laos and a similar count at Abiquiii; only Santa Fe 

 with 5,700 and Santa Cruz with 6,500 were larger 

 villages. 



At this time, an independent element appeared in 

 the religious activities of the Santa Cruz region. In 

 1 83 1, Vicar Rascon gave permission to sixty members 

 of the Third Order of St. Francis at Santa Cruz to 

 hold Lenten exercises in Taos, provided that no 

 "abuses" arose to be corrected on his next visit. ^^ Ap- 

 parently this warning proved inadequate, for in 1833 

 Archbishop Zubiria concluded his visitation at Santa 

 Cruz by ordering that "pastors of this villa . . . must 

 never in the future permit such reunions of Penitentes 

 under any pretext whatsoever." ^^ We have noted, how- 

 ever, that two generations earlier Fray Dominguez 

 had commended similar obser\'ances at Santa Cruz and 

 Abiquiii, and it was not until the visitation of Fray 

 Nino de Guevara, 1817-1820, that Church officials 

 found it necessary to condemn penitential activity in 

 New Mexico.^* 



In little more than two generations, from 1776 to 

 1833, the Franciscan missions were disrupted by 

 secularization and excessive acts of penance. In the 

 second half of the 19th century, the new, non-Spanish 

 Archbishops, Lamy and Salpointe, saw a relation be- 

 tween the Franciscan Third Order and the brother- 

 hood of penitentes. When J. B. Lamy began signing 

 rule books (arreglos) ior ihe penitcnte chapters oi New 

 Mexico,^' he hoped to reintegrate them into accepted 

 Church practice as members of the Third Order. And 

 at the end of the century, J. B. Salpointe expressed 

 his belief that the penitente brotherhood had been an 

 outgrowth of the Franciscan tertiaries.'- 



Abiquiu shared in events that marked the religious 

 history of New Mexico in the last three quarters of the 

 19th century. We have noted the secularization of Santo 

 Tomas Mission in 1826; by 1856 the village had its 

 penitente mle book duly signed by Archbishop Lamy. 

 Entitled Arreglo de la Santa Hermandad de la Sangre 

 de Nuestro Senor Jesucristo, a copy was signed by 

 Abiquiu's priest, Don Pedro Bernal, on April 6, 1867.'" 

 While officialdom worked out new religious and politi- 



34. AASF, Patentes, 1831, book Ixx, box 4, p. 25. 



35. Ibid., book Ixxiii, box 7. 



36. AASF, Accounts, book Ixii, box 5. 



37. AASF, Loose Documents, Diocesan, 1853, no. 17, for 

 Santuario and Cochiti ; other rule books document penitente 

 chapters at Chimayo, El Rito, and Taos. 



38. Jean B. Salpointe, Soldiers of the Cross (Banning, 

 Calif., 1898). 



39. AASF, Loose Documents, Diocesan, 1856, no. 12. 



cal relations, villagers struggled to preserve a more 

 familiar tradition. 



Occupation of New Mexico in 1846 by United States 

 troops tended to solidify traditional Hispano life in 

 Abiquiii. In that year, Navajo harassments caused an 

 encampment of 180 men under Major Gilpin to be 

 stationed at Abiquiii. *" Eventually, the Indian raids 

 slackened, and a trading post for the Utes was set up 

 at Abiquiii in 1853." Neither the U.S. Army nor 

 Indian trading posts, however, became integrated into 

 Abiquiu's Hispano way of life, and these extracultural 

 influences soon moved on, leaving only a few commer- 

 cial artifacts. 



With a new generation of inhabitants occupying 

 Abiquiii between 1 864 and 1 886, the village on the Rio 

 Chama lost its primary function as a buffer settlement 

 against nomadic Indians and settled down into a well- 

 established cultural pattern, which in part was pre- 

 served by the penitentes. Kit Carson had rounded up 

 the Navajos at Bosque Redondo, and two decades 

 later, by 1883, the Utes had been moved north. In 

 preparation, the Indian trading post at Abiquiii was 

 closed in 1872 and moved to the new seat of Rio Arriba 

 County, Tierra Amarilla,-'- 65 kilometers northward. 

 Within two generations, Abiquiu's population had 

 fallen to fewer than 800 from a high of nearly 3,600 

 in 1827.^^ As a result, many Hispanos at .\biquiii 

 withdrew into the penitente organization, which 

 promised to preserve and even intensify their tradi- 

 tional ways of life and beliefs. These attitudes were 

 materialized in the building of the penitente moradas. 



The Architecture of the Moradas 



In a modern map (Figure 2), circles enclose the Mis- 

 sion of Abiquiii and its two penitente moradas. The 

 moradas lie 300 meters east and 400 meters south of 

 the main plaza onto which Santo Tomas Mission faces 

 from the north. Between the moradas rests the local 

 burial ground {campo santo) , a. cemetery that serves 

 penitentes as "Calvary" [calvario] in their Lenten re- 

 enactment of the Passion. 



40. TwiTCHELL, pp. 533-334- 



41. Bancroft, p. 665. 



42. TwiTCHELL, p. 447. 



43. Ibid., p. 449, from P. B. Pino, Noticias hisloncas 

 (Mejico, 1848); and Ninth U.S. Censtts (1870). The later 

 figure may represent only the town proper; earlier statistics 

 generally included outlying settlements. 



PAPER 63: THE PENITENTE MORADAS OF ABIQUIU 



129 



