Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England WomanSummerhayes, Martha
History
Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman
Summerhayes, Martha
Arizona -- Biography; Arizona -- Description and travel; Summerhayes, Martha, 1844-1926; United States. Army -- Military life
I wrote to my friends in the East to come to the Sisters' Hospital if
they wanted health, peace and happiness, for it was surely to be found
there. I visited the convent of Our Lady of Loretto: I stood before a
high wall in an embrasure of which there was a low wooden gate; I pulled
on a small knotted string which hung out of a little hole, and a
queer old bell rang. Then one of the nuns came and let me in, across a
beautiful garden to the convent school. I placed my little daughter as
a day pupil there, as she was now eleven years old. The nuns spoke very
little English and the children none at all.
The entire city was ancient, Spanish, Catholic, steeped in a religious
atmosphere and in what the average American Protestant would call
the superstitions of the dark ages. There were endless fiestas, and
processions and religious services, I saw them all and became much
interested in reading the history of the Catholic missions, established
so early out through what was then a wild and unexplored country. After
that, I listened with renewed interest to old Father de Fouri, who had
tended and led his flock of simple people so long and so lovingly.
There was a large painting of Our Lady of Guadaloupe over the
altar--these people firmly believed that she had appeared to them, on
the earth, and so strong was the influence around me that I began almost
to believe it too. I never missed the Sunday morning mass, and I fell in
easily with the religious observances.
I read and studied about the old explorers, and I seemed to live in
the time of Cortez and his brave band. I became acquainted with Adolf
Bandelier, who had lived for years in that country, engaged in research
for the American Archaeological Society. I visited the Indian pueblos,
those marvellous structures of adobe, where live entire tribes, and saw
natives who have not changed their manner of speech or dress since the
days when the Spaniards first penetrated to their curious dwellings,
three hundred or more years ago. I climbed the rickety ladders, by which
one enters these strange dwellings, and bought the great bowls which
these Indians shape in some manner without the assistance of a potter's
wheel, and then bake in their mud ovens.
The pueblo of Tesuque is only nine miles from Santa Fe, and a pleasant
drive, at that; it seemed strange to me that the road was not lined
with tourists. But no, they pass all these wonders by, in their
disinclination to go off the beaten track.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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