve established regular mail connections with Saltillo.’ On he went, naming those simple deeds which taken together represented the quiet triumph of civilization.
But this was not enough for Benita, because she better than either of the brothers thought she knew the cause of Damián’s malaise: He sees his life running out, and without a wife or children to represent him when he’s gone, he fears it might have been in vain. So she began to tick off his particular achievements: ‘You built the irrigation systems, and when Misión Espada needed an aqueduct for its water supply, you showed them how to build one.’ Stopping, she formed an arch with her fingers and said: ‘Building an arch that will stand is something, believe me.’
She spoke of the compound walls he had erected, of the church, of the houses for the Indians. And then she mentioned the one thing of which she knew he was truly proud: ‘You encouraged Simón to finish his Stations of the Cross. Yes, when we three die we shall leave in Béxar an enduring memory.’
When she uttered the word die, applying it even to herself, Damián shuddered, and in the silence that followed he acknowledged for the first time that his mournfulness stemmed from growing awareness of his own approaching death: ‘Life is so brief. We should have accomplished so much and we did so little.’
‘My three sons!’ Benita snapped. ‘I call them something. And Alvaro’s promotion to colonel, I call that something, too.’
Damián could not accept this reprieve: ‘Once we had Santa Teresa firmly planted, I should have gone to Nacogdoches and brought order to the frontier. And after Alvaro established order here, he should have gone on to Los Adaes and done the same there. We do a little and claim it was a lot.’
Benita rose from her chair, walked to where Damián sat, and placed her hand on his shoulder: ‘We can be proud of the Béxar we built. It will stand here for a long time … a long time.’ She bit her lip and pressed Damián’s shoulder: ‘And you can be proud, Damián. Two hundred years from now, when the work of your mission is long completed, your church of Santa Teresa will still stand, and people will applaud it. Yes, I saw that last report of the inspectors from Querétaro: “No mission north of Saltillo, neither in Sonora nor in Tejas, excels what Friar Damián has achieved in Béxar.” ’ She bent down and kissed him.
&nb
sp; Cherishing her touch, he looked up and whispered: ‘I suppose it’s important that Indians have food if they’re to work at Christian duties. And it’s very important they have decent houses. And a mission needs walls to keep goodness in and evil out. But I merely built walls. Domingo built souls.’
As the long evening ended he tried to summarize: ‘I’ve one regret I can’t erase. I failed to convince Madrid to send us enough real Spanish settlers—farmers who would farm, knitters who would knit.’ When he fell silent, Alvaro nodded: ‘That was our great failure.’
‘I don’t discount the Mexican mestizo. All things considered, Simón Garza is one of the best human beings I’ve ever known, and there must be others like him, but what does the government in Mexico City send us? Rabble, rubbish, and they expect to build a province with such people?’
As he uttered these harsh and true indictments of Spanish policy he did concede that the Council of the Indies had made one serious effort to settle the north, and when he thought of those contentious Canary Islanders calling themselves hidalgos, he had to chuckle: ‘They’re the best Spaniards we have, and if the king had sent us fifty more boatloads, we could have settled Tejas and conquered Louisiana, too.’ He was in this frame of mind one afternoon when the inescapable Juan Leal Goras, his long beard unkempt, appeared at the mission, his devious mind busily at work.
‘Fray Damián, I do not come with pleasant news. Your men here at the mission are drawing down more water than we agreed upon, and I’m starting a lawsuit against you before you escape from Tejas.’
‘How many suits have you and I had before, Don Juan?’
‘Five, and each one essential for the protection of our interests.’
‘And how many have you won?’
‘None, but that’s not the point. Each suit brought to your attention some grievous wrong which you then had the sense to correct.’
‘Why didn’t you just come and complain without the lawsuits?’
‘Because you damned friars will never listen to mere words. But when I start a suit you clean out your ears.’ Pushing his face close to Damián’s, he added: ‘And don’t be fooled by the score, five suits, five losses. How could it be otherwise when the judges are all corrupt? All in the pockets of you friars.’
‘All the judges?’
‘I’ve conducted lawsuits in all parts of the world …’
‘You mean the Canaries and Tejas?’
‘It’s the same the world over. Judges are corrupt.’
‘Suppose that when you do engage your suit, Don Juan, that I bring witnesses to prove that you’ve dug a branch of your canal for which you have no permit? Which was not in our agreement? And I prove that it is you who are breaking the law, not I?’
‘That’s the kind of argument corrupt judges listen to.’
At this point Don Juan shifted the discussion dramatically: ‘Fray Damián, we couldn’t have had a better missionary in Béxar than you. Nor a better captain than your brother. I want him to stay on as a civilian. Why don’t you stay, too, as our parish priest?’
The suggestion was so improper to make to a Franciscan, whose mission in life was to wander, not to tend a specific church, that Damián remained mute, but it was also flattering, coming as it did from Goras, who pressed on, interpreting the friar’s hesitancy as indecision: ‘Our whole community wants to have you stay. You’re a man we’ve learned to trust.’ Goras could see the friar thinking intensely, but not even his conniving mind could have guessed what Damián was thinking: I could stay here with Alvaro and Benita and watch their sons grow. My home would not be broken.
Slowly and in some confusion he told Goras: ‘I’m a Franciscan. I go where God sends me.’ And as soon as Goras left, Damián started making his own secret plans to go on a mission which he felt that God had authorized: once more among the Apache, hoping that this time his example of fearlessness and brotherhood would encourage them to consider peace.
