Go West Young Man (11) - The Salinas Pueblo MIssions

     Based on hindsight and experience, perhaps Santa Fe was not the best base for visiting the Salinas Pueblo Missions as they were quite some distance from Santa Fe and the driving to and fro did take quite a bit of time; lesson learned. The town of Mountainair would have been a much better base of operations, so for those of you entertaining the thought of visiting these missions, use Mountainair or even Albuquerque.

      Before we get to the pictures though we have to relate a couple of interesting little events which occured on the way to the missions.

      As we are moving at a good speed down highway we come upon the good town of Madrid, it looked like a delightful little place with banners across the road advertising the chili festival;



Perhaps the car up front, which I drove around, was supposed to block traffic?

but it appeared that the people there were not at all that welcoming. There were lots of trucks with trailers parked along the roads and  people yelling at us get off the road and out of the way. Now we have been many places where people from Texas are perhaps not liked and maybe our license plate gave us away, but this was the rudest welcome we have ever experienced.
     Then Norma turns to me and says, "there is a movie in the making here, that is why all this stuff is here and why they are yelling at us". She must have seen something on one of the trucks. Sure enough, we drove right into the filming of some of the scenes of the Disney movie "Wild Hogs" with John Travolta and Tim Allen and others.
     No, we are not in the movie, surely we were edited out as the language used on a couple of occasions to get us out of the way would have gotten the movie a triple X rating. This was quite an experience, which was either preceded or following by a short visit to a three horse town, but I can't remember if that visit came before or after the Madrid incident.

     We also came up on a rock sitting along the road that resembled the head of a Spanish soldier of the time with his helmet on. Some people say that I have a vivid imagination, and that is perhaps so. Take a look and decide for yourself.

The "Spanish Soldier" looking North and thinking "Are we there yet?"

 

 

 

     Now as to the three horse town we were just driving along when we saw a sign about the old church in "I can't remember the name of the town" so we turned off the road and went to see it. I think it was in Los Cerrillos, but I am not sure. We found a neat little church, a nice "court yard" behind the church,

Norma at the door to the couryard.

The Pieta in the courtyard.

The Church front seen from the street

     In addition to the church there were several buildings with "historical building" plaques on the doors or walls. On one of those we saw a door open and decided that it would probably be a good idea to look at such a historical building, and we were talking about it as we walked towards the door, and we suddenly hear doors slamming shut here and there, in other words, people had been observing us the whole time, but we didn't see them. The only moving things we saw in town were three horses in a corral, so therefore, not a one horse town but a three horse town, in other words, a town of some importance.

     Somewhere along the way we came upon another little adobe church sitting along the roadside with what appeared to be an interesting cemetary, and we just had to stop and take a photo.

A small country adobe church somewhere along hwy. 14 in New Mexico.

     Looking at the order of the photos in the original folder it would appear that we came upon the  "Spanish Soldier" first, followed by the three horse town and the Madrid with its Chili Festival and movie making and the little church mentioned directly above.

     The Salinas Pueblo Missions are a National Monument and the history attached is very interesting; picture this in your imagination, you are a Franciscan Friar or Brother, leaving Mexico City and heading North into this hostile land now called New Mexico, but at that time it was part of Tejas. You have with you perhaps several good pairs of sandals, maybe one or two more cassocks, a donkey to carry some of the supplies and perhaps an oxen to carry the water barrels. Then you start out walking or occasionally riding on the donkey at the dizzying speed of 3 miles / 4.8 km an hour. Now assume we only walked 6 hours per day the trip would have taken about 7 or 8 weeks, a distance of roughly 1,200 miles / 1930 km not allowing for terrain variations and not knowing the exact route taken from Mexico City to the first Mission.
     These were people with some guts going off into the unknown, not knowing when and where they would find water, hunting for protein (you can only eat so many beans and then the gas will get you). They encounter local people and they do not speak each others langauge, their cultures and customs are worlds apart.
     The thing that really amazes me, aside from the journey, is that now these Franciscans convince the indiginous people, who perhaps much rather have removed the heads of the heads of these intruders, to build buildings, a people that in this area didn't build anything, but who lived off the land and in tune with the land and on the land.
     First they have to be turned into stone masons, then they have to learn rudimentary math in order to figure out how many stones long and wide and tall walls will have to be and how many stones it will require as these mission churches were not built of adobe. They also had to go long distances looking for trees that could be turned into roof beams, door beams and posts, gates and all the other things that wood is used for in construction. In other words, they also had to become carpenters. But perhaps most interesting of all is that in the culture of the natives based on the division of labor, women and children did most of the work.
     What is left of the three missions; Gran Quivira, Abo and Quarai, speaks well for the work of the Franciscans and the indiginous people of the area. Before the pictures of the missions here are a selection of links to information about the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinas_Pueblo_Missions_National_Monument
http://www.nps.gov/sapu/index.htm
http://sangres.com/newmexico/national-parks/salinas-pueblo-missions-nm.htm
http://www.gorp.com/parks-guide/salinas-pueblo-missions-national-monument-outdoor-pp2-guide-cid9316.html
http://newmexicohiking.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/the-salinas-pueblo-missions/

    Here are some of our photos from the missions, beginning with I beleive Quarai and ending with Gran Quivira. One would really liked to have had more time.

  

This fellow should work harder and he would get rid of the belly.

                                  

Watch out for the local fauna, it may bite with serious consequences.

 

                                  

     After a long and interesting day we headed back to Santa Fe for some rest and libation, but not before we stopped to take just one more photo along the way, as the sun was setting in the mountains.

      More to follow in the next post which will be about our visit to the Loretto Shrine and Chapel and some of the other churches in Santa Fe.