A skillful writer and wonderful teller of tales, Willa Cather produced a work in 1927 that is eminently readable, fascinating, alive with detail and description of people and places. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a classic example of the novel accepted as history. It is prominently displayed in bookstores in Santa Fe, inviting tourists and the general public alike to read what is advertised as an accurate and sympathetic description of nineteenth-century New Mexico. To this day, high school teachers and university professors in both American literature and history assign this book to their students. It is probably the most-admired and best-known Southwestern novel and after more than sixty years continues to evoke profound emotions about the Catholic church, the Hispanos, Mexicanos, Native Americans, and Anglo-Americans of Territorial New Mexico. It is an enormously impressive work. Still it does some violence to historical accuracy and in fact does considerable damage to the reputation of one of New Mexico's greatest native sons.

Throughout her history New Mexico has touched responsive chords in inhabitants and visitors. For many years the New Mexico automobile license plate has proclaimed her “The Land of Enchantment.” Tourists, artists, writers, and dudes invariably succumb to her charms and become “enchanted” with the landscape, the capital city Santa Fe, and Old Town Albuquerque. Some are moved to write a book or paint a picture. Many adopt Western clothing complete with squash blossom necklace or turquoise belt buckle and bola tie. Still others write letters to editors or feature articles for hometown newspapers proclaiming the beauty and wonders of the exciting new place they have just “discovered.” Willa Cather must have been similarly impressed. She visited there in 1912, 1914, 1915, 1925, and 1926, and she wrote a book. Her vivid imagination, her sensitivity towards people and places, and her feeling for time and space admirably equipped her for the task. Her novel is compelling and riveting, and her talent makes it seem plausible, genuine, and true, based as it is on historic figures, places, and events.

At the time of Cather's first visit to New Mexico, lawyer-turned-historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell had just published a multivolume history of the new state. His Leading Facts of New Mexico History in six volumes was a sweeping account of the Native American, Spanish, and Mexican heritages through the American conquest and struggle for statehood. Although it reads like a lawyer's brief, Cather, a voracious reader, doubtlessly devoured it. She was fascinated by the long sweep of history and the many persons of diverse culture who contributed to the development of the new state, and all this may have implanted the germ for a novel.

During her 1925 visit to New Mexico, Cather stayed with friends Tony and Mable Dodge Luhan at their home in Taos, where no doubt she was regaled with stories of the local culture and perhaps had the opportunity to read Twitchell's latest book, Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexico's Ancient Capital. She became further acquainted with one of the best-loved and most highly respected men in all the Southwest, Bishop—later Archbishop—Jean Baptiste Lamy. In the cold, hard, factual narrative of his life as related by Twitchell, Cather saw the hero of a new story emerging. She thereupon decided to relate the epic struggles of Father Lamy during his episcopal labors in New Mexico at a critical time in church-state history. Thus, with her pen she helped create the “Lamy Legend.” Based on the facts of Bishop/Archbishop Lamy's life, as well as the lives of other historical persons, Death Comes for the Archbishop became one of Cather's finest works. Her story caught the attention and imagination of the public and quickly became a national best-seller. Her feel for geography and grasp of the four conflicting cultures combined with her sympathetic understanding of human nature to strike responsive chords in the readers of her day, and they continue to do so in readers of ours.

For some reason, Cather used pseudonyms for her two main characters while retaining correct surnames for others. Father/Bishop/Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy became Father/Bishop/Archbishop Jean Marie Latour. His Vicar General and later Bishop of Denver, Joseph P. Machebeuf, was called Father Joseph Vaillant. (Perhaps she called Lamy “Latour” because this French priest was the tower of strength, and Father Machebeuf was indeed vailant [valiant] in the faith.) Kit Carson, however, and Father Antonio José Martinez, the priest of Taos, retained their given names. Latour and Vaillant emerge from her pages as devoted, selfless churchmen larger than life. Kit Carson received generally heroic treatment as a frontier American in New Mexico. But Padre Martinez is treated with contempt, and thus, unfortunately, the “Martinez Myth” was launched. Despite the book's other strengths and well-deserved plaudits, herein it is flawed.