One afternoon, when his preparations were almost complete, he went quietly into his little church, and in the quiet shadows he studied once more Simón Garza’s Stations of the Cross, contemplating both their beauty and the religious mystery they represented: How fortunate I was to work with men like Simón and Domingo. They made the things I tried to do doubly effective. And how wonderful that I should have done my work in companionship with Jesus Christ. As he looked at Garza’s depiction of the crucifixion he could feel the nails in Christ’s hands, the thorns digging into His brow: He was such a good man on earth, such a kind man in heaven.
As he prayed before the last Station he noticed that the two young friars now responsible for Santa Teresa had also entered the church, and unaware that Fray Damián was there, they were talking like young enthusiasts.
‘I’ve found this quarry. Rock so soft you cut it with a saw. But when it’s sun-dried in place, it hardens like granite. Tufa they call it.’
‘With such stones we could replace the adobe. Make this a real church.’ ‘Better yet, we could replace everything.’
At this Damián gasped, for he could not imagine sacrificing Simón’s glorious Stations. The young friars now discovered him, and realizing that he must have heard their plans, were eager to apologize: ‘We didn’t know you were here. We’re so sorry.’
‘No, no! I assure you, it’s time to build a new church.’
‘Do you really approve?’
‘Yes!’ he cried vehemently. ‘Each man builds only for his generation. Everything he does ought to be restudied … improved by those who follow.’ He waved his hand deprecatingly. ‘I built so poorly. They told me in Zacatecas: “You need build only in wood, for temporary use.” ’ His voice dropped to a whisper: ‘But the heart yearns to build in stone … for eternity.’
As he moved his right arm across the spread of the little church his eyes were directed to the Stations of the Cross, and almost as if he were a parent defending his children, he stepped before the carvings and lifted his arms to cover one of them. ‘I would not want you to replace these … not destroy them, that is.’ And his plea was so profound that one of the young friars stooped and kissed his hand.
‘We would never have damaged them, Brother Damián. We planned to have them as the heart of our new church.’
‘Did you?’ he asked in great excitement, and as the two moved about the church, explaining to each other how the roof could be taken off and the walls replaced with minimum confusion, he stayed with them, encouraging them and talking far more than was necessary.
On 21 September 1737, when day and night stood even across the world, Damián left his mission riding a mule, with a donkey in tow. He rode westward toward Rancho El Codo, which Alvaro, Benita and their sons now owned, and here he stopped to utter a long prayer for the soul of Domingo Pacheco as it made its way through purgatory to heaven. He spent his first night at the ranch, and rose refreshed and eager for the serious part of his journey.
Not till three days later did he make contact with any Apache; then he came upon a good-sized band which did not include either the squaw or any of the chiefs who had known him earlier, although there were members who had heard of the decent manner in which he had treated other Apache. They made him as welcome as Apache ever did, but he was aware that some of the younger braves resented him and were advising their fellows against any contact with a Spaniard.
In the two days he spent in the Apachería he found some leaders who were willing to listen when he explained about the advantages of Christianity and an orderly life within the Spanish empire. ‘Like me,’ he told them, ‘you will enjoy the full protection of the king.’ He was convinced that the conversion of the Apache was at hand and that God had sent him to be the agent.
But on the third day, in the midst of the most serious explanation of how God and His son Jesus Christ shared responsibilities in heaven, three impatient young braves kicked aside a buffalo skin before which Damián sat, seized him and dragged him to an oak tree, from which they hung him by his thumbs. Then, befo
re the older chiefs could protest, which they showed little inclination to do, the young men stripped the dangling body and began making little cuts across it with their flint scrapers.
They were not deep, just a slash on the arm, or on the leg, but the young men kept darting back and forth, now away from Damián, now toward him, always making another small cut, until his body was red-stained in all its parts.
The young men now called upon the women of the tribe, and with obvious delight the squaws joined them, dancing around and making deeper cuts in parts of the body hitherto untouched. One woman, hair falling across her dark face, evil-smelling, was lifted up to cut at the base of his left thumb, not severing it but nearly so; she and her sisters wanted to see how long it took for the weight of the body to pull the damaged thumb apart, and when this happened, and the body swung sideways, suspended only by the right thumb and twirling in a tight circle, the women shrieked with pleasure, and ran back to stab at the body that now gushed blood from various deep wounds.
Damián, still conscious, for no cuts had yet been made in a vital place, held to his belief that this hideous affair was merely a ritual torture, but now two of the women rushed up and made such deep slashes in the lower part of his stomach that a great shudder ran through all his body, visible to his tormentors.
‘He dies! He dies!’ they screamed, and this encouraged other women to dance in and stab at him. One was even lifted high enough so that she could cut at his throat, but this terrible pain Damián ignored, for when he stared at her hawklike face he saw not an Apache woman but Benita Liñán. She smiled at him as she had on that first evening in the paseo, and as his blood spurted she leaned forward to cradle him in her arms.
… TASK FORCE
San Antonio! Loveliest city in Texas, Venice of the Drylands, its river runs right through the heart of town, providing a colorful waterway for festive barges and an exotic riverside walk along which one could promenade forever. How glad I was to be coming back to a city I had cherished as a boy, for this had been my family’s preferred vacation spot.