![]() Narrator, 129įather Latour is shown by his Indian guide Jacinto into a secret cave sacred to Jacinto's tribe when the two escape from a snowstorm. He found himself in a lofty cavern, shaped somewhat like a Gothic chapel, of vague outline, - the only light within was that which came through the narrow aperture between the stone lips. Father Lucero's son, Trinidad, goes about the town saying that his father has seen Padre Martinez in hell, which implicitly works as a condemnation of the old priest who had ruled the town. Armajillo, just before being hanged, had sewed a pair of tiny boots for a statuette of Mary in his hometown, demonstrating his religious faith and general moral sense, of which Father Vaillant expects he will not see much in the men of the gold rush.Ĭomete tu cola, Martinez, comete tu cola! (Eat your tail, Martinez, eat your tail!) Father Lucero, 174įather Lucero's last words seem to be damning his friend Padre Martinez, who predeceased him. Just before going to Colorado, Father Vaillant hears the story of Ramon Armajillo, a young man who was sentenced to hang for stabbing a man in the heat of anger. ![]() The criminals with whom he would have to do in Colorado would hardly be of that type, he told himself. Tribes such as the Navajos, lead by Manuelito, faced annihilation by the American army but were eventually able to get recognition from the American government, allowing them to return to their ancestral lands. I believe that God will preserve him.”įather Latour tells Bernard Ducrot that he has been concerned for the Indian people for a long time. I do not believe, as I once did, that the Indian will perish. “Bernard,” the old Bishop would murmur, “God has been very good to let me live to see a happy issue to those old wrongs. As Father Latour's engagements with the local Mexican and Indian populace and his confrontation with Padre Martinez demonstrates, Father Ferrand was right in his assessment. Father Ferrand, 7įather Ferrand advises the Spanish cardinal to appoint as vicar for the new Apostolic Vicariate in New Mexico someone (he has Jean Marie Latour in mind) who will be suited to the task of, as he sees it, civilizing an uncivilized land. He must be a man to whom order is necessary - as dear as life. He will have to deal with savagery and ignorance, with dissolute priests and political intrigue. The new Vicar must be a young man, of strong constitution, full of zeal, and above all, intelligent. ![]() Ironically, this evokes for him a comparison with Christ and Christian faith under persecution, even though much of the persecution the Indians face is backed by a Christian ideology. Father Latour, 98įather Latour observes that the mesa on which Acoma is built was the shelter of Indians hunted by white men. And the Hebrews of the Old Testament, always being carried captive into foreign lands, - their rock was an idea of God, the only thing their conquerors could not take from them. Christ Himself had used that comparison for the disciple to whom He gave the keys of His Church. The rock, when one came to think of it, was the utmost expression of human need even mere feeling yearned for it it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and friendship. Father Latour, 236įather Latour - speaking in free indirect discourse - observes the differences between the European way of relating to nature, whereby they distinguish themselves from nature and seek to master it, to an Indian way, which emphasizes harmonization instead. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance. It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. His feeling of dying, however, does not come so much from weakness or illness, but rather from the fullness of the life he has lived in service of his diocese. I shall die of having lived." Father Latour, 270įather Latour tells his young protege, Bernard Ducrot, that he wants to die in Santa Fe.
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