SALINAS "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions

FRAY FRANCISCO DE ACEVEDO AND LAS HUMANAS

So Letrado left Las Humanas and San Lucas struggled on alone. In 1633 he petitioned the governor, don Francisco de la Mora, for assistance. The governor and Custodian Perea decided to reduce Las Humanas to a visita. About 1634, Letrado's companion on the trip from Mexico, Fray Francisco de Acevedo (stationed at Abó at the same time that Letrado was assigned to Las Humanas) became the visitador and inherited the problem of Las Humanas. With the status of Las Humanas changed to that of a visita, the Franciscan construction needs were considerably reduced, to a scale that the very restricted resources of the pueblo could support. Most of the starting supplies were probably transferred to storage at Abó when Letrado left Las Humanas in late 1631. [25]

The Completion of the Interim Church

Because Acevedo was also responsible for the construction of a visita church at Tabirá, as well as his other duties at Abó, he could not have been at Las Humanas continuously throughout the year required to finish the church. Either San Lucas (or some other lay brother) or an Indian mayordomo must have remained at Las Humanas during this time to oversee the work.

Acevedo would probably have had the same number of people working on the church as Letrado had. Using the standard procedures of crew organization and scaffolding, woodcutting and shear-legs lifting, he completed construction on the church in about a year. Acevedo apparently dedicated the finished church in late 1634 or early 1635. [36] Although Letrado probably intended that the church would be dedicated to San Isidro, Acevedo changed the advocation of the church to San Buenaventura either at the time of its formal dedication in 1634, or soon thereafter. Acevedo may have renamed the mission because of its change in status, since it had been made a visita after the absence of a minister for two years, or he may have had other, presently unknown reasons. [27]

Small though it was compared to, for example, the church of Nuestra Senora de Quarai, San Isidro de las Humanas loomed over the nearest of the low, huddled buildings of the pueblo of Las Humanas. Its adobe-plastered walls stood about twenty-eight feet high, so that the parapets were almost even with the tops of the highest buildings on mound 7. The plain facade would have been another ten feet higher, and would have looked much like that depicted by Gordon Vivian in his reconstruction drawing of the church, with no balcony over the main door, a window into the choir loft, and a bell wall at the top of the church with a single bell mounted in an opening through the wall.

The roofing of the church as proposed by Vivian does not match the practices in use in seventeenth-century New Mexico. Vivian's design was derived from his assumptions that the flat stones he found in the floor of the church were all pillar supports, that the pillars were to hold up roof vigas, and that the pillars were at the intervals of the roof vigas. If the fifth pillar support was nothing more than a random flat stone or the base of some other structure, then the four pillars near the east end of the church become nothing but standard choir loft supports. In this report, the roof is assumed to consist of the usual structure of vigas, latillas, matting and a clay surface, with the vigas at about two-foot intervals; see figure 20. The total length of these vigas would have been about 33 feet, shorter than those used in the other Salinas churches and certainly shorter than the thirty-eight-foot beams intended to be used in San Buenaventura, or even the thirty-five-foot beams that would have been necessary for the sacristy of San Buenaventura. Beams at closer intervals lessened the stresses on each one, making the supporting pillars proposed by Vivian unnecessary. The walls, averaging two feet thick and about thirty feet high, were thin but supported over part of their length by the slopes of the hill into which the church was cut, making the structure solid enough to stand for several decades. [28]

Inside the church, Acevedo constructed an interior very much like that of the recently completed first church at Abó. At the east end, over the principal entrance, he built a choir loft. It had two main crossbeams, each supported by two wooden pillars eight feet from the side walls of the nave. One of the two crossbeams was positioned to support the front edge of the choir loft, sixteen feet from the front wall, while the second crossbeam was eight feet from the front wall of the church. The two crossbeams were necessary in order to support several short flooring vigas at the north side of the choir loft, allowing Acevedo to insert a stairwell opening for the choir stairs. A wooden stairway against the north wall gave access to the choir loft. A second stairway or ladder allowed the sacristan to climb from the choir loft through a hatch in the ceiling to the roof where he rang the bell to announce activities in the church. [29]

Figure 20. Plan of San Buenaventura and its convento. This plan depicts the buildings after the final effort at construction ending about 1667. The convento had been roofed, and the choir loft built into the church, but the roofing of the church, sacristy and baptistry were never put on the building. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

Under the choir loft on the south side of the church near the entrance, Acevedo placed the baptismal font. He built a circular stone pillar base about two feet in diameter, with a hole in the center about ten inches across. The base was probably about three feet high, and supported a large baptismal basin of copper. [30]

At the west end of the church he placed two side altars on low platforms in the north and south corners of the sanctuary area, and a main altar on a higher platform in the apse. Each side altar platform was about one foot high, with a masonry edge and an adobe floor over packed earth fill. The side altars were masonry boxes also filled with earth, and with a stone or wood top about four feet above the platform. The main altar platform was about two feet above the floor of the church, with four steps each about six inches high leading up to it from the nave. Two of these steps had masonry risers, while the other two probably had wooden risers. The main altar itself probably followed the traditional arrangement. It would have been about four feet high, resting on a predella, or altar platform, about six inches high. Acevedo probably left a space behind it to allow the addition of a wooden retablo later. [31]

