Landscape and Ideology in Willa Cather's Death Comes for The

Romancing the Desert

Romancing the Desert: Landscape and fulfilled. However, this region was not a “blank Ideology in Willa Cather’s Death space”; it already had a history and people which were mapped over by the Euro- Comes for the Archbishop Americans in their desire to conquer the “wilderness.” As Mary Lawlor discusses in Recalling the Wild, the closure of the frontier Julie Williams as a defined spatial category allowed romanticized imaginings to abound, as “writers and artists across the social spectrum Julie Williams is a PhD candidate in the English found in the topic of the vanished ‘wilderness’ department at the University of New Mexico. She is an opportunity to memorialize the open- specializing in 19th and 20th century American literature, endedness, the sense of possibility of what with a focus on landscape, popular culture, and unraveling the complexities of interactions between the was now regarded as a storied zone of many different cultures who reside in the American West. adventure” (1). The open-endedness of this She received a B.A. from the University of Montana and a area describes the multiple possible futures of M.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is this region whose past has been so happy to round out her academic experience in the Southwest. thoroughly re-imagined. Throughout Death Comes for the Archbishop, Father Latour engages in the process of memorializing this Willa Cather’s mythic tale of the “adventure zone” both concretely, through Southwest, Death Comes for the Archbishop, construction of the cathedral and his does more than memorialize the life of a cultivation of gardens, and conceptually, with French priest, it also commemorates the the dictation of “truths and fancies” about the Southwest as a land where history and legend New Mexican diocese to his young disciples. coalesce, and reveals the anxieties underlying Latour’s myth-making remaps the landscape the integration of this region into the national with a European sense of spirituality and imaginary. The story centers on Father possession, becoming the palimpsest under Latour’s experiences in his Santa Fe diocese, which traces of indigenous history and layers yet by the end it is clear that the story of this of empire can be unearthed. man is merely one of many threads in a A European Chess Game narrative woven with the aspects which make the Southwest mythic: the desert landscape, The novel begins with a scene which its native inhabitants, and both the specific depicts not only the romantic image that the history and a sense of timelessness Europeans had of the Southwest, but also surrounding the region. their belief that they could arrange its destiny and remap its boundaries without a clear Death Comes for the Archbishop vision of the landscape or any reliable depicts the process through which individual knowledge of its inhabitants and their culture. perception distorts a previously inscribed As one Cardinal frankly admits, “[m]y landscape, as Cather’s portrayals of the knowledge of your country is chiefly drawn Southwest articulate the Euro-American wish from the romances of Fenimore Cooper” (10) to transform an unfamiliar landscape and and “I see your redskins through Fenimore culture into a blank space onto which national Cooper, and I like them so” (13). The desires can be projected and ultimately

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

European Cardinals view America through the (284). This statement seems to gesture lens of Cooper’s novels and prefer not to have toward the importance of shifting boundaries, their romanticized image confused by fact, but once again without explaining their although the probability of them having significance. In addition, the Mexicans’ and access to facts about this region is negligible, Indians’ maintenance of their cultural and since the “new territory was vague . . . even political identities years after the border had to the missionary bishop” (4). New Mexico is moved around them reveals the lag between portrayed as foreign even to a missionary who political and cultural integration of this region has spent time in North America, and it is into the nation. Long after the US had exactly this unfamiliar exoticism that makes acquired this territory, the work of culturally the Southwest the setting onto which integrating its inhabitants into the nation was expansionist national desires and fantasies still being done, and Death Comes for the can be mapped. Also, distinct tribes and Archbishop is itself an example of weaving regions are conflated in the Bishops’ this region into the fabric of the national imaginations; the characters of Cooper’s imaginary. As Anthony Mora observes in novels are different from the inhabitants of “Resistance and Accommodation in a Border New Mexico, just as the landscape of the Parish”, the Catholic Church played a Great Lakes region bears little resemblance to complicated role in the “Americanizing” of the desert Southwest. However, the Cardinals’ Mexican peoples after the annexation of New lack of knowledge about the Southwest did Mexico in 1848. Cather’s narrative dramatizes not deter them from determining its spiritual a common story after the end of the Mexican- path and arranging the administrative course American War, that of the influence of Catholic of the newly founded Apostolic Vicariate in officials from Europe in the Southwest. As New Mexico. Mora notes, the “irony of European clergy authoritatively asserting their vision of Neither the temporal importance of ‘American’ Catholicism should not be ignored” 1848, the year in which the Cardinals’ (306). maneuvers occurred, nor the situation surrounding the annexation of New Mexico to In Death Comes for the Archbishop, the United States were noteworthy in the just as in the actual history of the Southwest, discussion which determines the fate of Father the characters have strong opinions on their Latour. Cather reveals the date in the first national identity. “They say at Albuquerque sentence of the novel, which would seem to that now we are all Americans, but that is not indicate that this time period and the true, Padre. I will never be an American. They aftermath of the Mexican-American War would are infidels” (27). This sets the tone for the factor significantly into the rest of the remainder of the narrative, a narrative which narrative. However, the narrative itself seems itself is performing the work of cultural almost to exist outside time. Readers are integration of this region into the national moved seamlessly through the stages of imaginary. Although the shifting borders are Latour’s life and the changes in his diocese, mentioned, there is no emphasis placed on which he minimizes at the end of his life, their political significance or their connections saying “that his diocese changed little except to the end of the Mexican-American war, in boundaries. The Mexicans were always although the importance of this becomes Mexicans, the Indians were always Indians” evident through the characters’ anxieties

