The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó
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The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó

America's Miraculous Church

Brett Hendrickson

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eBook - ePub

The Healing Power of the Santuario de Chimayó

America's Miraculous Church

Brett Hendrickson

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About This Book

The remarkable history of the Santuario de Chimayó, the church whose world-renowned healing powers have drawn visitors to its steps for centuries. Nestled in a valley at the feet of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico, the Santuario de Chimayó has been called the most important Catholic pilgrimage site in America. To experience the Santuario’s miraculous healing dirt, pilgrims and visitors first walk into the cool, adobe church, proceeding up an aisle to the altar with its magnificent crucifix. They then turn left to enter a low-slung room filled with cast-off crutches, a statue of the Santo Niño de Atocha, and photos of thousands of people who have been prayed for in the exact spot they are standing. An adjacent room, stark by contrast, contains little but a hole in the floor, known as the pocito. From this well in the earth, the Santuario’s half a million annual visitors gather handfuls of holy dirt, celebrated for two hundred years for its purported healing properties. The book tells the fascinating stories of the Pueblo and Nuevomexicano Catholic origins of the site and the building of the church, the eventual transfer of the property to the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe, and the modern pilgrimage of believers alongside thousands of tourists.
Drawing on extensive archival research as well as fieldwork in Chimayó, Brett Hendrickson examines the claims that various constituencies have made on the Santuario, its stories, dirt, ritual life, commercial value, and aesthetic character. The importance of the story of the Santuario de Chimayó goes well beyond its sacred dirt, to illuminate the role of Southwestern Hispanics and Catholics in American religious history and identity. The healing powers and marvel of the Santuario shine through the pages of Hendrickson’s book, allowing readers of all kinds to feel like they have stepped inside an institution in American and religious history.

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Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2017
ISBN
9781479855551

1

Catholic Settlement of Río Arriba

Where the Santuario de Chimayó now sits has been a place of nearly continuous human habitation for centuries if not millennia. The reasons for this have largely to do with the fertile nature of the Santa Cruz River valley, referred to in the Spanish of the people of the area as La Cañada. Today, various villages, towns, and cities lie along the approximately ten-mile length of La Cañada, from Chimayó and its constituent parts at the eastern end to the midsize city of Española at the west, where the Santa Cruz River empties into the Río Grande. Along the banks of the Santa Cruz, crops and woodlands flourish; the area is known for its relative verdancy in New Mexico and its towering and ancient cottonwoods. In short, while La Cañada cannot boast the mineral wealth of Zacatecas or the agricultural abundance of Mexico’s central valley, it has nevertheless been coveted land in the desert and mountain reaches of the northern watershed of the mighty Río Grande. It is no wonder that Pueblos long made the valley their home before the arrival of the Spanish, who likewise identified the place as good for settlement. The very goodness of the place, in all senses of the word, has made it the site of ongoing declarations of ownership and control. Before the first adobes of the Santuario were first laid down in the mud, people have been claiming a place for themselves here, using all the power and strategies at their disposal to enjoy this valley and to sanction the kind of religious practice that can take place therein. In the earliest years of Spanish settlement in the area, sometimes these competing claims found ways to coexist, while in other cases, they came into violent opposition.

