(late 1800s)
The Moors cried, “Mohammad!” The Christians, “Saint James!”
In a moment, thirteen hundred Moors lay dead on the field.
—The Song of the Cid1
The dissonant collision between Spanish-American, Anglo-American, and Native American cultures in the New World is today perhaps nowhere better witnessed than in the northern New Mexico town of Taos, an ancient enclave once the habitat of civilized peoples long before the Iberian Reconquista extended little further than the province of Asturias. In Taos, along the aptly designated Camino de Santiago (named after the co-patron saint of the town), one can find the St. James Episcopal Church, first established as a Protestant mission as recently as 1945.2 Also along the Taos Camino de Santiago is the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints, another Anglo-American derived sect venerating Saint James the Greater, whose roots in the American West date back to the mid–1800s (see Chapter 16). Throughout its lengthy colonial history, extending back to the early 16th century, New Mexico (and Taos in particular) has been the focal point of continual conquests, revolts, raids, and reconquests, including in 1847 when the first U.S.–appointed governor was killed during a violent Native American uprising.3 Unusually, at least for an American city patron saint, Santiago Mayor seems rather appropriate for a geographic place having known so much political turmoil and organized aggression over the last millennium. During an age that celebrated Latin American independence from Europe, as well as U.S. westward expansion in the name of Manifest Destiny, the volatile heritage of Taos, New Mexico, stood (and still stands) as a stern reminder that, ultimately, all politics are local, and that all military conquests are far easier than any peaceful governance.
After decisive American victory in the Mexican War by 1848, the image of Saint James the Greater, both in his Protestant and Roman Catholic guises, seemed to spread across the western territories of the continent as far as the Pacific northwest. Along the then-remote Columbia River Valley, within Fort Vancouver, Washington, St. James Catholic Church was established in 1851, soon after which a young and still-unknown Captain Ulysses S. Grant arrived to serve a short, unhappy stint of duty in 1852–1853. By 1885, a St. James Cathedral had been built near the same location, but by the turn of century it was apparent that the city of Seattle would be the new commercial hub of the region. Accordingly, in 1905, a more magnificent and still-standing St. James Cathedral was constructed in Seattle, making Saint James the patron saint of that growing Roman Catholic archdiocese. From these trends, it appeared as if the cult of Saint James the Greater was ever pushing northwestwards, just as it had a thousand years earlier in Galician Spain, including the first century CE (see Chapter 1), where according to tradition, the apostle-evangelist ventured into the most remote corner of the Roman Empire and then known world. In short, the Way of Saint James seemed to lead continually westward, especially northwesterly, even after discovery of the New World, and regardless of whether one was Spanish, French or Anglo.
Such a sweeping premise as this might be viewed as overstatement until one visits the thriving Quebec metropolis of Montreal, Canada, where physical remnants of the same mentality are still in plain view for everyone to see. Here the prominent Rue Saint-Jacques extends directly westward from the center of the old city, beginning directly in front of Notre-Dame Basilica—not unlike Paris itself wherein another, more ancient Rue Saint-Jacques once led Camino pilgrims of a former epoch from Notre-Dame Cathedral into the generally westward direction of far distant Santiago de Compostela.4 In North America, however, the newer French Camino was less about pilgrimage and more about appropriation of natural resources, spreading both the Christian gospel and commercial fur-trading in roughly similar, if unequal measures. By the late 19th century, France’s colonial ambitions had been greatly diminished by its European competitors; nevertheless, similar objectives were adopted by the ascendant Anglo-American powers that had not long previously supplanted their French rival.
As if to personify the new mood and emphases in French Canadian religious fervor, the mid–1800s saw coming of age in Quebec Province a young priest, born Alfred Bessette (1845–1937), and better known in contemporary times as Saint André of Montreal after his formal canonization by the Vatican in 2010. Unlike many of his devout Quebecois brethren, Brother André preferred veneration of Saint Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary, over that of Saint James the Greater. Saint Joseph was even more mysterious and obscure in his historical personage, but unlike Santiago Mayor, was much closer associated with faith healing and charity towards the poor. These seemed to be more pressing priorities to Brother André as he surveyed the world surrounding him. His single-minded devotion to the cult of Saint Joseph and subsequent championing of a great new shrine in Montreal, the monumental Saint Joseph’s Oratory, would later prove to be one of the more remarkable stories in the chronicles of North American religious life. It also continues to provide dispassionate observers with a useful foil (for comparison’s sake) to the now more obscure cult of Saint James the Greater, at least within the limited confines of the North America continent (see Chapter 18).