Father Martinez was, and remains to this day, a controversial figure in New Mexico history. But Cather accepted as fact the worst accounts of his character and reputation. Because Archbishop is still so widely read, Martinez, despite some excellent attributes, remains in the minds of most readers one of the villains of fiction. Yet he is not a fictional character; he is a historical personage whose reputation has been sullied by a popular novel. Willa Cather describes Padre Martinez of Taos as “an old scapegrace” (an incorrigible rascal) and asserts that he had children and grandchildren in almost every settlement in northern New Mexico. She writes that he was a powerful old priest who was ruler in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. She calls him a “dictator” to all the parishes in the area and says that even “the native priests in Santa Fe were under his thumb” (139). She accuses Martinez of instigating the Taos Indian Revolt of 1847, which resulted in the murder of Governor Charles Bent and a dozen other Americans. She claims that no attempt was made to bring Martinez to account for these deeds and that the priest even managed to profit personally from the affair by acquiring the property of the seven Taos Indians who were later arrested, condemned, and hanged for their role in the uprising. This, she asserts, made him “quite the richest man in the parish” (140). All this may make an excellent literary foil for her book's heroes, but, unfortunately for Cather, as a reflector of history it is just not true!

Nor did Padre Martinez impress Cather by his physical appearance. She describes him as “an enormous man. His broad high shoulders were like a bull buffalo's, his big head was set defiantly on a thick neck, and the full-cheeked, richly coloured, egg-shaped Spanish face … was so unusual … a high, narrow forehead, brilliant yellow eyes set deep in strong arches, and full, florid cheeks,—not blank areas of smooth flesh, as in Anglo-Saxon faces, but full of muscular activity, as quick to change with feeling as any of his features. His mouth was the very assertion of violent, uncurbed passions and tyrannical self-will; the full lips thrust out and taut, like the flesh of animals distended by fear or desire” (140-41). Father Latour did not even care much for Martinez asleep, for he “snored like an enraged bull” (149). Cather did admit that he sang the mass impressively in a beautiful baritone voice, that he drank from some deep well of emotional power, and that he “was not a man one would easily forget” (140). Anyone who passed him on the street, she allowed, would feel his great physical force and imperious will.

Bishop Latour was scandalized that Padre Martinez did not consider celibacy an essential element of a priest's condition. Even though this had been thrashed out many centuries before, Martinez retorted to the bishop that “nothing is decided once for all” (146). Martinez believed that celibacy was all very well for the French clergy (like Latour and Vaillant), but not for the Spaniard or Mexican. Cather charged that Padre Martinez lusted for women the way Padre Lucero of Albuquerque lusted for money. He paid a filial respect to the Holy Father, yet he also claimed that Rome had no authority in New Mexico and that the church there resented the Pope's interference in its affairs. Ultimately the split between Latour and Martinez became so bitter and nefarious that the bishop had no alternative but to excommunicate the recalcitrant and unrepentant priest. Martinez continued to lead his parishioners in Taos at the head of his schismatic church until his death in 1867. Such is the way Martinez has come to us through the pen of Willa Cather. Such is he considered since 1927 by those who have read Archbishop. Such is the Martinez Myth. The truth is, however, that Cather fictionalized the facts.

It should be remembered that even though Cather cast him in the role of Bishop Latour's (Lamy's) great antagonist, historically Father Martinez's conflict with the bishop came toward the end of an otherwise praiseworthy career that straddled three periods of New Mexico history—the Spanish, Mexican, and American. Martinez was involved in virtually every important event during fifty years of significant transition, but Cather and other writers have limited his actions to irresponsible resistance to Roman dominance and a self-serving struggle for personal power and wealth. Three opposing camps in New Mexico have a vital interest in seeing the conflict this way. English-speaking Americans have a confirmation for their position that the Hispanic people submitted peacefully, even eagerly, to their conquest. Protestants doing missionary work in the once solidly Catholic region welcomed any sign of inner readiness on the part of the people to break away from the church of Rome. And Catholic historians have found vindication for the course taken by Bishop Lamy and his successors (Francis 265-66). But modern scholarship strongly disagrees with this twisted image of Padre Martinez, and many present-day historians, Chicano leaders, Rio Arribans, and New Mexicans have banded together to rescue him from his unfortunate reputation.