First Spanish Settlement, 1598–1680

Of course, several Tewa Pueblos still surround the mostly Hispano village of Chimayó. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of Pueblo occupation of La Cañada as early as 1000 CE by people who were likely ancestors of the present-day Tewa people. Initial settlement appears to be in scattered, small gatherings of dwellings located in lowlands near the river, with approximately eight hundred to a thousand inhabitants throughout the valley. Archaeological evidence suggests that, around 1250, the population gathered into large Pueblos located on the hilltops, perhaps to better defend their growing agricultural enterprises. For unknown reasons, although possibly related to soil erosion, these early Pueblos had left the immediate vicinity of La Cañada by 1400; however, thousands of Pueblo people lived at that time throughout what would eventually become northern New Mexico.1
The growing Spanish Empire spread slowly northward from Mexico City, conquered in 1521. Initial European forays into the Pueblo homelands occurred haphazardly between 1540 and 1598, but during this period, little changed in terms of the Pueblo way of life. Albert T. Schroeder, the noted archaeologist of the Southwest, somewhat innocently notes that these decades were “nothing more than a time of contact between two vastly different cultures.”2 While this may have been true in the short term, the “time of contact” sowed the seeds for the cataclysmic changes that would follow Spain’s eventual move to settle permanently in Pueblo territory.
As mentioned, former Pueblo settlements—likely Tewa-speaking—had either been abandoned or had shrunk to the size that they made no archaeological impact in the century prior to Spanish entry into the area. However, this does not necessarily mean that the Santa Cruz River valley and its cluster of hills and small mountains had lost all significance for the Tewas. Specific Tewa myths and religious practices relating to Chimayó are discussed in chapter 2, but it is helpful to mention here that the hill called Tsi Mayoh, which is directly northeast of the Santuario, constitutes an important part of in Tewa cosmology, and it is certainly not a coincidence that the Spanish village founded in the valley would take its moniker from a Pueblo place-name. The Tewas, in these early years of European encroachment, were not universally allied with the Spanish but did frequently find themselves in close, sometimes mutually beneficial, associations with them. They were also some of the first Indians in the upper Río Grande valley to experience the full evangelistic attention of the Franciscans who accompanied the first permanent wave of Spanish settlers.
Don Juan de Oñate was the man at the head of this wave of conquest in 1598. The story of his invasion and its infamous brutality has been told elsewhere, and his expedition’s forces almost immediately made their way to the center of the Tewa world at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, the site of Oñate’s first headquarters, which they renamed San Juan.3 Already in 1598, the Santa Cruz valley had been named La Cañada by the Spaniards, and at the time had been reinhabited by a Tewa settlement, which Oñate himself visited and mentioned in his voluminous writings. Within three years, a small Spanish settlement had been established in La Cañada, although in these earliest years of Spanish occupation, the region represented the bleeding edge of relative safety against Indian attacks. In 1601 a Spaniard named Juan Luxán reported to Oñate that the local Indians had warned him in no uncertain terms that the Spanish should proceed no farther to the north and east of La Cañada lest they be outnumbered and killed.4 Much later, the archaeologist and explorer Adolph Bandelier came to the same conclusion in his own investigation of the region and its history, identifying “the gorges of Chimayo” as the eastern point of early settlement and a kind of lookout.5
Oñate and his men had relatively peaceful relations with the Tewas in and around San Juan and La Cañada. At this historical distance, it is impossible to know why the Tewa people chose to accommodate Oñate’s forces, but it is possible that annual agricultural rhythms required the Pueblos to remain dedicated to their crops at the stage of the year when Oñate and his men arrived on the scene. To be sure, food production was essential to both Pueblos and the Spanish, and Tewa work crews assisted the Spanish to enlarge irrigation canals to ensure larger crop yields. In addition to the demands of agricultural life on the Tewas, the realpolitik of their situation also may have convinced the Pueblos that military resistance against the Spanish was futile. In any case, this early détente between the Tewas and the Spanish gave Oñate the opportunity to begin to communicate Christian stories to the native people. Oñate and his men soon organized the performance of one of the folk religious dramas that were popular in the Iberian Peninsula, in Oñate’s own words, “a good sham battle between Moors and Christians, the latter on foot with harquebuses, the former on horseback with lances and shields.” The pageantry of the battle culminated in the Moors’ epic defeat, no doubt communicating a sufficiently clear message to Pueblos.6
