When Don Ramón failed to respond, his friend said, as he gazed north: ‘So what I really suppose is that my granddaughters will marry Frenchmen posing as Spaniards. Or even worse, one of those rough norteamericanos.’
‘But aren’t all americanos Protestants?’
‘Men can change, especially where a beautiful girl’s involved … and free land.’ Again Don Ramón was flabbergasted, whereupon Don Lázaro clapped him on the knee: ‘Since your little Trinidad is about the prettiest in town, you may find yourself completely surprised at whom she marries.’
At last Don Ramón found his voice: ‘By God, Don Lázaro, you sound as if you wouldn’t even stop at Indians.’
‘I don’t want them for these girls,’ Don Lázaro snapped instantly, ‘because the Indians are not yet civilized. But the granddaughters of these girls, they might be very proud to marry the type of Indian who’s going to come along.’
‘When I was a boy, if the viceroy heard a Spaniard utter such a statement … off to the dungeons at San Juan de Ulúa.’
At this, Veramendi leaped from the stone bench, danced about the garden, and chuckled with delight. Then he took a position staring down at Saldaña and reminded him of a few important facts:
‘Two years ago I was sent by our viceroy to New Orleans to help our Spanish Governor Miró bring that French city into our system, and I never worked with a better man. Judicious, far-seeing, patriotic. I wish we had a governor like that in Tejas. He preached constantly to those below him that our new province of Louisiana was to be a haven for people of all kinds, French in the majority, norteamericanos next in number, Spaniards of the better sort ruling fairly and running the businesses, with many, many blacks and Indians doing the work. All nations and yes, unwisely, all religions. Governor Miró accepted everyone as his brother.
‘Well, you can guess that his liberal attitude toward religion got him into immediate trouble, because officials in Mexico supported the Inquisition, which is a fine institution, if properly run. But Madrid sent out a wild-eyed, savage-spirited Spanish priest named Father Sadella to head our Inquisition. Yes, Father Sadella came out to New Orleans to establish religious courts, religious jails and religious gibbets from which he was going to hang every damned Protestant or free-thinker like me and maybe even Governor Miró himself. And when Louisiana was sanctified he was going to hang all the Protestants in Tejas. He had lists of names.
‘He was a terrifying man, Don Ramón, and had he come down here, in due course you would have found yourself entangled in his webs. For what? I don’t know, but he would have found something you had done or hadn’t done. He was tall and very thin and had deep-set eyes which darted from side to side as if he constantly expected a dagger. Imagine, jails and gibbets established in Tejas!
‘Governor Miró assembled eight of us he could trust and asked us bluntly: “What can we do to save ourselves from this dreadful man?” and I said: “Murder him, tonight,” but Miró warned against such action: “If we did that, Madrid would have to respond, and all of us would be hanged.” A Spanish officer from Valencia, a pious man I believe, for I saw him always in church, made the best proposal: “Let us arrest him right now, and throw him onto the Princesa Luisa, which is ready to sail, and then hope that the ship sinks.” A very wise priest born in Mexico City added the good touch: “We’ll march him aboard at ten in the morning with the whole town at the docks to jeer at him and laugh. We’ll make a holiday of it as if all Louisiana approved what we’re doing. And that will draw Father Sadella’s ugly teeth.”
‘So we had a festival, even the firing of a cannon. I arranged for that. And that’s how we saved Tejas from the leg irons and gallows of the Holy Inquisition.’
Don Ramón studied his knuckles, which had grown taut as the tale unfolded: ‘Why do you tell me something for which you could still be thrown in jail?’
‘Because it represents the new truth, as I see it. Mexico City would never have dared oppose the Inquisition. New Orleans did. Down El Camino Real, from our new holdings in Louisiana, will come new interpretations of old customs. And along the same road, from los Estados Unidos, will come new ways of doing things, a new sense of government, and lusty, energetic young men who will marry our girls.’
‘Will you permit that?’
‘Who can stop it?’
‘Is the old Spain dead?’
