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

LIFE AND TIMES IN THE CONVENTO

In the eighteenth century, missions had shops for carpentry, blacksmithing, weaving, and sometimes stoneworking. However, other than weaving, craft activities were not incorporated into the buildings at the New Mexico missions in the seventeenth century. These activities were apparently conducted by specialists located elsewhere in the province, or in the Pueblo where the mission was located. For example, carpentry was carried out by Indians from the pueblo of Pecos. Their finished goods or their expertise was transported all over the province. It is likely that Pecos Indian carpenters cut and carved virtually all the wooden items at the Salinas missions. Details of the decorated woodwork at all three Salinas missions are known, and show a strong resemblance.

Blacksmithing may have been relatively rare in the pueblos and at the missions, although it must have been practiced in the civil settlements and military establishments. Most necessary iron items such as hinges, nails, and tools were probably shipped from Mexico. Zuñi maintained a large smithy in the 19th century; whether this reflects earlier skills at this pueblo is not known. The mission wagon trains, however, must have needed smiths as part of their travelling staff, to take care of the almost certain breakdowns during the long months of travel to New Mexico. This expertise would surely have been made available to individual missions as needed. Bulk iron and steel was occasionally shipped to the missions to be made into necessary items needed sooner than the next round trip of the wagon train, six years later.

Some missionaries included a weaving workshop, using imported looms and other equipment, in the convento. [41] The workshop could, however, just as easily have been maintained in the pueblo, although a convento workroom is more likely since the equipment was costly and replacement time would be three or six years. The missionary probably supplied the Indian workers with the necessary equipment and supplies through the mission supply system. No such equipment is listed as part of the founding stock sent to a new mission, but it may have been usual to start this industry later, after the new mission operation was stabilized. [42]

Undoubtedly a weaving industry existed in New Mexico during the 17th century. [43] The missions were strongly involved in this industry, as is shown by an order of governor Peñalosa Brizeño in 1664 in which he prohibited the missionaries from employing "Indian women in spinning, weaving mantas, stockings, or any other things" without permission from the governor. [44] The prohibition, part of the ongoing competition between the Franciscan establishment and civil enterprises in New Mexico in the later 17th century, indicates that such activities must have been relatively common in the missions. [45]

Staff and Daily Activity in the Convento

Life for the Franciscan on the New Mexican frontier was not always harsh or difficult. It was common, for example, for several friars to get together in one or another convento to exchange news and discuss politics. [46] Occasionally the convento saw a more formal dinner with a visiting governor, as at Quarai in 1661, when four Franciscans, including the guardian, Fray Francisco de Salazar, and the governor all eating at the same table. [47]

Luxuries were not forbidden to the Franciscans. For example, on social occasions, chocolate was served as coffee would be in the United States today. [48] Some items were very expensive, such as a large clock purchased in 1628. It cost 450 pesos, more than the full three-year stipend for a missionary. [49] It is difficult to imagine that the friars could afford such an expenditure unless the income from the sales of mission products was quite good.

Sometimes the rooms of a convento could acquire individual names or specialized uses. For example, the principal cell at Quarai was called "of the Custodians," probably because it had been used by custodian Estevan de Perea in the 1630s. [50] One room of the convento was used as the office of the Inquisition for a time in the 1640s. In about 1641 it was broken into by unknown persons and the Inquisition records disturbed. [51] One unusual use of the convento was the confinement of Fray Salvador de Guerra in the convento of Concepción de Quarai in July, 1655, to be held there until taken back to Mexico City by the returning supply train in the winter of 1656. [52]

Fray Alonso de Benavides described a standard convento in the late 1620s as having only one Franciscan. Later the Franciscans anticipated two or three friars at a convento, although usually this did not happen. Two friars in a convento became relatively common by 1666, and two missions had three, but the Franciscans were still requesting additional friars.

In addition to the friars, each mission had a number of persons as semipermanent staff. In the 1620s, more than twenty Indians with the friar in the convento. They worked as gardeners, waiters, an interpreter, a sacristan, a choir leader, a bell ringer, an organist, a herdsman, a cook, a porter, and a horse-tender. [53] Benavides says that they "perform their duties with as much attention and care as if they were friars." [54] The sacristans, at least, wore cassocks when assisting at mass. [55] As the mission establishment developed, however, the number of people on staff seems to have increased. In 1660, for example, Captain Nicolás de Aguilar testified that more than 70 Indians worked for the conventos of Salinas "as acolytes, sacristans, singers, aides, horsemen, cooks, shepherds, and farm hands, and in other things, and besides this, every day all the [families of these] Indians, women as well as children, were kept busy . . . ." During a normal day, the Indians attended the teaching of doctrine, and rang the mission bells to mark the hours of the day, specifically the Ave Maria and the sunset bell. At some time during the day they attended choir. [56]

The Franciscans were said to have as many as twenty Indians as cantors and sacristans. The mission schools could have up to seventy students, some of them adult. More than forty Indians might be used as porters, wood cutters, or millers. At Tajique, and apparently in all the missions, women entered the convento to do the cooking and bread-making. On the farms, the Indians planted and guarded "very large fields of wheat and corn for the religious," as well as vegetable gardens and orchards. As well as planting it, the Indians reaped the wheat for the Franciscans. On the ranches, the Indians herded and protected the cattle and horses. [57]