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

about their national affiliation. However, the national characteristic of the French mapping being done by the Cardinals in Rome missionaries, and is why the Cardinals is on an entirely different ideological plane considered Latour a good choice to organize than the mapping of the Mexican/American the New Mexican Vicariate. “Our Spanish border: what does a political border matter fathers made good martyrs, but the French when dealing with a space which is to be Jesuits accomplish more. They are the great made sacred? organizers . . . the Germans classify, but the French arrange! The French missionaries have As the focus of the text shifts from a sense of proportion and rational Rome to central New Mexico, the reality of the adjustment” (8-9). Latour’s nationalized landscape creeps in. Father Latour is depicted sensitivity would seem to be particularly as a “solitary horseman” who had lost his way helpful in creating order in his Vicariate, a in a landscape which rapidly overwhelms his place which was perceived as a cultural senses. The depiction of the land evokes wilderness; however, that sensitivity was a Kant’s idea of the mathematical sublime. disadvantage in the “geographical nightmare” “[What happens is that] our imagination of the sublime landscape. There it only strives to progress toward infinity, while our heightened the violence done to his sensory reason demands absolute totality as a real faculties when he reached the limit of his idea, and so [the imagination,] our power of conceptual ability to imagine and arrange the estimating the magnitude of things in the infinite measurement of the desert. Latour’s world of sense, is inadequate to that idea” power of reason as a supersensible faculty (Kant 106). Certainly Latour’s imagination had not been able to exert its superiority over seems unable to comprehend the vastness of nature, for he was not yet viewing this this desert landscape, in which he is alone, sublime landscape from a position of safety. A lost and overwhelmed: position of safety, in this geographical and As far as he could see, on every cultural wilderness, is something that Latour side, the landscape was heaped up would have to create for himself. He does this into monotonous red sand-hills . . . through establishing his cathedral and his one could not have believed that in gardens, signs of civilization in this the number of square miles a man wilderness. Also, the aesthetic problem of the is able to sweep with the eye there “geographical nightmare” of the landscape is could be so many uniform red hills. lessened through “arranging” the socio- He had been riding since early political problems presented by the members morning, and the look of the of his diocese. country had no more changed than Vanishing into the Landscape if he had stood still . . . and he had begun to think that he would never Once he reached the relative safety of see anything else. (17) his Vicariate in Santa Fe, the work of the missionary began in earnest. Latour’s work The immensity of this monotonous and went beyond the saving of souls; he also seemingly never-ending landscape is participated in the cultivation of the overpowering, particularly to Latour who is wilderness, which in turn contributed to the “sensitive to the shape of things” (18). This re-inscription of the landscape with a Euro- sensitivity was discussed in the Prologue as a

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

American sense of ownership and power. inevitability of the imperialism of the Catholic However, in order to inscribe this sense of missionaries and, later on, of the Americans. ownership, the past had to be effaced. This After articulating Eusabio’s acceptance was done in various ways, but one of the of circumstances, the narrator moves to a most prevalent was the construction of the discussion of how the Navajo attempts to areas previously unsettled by Euro-Americans “obliterate every trace” of his presence in the as “wilderness.” The idea of this region as a landscape (232). The description of Eusabio wilderness is itself flawed, as wilderness is the as an early “leave no trace” camper is absence of civilization. A civilization existed in contrasted with the white man’s method of New Mexico; in fact many civilizations existed asserting his presence wherever he travels: there: many different Pueblo tribes, Navajo, Apaches, and the Nuevo Mexicanos. However, Father Latour judged that, just as the Native Americans were not viewed as it was the white man’s way to civilized by the Euro-Americans, who assert himself in any landscape, to “perceived Indians as the functional change it, make it over a little (at equivalent of wild animals” (Cronon 144). least to leave some mark of However, it was believed that “the Indian memorial of his sojourn), it was survivors had the potential to be ‘civilized’” the Indian’s way to pass through a and participate in the new culture which was country without disturbing establishing itself in the region (ibid. 144). In anything; to pass and leave no this context Cather evokes the image of the trace, like fish through the water, vanishing Indian and creates a distinction or birds through the air. It was the between the Native- and the Euro-American’s Indian manner to vanish into the methods of inhabiting the land. landscape, not to stand out against it. (232-233) The land-use ethics of both cultures are presented in “The Great Diocese”, through Once again akin to the natural world, the the depiction of the journey that Father Latour Indian is presented as relating to the and his Navajo friend Eusabio take from landscape of the Southwest as an animal in its Navajo country back to Santa Fe. Eusabio’s natural environment. Through the use of the interactions are presented as harmonious with word “vanish,” Cather is evoking a discourse the land through which they pass, so much so which is unable to depict an appropriate space that “[t]ravelling with Eusabio was like for Native Americans within Euro-American traveling with the landscape made human” culture, a culture whose need to shape and (232). Eusabio is depicted as so analogous to manipulate their environment is placed in the land which he occupies that Latour sees opposition to the Native ethic of “leave no him as its human embodiment. This trace.” However, a trace of the Native peoples naturalization of Eusabio’s position in relation who have vanished remains in the palimpsest to the landscape leads immediately to a of American history, despite their efforts to discourse of Native submission, where leave no mark on the landscape and the Euro- Eusabio “accepted chance and weather as the American desire for them to either vanish into country did” (232). This acceptance of events or be conflated with the landscape. The beyond their control marks the Native Fenimore Cooper novels through which the Americans in this story as acquiescent to the Cardinals imagined America belong to this line

