Salinas Pueblo Missions "In the Midst of a Loneliness": The Architectural History of the Salinas Missions Historic Structures Report

The methods of construction used by Hispanic builders in the New World remained the same from the conquest of Mexico in 1521 through the end of the Spanish colonial period in 1821. In fact, builders still use many of the same techniques, materials, and organization of work crews today and these derive from traditional building methods of the Mediterranean Basin of Medieval Europe, North Africa, and the Near East.

Construction of houses with clay or stone walls and flat, beam supported, earth-covered roofs, referred to as "wall and beam" construction in this report, began in Turkey and Israel as early as 10,000 BC. By 8,000 BC builders in Jericho, Israel, had invented the method of molding clay bricks in square wooden forms, sun-drying them, and using them for construction. About 7,000 BC the practice of coating walls with gypsum plaster began. About the same time, rectangular adobe buildings with shared walls formed much of the city of Catal Huyuck, Turkey. Horizontal beams supported a flat roof made up of a layer of smaller logs or sticks covered by grass and sealed with a layer of puddled clay. The inhabitants entered the buildings by means of square hatches through the roofs. The populations of the arid regions of the American southwest and Mexico arrived at almost identical construction methods several thousand years later, in the tenth and eleventh centuries AD, excluding adobe bricks molded in wooden forms. [1]

In the Old World, the wall and beam method of construction spread rapidly throughout the arid regions of the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. The consolidation of most of the Mediterranean basin and adjoining areas under Islam from 632 to 738 AD eventually carried the construction method to places as far apart as Pakistan and Spain. The arid regions that once comprised the Islamic Empire still use this method. [2]

Spain, once a thriving colonial territory of the Roman Empire, already possessed a wide range of building traditions including wall and beam construction when, in the years from 711 to 715, it was overrun by Islam. The conquest began a long period of Islamic control and cultural influence, especially from the area of Morocco, North Africa, just across the Straits of Gibraltar. Spain was reconquered by its remaining Christian kings in a long series of campaigns from 1212 to 1492. [3]

As Spain began the exploration of the New World in 1492, colonists sent to the new territories brought with them the traditions of the Iberian peninsula. They usually built stone and adobe buildings with gabled tile roofs in places with moderate rain and snowfall. In the dryer areas from Peru to New Mexico, with wider temperature ranges and lower rain and snowfall, they built wall and beam houses.

In most of the arid regions of the Spanish New World, the more advanced Indian cultures had begun the use of wall-and-beam construction by 1000 AD. Throughout the New World Spanish settlers found the local Indian artisans already skilled in the methods of construction needed for building the houses, offices, and churches that befitted Spanish culture. The Indians of New Mexico had five hundred years of experience with "Spanish" construction methods and materials. [4]

The design and construction of the mission churches and conventos of New Mexico were a combination of the Spanish architectural tradition of wall and beam construction and the influence of local Indian cultures skilled in the same methods. The differences between the two architectures lay not in the method, but in the design. The Pueblo Indians constructed a house incorporating their own standards of room size and proportions, squareness, wall thickness, overall height, the relationship between rooms, and the size, shape, location, and design of doors and windows. All of these differed from the standards a Spaniard would have employed in building a house. Spanish and Pueblo Indian builders in New Mexico used the same methods to roof a room or make a beam over a doorway, but these methods had to serve different cultural needs, and, therefore, differed in many details. A completed structure usually had a clear imprint of the culture for which it was built.

The churches and conventos of seventeenth century New Mexico bore the clear imprint of Spanish construction. The Indians worked on the construction crews with considerable skill because they knew, in general, how the new buildings would go together, but the completed buildings were thoroughly Spanish.

The resident friar of a new mission probably designed and directed the building of his own church and convento. Each friar generally worked out the plans for his new church on his own, though the less experienced probably sought the assistance of other Franciscans in nearby missions. Higher authorities in the Franciscan administration of New Mexico undoubtedly examined the buildings at various stages in their construction and made their own suggestions for structural details and design changes.

The basic elements of the plan and elevation of the mission buildings would have been common knowledge to a Franciscan, who usually had spent much of his life in a mission. To this basic design the individual friar would have added details that were popular at the time, that were derived from other churches and conventos he had seen and admired, or that were innovations of his own. Friars varied in their creativity, sense of balance and proportion, and even in their understanding of the technical aspects of constructing a sound, attractive building.