One of the first attempts was by the New Mexico writer, Erna Fergusson. Writing in 1941, she proclaimed that “Martinez probably still ranks as the outstanding New Mexican.” Recognizing but not dwelling on his spiritual qualities, she notes that they “were entirely overshadowed by his energy and his versatility in practical affairs” (307). He was a forward-looking priest who printed textbooks as well as a newspaper he called El Crepusculo de Libertad (The Dawn of Liberty). He established schools for boys and, unusual in that day, a school for girls. Whatever his priestly derelictions, he was “a strong character, a fascinating man, a true liberal” (Our Southwest 306-08). Fergusson calls him “the first New Mexico gringo” and claims that as a result of his part in the 1847 Taos Revolt he may have seemed a patriot to Mexico while a traitor to the United States. Ten years later Fergusson again defended Father Martinez, describing him as “New Mexico's most brilliant and controversial figure” (New Mexico 260). She calls him New Mexico's first modern and wonders if he may simply have been the last unreconciled Mexican. She also says that he never lost the confidence of his people.

Other writers have risen to the padre's defense. Stan Steiner claims that Martinez was “a man of obstinate and strong beliefs” and a leader of the independence battles in New Mexico (348). He believes the conflict between Lamy and Martinez was one that echoed and reechoed through the years between the poor priests of the villages and the opulent bishoprics. The native-born Spanish-speaking clergy and the Anglo and English-speaking hierarchy were united in the Mystical Body of Christ that was the church, but they were divided in every other way, including their way of life and cultural inheritance and their religious ritual and practice. In The Proud Peoples: The Heritage and Culture of Spanish-Speaking Peoples in the United States (1972), Harold J. Alford calls Martinez “a pioneer educator and socially conscious leader” (238-39). As early as 1830 Martinez was preaching and writing on topics such as religious freedom, tolerance of other sects, and the necessary separation of church and state, all of which were considered extremely radical ideas in New Mexico at the time. The good padre also advocated an equitable redistribution of land to check the exploitation of the small farmer by the large landowner. “He gave his own lands to his servants and to his relatives and devoted all of his earnings to the enlightenment of the people of New Mexico. He urged education for all of the people, and a reduction of the civil powers of the church and clergy.” He died “a poor man financially but one rich in the regard of his people, for his lifelong efforts to break down the barriers of ignorance and bigotry” (238-39). This does not sound like the Padre Martinez who emerges from the pages of Archbishop. Matt S. Meier and Feliciano Rivera explain that when Bishop Lamy was given the task of reforming and reorganizing the isolated and corrupted New Mexican church at mid-nineteenth century, church influence was at an all-time low. Lamy, they assert, was a man of great dedication and drive, but totally unfamiliar with the Hispano-Mexicano culture, and soon became involved in a quarrel over tithing with Father Martinez. But in spite of this conflict with the bishop, Martinez remained an important religious and political leader until his death (110).

Perhaps the most angry of the Chicano writers is Rudolfo Acuña, who writes that in the clash between the Anglo-Americans and the New Mexicans subsequent to the American takeover of the Southwest, the Catholic church—the most important institution in New Mexico—limited its function to tending strictly to the spiritual needs of the people, worked to “Americanize” the New Mexicans, and with few exceptions did not champion the rights of the poor. When, after 1850, control of the church passed from the Spanish/Mexican clergy to an Anglo-American hierarchy, “it became an alien clergy that related more to the power establishment and a few rich Anglo-American parishioners than to the masses. It became a pacifying agent, encouraging Mexicans to accept the occupation” (55). The undisputed leader of the Mexican clergy at that time, says Acuña, was Padre Antonio José Martinez. His devotion to the Catholic church was deep and abiding, but he saw it as an institution to benefit, not enslave, mankind. Acuña calls Martinez “one of the most important figures in New Mexican history, as well as one of the most beloved.” In Taos, “Martinez took a progressive religious stand, refusing to collect tithes from the poor and opposing large land grants, claiming the land should go to the people. He criticized the church for its policy of allowing the clergy to exact excessive and oppressive tithes and fees for marriages, funerals, and like services” (55). He was also a staunch advocate of the separation of church and state. This does not sound like Cather's Martinez either!