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

of “vanishing Indian” literature, but Cather’s even greater audience . . . by bringing to bear own position in this lineage is not so clear. on everything related to the winning of the The vexed relationship her narrative has with West the yeasty nationalism aroused by the this tradition becomes evident later in the conflict” (Smith 84). This nationalism which story, as the removal of the Navajos from gave Carson his fame also required a their homeland forces Latour to more deeply reinterpretation of his character to imbue it consider exactly what the relationship with the qualities necessary in a person who between the settlers and the native was to civilize and domesticate the West. inhabitants of the land is (or should be), and Previous interpretations of the mountain man whether it is possible for them to coexist connected him to the wilderness in which he peacefully. lived. Vestiges of this image can be seen in Cather’s interpretation of Carson, particularly The Indians’ own attempt to erase the in the expectations Latour had after hearing visual marks of their presence seems to the legends about him. “He had supposed him explain to readers the subsequent removal of to be a very large man, of powerful body and their physical presence as well. This more commanding presence. This Carson was not forceful and harmful removal is perplexingly so tall as the Bishop himself, was very slight referenced later in the story, as Father Latour in frame, modest in manner, and he spoke reminisces on his deathbed about the fate of English with a soft Southern drawl” (74). the Navajos. After a description of their defeat Cather makes Carson into a slight, soft- at the Canyon de Chelly and their removal spoken man, characteristics which resist the from and later return to their land, Latour mountain man stereotypes and seem to make remarks that, “I do not believe, as I once did, him a living frontier, a figure that exists that the Indian will perish. I believe that God between wilderness and civilization. Carson’s will preserve him” (296). Although this connections to the values of civilization and statement is presented as a grand moment of progress are further emphasized by the hope, their preservation seems less reactions Latour has upon meeting him: satisfactory in its conditional nature. The Indians’ survival is more due to divine The Bishop felt a quick glow of intervention than to the actual humans of the pleasure in looking at the man. As story working through or accepting cultural he stood there in his buckskin and racial differences. Cather seems to desire clothes one felt in him standards, a narrative in which the natives and colonists loyalties, a code which is not can coexist, but her language betrays the easily put into words but which is difficulties in creating such a space. instantly felt when two men who live by it come together by Kit Carson: A Frontier “Hero” chance. He took the scout’s hand. The Navajos are finally defeated by the ‘I have long wanted to meet Kit famous scout, Kit Carson. This character, like Carson,’ he said, ‘even before I Latour, was based on a historical frontier came to New Mexico. (75) individual. Carson was a mountain man who Carson shares Latour’s standards, loyalties, became known for his exploring expeditions in and codes, which seems to imply that he will the 1840s, and gained fame after the end of be a partner in Latour’s civilizing mission. the Mexican-American War, which “created an

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

However, their methods for civilizing the from Latour’s methods of domesticating the “savage” elements of the Southwest differ. land and people of his diocese.

Cather uses Carson’s domesticating influence as an example of the extremes Latour’s Legacy: “Mastery” of the which occurred in the “taming” of the West. Landscape Rather than coexisting with the Navajos, Carson and the army behind him are depicted The construction of Latour’s cathedral as “misguided” in their attempts to gain stands in sharp contrast to the “leave no mastery over this nomadic tribe. “The trace” attitude of the Native Americans and is expulsion of the Navajos from their country, emblematic of the white man’s way of which had been theirs no man knew how long, impressing himself onto the landscape of this had seemed to him an injustice that cried to text. More than his religious converts and Heaven . . . It was his own misguided friend, saved souls, the cathedral represents Latour’s Kit Carson, who finally subdued the last memorial of his time in New Mexico. Built in unconquered remnant of that people” (290- the Midi-Romanesque style, the cathedral 91). The narrator here seems to sympathize “was of the South . . . how it sounded the with this tribe and the injustice of their note of the South” (269). The “South” removal from their land. This view is perhaps Cather’s narrator refers to, however, seems influenced by the hindsight provided after the purposefully vague. Does this cathedral attempt to turn them into settled farmers embody the spirit of the Southwest, or is rather than nomadic shepherds failed. When Latour juxtaposing this region with Southern the Navajos were permitted to return to their Europe, the American South, or an even land and resume the life they had been forced further south of the Americas? to abandon, the area they inhabited was The use of the French Gothic Revival depicted as “an Indian Garden of Eden” (295). style in the architecture of Catholic buildings This is a twist on the recovery narrative, was prevalent throughout the Southwest in which usually attributes the recreation of the the period following the Mexican-American Garden of Eden to the Christian settlers who War. European clergy arrived in Southwestern change the land from wilderness to parishes to replace Mexican priests as part of productive, fertile garden. However, settlers the administrative changes that were a part of did believe that “Indian survivors had the the integration of the Mexican church into the potential to be ‘civilized’ and hence to new vicariate apostolic of New Mexico. In participate in the recovery narrative as settled addition to the doctrinal changes the (mostly) farmers” (Cronon 144). Once again, the French priests came to enact, they also inclusion of this story indicates Cather’s desire brought architectural ideals shaped in their to create a narrative in which the Natives and native Europe (Mora 304). In “Texas Gothic, the colonists can coexist and cultivate a new, French Accent: The Architecture of the Roman hybrid society. Although Cather depicts Kit Catholic Church in Antebellum Texas”, Richard Carson as soft-spoken and gentle, remnants Cleary traces this architectural movement and of the old mountain man remain in his its consequences in parishes throughout Texas interactions with the Navajos, and his way of as he positions the use of Gothic-style civilizing the Southwest is vastly different buildings as “instruments of the church’s