Few seventeenth century missions have been examined in any detail, so variations in personal taste among the Franciscans who constructed them cannot yet be determined. Enough information is available, however, to see some change in the popularity of various plan elements. These will be discussed in the chapters on the individual Salinas missions.

ESTABLISHMENT OF A MISSION

The founding of a new mission followed a standardized procedure. First, the custodio and his staff of difinitors made the decision to send a mission to a particular pueblo. They usually selected a missionary for the task during the annual chapter meeting. It was common for a new mission to be assigned to a friar who had just arrived from Mexico. The friar departed for his new pueblo accompanied by a squad of soldiers for his protection on the road and during the first days in his assigned pueblo. A wagon carried his allotment of basic supplies necessary to begin religious instruction and the construction of a church and convento. The equipment had been sent from Mexico City on the same supply train that brought him to New Mexico. [5]

Upon arriving in the pueblo, the friar purchased one or two houses from an Indian family, with the approval of the administrators responsible for such decisions. The houses served as his church, convento, and storerooms during the planning and construction of permanent buildings. [6]

The friar's next step was to secure permission to build a church. The leaders of the pueblo had to give permission to use a particular tract of land for this purpose. Depending on the success of the negotiations, the friar decided whether to build a temporary or a permanent church and convento.

There were several paths that events could follow over the next several years. For example, at Hawikuh Fray Roque de Figueredo and his successor, Fray Francisco Letrado, began construction on the permanent church and convento about 300 feet east of the pueblo, at the bottom of the hill on which the Indian buildings stood. The friars built the mission immediately adjacent to abandoned house block F, reoccupied by the Indians about the same time. Some of the rooms of this house block probably served as the temporary convento. The friars began on the mission in late 1629, but it was destroyed before completion during a revolt about a year and a half later, in February, 1632. The Franciscans did not return to Hawikuh until the late 1640s, when they successfully completed the church and convento. [7]

At Pecos in 1617, the pueblo would not permit the construction of a church near Indian buildings. Fray Pedro Zambrano Ortiz began a small church about a thousand feet northeast of the pueblo and probably lived in a small shack near the site of construction. The small church may have been roofed but was unfinished inside when the Franciscans finally received permission to enter the pueblo about 1620. Fray Pedro de Ortega, who replaced Ortiz, moved into rooms at the south end of the South Pueblo and built several additional rooms to serve as a convento. He constructed a small temporary church, and in late 1620 began construction on the building that was to become the largest church ever built in colonial New Mexico. The small church northeast of the pueblo was dismantled and some of the adobes and wood were probably reused in the new construction. Fray Andres Suárez took over the work of construction in 1622 and completed the new church and its convento by early 1626. [8]

At Las Humanas a third variation on establishment occurred. In mid-1629 Fray Francisco Letrado occupied several rooms at the west end of house block 7 and in 1631 began construction on the church of San Isidro. It was located on the south slope of the hill crowned by the pueblo, and was intended as an interim structure. Letrado was transferred to Hawikuh in late 1631, and Las Humanas was reduced to a visita of Abó. Fray Francisco Acevedo completed construction on San Isidro. Fray Diego de Santandér began construction on a larger church in about 1660. [9]

Supplies and Equipment

Each friar was given a set of basic items when he was sent to New Mexico for the first time. As part of his founding equipment, the friar was furnished with:

10 axes for cutting trees for beams and other wooden items;
 3 adzes for trimming beams, lintels, and other wooden items;
10 hoes for the preparation and maintenance of the convento garden and for digging foundation trenches;
 1 medium-sized saw for cutting boards;
 1 chisel with collar and handle for detailed shaping of beams, lintels, and boards;
 2 augers for drilling holes for pegs, the usual way of fastening the components of doors;
 1 box plane for planing board and beam surfaces flat. [10]

This was a basic set of tools for use in the mission on a day-to-day basis. For major work such as the trimming and carving of the decorated roof beams and corbels for the church and sacristy and the lathe-turning of bannister rails and posts, the friar usually hired skilled carpenters, such as the Indians of Pecos Pueblo. These experts would bring their own, more specialized tools and equipment to the site. [11]

In addition, the friar was supplied with the following materials for construction:

 600 tinned nails for decorating the church door;
  60 nails about 4 inches long;
  60 nails about 7 inches long;
 100 nails de a quinientos en suma; [12]
 400 nails de a mil en suma;
1800 roofing nails;
1200 nails de medio almud;
 800 tacks;
  10 pounds of steel for making other needed items and tools;
   1 large latch for the church door;
   1 pair of braces for double doors, probably the church doors;
   2 small locks;
  12 hinges for doors and windows;
  12 hook and eye latches. [13]

The carpenters used very few nails in the construction of flat earthen roofs, and they used wooden pegs in much of the other work, such as door construction and window framing. [14] Other than the tinned nails for the church door, the carpenters probably used the smaller nails listed above for furniture construction such as benches, chairs, tables, cabinets, and bed frames. The larger nails were probably for framing and supports for the retablo, or decorative screens, in the church. The roofing nails may have been used in the construction of stables and storerooms adjacent to the convento.

