Having first escorted Father Romero and Muñoz to the “bellicose and warlike Apaches” to the east, Governor Silva prepared to conduct the friars assigned to Ácoma, Zuñi, and Moqui. This, too, was enemy country, and soldiers were taken along. Governor Silva was evidently proud of his part in the re-establishment of the faith in the west, for on his way both to and from Zuñi, he carved his name on Inscription Rock (July 29 and August 9, 1629), where it is still plainly to be seen. Silva’s zeal for the faith is shown likewise by his deeds in Zuñi. There he issued an edict that no soldier should enter any house of the pueblo, nor transgress by ill-using the Indians, under forfeit of his life. “Moreover, to make these people understand the veneration due to the priests, wherever they met with Indians, the governor and soldiers knelt to kiss the feet of the fathers, admonishing them to do likewise, which the Indians did; so much as this the example of a Superior can achieve.”

From Santa Fé a cavalcade of thirty soldiers filled with a spirit of high adventure, fully armed, and mounted on good horses gay with the trappings of that period, set forth on June the twenty-third, 1629. Perea writes that the soldiers were well armed in body, but the eight friars were “much better armed in spirit.” Four hundred extra cavalry horses followed close. Behind came ten wagons on which were loaded all the essentials of food, munitions, and church equipment for such a journey. They took the desert trail, marked out through the ages by the unshod feet of the Indian himself—a trail we of to-day must likewise follow almost as blindly since everywhere its course is blurred by drifting sand. Watchful and wary of ambush, but stirring up great clouds of dust, the cavalcade crossed the Rio Grande, and continued its way southwest. In due time the weary hundred miles or more were covered, and the Peñol was reached.

To their relief the Spaniards were given a friendly welcome. Probably the spectacle of such a force, and a still potent memory of the tragedy of the Crag in Oñate’s time caused the Ácomas to reflect, and to conclude that, for the moment at least, discretion was the better part of valor. The friendly reception was gratifying, for as Perea wrote, “by force or by siege it would appear to be impossible to enter the place because of its impregnable site. It is a cliff as high as Mt. Amar in Abasia or the insuperable steep which Alexander won from the Scythians.”[76]

Governor Silva and his party continued west. At the Crag Father Ramírez “remained at the avowed peril of his life—though this had been already surrendered in sacrifice unto God—among these so-valiant Barbarians who had on other occasions fought so well that the Spaniards knew to their sorrow the courage and skill of their opponents.”

Born at Oaxaca, in the valley of Antequera, Juan Ramírez had taken holy orders in the famous convent of Mexico. There his zeal in religious teaching had brought him distinction, so “that he shed lustre upon the Province” and was chosen to go with others of his Order to New Mexico in 1628. Vetancur expressly says that the march was made on foot over the greater part of the six hundred leagues of the wild country, and that because the supplies for their maintenance, furnished by the Crown, were insufficient, “he and the other Religious lived upon what was given them in charity along the way.”

When Father Ramírez heard that the fiercest and most rebellious of all the tribes were those upon the Peñol at Ácoma, he besought the custodian to be sent thither. This intrepid priest believed himself so endowed with grace of heaven that he could succeed where during forty years Spanish arms had failed. The legend is that he ascended the cliff, though with great difficulty, having no other defence than his breviary and his cross, and that so soon as he was seen by the savages, they pelted him with enough arrows to destroy a dozen men, but not one even pierced his habit—a thing so strange that even his would-be murderers thought it a miracle and were sore afraid. Moreover, it happened that a little girl of eight years was accidentally pushed over the brink in the tumult of the riotous savages on the summit, and fell among the cruel rocks sixty feet below. Ramírez went to her, knelt beside her, and prayed over her, and soon led her quite unharmed up to her amazed kinsfolk, who received her with fond caresses. Now they looked upon the Father as one more than human and soon became his disciples. History does not always sustain the poetic overlay of fact, for in this case the records say positively that Ramírez was escorted to the Peñol by Governor Silva.