Against the edge of the platform of the southern side altar, Acevedo built a font and washbasin to carry out part of the activities usually conducted in a sacristy. The font was probably a copper basin, like the baptismal basin, placed on a similar masonry pillar. The priest would have used it to hold holy water to wash his hands before Mass. The masonry box next to it stood two or more feet high, and may have been used to dispose of the holy water in the approved manner. The robing room remained in the old convento farther up the hill. [32]

The interior of San Isidro was more colorful than the drab, adobe-tan exterior. The plastering crew coated the clay floor and stone walls with a layer of tan clay plaster, and then painted the walls with a thin white plaster coat. They also whitewashed the baptismal font, the altar platforms and altars, and probably the sacristy font and washbasin. Then the plasterers added a red dado along the walls, and a similar dado-like band around the base of the baptismal font, extending four inches out onto the floor around it. [33]

Behind the side altars, Acevedo designed retablos of white plaster on an armature or framework of small poles. It had a red dado along the base, topped by a black line and floral designs in black on the white plaster above the dado. The main altar probably had a similar retablo, although undoubtedly more elaborate, with perhaps a central niche for a statue of San Isidro or San Buenaventura. [34]

Tabirá

During the same period, Acevedo completed the church begun by Letrado at Tabirá. Letrado had begun the church, but abandoned the work while the walls were only two to five feet high and no interior structures had been built. Acevedo continued the construction. [35] The work crews, under the direction of a mayordomo, built the usual scaffolding and raised the walls to a height of about twenty-five feet. At this height they lifted roof beams, and finished the roof and parapets to a height of about twenty-eight feet. Acevedo had them build a room on the south side of the church, measuring fourteen feet by twenty-one feet, to use as the sacristy and his residence when he was visiting the pueblo. The sacristy had a door through the south nave wall in front of the altar through which the priest entered the church. The construction crew raised the floor of the church about two feet, making it slightly higher than the floor of the sacristy. As part of this construction, the workers built a flagged area at the main doorway through the east or front wall, with a flight of three stairs down to ground level in the campo santo on the east side of the church. After the floor fill was completed, the masons built a simple altar against the west wall of the apse. The altar, about four feet high, had no raised platform, unlike virtually every other known main altar in seventeenth century New Mexico. The visita church apparently had no choir loft. Total construction time was about two years. When it was completed, Acevedo dedicated the church to San Diego.

Administration of the Visita

During his visits to Las Humanas, Acevedo continued to use the convento rooms built by the late Letrado as his residence. When he was at Tabirá, he probably stayed in the sacristy of San Diego. He travelled, presumably by wagon, from Abó to Las Humanas as part of his rounds to the visitas of Abó, bringing the necessary vestments and vessels for the services, and perhaps a sacristan or cantor as an assistant. He would have stayed in the convento overnight during these visits. From Las Humanas he probably went on to Tabirá, then back to Abó. Acevedo would have spent about five days on the road or at a visita, and may have made the trip once a month perhaps or even more frequently. He followed this routine for almost thirty years.

He made the feast day of San Buenaventura a special celebration for the people of Las Humanas, and even brought Indians from Abó to help during the celebration. Usually Acevedo was accompanied by about twenty Indian cantors and sacristans, and brought along the appropriate vestments for the festival, which usually included a vesper service, a mass, and a procession. [36]

Changes to the Mission Buildings

Acevedo noticed that the north and west walls of the convento of San Isidro were settling and cracking. In order to assure that they did not collapse, he arranged for a construction crew to thicken the exterior wall along the entire west side of the convento, as well as along the west half of the north side. When completed, the lower portion of the wall was almost three feet thick. A gap was left for the vent in the west wall of room 222. [37]

During the 1650s Acevedo also extensively remodelled the visita church at Tabirá. He constructed an altar platform into the apse of the church by building a masonry wall across the mouth of the apse and filling the enclosed area with packed earth. He built up the altar until its top was about four feet above the surface of the platform, and added a flight of three masonry stairs for access. Both the edge of the platform and the edges of the stairs were formed by squared beams. The stairs, platform face, and lower five feet of the nave walls were painted red, while the rebuilt altar was painted white. [38]

In the late 1650s began a resurgence of the interest of the king and higher authorities in Mexico City in the northern frontier. This resulted in the decision in 1659 to expand the Franciscan effort in the frontier missions of New Mexico. The number of missionaries serving the province was returned to the maximum of sixty-six, and several missions which had been reduced to visitas were returned to full mission status. In this spirit of a new effort on the frontier, the custodian of New Mexico decided on a second attempt to make Las Humanas a permanent mission post.