‘It’s been dead for fifty years. I could have built a great city here. All it needed was two thousand Spaniards of the better sort ruling fairly, supervising things and running the businesses. But they were never forthcoming. Spain had its chance, but passed it by.’
The two men, debris from a flood of empire which had receded with terrible swiftness, sat gloomily for some minutes, seeing in imagination the royal road along which the promised help should have come but never did. Then, as if by malignant design, a bugle sounded from the presidio and the army contingent marched out for one of its weekly parades, seeking to prove that Spain still had the power to defend its farthest outpost.
Two aspects of the march impressed them when they went to the gate to watch: the slovenliness of the drill and the incredibility of the uniforms. Only the two officers, Captain Moncado and Lieutenant Marcelino, were properly outfitted. In gold trousers and smartly polished boots they made a stiff and handsome pair, very military in appearance except that Marcelino had no proper hat. He marched bareheaded, which made him seem two feet shorter than his commander and somewhat ridiculous.
The enlisted complement for Béjar was ninety-four, but of these, only sixty-four had bothered to show up, and of those, only two groups of three each wore uniforms, but no one outfit was complete. The front rank wore fine blue uniforms, but here again hats were missing. The second group, marching immediately behind, wore green uniforms that had been popular thirty years earlier; this time only one hat was missing.
The eight men in the next two ranks also had uniforms, each one completely different, and behind them came twenty men dressed in either leather jackets or army trousers, but never both. And whichever half they did have was preposterously patched with cloth of another match.
The next ranks wore no uniforms at all, only the floppy white garments of the countryside, and of these men, half had no shoes; they marched barefoot. Unbelievably, the last fifteen in the parade had no hats, no shirts, no shoes; they marched in trousers only and these of every possible length and style.
At the front, Captain Moncado and Lieutenant Marcelino moved smartly and in step as if they were on duty in Spain, as did the six enlisted men who had matching uniforms. But the rest straggled along, kicking dust, out of step, neither neat nor erect, for all the world more like field hands returning to town at the end of a wearing day than soldiers representing Spanish dominion overseas.
Two-thirds of the troops had guns, but of every imaginable make and age; surely, if the poorest dozen were fired, they could not be reloaded in less than ten minutes. Some of the remaining men carried lances, shields or swords, and many had no formal weapon whatever except a club hacked from some tree. And this was the military might which was supposed to protect Béjar and its six missions, safeguard the roads, and defend the outlying farms from the skilled attacks of some four thousand Comanche, those dreaded horse Indians from the north who had captured a few Spanish steeds, bred them, and galloped south to lay waste all Spanish settlements. This was the grandeur of Spain in the year 1788.
Don Ramón, remembering how meticulous his father had been about maintaining the dignity of Spain when he occupied the Béjar presidio, stalked over to the ramshackle building after the parade ended to rebuke Lieutenant Marcelino: ‘You could at least wear a proper hat.’
‘The government provides us with no hats,’ the young man snapped. ‘We get damned little of anything, really.’
‘If you had any self-respect, you’d buy your own.’
‘We’re supposed to, but we get no money.’
‘And your men! Shocking. Can’t you discipline them?’
‘If I say one unkind word, make one threat, they desert.’
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, young man,’ and from that day Don Ramón avoided the presidio and its unruly complement, for he remembered when Spain was Spain.
When Veramendi learned of his friend’s unfortunate run-in with the military, he said: ‘Old friend, you aren’t going to like this, but the two thousand real men who never arrived didn’t have to be notable Spaniards like your ancestors and mine. They could very nicely have been Canary Islanders, if they’d had the courage of that fellow who gave your father and uncle so much trouble.’ He whistled for one of his granddaughters, and when the girl Amalia appeared, a saucy child of fourteen with bright eyes and big white teeth, he asked her to fetch a book from his desk. As she disappeared Don Ramón asked: ‘Would you really let her marry a mestizo?’ and Veramendi said with a smile: ‘Who else will be left?’