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

strategy for securing its place among the expansionist mission, and is suggestive of its institutions shaping the future of Texas” (60). overwhelming suitability; the intent is so The Euro-Americanization of the Catholic strong that purpose seems almost able to Church was seen throughout the Southwest stand in for action. This vision of the rightness through the visual presence of the imported of the “Americanizing” mission of the Catholic architectural style as well as through the Church seems to justify the irony that Mora structural doctrinal changes the French priests points out regarding European clergy sought to make. The presence of these French asserting the “Americanizing” vision of priests, most notably Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the Catholicism. Archbishop that Cather’s Latour is based Yet the cathedral has an element which upon, served as a symbol of the Euro- is definitively connected to the Southwest: it American institutional framework that the is built from stone native to the area, quarried Church hoped to establish in the newly west of Santa Fe. The ridge on which the rock annexed region. As such, considerations of was found was “covered with cone-shaped, international diplomacy were woven into the rocky hills” which remind the reader of the local church politics, and officials often sought “geographical nightmare” of cone-shaped hills to reconcile ideas native to the region with which confronted Latour at the beginning of those being brought in from the outside. his time in the Southwest (238). His reaction Perhaps the cathedral, in addition to to this landscape is quite different than when memorializing Latour’s presence in New he was first overwhelmed by the sublimity of Mexico, stands as a symbol of this type of the Southwest so many years ago, suggesting hybridized culture that Cather is trying to that his efforts at taming this wilderness have imagine throughout the text. Its connections been successful. He is accompanied by Father to Europe become clear through the Vaillant on this trip, so he is not alone in the architect’s description of the cathedral in face of the wilderness, and his efforts at relation to the landscape it occupies, as “only arranging the land in which he lived seem in Italy, or in the opera, did churches leap out successful: there is no trace left of the of the mountains and black pines like that” overwhelming power this land once had on his (270). This description not only connects the sensitive faculties of perception. In addition, cathedral to Europe with the reference to these hills are green, a color suggestive of Italy, it also solidifies the architecture as fertile land, whereas the hills at the beginning decidedly non-Indian. Rather than vanishing of the narrative, with their red coloring, were into the landscape, this structure “leaps out”, more suggestive of a harsh landscape. creating a physical/visual manifestation of the In the midst of these verdant hills, one ideological dominance the Catholic Church golden hill stands apart. The original attempted to establish. This monument is description is somewhat misleading: the depicted not only as leaping out from its reader is led to believe that gold has been physical environment, but doing so in an discovered in this yellow hill, with “picks and authoritative manner: “the tawny church crowbars lay[ing] about, and fragments of seemed to start directly out of those rose- stone, freshly broken off” but the value of this coloured hills—with a purpose so strong that it rock is cultural and spiritual, not monetary was like action” (269). This emphasizes the (239). Yet even though the stone is local, the intent and logic behind the Euro-American