The last meaningful attempt at French political influence in North America came and went with the Franco-Mexican War of 1861–1867, most of which time the United States was too distracted by its own internal divisions to act more in character as an enthusiastic interventionist. An overly ambitious Napoleon III of France had instigated the conflict when Mexico defaulted on its international debt payments, but the French were denied a quick military victory on May 5, 1862 (“Cinco de Mayo”), when a heavily outnumbered but deeply determined and well-led Mexican army defeated its foreign invaders at the Battle of Puebla. The upshot of this unexpected turn of events was that Mexican President Benito Juárez maintained his elected office while the French pretender, Emperor Maximilian I, was eventually deposed and later executed in 1867. Following the triumph of Mexican republicans, along with the establishment of a Canadian Confederation that same year (1867) and recently enforced federal union within the United States, it had become abundantly clear that the days of overt European interference in North American affairs was a thing of the past. Moving forward, political and religious decision-making across the New World would be more locally based, often influenced, but never dictated by European leaders. One of the few things that English-speaking, Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, French-speaking, and Native Americans could all agree upon was that they preferred to settle their own problems without any colonial-driven pressures coming from without. By the time that Brazil became the last significant nation-state to formally abolish slavery in 1888, it did so voluntarily and of its own accord, driven mainly by economic motives rather than any ideology. Ironically, some of these same emancipated Brazilian slaves were African-born or descended Muslims whose distant ancestors had likely fought against Christian banners and the cult of Santiago during the old Iberian wars of Reconquista.
July 4, 1876, marked the first centennial of American Independence, but celebrations were somewhat dampened late in June of that same year when an experienced U.S. cavalry strike force under the seasoned command of General George Armstrong Custer was annihilated near the Little Bighorn River in southeastern Montana. Destruction of Custer’s over-confident expedition was administered by an improvised coalition of Native American tribes, rallied in the camp by the visions of Sitting Bull (c.1831–1890) and inspired in the field by the exploits of Crazy Horse (c.1842–1877). Although U.S. Cavalry had previously lost minor engagements to Native Americans, Little Bighorn was the first time a large, highly organized expedition had been cleanly beaten in the field by indigenous combatants since the French and Indian wars of the pre–Revolutionary era. Despite media attempts to spin the defeat into patriotic sacrifice for purposes of the centennial (“Custer’s Last Stand”), the truth was that the fiasco mainly whipped up white hysteria, in turn leading to the immediate and ruthless suppression of all tribes. After the murders of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull (both after surrendering themselves into U.S. custody), the tragic Plains War culminated with the ignoble Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 in South Dakota, in which political protest and civil disobedience were, for all practical purposes, punished as capital crimes with no due process of law, put down with the force of automatic weaponry. The brutal response at Wounded Knee was reminiscent of distant events in totalitarian Spain from the Middle Ages; however, whereas the Iberian Reconquista lasted nearly eight centuries, the U.S. Plains War spanned only a few decades with the outcome never really in doubt.