The historical records reveal that Padre Antonio José Martinez's family was typical of the many Spanish colonial families who pushed into northern New Mexico in the late eighteenth century. His father, Don José Manuel Martinez, secured a large land grant at Tierra Amarilla on the Upper Chama River. Four of the don's sons were placed there and four others were located in the Taos Valley. “Don Manuel's progeny were as prolific as they were able, and by the 1830s and 1840s the Martinez clan, by virtue of size and holdings, was called the ‘big family’ in Taos” (Lamar 38-39). Geographical isolation restricted marital opportunities, and the Martinez family soon spread throughout the Rio Arriba, “knitted together in a complex web of consanguinity” with other local clans (the Valdez, Vigil, Jaramillo, Lovato, and Trujillo families) “more characteristic of an old paternalistic society than of a frontier one. And in true patron tradition they and their relations controlled scores of devoted peons, domesticated Indians, and retainers. Though there were many feuds and personality conflicts between rival families, they felt a common bond of blood and environment which made them truly provincial” (Lamar 40). (John Nichols's The Milagro Beanfield War, made into a film in 1988 directed by Robert Redford, faithfully depicts the family life and ties of this region.)

The foremost member in this “big family” and the history of Taos was Antonio José Martinez. Born in Abiquiu in 1793, he entered the priesthood after his young wife died, and chose Taos as his parish. Trained in the seminary in Durango, Mexico, he was his community's well-traveled and learned man, and many thought him a legal expert. He selected the promising sons of prominent families as his students, and historian Howard R. Lamar credits him with “training at least a dozen future political leaders and priests of territorial New Mexico.” Padre Martinez was shrewd and observant and a born leader with sizable ambitions, and Lamar recalls that to Twitchell he was “one of the most brilliant men of his time.” Martinez recognized early that the Mexican rebellion against Spain in 1821 signified the beginning of a new era, but he was also a traditionalist who wielded great local power through his priestly offices, his family, and the Taos Indians who admired him. He became their spokesman in civil as well as religious matters (Lamar 40).

It has been suggested that by usual church standards Martinez was not a good defender of the faith and that he renounced few, if any, physical pleasures of the world. This, however, can be vigorously denied, it being pointed out that in his own lifetime he was “never openly attacked by even his bitterest enemies on grounds of immorality” (Francis 272). The archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, which hold voluminous documents bearing on Martinez's conflict with Lamy, contain no records attesting to charges of immorality or licentiousness. Had such documents existed they surely would have been filed there to bolster the bishop's case against the padre. Bishop Lamy indeed found many irregularities among the priests laboring in New Mexico in 1851, but the record reveals no charges against Martinez. Several writers have claimed that Martinez was ultimately excommunicated because of an immoral life and illegitimate children, but it is possible that such charges arose simply because of the many Martinezes who lived in Taos and Rio Arriba—Martinez is a very common surname. Father Martinez, indeed, had two married brothers, Antonio and José Maria, with large families living in Taos. It would be easy to confuse Father Antonio José Martinez with either of these two, especially if there were motives to discredit him for political or religious reasons. In any case, no such charges were ever filed in his lifetime. Fray Angelico Chavez, a distinguished native New Mexican historian, scholar, novelist, and poet, emphatically denies any such immoral conduct on the part of Father Martinez (Francis 273).

Martinez seems at first to have looked with favor on the Texas Revolution of 1836, thinking that New Mexico might also gain independence from Mexico. He was probably active in the Taos Rebellion of 1837 (when the unpopular government in Santa Fe was overthrown) and perhaps approved the deposition and even the murder of Governor Pérez—an unpopular nonresident appointee—who was succeeded briefly by Taos buffalo hunter José Gonzales. “By such actions Padre Martinez illustrated the active and powerful role that he and many other local church leaders … played in New Mexican life” (Lamar 40-41). All this, however, led Americans to decry that “priest-ridden country” and persuaded Governor Pino to beg for a bishop. A bishop they got—Jean Baptiste Lamy, who promptly locked horns with the padre of Taos in a great power struggle.