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

French priests cannot help but project their Cultivating the “Blessed Lettuce” memories onto it. Vaillant suggests that it is a In addition to the cathedral, Latour “good color, certainly; something like the memorialized his time in the Southwest colonnade of St. Peter’s,” while Latour sees it through his cultivation of gardens. Latour’s as “more like something nearer home—I gardening differed from that of the Native mean, nearer Clermont” (239). This simple Americans and Mexicans, who “were satisfied statement conveys so much about Latour’s with beans and squashes and chili, asking for predicament. He has settled in New Mexico nothing more” (105). Latour yearned for and has made it his home, yet he can never green vegetables, the “blessed plant” lettuce, quite leave his past or the ideological and other edible vegetation of his boyhood in framework that it provides behind him. France (36). In Recalling the Wild: Naturalism “Home” for him seems like it will always be a and the Closing of the American West, Mary place that spans two continents and contains Lawlor connects Latour’s gardening to his aspects of both. He is never able to view the missionary work, as developing not only the landscape and culture around him without religious life of the New Mexicans, but also seeing it through the lens of his European the landscape itself: past. This is further evidenced by the end of his life: he chooses to stay in New Mexico, yet The work of transforming the he reverts to speaking his native French when religions of the region overlaps he knows his life is drawing to a close, with the work of transforming breaking his own rule that Spanish always be aesthetics and work habits. Ways spoken in his New Mexico home. of thinking and imagining are themselves at stake, and indeed As the final image of the text and as missionary work is, to some Latour’s tomb, the Cathedral seems to have a degree at least, aimed at the privileged position in deciding the tensions transformation of culture. Where that pervade the text. After Latour’s death, the Western missionary perceives “when the Cathedral bell tolled just after dark, that religious difference means the Mexican population of Santa Fe fell upon there is no culture, the trope of their knees, and all American Catholics as cultivation becomes more well” (297). The ideological influence of appropriate than that of Latour and the Church seem expansive in this transformation. In either case, final vision; however, the Native Americans though, religious influence is a are notably missing from the groups paying part of the larger umbrella of homage to Latour’s memory. Although empire, which seeks to alter “Eusabio and the Tesuque boys went quietly politics, language, even soil, in the away to tell their people” (297), the Indians project of transplanting European are not a part of the Santa Fe population ways of being and knowing to depicted in communal mourning for Latour, North America. (180-81) leaving the reader with more unanswered questions regarding the possibility of an The difference between transformation and ideological and geographical space in which cultivation seems significant; the process of natives and settlers can coexist peacefully. cultivation is focused on nurturing something new rather than an absolute alteration of the

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

old. Latour’s garden represents a mixture of trees, and the green grapes shriveling on the cultures, as he seeks to develop the soil not vines” (114). only by transplanting European plant species The differences between Latour’s and like the “peerless pears of France,” but also Baltazar’s gardens are revealing. Baltazar through the domestication of native species made no attempt to cultivate either native (265). Perhaps Cather uses the domestication plants or the native spirit, and as a result his of the native wildflowers as a metaphor for legacy is a “half-dead peach tree that . . . the question of peaceful coexistence which never bears” and “an old vine stump” (102). was left open-ended in her discussions of the Although we do not get to see how durable Native and Euro-American peoples, and the Latour’s garden is within the space of the possible solution she envisions is the novel, one is left with the feeling that the domestication of the native. If this is so, then residents of Santa Fe will be enjoying the fruit the method of domestication seems to matter, from his orchard for generations to come. as is evidenced when the gardens of previous Also, Latour passed on his desire to cultivate, missionaries such as Friar Baltazar are as he “urged the new priests to plant fruit considered. trees wherever they went” (265). Through Baltazar Montoya, whose tale is told in these future generations of priests, Latour’s “The Legend of Fray Baltazar,” was a “long- legacy will live on long after he has died. The forgotten friar” who served at Acoma during text offers one final glimpse of imperial the early eighteenth century (103). His gardening, or the lack thereof, when Father cultivation of the land and its inhabitants was Vaillant relocated to gold-rush era Colorado, a not nearly as benign as Latour’s, as he place where nobody planted gardens, and believed that “the pueblo of Acoma existed “nobody would stick a shovel into the earth chiefly to support its fine church” and for anything less than gold” (258). These exploited the people of the pueblo to do the differences disclose Cather’s ideas about how labor required to sustain the church and his the imperial project can be successful or garden within it (104). Baltazar journeyed far suffer defeat depending upon how it is and wide to collect grape cuttings and peach implemented, or, as Lawlor suggests, “[t]he seeds; however, there is no mention of any kind of garden one has measures one’s ability, native plants being domesticated in his as a cultivated, civilized, relatively garden. Baltazar clearly does not have the comfortable aesthete, to measure, interpret, same goal of hybridization or peaceful and manage the primitive” (181). cohabitation that Latour seems to be working The Other Mythic Southwest toward, as is evidenced by his tyranny over the inhabitants which grew until the breaking The idea of leaving a legacy or a trace point was reached when he murdered an of one’s existence is scattered throughout the Indian boy in a fit of rage. For this Baltazar text. It is evident in the idea of cultivating was flung to his death from the cliff of Acoma, gardens, it is present in the vanishing Indians whose inhabitants “took pleasure in watching who leave a trace of their presence in the the garden pine and waste away from thirst, palimpsest of American history, and it is and ventured into the cloisters to laugh and apparent in the construction of Latour’s chatter at the whitening foliage of the peach cathedral, which also becomes his tomb. Latour is the character who most actively

Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (Fall 2011) Romancing the Desert

engages in the process of creating a legacy, Fray Baltazar, the “long-forgotten friar at and he is also the character who most actively Acoma” as well as the central legend of the engages in the process of shaping the novel, that of Latour himself (103, 122). landscape. Lawlor describes the interrelation This idea of interpreting and managing of these two processes as such: the native, seen in the cultivation of gardens, Although her terrains are given as is also present in the way that Latour reacts entities that precede and stand to the myths of the Native Americans’ and the apart from their human witnesses, Mexicans’ local interpretations of Catholicism. the very process of granting them Latour’s reactions to the Native American some kind of dialogic agency myths occur primarily in “The Mass at Acoma” suggests the extent to which and “Snake Root”, the chapters which Cather thought about landscapes concentrate on his journeys and interactions as metaphors of human with his two native friends, Jacinto and experience. Her anthropomorphisms Eusabio. Responses to the Catholicism of the strongly imply that what is Mexicans, altered from official Vatican important about nature is not that doctrine after many years without a strong it is a force in its own right, but connection to the European arm of the that it serves as a record for Church, are scattered throughout the human subjects of their own narrative, making the attitude toward this histories with it, of their own “deviant” Catholicism more pervasive yet entanglements with its textures harder to detect. Latour’s civilized sensibilities and contours. (166-7) are horrified at the Native American myths: they are too “other” to be understood, but the Latour understands the importance of nature Mexicans he views merely as misled children and the landscape as a record for human who are in need of guidance. history, which is why he so actively engages in shaping it. He not only wishes to shape the Latour finds the Native American physical record, but also the verbal myths of myths repulsive yet fascinating. His repulsion the Southwest. This is why he spends his final perhaps stems from the alienation he feels days “dictat[ing] to his young disciple certain from the belief system and history which facts about the old missions in the diocese; created these legends. The Native Americans facts which he had come upon by chance and are portrayed as mysterious and other, and feared would be forgotten” (274). He and his the narrator informs us that the barrier disciple work to preserve both the history between Latour and his native friends is which they found in New Mexico, and that multi-layered; it stems from cultural, racial, which they created. In this circumstance, he religious, and linguistic differences: is acting as an authority by recording history The Bishop seldom questioned and myths he may not completely Jacinto about his thoughts or understand, recording his version of this beliefs. He didn’t think it polite, history which is influenced by his past and his and he believed it to be useless. prejudices. This history might have included There was no way in which he the “dark legends” of Pecos, which “had had could transfer his own memories more than its share of history,” the legend of of European civilization into the

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Indian mind, and he was quite never be completely accessible to him. Before willing to believe that behind delving into the myths, the narrator slips into Jacinto there was a long tradition, a language reminiscent of fairy-tales, setting a story of experience, which no the mood with “it was said that this people language could translate to him. had from time immemorial . . .” (122). “Time (92) immemorial” is a term commonly associated with tales of Native American history, The narrative does not dwell further upon the suggesting the same idea of time outside the matter of translation here, yet this passage is limits of memory that is connected to the a good example of the vexed relationship desert and “wilderness”. The legends between Latour and the natives. It seems that presented here provide reasons for the he would prefer to “transfer his own diminishing numbers of the tribe: a fire kept memories” into the minds of these people; his burning from time immemorial which weakens missionary work would be simpler if this was the best young men chosen to serve and tend possible. However, these people will never it; babies sacrificed to a great snake the tribe possess memories of European civilization; worshipped (122). The legends are both their minds are full of their own civilization introduced and followed by what is, from the and history. Latour is “willing to believe” that narrator’s rational world-view, the “more they have a cultural tradition, although that likely” explanation; in fact, the legends are statement implies that he does not quite short in comparison to the rational set-up believe in a Native American tradition they are given. The reiteration of this equivalent to that of the Europeans, but is explanation at the end of this section explains willing to if presented with further evidence. the situation clearly. “It seemed much more Whatever the “story of experience” behind likely that the contagious diseases brought by Jacinto’s beliefs, Latour recognizes that this white men were the real cause of the history is likely to remain sealed off to him. shrinkage of the tribe” (123). However, the He is better able to maneuver around matters language used before the presentation of of linguistic translation, such as Jacinto’s way these myths is more interesting. “Pecos had of structuring the languages in which they more than its share of dark legends,—perhaps conversed. “Jacinto usually dropped the that was because it had been too tempting to article when speaking Spanish, just as he did white men, and had had more than its share in speaking English, though the Bishop had of history” (122). An alluring place, Pecos noticed that when he did give a noun its seems to have attracted more “history” than article, he used the right one. The customary it warranted, and this proved destructive to omission, therefore, seemed to be a matter of the people who called it home. However, one taste, not ignorance” (91). The issue of might wonder what the allotment of history sentence structure Latour is willing to accept for one place is, and how it is possible to as “a matter of taste,” but the strange legends exceed. This list of legends is accompanied by are another issue altogether. That is not a the one and only footnote in the text, which matter of taste, but an offense to his system refers to a temporal incongruity present in the of beliefs. legend of the Pecos pueblo. “In actual fact, The “dark legends” themselves are the dying pueblo of Pecos was abandoned discussed shortly after Latour admits they will some years before the American occupation of