A second quaint story of a “Religious” who can be no other than Ramírez is told by Benavides. The Father, after recounting his own success among the Indians of Taos, writes as follows of the Crag of Ácoma, at that time apparently hostile to the invading Spaniards:

Some may discredit the two miracles of the children as treasured by the Church; but others feel it to be equally miraculous that the personality and ingenuity of one solitary human being could disarm the ferocity and suspicion of barbarians such as these, win their confidence, make them obedient to his teachings and induce them to adopt a better mode of life. For in these things we have every reason to believe he succeeded so long as he lived among them.

One wishes there were some vivid personal picture of this courageous priest. The quaint phrase of the old chroniclers is too apt to convey an idea of an elderly, grave, and wholly pious padre. But I suspect that any man daring enough to undertake and carry through so hazardous an adventure as this of Fray Juan was certainly in the prime of life. I see him a lithe, muscular, forceful figure, resourceful in emergencies and always fearless. We need not question nor minimize his zeal to save souls if we also believe him gifted with a large share of practical common sense, alertness to seize upon and adapt unusual incidents as they offered, and a firm will that would impress and even awe the Indians. A man in such circumstances must know a great deal besides the liturgy and the confessional. Most of the Spanish priests were men of affairs in one sense or another. They knew how to wield tools and guns as well as the censer and the bell. They were adepts in a score of ingenious useful ways of making life tolerable in the wilderness. How else could they have endured the life there or taught their neophytes new methods of carrying on improved horticulture, church building, and the like? Father Ramírez, like other missionaries in this wild land, thought no danger too great, no labor too mean or too arduous, no sacrifice too momentous, if only the high purpose of civilizing and converting those entrusted to his charge was achieved. All of them understood well that the first step toward winning the confidence of these children of the forest and the desert was to provide for their bodily welfare; and we may take for granted that Father Ramírez was solicitous to give them more food and to teach them how to use their natural resources to better advantage, even while he was learning their language. Then would they in gratitude repay him by repeating the prayers taught them and allow themselves to be “catechized and baptized” as the chronicler tells us was the case. After a time, he went down from the Crag, attended by his flock, apparently to visit some of the other fathers at their posts. They, thinking he must long since have met his death, were amazed to see these ferocious Ácomas changed from “lions to meek sheep.”

We are next told that Father Ramírez built a great church on the top of the mesa and enriched it with many decorations. Can we not visualize the slow and laboring procession of moccasined men and boys coming painfully up those difficult paths with loads of heavy adobe, and with huge timbers from San Mateo Mountain to build their wonderful church? Fortunately the Spanish padres allowed these new-found neophytes to combine in the mission churches their own form of house-building with motifs brought from Spain. Consequently we find complete harmony in the simple lines of the massive structures with their natural environment.

Dedicated as was the shrine on this bleak rock-island to St. Stephen, we should like to think it had been consecrated in memory of the early martyr whose stoning is described in the sixth and seventh chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. Surely it would have been a fitting memorial; but it is definitely stated that the patron saint of Ácoma was that King of Hungary named for Stephen the Martyr, and canonized by Benedict the Ninth because he had converted the Magyars from paganism to Christianity.

A monument which bears Ramírez’s name to-day is the roadway that he caused to be constructed for easier access to the plain below. Down the “Camino del padre” the visitor to-day may watch the burros go every morning, to return at nightfall after a long day’s patient labor.

So the years wore on, twenty or more, years which we may picture among the Ácomas as perhaps the most peaceful in their whole history since the Discovery. Then, because of enfeebled age, the wise and good father was carried back to Old Mexico and put into an infirmary to end his days, as it was thought, in ease. But the old man yearned after his children and could not be comforted. “Rivulets of tears coursed over his cheeks” as he thought on the days of his active service among them. With prayer and the Mass he filled his time as best he could, until, “full of years and virtues he died in the year 1664 on the 24th of July, and was buried in the Convent of Mexico.”[78]

In so many of the lonely places of service given by men like Fray Juan a daily record was kept of what went on about them and of their own progress with the Indians in their charge. None such has ever come to light written of Ácoma. Is it possible that Fray Juan did not beguile his infrequent leisure with any such jotting down of events? Will not some one in some fortunate future day make the longed-for discovery of the record of Ramírez’s life upon the Crag of Ácoma?