The friar had some tools or equipment made on-site, using the ten pounds of unworked steel in his supplies. A blacksmith must have been present during at least some of the cycle of mission construction and activity to do this work.

Site selection and siting considerations

As his first major task, the friar had to select an appropriate location for the mission compound. Several criteria influenced his decision. The friar wanted the church to have an imposing situation, close to the main plaza of the pueblo, but clearly separate from the mundane lives of the Indians, as dictated by the Laws of the Indies. The site should be fairly level, but the friar would plan on building a level platform for the mission if necessary. The church should face into one of the plazas of the pueblo, but still be oriented towards a cardinal direction if possible.

After he selecting a first choice and several second choices, the friar entered into negotiations with those in authority in the pueblo, in order to secure permission to build on one or another of the sites. If and when permission was granted, the friar could begin planning the actual construction.

Planning the Buildings

The friar worked out the plan of the church and convento buildings, probably in the form of a measured sketch plan on paper or smooth board, in advance of actual layout of the site. He carefully determined the overall measurements, the use, sizes and relative location of the rooms of the convento, the plan of the church, and the design of facade. During planning, the friar's own ideas and experience necessarily influenced the design. Conventos and church plan and elevation, usually similar in their general attributes, tended to be different in detail throughout seventeenth century New Mexico because each was the creative product of only one or two people. [15]

The church could be planned with either a straight nave (the main body of the interior of a church) or with transepts. Transepts were extensions built onto the sides of a nave to give the plan of a church the shape of a cross. At the end of the church opposite the main entrance doors, the friars built the main altar. In the area immediately in front of the altar was the sanctuary, where much of the activity took place during the religious ceremony called Mass. The main altar was almost always raised above the level of the nave on a platform reached by broad stairs. To either side of the main alter, the Franciscans usually built secondary altars called collaterals, or simply side altars. At the front of the church, over the entrance, was usually a choir loft, a large balcony where the choir stood to sing. The choir loft was reached by a stairway built under the loft or in a room against the outside wall of the church. Before 1640, the friars built a baptismal area under the choir loft, but after 1640 the baptistry was a separate room reached by a doorway through the church wall. From the area of the sanctuary, a doorway opened into the sacristy, a room used for storing the vestments worn during the Mass. From the sacristy, the friar could go through another doorway into the main residence area of the mission, called the convento.

The Franciscans laid out the churches as precisely square as they could, with remarkable success. San Buenaventura is the only one of the surviving seventeenth-century churches to have a significant lack of parallelism in the walls of the nave. George Kubler has suggested that many seventeenth-century churches were designed to appear longer by the creation of a false perspective with non-parallel nave walls. [16] However, most of these churches have naves that diverge less than one foot over lengths of sixty to one hundred feet. These include Halona, Hawikuh, Abó, Quarai, Giusewa, Acoma, San Isidro, the "Lost Church" at Pecos, and the first plan of the Chapel of San Miguel in Santa Fe; most of these diverge less than six inches. Only San Diego de Tabirá and San Buenaventura have walls more than one foot out of parallel, with San Buenaventura having a three-foot divergence and San Diego two feet. Apparently the missionary responsible for each church wanted the walls parallel, but were not always able to achieve this.