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New Mexico” (123). This footnote provides the there . . . he still felt a certain only outside interruption by the author in the curiosity about this ceremonial tale woven by the narrator, and stands as an cave, and Jacinto’s puzzling example of the complex relationship of the behavior. It seemed almost to lend “actual facts” of history and legend. With this a colour of probability to some of narrative interruption, Cather uses history to those unpleasant stories about the debunk the legend which attributed the Pecos religion. He was already decline of the Pecos pueblo to the sacrifices convinced that neither the white the tribe performed to appease the sacred men nor the Mexicans in Santa Fe snakes. understood anything about Indian beliefs or the workings of the The day after Latour was reminiscing Indian mind. (132-33) on these stories, he and Jacinto encounter a storm on their journey which forces them into Time may have dulled the memory of his the realm of legend themselves. Overtaken by promise, which he in fact did not keep. He a blizzard, they cannot go further. Jacinto promised Jacinto he would forget the cave knows of a cave nearby, although he is after they left, however, this seems to be reluctant to reveal it to Latour. “‘I do not know something that Latour cannot do, and his if it was right to bring you here. This place is alteration of this promise may be unconscious used by my people for ceremonies and is so he can believe that he remained true to his known only to us. When you go out from word. Nevertheless, this incident conveys the here, you must forget.’ ‘I will forget, difficulties Latour encounters when attempting certainly’” (128). Latour is in a location where to access the spiritual beliefs of his native the strange ceremonies of which he had heard friends and understand the “workings of the rumors take place. He is uncomfortable in this Indian mind.” cave, offended by the strange odor that Latour is so intrigued by this place and permeates it, frightened by the terrible force its possible religious significance that he of the river which rumbles below, and searches for another opinion on the matter. confused by the strange and secretive He seeks out an acquaintance of Kit Carson, behavior of his friend and guide while they who “had grown up a neighbour to these spend the night there. His reaction to this Indians, and knew as much about them as place and the mysterious possibilities of anybody” (133). This man gives his own foreign religious ceremonies makes such a interpretation of the Indian myths, as do the strong impression on him that it is impossible other people who had related these tales, yet for him to forget: as a local white male Latour seems to view The Bishop kept his word, and him as an authority. In this unnamed never spoke of Jacinto’s cave to “authority’s” opinion, the fire myth is true, but anyone, but he did not cease from he relates a slightly different version than the wondering about it. It flashed into one Latour had heard. He admits he cannot his mind from time to time, and give an definitive answer on whether the always with a shudder of “varmit” they keep hidden in the mountains repugnance quite unjustified by and bring to the pueblo for ceremonies is a anything he had experienced snake, which leads him to reminisce on his

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own questionable authority, and how “no Claremont, where Latour was trained, and white man knows anything about Indian had been influenced by an entirely different religion” (134). He also predicts that Latour ideology. If Latour were to merely come in might make some Indians Catholics, “but he and reform without understanding the reasons would never separate them from their own why these deviations occurred in the first beliefs” (135). Undeterred, Latour manages to place, the reforms would not be long lasting. turn their resistance to abandoning the very Martinez’s view on the differences of beliefs and ceremonies he had previously the New World and Old World Catholicisms found so repugnant into a positive character provides an interesting glimpse of the trait, and “remarked that their veneration for narrative’s view of the transformation that old customs was a quality he liked in the occurs, to both doctrine and people, when Indians, and that it played a great part in his they become attuned to the particulars of life own religion” (135). in the desert: An “Indigenous” Catholicism Nature has got the start of you The locals’ interpretations of his own here. We have a living Church religion are less foreign to Latour, and he here, not a dead arm of the views the common peoples’ diversions from European Church. Our religion original doctrine leniently. However, the grew out of the soil, and has its abuses of power and laxity of the Mexican own roots. We pay a filial respect priests are just as repugnant to his to the person of the Holy Father, sensibilities as the mysterious cave. The but Rome has no authority here . . behavior of Padre Martinez, who does not . The Church the Franciscan adhere to the requirement of celibacy for fathers planted here was cut off; priests, is particularly unacceptable to this is the second growth, and is Latour’s sensibilities. As Latour converses with indigenous. (146) Martinez on their different interpretations of Martinez views the church to which he Church doctrine, he explains that he will have belongs as a different entity than that of no tolerance for such behavior, and “I shall Latour’s. Influenced by the region and the reform these practices throughout my diocese land itself, it developed into an “indigenous” as rapidly as possible” (146). Padre Martinez church. This idea of a separate church, native laughs at Latour’s desire to bring the New to the Southwest, is developed further when World Church back to the European doctrines Latour removes Martinez and another priest in which he was trained. “If you try to from power. They rebelled, and “organized a introduce European civilization here and church of their own. This, they declared, was change our old ways, to interfere with the the old Holy Catholic Church of Mexico, while secret dances of the Indians, let us say, or the Bishop’s church was an American abolish the bloody rites of the Penitentes, I institution” (159). This schism reveals many foretell an early death for you. I advise you to of the tensions inherent in Latour’s mission in study our native traditions before you begin New Mexico, and how his endeavor to arrange your reforms” (147). Martinez’s advice is and domesticate the Southwest was received. sage. The New Mexican diocese was both The narrative gestures at the connection culturally and geographically different from between Latour and a more “Americanized”