When the girl returned, Don Lázaro caught her by the hand: ‘Stay! I want you to hear this. I want you to hear how you should speak to little men who assume authority.’ Then, turning to Saldaña, he explained: ‘This is a copy of the letter which our famous Canary Islander, Juan Leal Goras, sent to the viceroy in Mexico City, demanding, not begging, for some additional right he was entitled to. Listen to how he begins his respectful plea:
‘Juan Leal Goras, Español y Colonizador a las Ordenes de Su Majestad, Quien Dios Protege, en Su Presidio de San Antonio de Véxar y Villa de San Fernando, Provincia de Tejas también llamada Nuevas Filipinas, y Señor Regidor de esta Villa. Agricultor.’
Slapping his granddaughter lovingly on the shoulder, he said: ‘That’s the kind of man we need in Tejas. Give your full credentials, like some dignitary, then sign yourself ‘Farmer.’ When the girl laughed, not understanding the force of what her grandfather was saying, he drew her to him, kissed her, and said: ‘And that’s the kind of man I want you to marry, Amalia. Someone with spunk.’
When Trinidad learned that she would be traveling to Mexico City she wanted to kiss her mother and her grandfather for their generosity, but she was so overcome by love that she stood in the white-walled room where they took chocolate in the afternoons and lowered her head for fear she might cry. Then a most winsome smile took possession of her curiously tilted mouth, and she gave a childlike leap in the air and shouted: ‘Olé! How wonderful!’
She maintained this level of excitement for several days as the great trip was planned. Since it was over a thousand miles to the capital, any citizen of Béjar would be fortunate to make the journey once in a lifetime. Trinidad, supposing that she would see the grand city once and no more, packed her two trunks with the greatest of care.
Béjar at this time was not large, less than two thousand inhabitants, but since the old capital of Los Adaes had been abandoned, it had become the principal Spanish establishment north of Monclova. And because of a startling change in viceregal administration, it now had additional responsibility. A vast collection of provinces, including California, New Mexico and Tejas in the north, along with six huge provinces like Coahuila and Sonora to the south, had been united to form the Provincias Internas with their capital at Chihuahua, but since this city was five hundred miles to the west and connected only by Indian trails to Béjar, most local decisions had to be made in the Tejas capital. For extended periods, Béjar was left on its own.
The town was in a fine setting. Four waterways now ran in parallel courses from north to south, lending color and charm with their shade trees: to the east, the original canal servicing the missions; next, the lively San Antonio; to the west, the irrigation ditch that Fray Damián had laid out for the Canary Islanders in 1732; and farther to the west, a little creek whose water serviced expanding agricultural fields. These waterways created four clearly defined available land areas, and by 1788 each was beginning to fill up with the houses of permanent settlers.
Well to the east, on the far side of the river, stood the unfinished buildings of the dying mission that would one day be named the Alamo, and around it clustered a few mean houses occupied by Indians. On the west bank, within the big loop where the horses pastured, stood eleven well-constructed houses belonging to leading mestizos, and along the rest of the river rose twenty-six other houses of a mixed population. The finest area was that between the westernmost irrigation ditches, and on it stood fifty-four homes clustered about the center of the town; the Saldañas and the Veramendis lived here. West of all the ditches were the scattered homes of farmers.
The carefully recorded census showed: Spaniards (peninsular and criollo) 862; mestizos 203; Indians 505; other colored (Indian-Black, oriental) 275; blacks (all slaves) 37; total 1,882. These citizens performed a rich assortment of duties: ten merchants, each with his own shop; ten tailors; six shoemakers; four river fishermen; four carpenters; two blacksmiths; one barber and one digger of sewers. Lawyers: none.
There were also more than six hundred Indians living in or near the six missions, but the fortunes of these once-valuable institutions had begun to decline so badly that there was talk of closing them down; indeed, a Father Ybarra had recently been sent north to report on that advisability. He was working now on his recommendations, and since he was a gloomy, unpleasant man, the citizens assumed that his document would be, too.