Somewhere high on the church, sometimes above the choir loft stairs or the baptistry, the Franciscans built the bell room. Bells in seventeenth century mission churches were not sounded by swinging. Instead, the clapper was pulled against it by a thong, or the bell was struck from the outside. [17] It was necessary for the bell ringer to stand virtually beside the bell. This resulted in the distinctive arrangement of the bell tower seen in the missions of the seventeenth century. In each case, the design carefully allowed direct, easy access to the bell room, usually built high on one side or either end of the church. Each missionary received one standard issue, two-hundred pound bell in the founding supplies for his mission. Most of these were virtually identical bronze bells. The seventeenth century Pecos and Aguatobi bells were cast in the same mold as the bell at Acoma made in 1710; the bells at the Salinas missions probably looked the same. [18] The bells were usually made in Mexico City. For example, in 1612, the Franciscans contracted with the maestro de campañero, the master bell-maker, Hernan Sanchez for a number of brass items, including six large bells, each weighing 200 pounds. Hernan Sanchez was a recognized maestro in Mexico City. Among other things, he made the bell called "Santa Maria de los Angeles" in the Cathedral there. [19]

The Convento

The friar planned the convento to include certain basic elements: 1) the central patio with its encircling covered walk, called the ambulatorio in this report; 2) the portería, or reception room, at the front of the convento near the church facade; 3) a refectorio, or dining room; 4) a cocina, or kitchen; 5) oficinas, or storerooms; 6) the despensa, or pantry; 7) the infirmario, or infirmary; and 8) several celdas, cells or residences. Some of the cells had alcobas (alcoves, also called trasceldas) or rear rooms for sleeping, and usually one cell, the celda principal, had an adjoining office space for the friar. Frequently the mission would have one or several privies inside the convento buildings, in the patio, or in the second courtyard. The missionaries usually used one room, probably an unused cell, for a schoolroom. [20]

The convento centered on the patio. Around it was the ambulatorio, a walkway that gave access to both the secular and sacred areas of the mission. It served to separate the activities which involved the public from the private residence of the Franciscans. However, the Franciscans were not a cloistered order, and lay persons had some access even to the private rooms of the friars. Doors were used, not to preserve the sanctity of the cloister, but as a security measure to prevent pilferage of goods, supplies, and valuable church fittings, and as a deterrent to cold drafts in the winter.

In the private area of the friary were the rooms for the necessities of life and the business of the mission. These included the cells where the friar and any other resident Franciscan or lay brother lived; the storerooms; the dining room; and the kitchen. The cells were usually two rooms each, a larger one for paperwork and study, and a smaller, the alcove, for sleeping. Some of the cells may have been used as residences by Indians on the permanent staff of the mission, such as the sacristan, who kept the sacristy and church clean and neat and cared for the vestments used in the ceremonies of the church. He sometimes assisted the priest in such ceremonies. [21] These and other room uses were highly variable depending on the wishes of the resident minister and the fortunes of the mission.

The friar designed all of the rooms for particular purposes at the time they were built. Some, such as the extra cells, anticipated future needs, while other rooms were put into use immediately. However, because of changes introduced by later friars and alterations by reoccupation after 1800, and lack of sufficient detail in the archeological records, the purposes of some rooms cannot be determined. The friars after the original builder changed the plan of some rooms, indicating that they also probably changed the uses of these rooms.

Adjacent to the main convento complex, the friar laid out a second courtyard resembling a barnyard. The second courtyard contained the animal pens; stables for the mules, horses, and dairy cows; and coops for chickens and turkeys. Here stood the main food-storage buildings, usually a hay barn for the animals and a granary to store beans, wheat, and corn against time of need for the convento and the pueblo. Beyond this, but not far from the convento, would be pens and corrals for keeping sheep for shearing or fattening and tame cattle for milking and breeding. Larger pens in the area held stock waiting to be driven to markets in the San Bartólome-Parral area, several hundred miles to the south. [22]

The rooms and associated wooden buildings of the second courtyard served the secular life of the mission. Elsewhere, either in the second courtyard or in buildings added to the pueblo room blocks, the friar built the mission weaving rooms and other workshops. [23]

The mission maintained its ranching and farming activities in large estancias on the surrounding valley floor, using Indian labor. Some missions in the central Rio Grande Valley had a surprising number of these estancias. In the period from 1663 to 1666, for example, San Ildefonso had six, Sandía had thirty, Isleta had fourteen, and Socorro had two. [24]

The mission, with its residences, offices, storerooms, workshops, sheds, barns, pens, herds and fields, was almost a self-contained community. This was certainly the intent of the design, derived from over 800 years of monastic tradition and 400 years of Franciscan development. It had served well in Medieval Europe, in Renaissance Mexico, and would continue to serve in Colonial New Mexico.