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version of Catholicism, referenced earlier in they are further evidence of the tenacity of the text when Latour is explaining his new life the Mexican people in retaining their faith in a letter to one of his acquaintances in even without proper supervision. To Latour France. “We missionaries wear a frock-coat and Vaillant, these people are the human and wide brimmed hat all day, you know, and equivalent of what they are trying to look like American traders . . . All day I am an accomplish through their domestication of the American in speech and thought—yes, in land through gardening: heart, too” and “[t]he Church can do more They are like seeds, full of than the Fort to make the poor Mexicans germination but with no moisture. ‘good Americans’” (35-6). One of the few A mere contact is enough to make concrete spots in the text where Cather allows them a living part of the Church. the political reality of Latour’s situation to The more I work with the creep into the otherwise timeless, mythic Mexicans, the more I believe it narrative, Latour’s admission that part of his was people like them our Saviour work in New Mexico was to turn the bore in mind when He Said, inhabitants into “good Americans” is an Unless ye become as little example of how his mission in the Southwest children. He was thinking of coincides with the need to integrate this people who are not clever in the region into the political imaginary of the rest things of this world. (206, of the nation. emphasis original) The variations which have been shaped This statement encompasses both the by the common people, the other devotion that he sees in these Mexican manifestations of this “indigenous” branch of Catholics, as well as his condescending the Church, are more acceptable to Latour. He conception of them as children who are in finds the veneration of the dolls which need of proper guidance, which he is more represent saints endearing and prefers these than willing to provide. homemade versions to the plaster ones he found in his work in Ohio; he sees the love Conclusion and energy poured into these figures as Latour creates the history of his demonstrative of the Mexicans’ devotion to presence in New Mexico through the their faith. The local variations of saints’ construction of his cathedral and the legends he understands as having been cultivation of his gardens. His ideological modified to suit the reality of the region, such imperialism is memorialized through the as the saint who was the patron of horses in physical presence of these images, and they New Mexico, a region in which people rely serve as the representations of the legend of heavily on these animals. “The boy looked at the first Archbishop of New Mexico. The him in surprise. ‘But he is the saint of horses. process of myth-making in which Latour Isn’t he that in your country?’ The Bishop participates is significant because the shook his head. ‘No. I know nothing about Southwest of Death Comes for the Archbishop that’” (28-9). He may know nothing about this is “a country which had no written histories”, local variation, but these small changes do yet the historical trajectory of the region was not contradict Church doctrine, so he does not being defined through the Euro-American view them as a threat to his mission; in fact,

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expansion which serves as the background for all the inhabitants of the Southwest, but is the entire narrative (151). The characters unable to imagine such a space. Her traveled ahead of the boundaries of the avoidance of directly addressing these political printing press and landed in a place which conflicts and their consequences, which still relies upon oral tradition and myth to have resonance in the region today, does not preserve history and culture—Archbishop seem to release her from the implications of Latour realized this, and created his own these issues, as they are the shadow which myths which helped to inscribe European hangs over the entire text. Cather’s process of cultural traditions onto a foreign landscape. myth-making results in an enchanting legend that has endured the test of time, yet the Cather’s depiction of this process potential of her narrative to serve as more reflects the issues involved in “Americanizing” than a myth remains unfulfilled. the Southwest while still engaging in the process of myth-making about a region that was already viewed as legendary and Works Cited enchanting. Through her representation of the interactions and conflicts between the French Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. New York: Vintage Classics, 1990. priests and the local Native American and New Mexican populations, Cather participated Cleary, Richard. “Texas Gothic, French Accent: The in the process of creating the narrative Architecture of the Roman Catholic Church in Antebellum Texas.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, trajectory of this region as it was being Vol. 66, No. 1 (March, 2007): 60-83. integrated into the national consciousness. This process was similar to, and indeed Comer, Krista. Landscapes of the New West: Gender and Geography in Contemporary Women’s Writing. Chapel modeled on, the experiences of the actual Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. French priests who were sent with Vatican Cronon, William. ed. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the approval into the Southwest after the end of Human Place in Nature. New York: Norton, 1996. the Mexican-American War to “Americanize” the Mexican arm of the Church, and who Goldman, Anne E. Continental Divides: Revisioning American Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2000. brought doctrinal, political, and architectural ideals with them that transformed the position Goodman, Audrey. Translating Southwestern Landscapes: of the Catholic Church in regards to both the The Making of an Anglo Literary Region. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. long-term residents of the Southwest and those who were just entering the region. As Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Werner S. Anthony Mora observes in “Resistance and Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987. Accommodation in a Border Parish”, the ways Kolodny, Annette. “Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: in which twentieth-century individuals Notes Toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers.” American Literature, Vol. 64, No. 1 (March, “explained, remembered, or forgot” this 1992): 1-18. region’s past is significant, as memories and stories about past events “sometimes --- “Rethinking Frontier Literary History as the Stories of First Cultural Contact.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women obscured racial and religious tensions” (302). Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1996): 14-18. Cather’s narrative presents a story about the Southwest which leaves such tensions --- The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: unresolved; she seems to want to depict a University of North Carolina Press, 1975. hybridized and harmonious existence between

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Lawlor, Mary. Recalling the Wild: Naturalism and the Closing of the American West. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Limerick, Patricia Nelson. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1987.

Mora, Anthony. “Resistance and Accommodation in a Border Parish.” Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn, 2005): 301-326.

Rosowski, Susan. The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

Woidat, Caroline M. “The Indian-Detour in Willa Cather’s Southwestern Novels.” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2002): 22-49.

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