In terrible contrast to the heavy-handed but peaceful occupation of San Juan, the Spaniards’ brutality at Acoma Pueblo had long-lasting effects on all the New Mexican Pueblos. Late in 1598, the fortress Pueblo atop a nearly impregnable mesa received demands from Oñate for provisions. When a small group of Spanish soldiers scaled to the Pueblo to gather the goods, the Acomans divided the invaders into small groups and attacked, killing many of them; other Spaniards escaped only by leaping off the mesa. In response, Oñate’s sergeant, Vicente de Zaldívar, led a siege and attack on Acoma in the cold January of 1599 that ultimately resulted in the Pueblos’ bloody defeat five days later. More important than the Acomans’ defeat were the consequences of the trial held shortly thereafter to punish the survivors. The now notorious sentence for all men over twenty-five years of age was to have one of their feet amputated and to spend twenty years in bondage. All girls and women over twelve and all boys and young men from twelve to twenty-four years were, like the older mutilated men, enslaved to the Spanish for twenty years. The fear inspired by these harsh acts would prove to be effective in the short term as Oñate and his forces continued their occupation of the Pueblos’ territories, but this brutality—which was often accompanied by religious scripts concerning the conquest of evil and the conversion of infidels—would set the scene for rebellion and long-lasting conflict with the Pueblos.7
Even before Oñate’s arrival, Franciscan friars, accompanied by soldiers, had made their way to many of the Pueblos in the Río Arriba region with hopes of both converting them to the Catholic faith and discovering new sources of mineral wealth for the Spanish crown. Their first explorations included several Pueblos in the area of present-day Albuquerque as well as the Sandia mountains. They also learned of the line of Pueblo towns stretching up the Río Grande to Taos and of the presence of hostile people who lived even farther away to the northeast, on the plains. This intelligence would eventually be amply confirmed by decades of conflict between the Spanish and Pueblos allied against marauding Comanches and other plains peoples on the northern and eastern edges of New Mexico. Groups of friars and soldiers made their way as far as Zuni, northwest of Acoma, and Jemez, west and southwest of Oñate’s eventual settlement at San Juan. Another unsanctioned expeditionary force traveled through Taos and on toward the plains, possibly reaching what is now Nebraska before perishing. While no permanent missions or settlements were established prior to 1598, these initial forays convinced the friars that the Pueblos represented a promising mission field. Their well-organized dwellings and stable agricultural economies made them excellent prospects for proselytization, education in Catholic doctrine, and participation in the folk dramas and devotions of Iberian Catholicism.8
Before Oñate and the six hundred permanent settlers who accompanied him, the earlier Spanish expeditions had come initially in search of mineral wealth. Once it was generally acknowledged that New Mexico would not immediately produce gold or other precious resources, the Spanish crown refocused its support to emphasize Christianization of the natives. To this end, the government in New Spain equipped northern-bound Franciscans with a “building kit” to aid their efforts in converting the Pueblos. Each kit contained tools and construction materials as well as some religious objects for the administration of the sacrament of baptism and the celebration of the Mass. After Oñate’s successor, Pedro de Peralta, moved the territory’s headquarters from the San Juan area to the newly formed city of Santa Fe around 1610, the friars could count on infrequent but regular shipments of other necessary goods to construct and maintain their mission churches and outposts. There is no doubt that the Tewa-speaking Pueblos around Ohkay Owingeh/San Juan, including the scattered Pueblo settlements in La Cañada, were some of the first Indians in the new province to experience sustained interaction with the Franciscan missioners and witness the impact of their fervor for building and baptizing.9
Although the relationship between the Spanish settlement party, the Franciscans, and the Tewas was relatively peaceful, the threat of violence hung perpetually over the region. Even in distant New Mexico, the imperatives of the Patronato Real—the complex balance of power achieved between the Spanish crown and the Catholic Church concerning settlement and evangelization of the Americas—still dictated much of the Spaniards’ behavior. For example, upon contact, Oñate read to the Pueblos the Requerimiento, a document that outlined Spain’s legal and ecclesiastical right to conquest and that admonished the listeners to submit to both the crown’s authority and the dogmas of the Catholic faith. After Oñate had experienced some semblance of success with various Pueblos, whose leaders seemed to accept the new authorities, he planned a dedicatory celebration in September 1598. An assemblage of Pueblo leaders met with Oñate and the upper echelons of his command, and the Pueblos were made to swear that they would assist the friars and accept Spanish rule. A witness to the event reported, “The governor repeated this three times, warning them that, if they failed to obey any of the padres or caused them the slightest harm, they and their cities and pueblos would be put to the sword and destroyed by fire.” Tragically, the battle and subsequent punishments meted out against Acoma would soon prove the sincerity of Oñate’s threats.10 It was in this threatening atmosphere that conversions began to be recorded.
