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

THE CONSTRUCTION OF SAN BUENAVENTURA

At the end of July, 1659, Fray Diego de Santandér arrived at the headquarters of the Franciscan province of New Mexico at Santo Domingo, accompanying the new custodian, Fray Juan Ramirez. They and fourteen other new missionaries had travelled from Mexico City in the same wagon train that brought the new governor, Don Bernardo López de Mendizábal. [39] The new missionaries received their assignments at the chapter meeting held soon after their arrival, probably in August. Santandér was designated to return a permanent Franciscan establishment to the pueblo of Las Humanas. With this assignment the custodian raised Las Humanas once again from a visita to a doctrina, and Tabirá again became a visita of Las Humanas rather than of Abó.

Santandér arrived at Las Humanas in late August or September of 1659 with his wagon load of starting supplies. He moved into the convento built by Letrado and soon carried out a program of repairs and reconstruction on the buildings. In room 222, where Santandér lived, he built a large fireplace in the northwest corner. As part of the construction, the masons sealed off the vent through the west wall, leaving a niche in its place on the outside of the wall. At some time during Santandér's tenure at Las Humanas the small pass through opening between rooms 226 and 224 was also filled. [40]

Probably in this same period, the church of San Isidro (named San Buenaventura by Acevedo) was redecorated. During the redecoration, the floor, which had accumulated about 1 1/2 inches of dirt, was replastered and the baptismal font repainted in red and white. [41]

After completing the repair and remodelling of Letrado's church and convento, Santandér began work on the design of a full-sized mission compound. He wanted one appropriate for a doctrina with its own visita and preferably one somewhat more imposing than the other churches in the Jurisdiction of Salinas. Santandér and the surveying crew probably began to lay out the new design in the spring of 1660. Later testimony by Fray Nicolás de Freitas indicates that construction on the foundations had already begun by late 1660. [42]

Santandér, however, soon ran into a number of problems, both political and economic. The economic problems were the same as those that had defeated Fray Francisco Letrado thirty years before, centering around the shortage of water at the pueblo. This was destined to be the major recurring difficulty throughout the next decade. Santandér had arrived in New Mexico during a period of famine. The Salinas missions had already found it necessary to feed some of the people in their pueblos earlier in 1659, and perhaps during the winter months of 1658. The shortages continued into 1660. In February, 1660, Vice-Custodian Fray Garcia de San Francisco ordered those missions that had not already done so to begin feeding their pueblos from the convento storerooms, if they had sufficient supplies. Santandér, in what amounted to a new conversión, had no stockpile of supplies to draw on, and Las Humanas had to depend on whatever could be spared from the other Salinas missions. [43]

Figure 21. Section across the nave of San Buenaventura at its maximum height. The choir loft structure in the drawing is not hypothetical, but is taken directly from photographs, drawings, and the recorded measurements of visitors to the ruins. The opening above the choir loft was apparently intended to be only a window, since there is no evidence suggesting a porch along the front of the building. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

A mission usually used its herds of sheep and the excess grain not needed in the mission storerooms to finance the miscellaneous costs of constructing and furnishing a church. Like Letrado before him, Santandér found that he had very limited access to such income. Because the water supply was adequate only for the people and the fields of the pueblo, he could not maintain the usual herds of sheep, cattle, and horses at Las Humanas. Finally, in July, 1660, by order of Governor Mendizábal, his herds were moved to Abó. [44] This allowed Santandér some hope of profitable increase to be used to furnish his new mission appropriately, but such increase would be at the discretion of Abó, not directly under Santandér's control as he would have liked.

Santandér was unable to plant the usual fields of wheat to be used to supplement the food supplies of the mission and to add to the trade goods, again because of the closely-controlled water supply, which was aggravated by the drought conditions prevailing in much of New Mexico. Any fields Santandér planted were that much more of a drain on the limited water in the basins. The catch-basins on the hillsides and the large fields in the valley bottoms were badly dried out, so that the crops were falling short of their usual quantity. [45] One solution Santandér attempted was to plant wheat in the large fields near Quarai, but this made problems in harvesting and transporting the grain. [46]

The Indians had established larger areas of farming in the big basins on the floors of the surrounding valleys. Millennia of runoff from the hills had deposited thick layers of rich soil on the floors of these shallow limestone bowls. During times of good rain and snowfall, these basins probably retained enough moisture for dry-farming throughout the year. The Indians found that the basins were also a dependable source of water for drinking if they excavated pozos, or wells, in their centers. Fray Freitas, stationed at Quarai, later stated that there were about 32 pozos within 1/4 mile of Las Humanas. Most were about 22 to 28 feet deep, although some were as deep as 56 feet. [47] The pozos could supply only a limited amount of water, an amount undoubtedly precisely known by the people living at Las Humanas. The actual population of Las Humanas was controlled by the amount of water available. Before the Franciscans came, in dry years, some people probably had to move elsewhere.

The hillside catch-basins were artificial structures called jagueyes formed by building low retaining dams across ravines on the slopes of the mesa. The retaining walls trapped soil being washed from the top of the mesa, and the soil trapped moisture. Governor López de Mendizábal claimed that he had suggested the construction of these to Santandér in 1659. [48] The Indians, and presumably Santandér, farmed in and around these small pockets of moist earth. Nine of these have been located. Most are about 30 to 50 feet across and almost flat, while the two largest are each 120 feet across and several feet deep.

From Santandér's viewpoint, a far worse problem was the political situation. Governor López had quickly taken the position that the Franciscans exercised far too much civil authority, and he embarked on a campaign to restrict their legal powers to those of simple doctrineros, rather than the broad powers they presently wielded. As part of the conflict, severe restrictions were put on the use of Indian labor, and strong punishment was meted out to those who violated the governor's edicts. Santandér found that legally he could not have the usual work-crews of Indians unless he paid them one real a day instead of employing them on a volunteer basis. This must have seemed an exorbitant rate, especially when he was facing the fact that he had no appreciable income from which to draw funds. Requesting the usual Indian masons experienced in Spanish construction methods to serve as his mayordomos would be relatively expensive and legally difficult. Santandér was faced with the necessity of building his church surreptitiously with Indians he persuaded to carry out the work with little or no hope of pay and a very real chance of being whipped if caught by Aguilar. [49] The amazing thing is that Santandér got any work done at all.

Santandér managed to avoid the direct attacks Mendizábal made against priests like Fray Nicolás de Freitas and Fray Diego de Parraga, but still apparently aroused the enmity of both the conservative Franciscan clergy and the civil authorities. He brought some of his difficulties on himself. Governor López de Mendizábal remarked that he was very young and considered him to be a troublemaker and the cause of many of the problems in 1659 to 1660. [50]

Santandér had a heavy load of duties to carry out. In addition to conducting an occasional mass at Tabirá, twenty-five miles away to the northeast, he was also secretary to the custodian, all of which required that he travel frequently. He acted as the notary, officially recording many hearings and inquiries conducted by the Franciscans. Santandér is known to have made trips to Chililí and Senecú during 1660 and Isleta and Santa Fe during 1661 as part of these duties. [51] Because of Santandér's other activities, work on the church apparently went slowly and lacked the expert polish to be found in other churches built by more experienced friars. [52]