About three years after Native Americans of the Great Plains temporarily disrupted the relentless triumphalism of Manifest Destiny at the Little Bighorn, something remarkable began taking shape in faraway Santiago de Compostela. There, Cardinal Miguel Payá y Rico, correctly sensing that, after over a thousand years, the old religious shrine was badly in need of reaffirmation, as well as a P.R.-makeover, directed that the contentious issue of relic location be thoroughly investigated.5 Fortunately for defenders of the traditional cult, the person chosen to lead this initiative was the versatile cathedral historian, Canon Antonio López Ferreiro (1837–1910), who embodied that rarest of combinations—author, scholar, archeologist, administrator, and above all, man of faith. Beginning in 1879, Ferreiro spearheaded efforts to precisely identify the tomb of Saint James the Greater, a question that had vexed the Compostela for centuries, especially with local tradition holding that the relics had been hidden in response to hostile English raids, beginning with Francis Drake in 1588 (see Chapter 12). As recently as 1719, during one of the periodic flair-ups between Spain and Great Britain following the War of the Spanish Succession (see Chapter 15), British invaders at nearby Pontevedra caused another panic, further fueling similar rumors.6 Ferreiro’s team of 19th century excavators, however, quickly produced results, locating three skeletons together which conveniently corresponded in theory to Saint James and his two Spanish disciples of tradition, Athanasius and Theodore (see Chapter 4), all expertly certified to be of appropriate antiquity.7 The specific skeleton of James was then ingeniously and impressively identified by matching a documented skull fragment donated during the early 12th century by none other than Archbishop Diego Gelmírez to the Tuscan cathedral in Pistoia, Italy (see Chapter 6).8 By this point, even disbelievers and naysayers were forced to admit, at the very least, that the Compostela site had genuinely ancient and compelling associations with Christian religious worship.9
When Pope Leo XIII officially declared from the Vatican in 1884 that the new findings at Santiago de Compostela were valid, it seemed like the longstanding place of worship had finally received its much-needed vindication.10 After centuries of withering, erudite attacks on its legitimacy, there was now a semblance of modern science and scholarship verifying accuracy of the pilgrimage site location. Canon Ferreiro, however, was shrewd enough to know that papal proclamations alone were not enough to deflect criticism. Indeed, perpetual skeptics, even within Spain itself, complained that the discovered relics, given their age and obscurity, could be those of anyone, including condemned Galician Bishop Priscillian, executed for heresy during the 4th century (see Chapter 1). Accordingly, Ferreiro spent the rest of his life producing a near-definitive 11-volume treatise, Historia de la Santa A. M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela (1898–1910), laying out for future generations exactly what had been done, why, and how.11 Though now over a hundred years old, and not yet translated into English, Ferreiro’s Historia remains, if not the final word on its subject matter, most certainly an inescapable benchmark. Intellectually, its premise was ingenious, and is often recognized as such even by doubters—namely, that at this very late date in history, no one can prove or disprove much of anything regarding the Santiago cult. Known or agreed-upon facts are rationally and patiently presented as such, with minimal extravagance or embellishment. As for conclusions, these become, ultimately, a matter of religious faith and personal belief, rather than any irrefutable logic or universal acceptance. Spain’s long, troubled history in matters of religious doctrine seemed to be in the back of Ferreiro’s mind as he wrote, even while that country was being stripped of its last overseas colonial possessions during the Spanish-American War (see below).
Back in the United States, the aftermath of Wounded Knee and end of the Plains War witnessed the highly influential World’s Fair Exposition of 1893 held in Chicago, where European-descended Americans celebrated the recent 400th anniversary (1892) of Christopher Columbus’ first voyage and sustained encounter with the New World (see Chapter 11). Native Americans and African-Americans were less celebratory. Original Spanish patronage of Columbus’ venture was downplayed as well, although Spain was one of 46 countries sponsoring national pavilions at the exposition. Among the sculptures exhibited at the Spanish Pavilion was an imposing effigy of Saint Isidore by José Alcoverro, today on prominent public display at the entrance to the Spanish national library in Madrid (see Chapter 2, note 3). Ironically, at the Columbian Exposition, Americans lauded Spanish “discovery” of the New World, even as the U.S. prepared to forcefully take away from Spain what little was left of their once sprawling global empire.12 Nevertheless, the Chicago event was notable for its grandeur and diversity, at least by more modest 19th century standards. The fair also served as a convenient symbolic reminder or assertion that the United States would from then on be the dominant power on the world stage, rather than Spain, Great Britain, or any other European-based nation state of the distant past.