The nascent Franciscan missions soon began to make claims of astonishing success. By 1604, only six years after Oñate’s arrival, the collection of missions in New Mexico had already been named a commissary, or the basic ecclesiastical unit of organization. By 1616, they had made sufficient inroads to advance to the level of custodia, the next rung of the organizational ladder, and by 1625, there were twenty-six missionaries laboring principally among the various Pueblos. Some areas could boast new church buildings as well as mission compounds where the friars taught the Indians weaving, carpentry, blacksmithing, and other skills that the padres deemed essential for Christian civilization. The custodian in charge of all these missions, Fray Alonso de Benavides, reported in 1630 that sixty thousand Pueblo individuals in ninety villages had been converted to the Catholic faith:
All the Indians are now converted, baptized and well ministered to, with 33 convents and churches in the principal pueblos and more than 150 churches throughout the other pueblos. . . . Here where scarcely 30 years earlier all was idolatry and worship of the devil, without any vestige of civilization, today they worship our true God and Lord.11
The Tewas, of all the Pueblos, experienced some of the Franciscans’ most intense missionary activity. By the 1620s, all the main Tewa Pueblos had their own resident priest, and the mission training programs introduced significant changes to Tewa life and culture that extended well beyond religious instruction to include music, gardening, the tending of livestock, leather working, and Spanish-style construction. The Tewas, in addition to being the first Pueblos to be baptized Christians, were the Spaniards’ closest allies throughout most of the seventeenth century. Fray Benavides lauded their cooperativeness and willingness to support Spain’s efforts in conversion as well as in military pacification of the other Pueblos. He wrote in the early 1630s that the Tewa “nation is very attached to the Spaniards, and when a war breaks out they are the first to join and accompany them.”12 Again, at this historical remove it is perhaps impossible to know for certain what motivated the Tewas to ally with the Spanish, but reasonable explanations point out ongoing congruencies between Tewa values and traditions and those being forcibly imported by the Spanish. The archaeologist Albert Schroeder suggests that Tewa conversion to Christianity was greatly facilitated by similar elements in Tewa religious life: both included “the use of altars, singing, specialized instruction for neophytes, ornamentation and painting, formalized ceremonies and rituals, care of religious objects, and a religious calendar.”13 Another explanation suggests that Tewa conflicts with the other Pueblos made the Spanish attractive allies and that Spanish calls-to-arms to the Tewa often appealed to the latter’s ongoing wars and skirmishes with the surrounding peoples, both Pueblos and other peoples such as the Apaches.14
All, however, was not well. The padres freely expressed their animus toward the religious practices of the Pueblos, including their use of kivas and their katsina dances, often referring to the Pueblo sacred figures as devils and their ritual life as the darkest idolatry. This meant that the reported statistics concerning baptisms and conversions often obscured the fact that, rather than being eliminated, many Pueblo ceremonies moved into the realms of secrecy where they were able to continue to flourish and affect the overt practices of Pueblo Christianity for years to come. The Tewas of San Juan and the surrounding region were the group most committed to Christianity, but even with that qualifier, by the middle of the seventeenth century, it became clear that the ostensible conversions of thousands of Pueblo people throughout New Mexico had not stopped widespread practice of their ancestral ceremonies and observances, sometimes in tandem with the new European religion and sometimes in conflict with it.15

Revolt

By the 1670s, suppression of Pueblo ritual practices and traditions had become part and parcel of both the Franciscans’ missionary efforts and the Spanish governors’ strategy of control from their seat in Santa Fe over the various Río Grande Pueblos. The friars had long forbidden the katsina dances, so essential to Pueblo cosmology and maintenance of proper living conditions. Their heavy-handed corporal punishments of Indians as well as widespread reports of the missionaries’ sexual impropriety in various locales only exacerbated growing Pueblo displeasure with the missions. In the decades after Oñate’s original settlement, his successors sometimes tangled with the friars over questions of authority over the new province, which meant that sometimes the political leaders, as a bargaining strategy, showed more leniency toward the Pueblos in terms of their religious rituals. For the most part, however, the governors moved ...

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