"Death Comes for the Archbishop" by Willa Cather
Above: "Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather. 297 pages.
Reading these classic novels reveals an exciting apex of modern literature accomplishment, even if one has to look backwards to see it.
I completed reading this book today.
Eighteen months ago, TIMDT and Mwah (sic) tooled down the valley of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, in the Sprinter. We attended a Mass in the cathedral in Albuquerque and visited 19th Century US Army forts along the way. Coincident with that trip, I read Megan Kate Nelson's book, "Three Cornered War," which chronicled the history of US Civil War actions in New Mexico and much about the post-Civil War US Army's actions to end the Indian threat to ongoing white settlement and transcontinental travel on the southern route.
Joining us for dinner one evening in Albuquerque were good friends, Albuquerque residents, Tom and Dana. Nelson's book came up in the conversation. "Have you read 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' by Willa Cather, asked Dana? "No," I replied. I knew the book was an American classic. I realized that no genuine effort to understand New Mexico and its history could be made without reading Cather's novel.
Santa Fe, New Mexico was first colonized by Spain in 1598. The time setting for "Death Comes for the Archbishop, published in 1927, is in the late 1880's, almost three hundred years after the the Spanish started colonizing the area. As I look back in history three hundred years from the present, 1722 was seventy five years before the signing of the US Declaration of Independence. It hard to imagine an established Spanish colonial presence in North America beginning over one hundred eighty years prior to the "founding" of the United States.
The novel's narrative is based on two historical figures of the late 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, and rather than any one singular plot, the narrative is the stylized re-telling of their lives serving as Roman Catholic clergy in New Mexico. Cather includes many fictionalized accounts of actual historical figures, including Kit Carson and Pope Gregory XVI.
The primary fictional character in the book is Father Jean Marie Latour, who travels with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky, Ohio to New Mexico after the Civil War. The two priests have known one another since their boyhood in France. Latour is reserved, methodical, selfless and devout. Vaillant is a risk taker, purpose-filled, and maybe a bit too willing to enjoy guilty pleasures. The two men remain devoted to one another during the thirty ears of their ministry in New Mexico. LaTour becomes Archbishop of the New Mexico some few years into his assignment. Vaillant late in the tour becomes Archbishop of Colorado.
Various adventures are depicted in vignette-like manner. These missionary-priests would travel very long distances by foot and on mule. It took a full year for Father Latour to arrive in New Mexico coming from Ohio. Cincinnati was the end of the railway line west, so Latour had to travel by riverboat to the Gulf of Mexico and then overland to New Mexico. When Latour arrived in Santa Fe, the local priests had not been notified of his credential and refused to accept him as their superior. Latour had to travel another six months, 2000 miles round trip, to the episcopate in Durango, Mexico to obtain necessary documentation for his ministry. I marvel at the stamina and courage it took these early missionaries to ply such long distances alone, but for the company of a donkey or a mule. Another example, closer to home, of early Catholic missionary exploration and travel: The Escalante/Dominguez expedition started in Santa Fe in 1776 and reached as far as the southern tip of Utah lake in Utah County, before heading back to Santa Fe.
On one occasion, Latour and Vaillant are saved from being murdered by the villainous Buck Scales, at whose house they have sought shelter for the night. They are tipped off to Scales' perfidy by Scales' abused wife, Magdalena. Latour, Vaillant and the wife, Magdalena escape. Scales is later hanged for the murder of four previous guests to his isolated house. Father Latour sees that the heretofore abused Magdalena has a place in a monastery as a nun.
Over the years Latour gains the respect of both Indian and Mexican parishioners. He is able to raise enough money to build a stone cathedral in Santa Fe. Latour is able to remove dissident priests and replace them with young priests from his home parish in France. The novel ends with the death of Latour in Santa Fe. He dies a man loved and venerated, deservedly by the author's account, by all.
Cather portrays the Indians... the Hopi, the Pueblo, and the Navaho, sympathetically. One of Latour's good friends is the Navajo, Eusebio, with whom Latour goes on missionary trips deep into Navajo country.
The novel is positive towards the influence of the Catholic Church in New Mexico. It showed that religious faith is able to develop and maintain strong social bonds in the growing democratic United States.
I loved Cather's insightful descriptions. Father Vaillant was homely and diminutive of stature. First impressions of Vaillant were... well... not impressive. Cather writes, "Vaillant was much greater than the sum of his individual qualities." Despite his diminutive appearance, Vaillant was a highly effective and beloved cleric.
Another insight I liked: Eusebio the Navajo: "White man shows evidence of destroying landscapes wherever he goes. The Navajo leave all as it was. White man changes the scene. The Navajo accommodate themselves to the scene."
During the period of the novel, US army forces attempted to force move the Navajo nation from their traditional home in Canyon de Chelly, to a flat land area of New Mexico, east of the Pecos River. While most of the Navajo were force moved, Manuelito, their chief, was never captured. While in hiding, the beleaguered Manuelito said, "I don't believe God will allow the Indian to perish." After four years of failing to survive off the land in their new reservation, the US government deemed that the forced move of the Navajos was a failure. The government allowed the Navajos to return to the land of their origin, Canyon de Chelly.
"Death Comes for the Archbishop" added texture to our recent New Mexico travels. The land over which we had traveled last year following the Rio Grande River southward was in the United States. But the culture of the people we would encounter was decidedly influenced by a four-century long exposure to Spanish Catholicism. Being able to see beyond that ridge or that mountain, a historical narrative that shaped today's landscape and culture, rendered our travels that much more purposeful... and I liked that sensation of discovery provided by the novel.
Cather's writing is beautiful, lyrical, metaphorical and elegiac. It's the kind of writing you love to read out loud. That's why it was nice to listen, with TIMDT, to the Audible version of this novel. We would frequently stop the Audible narrative on the Sprinter's Apple Play, look at one another, and mutually gasp in amazement at Cather's deft use of the language. This is the third novel of American classical literature TIMDT and Mwah (sic) have "read" while traveling in the Sprinter in the last twelve months... the others being "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck and "Angle of Repose," by Wallace Stegner. Continuing in this classic novel discovery vein, we have started reading (listening to) "Absalom, Absalom," by William Faulkner.
I feel uplifted reading these American classic novels. Victor Davis Hanson recently decried the decline of our culture. He noted, among others, that our era has produced no great novels. He cited "Absalom, Absalom" as a benchmark after which all literature is decline. Peter Thiel has made a parallel observation, citing the slowing of technological progress in recent generations. Reading these classic novels reveals an exciting apex of modern literature accomplishment, even if one has to look backwards to see it.