Almost right on cue, military demonstration of this enhanced global status for the U.S. arrived with the short but decisive Spanish-American War of 1898. Fueled in part by a persistent Cuban independence movement—Cuba being one of the few Latin American states still under the direct rule of Spain—the U.S. entered the conflict initially as a self-appointed referee, but then nearly overnight transformed into the surprising role of anti-imperialist champion for Cuban freedom. This occurred when one of its warships, the USS Maine, blew up under hazy circumstances while docked in Havana harbor. Within a matter of months, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines were on the doorsteps of Spanish territories. In the Philippines, islands named after a former Spanish monarch and including a city called Santiago (see Chapter 15), quickly fell to American control after U.S. steel battleships made short work of all opposition, simultaneously intimidating any other European competitors in the vicinity, including Great Britain and Germany. In the Caribbean region, U.S. ground forces won a smashing victory at the so-called Battle of San Juan Hill on the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba, a city that once upon a time had been a launching pad for Spanish conquistadors subduing the New World all the way from California to Patagonia.13 One significant political outgrowth of the Spanish-American War was to bequeath celebrity status to a 39-year-old Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, commander of the famed Rough Riders regiment, who would go on in the next century to lead his country in the truest international sense.14 Meanwhile, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were all ceded by Spain to permanent or temporary U.S. territorial status. Another result of the conflict was to signal to the world that American territorial ambitions now far exceeded the previous hemispheric limits of Manifest Destiny, supplanting the international dominance not only of Spain, but Great Britain and other European powers as well.
Accompanying Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders into Cuba was the celebrated American artist Frederic Remington (1861–1909), whose sculptures and paintings have defined popular images of the 19th-century West much the same way that Norman Rockwell’s later 20th-century work defined American middle-class perceptions of itself. Among Remington’s extensive output, his equestrian subjects, particularly those involving Native Americans, are memorable and perhaps definitive, despite an occasional condescending attitude typical of that era. One of Remington’s first forays into this subject matter, as well as one his most frequently reproduced prototypes, is “The Scalp” (originally titled “The Triumph”), a bronze sculpture from 1898, depicting a mounted Plains warrior holding aloft a grisly battle trophy of unspecified origin.15 Echoes of the violent Santiago Matamoros tradition clearly reverberate, although it is unlikely that either artist or his subject had the Santiago cult specifically in mind. Remington’s numerous other paintings of mounted Native Americans, cowboys, U.S. troopers, and Rough Riders are only slightly less visceral, but all call to mind vivid memories of Santiago Mayor on horseback for anyone even slightly aware of that pre–Columbian symbol. One of Remington’s most noteworthy creations in this same vein (but with far more pathos) is the oil painting “How the Horses Died for Their Country at Santiago” (1899), depicting the scene prior to the Rough Riders’ infantry-style assault against the San Juan Heights, of which Remington was himself an eyewitness.16 By the turn of the 20th century, military horses had become nearly as synonymous with American patriotism (and sacrifice) as were the riders themselves.
While Remington created realistic scenes of heroism for mass consumption, another significant development in American art was transpiring, although one not coming to widespread public attention until many decades later. Lakota Ledger Art was the product of untrained but talented Native American artists who, against all odds, had first survived the Plains Wars, then either by accident or necessity recorded their memories of historical events and lifestyles mostly vanished by the time that Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901. The medium itself came into existence simply by Native Americans gaining first time access to paper and coloring devices. Ledger artists like Amos Bad Heart Bull (1868–1913) and Kicking Bear (1846–1904) may not be household names within the contemporary art world, but both were survivor-witnesses of the Little Bighorn—Amos as a seven-year-old child and Kicking Bear as a 30-year-old warrior—and both drew depictions of the battle that are hard to forget for anyone beholding them. Nothing is sentimentalized or glorified, even from the viewpoint of the victors. Amos shows a rifle-wielding Crazy Horse in the middle of the action furiously riding a white steed while charging or chasing routed and dying U.S. cavalrymen, not unlike Santiago Matamoros of old, but with a detached objectivity betraying its stark realism—an understandable memory from a mature adult whose life as a child had probably been saved by the feats of Crazy Horse and Kicking Bear. Amos knew all too well that within a year the heroic Crazy Horse would be dead, murdered as a prisoner of war with a degree of complicity from his own people.17 This had not been a war of triumphant Reconquista, but one of desperate defense and determined survival. A few had indeed managed to survive, but in hindsight they could perhaps only wonder and question the terrible sacrifices made along the way.
