PRE aR TR a 
Fe Ee a ee re Te ee ey ae a eae, Pye 
| talk, what couldn’t they tell? 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
25 
BACK IN THE OLD DAYS 
OF OUR NEW COUNTRY 
Historic Old Santa Fe, a Place Rich with History of the 
Wild Far Past—the Days of Carson and Kearney 
[By M. J. Brown, Editor Little Valley (N. Y.) Hub.] 
When it becomes more popular to 
know something about our own 
country, and less about Africa and 
Italy, then perhaps we Americans 
will know more about this arid but 
enchanted land of the southwest— 
this wonderland of witchery and 
mystery. 
Almost every foot of New Mexico 
has something of interest, something 
to make you stop and wonder. | 
don’t know where to start, what to 
take up first, or where to quit. 
Just out there, crumbling to ruins, 
is a fortress—where the early Span- 
iards builded mud fortifications to 
protect themselves from the savages 
300 years ago. The elements are 
wearing away these historic walls, 
and the American people are not lift- 
ing a protesting hand. Some hack 
driver will take you up on the hill, 
sing you a little fifty cent song of 
history, and hurry you back. 
If those crumbling walls could 
But 
they can’t and there are few to talk 
for them. There they waste away— 
out under the brightest sunshine of 
the southwest—a sunshine and a cli- 
mate that deals far more gently with 
them than does man. 
_ And over across is the place where 
General Lew Wallace wrote ‘‘Ben 
Hur’’—or the concluding chapters. 
I can understand the inspiration 
from this environment and surround- 
ings. 
- Down in the Plaza of Santa Fe is 
where General Kearney defeated the 
Pueblo Indians 220 years ago, and 
raised the stars and stripes. 
On the other side is the old palace, 
the oldest government building in 
our country, which was built of 
*dobe bricks in 1598. 
On the south side of the plaza is 
the oldest Masonic lodge of the Unit- 
ed States, on whose rooster is the 
ernment all men are equal, and ey- 
chives are filled with curious and 
historical memorials of the early 
days of.the square and compass. 
Over there is a monument erected 
to General Kearney’s memory and 
patriotic deeds, whose stone letters 
proclaim : 
‘*We come as friends to make you 
a part of the Republic. In our gov- 
ernment all men are equal, and ev- 
ery man has a right to serve God 
according to his heart.’’ 
Up on the hill is the ruins of Fort 
Marcy, where a few years ago The- 
odore Roosevelt climbed and took 
off his hat to the memory of the dead 
heroes. 
Out by the Federal building is a 
monument erected to the memory of 
Kit Carson. I had read that Carson’s 
home was in Taos, north of here, and 
that his body was buried there. I 
found an old man who wore the Ma- 
sonic badge and asked him how Car- 
son could be buried in two place. 
He looked at me and asked where I 
was from. 
‘<There is a monument at Batavia, 
N. Y.,’’ said he, ‘‘which marks the 
place where the bones of William 
Morgan are supposed to le, and the 
inscription states he was murdered 
by the Free Masons. Some of you 
Masons say he is buried in Canada 
and others in England.’’ 
From another man I learned that 
an attempt was made to remove Car- 
son’s bones from the old pueblo of 
Taos to Santa Fe, but so great was 
the protest that it was abandoned. 
Then the Masonic lodge at Santa Fe 
proposed that the lodge which would 
raise the greatest amount of money 
for a monument should erect it. San- 
ta Fe won out, and there it glistens 
in the sun today, but back up in the 
ancient old pueblo of Taos, his bones 
lie, buried, under the rites and cus- 
toms of the days of Tuble Cain & 
Co. 
But most ancient of all, most his- 
toric of all, and associated more 
nearly with the days of this coun- 
try which were wild beyond the tell- 
ing—there stands out under the 
Aztee sunshine the old San Miguel 
chureh—a wonder to all who see it, 
and a building whose crumbling mud 
walls you gaze at with speechless 
awe as you try to picture the days 
of the devote Franciscan Fathers 
whose bones lie buried under the 
floor of this oldest church in Am- 
erica. 
Back in 1541 Catholic hands build- 
ed this church out of earth. Its 
walls are four or five feet thick, 
and its rough mortar was laid on by 
the hand, rather than by the trowel. 
Projecting from the ’dobe walls are 
the ends of the wooden beams, the 
ends crackled and parted by the dry 
rot of over 390 years—-beams laid in 
place when Christopher Columbus 
was telling the Spaniards of a new 
world he had found. 
The rains of centuries have wash- 
ed down and worn away the ’dobe 
bricks from the top, and around the 
base of the walls the crumbling dirt 
is many feet thick. One looks at 
these historic old walls, and as his 
hand reaches out to take a handful 
of the dirt, a something seems to 
hold it back, and to make the act a 
sacrilege. 
I entered this old church and stood 
over the graves of men whose names 
are history. The venerable Father, 
garbed in the uniform of the Order, 
told me that under my feet lay the 
bones of Father Juan de Jesus, kill- 
ed by the Indians in 1680, and across 
the aisle there rested the bodies of 
De Vargas, 1704, as well as the bones 
of many other notable persons and 
governors of the early days. 
On the walls are oil paintings so 
old and so historic, that Columbus’ 
ancesters look like 1910 Milwaukee 
beer signs by comparison. There are 
two by Giovanni Ciamabue, in 1287, 
pictures that have defied time for 
over six hundred years—pictures 
beautiful in their rich hue, blue and 
yellow colors, and which look down 
on you from the ancient walls and 
defy time. There are others so old 
the dates and identification are worn 
out and lost. There are old masters; 
beautiful specimens of ancient wood 
carvings, Mexican and Italian work, 
statues, all so old and so expressive 
of centuries gone by that they hold 
the visitor in awe. 
One of the old masterpiece paint- 
ings hanging in the altar has two 
holes through it, pierced by Indian 
arrows, so it is said, many years 
ago. 
I am not through with the old 
things. Just inside the church is a 
bell, weighing 800 pounds that was 
hammered out in Spain over 650 
years ago. It has four inch walls 
and is wrought of copper, silver, iron 
and gold. Different from all other 
bells, this bell does not move, only 
the clapper. I took the end of my 
knife and tapped the bell from the 
top down the sides and the reverber- 
ations were like chimes, each note 
seeming to be in harmony with and 
tuned to the other. 
Now one more old one: On a Hit- 
tle side *dobe street of Santa Fe, 
and where one would never notice 
it from the hundreds of other mud 
houses that all look alike, is the old- 
est mud house in our country that 
has been continuously occupied— 
over 400 years old. What little 
Spanish history there is connected 
with it is to the effect that a great 
Indian chief built it in about 1500, 