The clash between Lamy and Martinez was primarily a head-on collision between two strong-willed personalities. Martinez believed Lamy was disregarding established precedence in New Mexico by enforcing the collection of church tithes. Lamy announced on 14 January 1854 “that the priests were to exclude from the sacraments all household heads who refused to pay tithes, and to demand triple fees for baptisms from other members of such families” (Francis 277). Martinez naturally objected to this and refused to collect such tithes from his impoverished parishioners. He thus placed himself in direct opposition to the new bishop, and the result was a schism. It was strictly a local affair, however, with only Martinez and one other priest excommunicated, and with the death of Martinez, most of his followers returned to the traditional Catholic fold. Martinez always declared “with great dignity and conviction that he was forever unto death a priest of the Christian, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman faith despite certain differences of opinion between him and the present bishop” (Francis 283-84).

Throughout his life, Martinez was in many things a liberal at heart, although his liberalism was of the eighteenth- rather than the later nineteenth-century variety. He was among the first to agitate for New Mexico's admission to the Union, believing that democratic institutions extended to New Mexico would benefit his people (Francis 269). He repeatedly emphasized that under a republican government everyone had a right to speak his mind for the enlightenment of the people. He believed it was his duty as a citizen, a native, an active member of the community, a Christian, and a priest to speak for people who were ignorant and intimidated. He favored religious tolerance, and he entertained friendly relations with Protestants. His published writings contain references to “pure religion,” to which, he explained, various kinds of believers adhered. His “sins” were not heresy or immorality; they amounted to difficulties with the bishop and pertained only to the realm of church government and discipline (Francis 284). He believed that the foreign prelates (French) were prejudiced and hostile to the native Spanish-Mexican clergy. But he “never attacked the Roman Catholic church as such or any of her doctrines. He did not even question the legitimate authority of Bishop Lamy. He was fighting against what he [honestly considered to be] the error not the institution” (Francis 288).

It is true that the old pastor of Taos exercised ecclesiastical functions without the necessary authority, publicly criticized his bishop without due moderation, failed to submit to his proper superiors, and caused a short-lived schism. Jean Baptiste Lamy, however, emerges as not quite the kindly, gracious prelate Cather painted as Bishop Latour. He refused to argue the case with the old and respected native priest, but insisted on invoking the authority of his office. “He was a practical man who wanted to get things done, and done his way.” Perhaps his course was the proper one, “but it left a wound in the side of the Catholic church in New Mexico which was long to heal, and the scar can yet be felt” (Francis 289).

It is not my purpose to denigrate Willa Cather or criticize her too severely for damaging the reputation of one of New Mexico's greatest sons. We must remember that her book discusses only the last years of Martinez's life, when he was engaged in his power struggle with Bishop Lamy. Cather did not consider his earlier career as friend and protector of his people, and she used her novelist's right to literary license with the things she did consider. The difficulty lies in the fact that Cather's novel is so well written and still so widely read that her account of the sensual, corrupt priest of Taos is all most readers ever learn of a historical figure of some consequence. His true character and greatness remain unknown to all but the initiated and those willing to go beyond Archbishop. Cather's novel-become-history, therefore, has maligned Martinez, and the result has been a tragic distortion of history in the popular mind.

What is needed, of course, is another wonderful but more historically sound book about Martinez and Lamy in the same genre as Cather's—one that will be read by generations of students and accepted as history just as readily. As it is, the popular image of nineteenth-century New Mexico has been virtually set in concrete by Cather, and it will take more than an article or two in a professional journal to educate the public about the injustice done to the memory of the Padre of Taos.

Bibliography

Acuña, Rudolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. New York: Harper, 1981.

Alford, Harold J. The Proud Peoples: The Heritage and Culture of Spanish-Speaking Peoples in the United States. New York: Mentor, 1972.

Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. New York: Knopf, 1927.

Fergusson, Erna. Our Southwest. New York: Knopf, 1941.

———. New Mexico: A Pageant of Three Peoples. New York: Knopf, 1951.

Francis, E. K. “Padre Martinez: A New Mexican Myth.” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (October): 1956. 265-89.

Lamar, Howard R. The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History. New Haven: Yale UP, 1966.

Meier, Matt S., and Feliciano Rivera. The Chicanos: A History of Mexican Americans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Nichols, John. The Milagro Beanfield War. New York: Holt, 1974.

Steiner, Stan. LaRaza: The Mexican Americans. New York: Harper, 1972.

Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. Leading Facts of New Mexico History. 6 vols. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch P, 1911-1915.

———. Old Santa Fe: The Story of New Mexico's Ancient Capital. Chicago: Rio Grande Press, 1963.