As observed by historians, the horses ridden by the Plains Indians both in war and peace were, in all likelihood, descended from those brought to the New World by Spanish conquistadores after 1492, which in turn were likely descended from horses participating on both sides of the Iberian Reconquista struggle dating back to the Middle Ages. Therefore, by extension, the white steed of Crazy Horse at the Little Bighorn so vividly depicted by Amos Bad Heart Bull was possibly a distant descendant of the same animals inspiring visions of Santiago Matamoros from another earlier epoch.18 To repeat the somewhat obvious, however, it is even more unlikely that Native Americans of the Great Plains had ever heard of the Santiago Matamoros, let alone been influenced by the Spanish religious cult or military order. Rather it would appear that this equestrian imagery from the Great Plains represented a good example of iconography parallel to those arising in Spain at least as early as the ninth century.
The Ledger Art of the Lakota tribes certainly is comparable in its primitive style, vivid coloring, and dynamic symbolism to say, the 10th century illuminated manuscripts illustrating the Apocalyptic commentaries of Beatus (see Chapter 3). While these illuminations predated wider circulation of the Santiago Matamoros legend itself, both the illustrators of Beatus and their kindred spirit Lakota visionaries of the distant North American future shared several artistic traits. One similarity was that both viewed their invader enemies as more than simply an economic or political threat, but even more seriously, as a threat to their societal values and traditional ways of life. As such, individual life was worth giving to preserve those values, or at the very least it was psychologically necessary to believe that.19 The difference was that the Lakota do not appear to have frequently implored the aid of the Great Spirit in their defensive struggle against European or American interlopers. The gradual Latin American transformation of Santiago Matamoros, first to Mataindios (see Chapter 16), and then later to Mataespañole, was not adopted by the Sioux warriors of the North American Great Plains. Fair to say, their resistance proved heroic enough without it.
The breathtaking range of Lakota Ledger Art cannot be done any sort of justice in this limited space; however, within the narrow context of this subject matter one image stands out especially. Circa 1880–1881, as part of a now famous series, a gifted Lakota artist by the name of Black Hawk (c.1832–c.1890) drew a representation which came to be known as “Thunder Being,” subtitled “Dream or vision of himself changed to a destroyer and riding a buffalo eagle.”20 Created after the Little Bighorn, but with an inherent sense of aggrieved fatalism, “Thunder Being” depicts a supernatural mounted warrior—part human, part buffalo, part eagle—similar to the rider’s horse also possessing the claws of an eagle and horns of a buffalo. The horse’s extended tail becomes a sweeping rainbow, while the mounted destroyer is armed with a scythe-like weapon tipped on one end in vivid blood red. Rider and mount both carry an ample supply of hailstones, like something out of a biblical apocalypse.21 Nearly 140 years after its creation, the image still retains its power and ability to frighten viewers. Nothing is known of Black Hawk’s whereabouts after 1890, and it is widely presumed that he was one of the victims murdered at the Wounded Knee Massacre that same year. In the visual legacy of the artist, however, one may continue to view a striking parallel development in the Native American imagination with that of the Iberian Santiago Matamoros—a fearful image of the mounted heavenly warrior presented as irresistible, divine avenger.
With the violent suppression or segregation of Native American culture, and subsequent U.S. international expansion at the close of the 19th century, it appeared that the conquering westward push originating out of Renaissance Europe had finally come full circle. While some Americans dreamed or fantasized of continuing this push westwards towards Asia, as Columbus and the Spanish had first envisioned, harsh reality was about to intervene. Nations such as India, China, and Japan had already been advanced civilizations for several millennia. In terms of warfare, cavalry was nothing new to them; in fact, one could easily argue that the Mongols of the Khans had taken horsemanship to its ultimate skill level, even more so than the formidable à la jinete fighters of Iberia. Moreover, Japan was rapidly modernizing, and within a few short decades would manage to sink the U.S. fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor. The real sticking point, however, for advocates of continuing westward conquest was that European totalitarianism was on the rise as well, and would soon threaten the New World itself. Beating back this new, unexpected threat from the east would require a massive coordinated effort from younger American nations (led by the U.S.) who had enjoyed independence from Europe for only two centuries or less. One of the leading European hot spots for this threatening totalitarianism, not too surprisingly, would be within Spain itself, where tough autocratic rule had a long tradition extending back to the Visigoth era of the Dark Ages. As things would transpire, Santiago Matamoros still had one last disturbing ride to make, one undertaken within his own adopted Spanish homeland.