The town was dominated by the presidio, with its ninety-four military misfits, and the large church started in 1738 by the Canary Islanders. Age had softened this building into an object of some beauty, if one appreciated the harsh desert style adopted by its Franciscan architects.
Trinidad loved Béjar and made each of its corners her own, begging her mother to take her first to some site across the river, then to the lovely missions to the south. The best part of town, she thought, was the two plazas facing the church: a smaller one to the east toward the river, a larger to the west toward the hill country beyond. In these plazas she and her friends had whiled away many hours of childhood. But lately Trinidad enjoyed even more the family journeys to what she called ‘our family’s mission,’ Santa Teresa, where the handsome carvings by Simón Garza depicted the Stations of the Cross. She preferred the one in which Santa Veronica wiped Christ’s face with her cloth, and the other in which the man stooped to help Jesus carry his cross, for these showed the kindness of humanity; the others showed only aspects of its brutality. The jamming down upon Christ’s head of the crown of thorns made her feel the thorns piercing her own forehead, while the actual crucifixion was too painful to contemplate.
After one of these journeys, she asked her grandfather about the carvings: ‘Is it true that the man who made them was an Indian?’
‘Half Indian. His Spanish blood enabled him to be an artist.’
‘Is it true that he was the grandfather, or something like that, of Domingo, who works at the ranch?’
‘How do you know Domingo?’
‘We played together. I taught him to read. He taught me to ride.’
‘You stay away from Domingo.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I tell you to.’
That night Don Ramón had only a broken sleep, for he was tormented by visions of his granddaughter marrying some savage Indian from the mountains of Mexico, and he knew he must prevent this. Early next morning, before the women were up, he called for his best horse, but before he could leave for the ranch, Trinidad, who had heard the clatter of hooves, bounded into the stables in her nightdress.
‘Where are you going?’ she called.
‘Where you’re not welcome. Go back to bed,’ and before she could protest, for he had always allowed her to accompany him on his travels, he had spurred his horse and headed for the gates of the presidio. There he rounded up a company of armed men to protect him, and together they rode westward over the plains in the early morning sun.
He rode for several hours, until he came to the cluster of buildings from where his men worked the vast, unfenced ranch of El Codo with its thousands of cattle that fed the little town of Béjar. There was a ho
use for the Garza family, whose men had been supervisors for decades, a barn for storing feed, three different sets of corrals, a line of low shacks for the Indians and a good stable for the horses. There was also a large lean-to under which the awkward carts with their creaking solid wheels were kept. It was a handsome assembly of adobe buildings, none pretentious and all well fitted to the terrain in the Spanish manner. Don Ramón was proud of this ranch and not pleased with the job he had to do on reaching it, but he was so determined to protect his granddaughter from the kind of talk Don Lázaro Veramendi had been engaging in that his mind was firm, and as soon as he saw Domingo’s father he began.
‘Teodoro, you and your family have worked so well for us …’
‘Only our duty, señor.’
‘We want to reward you.’
‘You already have, many times.’
‘In 1749, when I helped the great Escandón explore the valley of the Rio Grande, he liked my work so much that he awarded me four leagues of land along the river.’
‘That could be good land, señor, from what the soldiers say.’
‘I’m going to give you that land, Teodoro. We’ll never make good use of it, I fear.’
‘Señor, I wouldn’t want to leave El Codo …’
‘You must,’ Don Ramón said firmly. ‘You’ve earned our gratitude.’
‘Magdalena might not wish to travel.’
‘Wives do what their husbands say, so let’s hear no more about it. You have the four leagues. I’ve brought the papers, signed by Viceroy Güemes.’ From his saddlebag he produced the valuable parchment authorized by King Fernando VI, signed by the viceroy and notarized by the current governor of Nuevo Santander, Melchor Vidal de Lorca. The nearly eighteen thousand acres were worth at that time about one cent an acre; in years to come, six thousand dollars an acre, and after that, much more, for they lay on the rich north bank of the Rio Grande, where, according to legend, a walking stick fifty years old would flower and grow fruit if stuck in the loam and watered.