Surveying

The friar usually laid out the church and convento with some concern for geographic orientation. He located geographic north by a magnetic compass, or by means of any one of several methods using the stars or sun. A compass, however, was not trustworthy in a new territory until its variation, or deviation from geographic north, had been determined. Each area had a different variation, and in some cases the difference could be very large. [25]

The friar could accurately obtain the bearing of geographic north by methods using either observation of the stars during the night or of the sun during the day. He could have determined the variation with an accuracy of less than half a degree by a simple nighttime observation of the direction of the North Star relative to the direction in which the compass needle pointed. Greater accuracy could have been obtained by several observations at different times during one or several nights. [26]

Most "frontiersmen" such as the Spanish explorers, missionaries, and colonists on the northern frontiers of New Spain probably used solar observations to find the cardinal directions. They would have known several techniques for this, and probably carried small, easily used instruments for the job.

The simplest method of determining the cardinal directions using the sun was the gnomon. The friar set a rod (the gnomon) vertically into the ground and drew a circle around it using the base of the rod as the center. He marked the shadow of the top of the rod as it crossed the circle in the morning and again in the evening. He then found the midpoint of the line between the two marks and drew a line from that midpoint through the base of the rod. This line would run within a fraction of a degree of true north and south.

Several other instruments for finding true north using the sun, such as the magnetic sundial, the equinoctial sundial, and the equinoctial ring, were available to the missionaries in the early seventeenth century. All of these instruments were made in small, virtually pocket-sized versions. [27]

The magnetic sundial and equinoctial sundial used compasses as part of their orientation system, and therefore would not serve the purposes of the friar. The equinoctial ring was simpler, but required that the north latitude and the hour of the day be known. The friar could easily find his north latitude and the arrival of the noon hour by observing the altitude of the sun with standard instruments such as the quadrant or astrolabe and comparing this reading with printed tables of latitude. Such tables, called ephemerides, were commonly available. For example, Antonio Espejo used a set during his exploration of New Mexico in 1582, as did Captain Alonso de Leon while crossing Texas in 1689, and Father Eusebio Kino, a Jesuit, who explored and mapped southern California from 1685 to the early years of the 1700s. [28] The hour of the day could be obtained with some accuracy by using the astrolabe. In fact, a latitude observation required, as a routine procedure, that local noon be determined.

In the Salinas area, the missionaries would have found that the compass pointed almost due north, making it unnecessary for them to correct for variation on every sighting. After this determination, the friar could proceed with the layout of the mission buildings.

Laying Out the Plan of the Buildings

The church and convento buildings were laid out at the same time using stakes, a plumb bob, and a measuring cord, the cordel, probably fifty varas (140 feet) in length. [29] In general, the method consisted of a series of angle and distance determinations, with stakes placed at intended corners. First, the friar selected the location of the center of the complex. The Indians on the layout crew then ran a baseline through the center along the alignment selected by the friar for the building. They used the cordel to measure the length of the main wall along the baseline and drove stakes to mark the first two corners. The friar showed them how to turn a right angle here, using a simple geometric method such as intersecting circles or a 3-4-5 triangle, or an instrument such as the compass. The crew drove a third stake marking the new alignment and measured along that alignment to the next principal corner, perhaps using the plumb bob string as the sighting instrument. This procedure continued until the crew/workers had marked the outline of the entire building complex on the ground. They probably ran string between the stakes. [30]

Within the outline, the crew members delineated room walls, then excavated trenches for the building foundations along these lines. As a rule, the friar had all the foundations completed first to serve as the permanent plan for above-ground construction. [31]

WALLS AND ROOFS

Wall thickness was an important choice by the friar. The greater the weight of roofing a wall was to support, the thicker it was made. Primary walls in a friary, for example, measured 3 to 3 1/2 feet thick and carried the weight of the roof over the room. The larger the area of the roof, the greater the weight resting on the walls. Only two of the four walls of a given room actually carried the roof, because the roof was supported on beams running only across the shorter dimension of the room. When several rooms were built in a row, the wall thickness between any two rooms was determined by the area of roofing in both rooms. Secondary walls that still performed some structural function were about 2 1/2 feet thick. Simple partition walls, such as those between the celdas, had a thickness of about 1 1/2 feet. When the friar built a platform, he designed the retaining walls along the edge of the platform so that they also formed the foundations of the buildings constructed on the platform.

In "wall and beam" construction, the "beam" was the overhead piece of wood between two vertical supports. When the beam formed the overhead for an window or doorway, it was called a "lintel." When the beam was one of several supporting a flat roof it was called a "viga." Sometimes vigas received additional support in the form of a "corbel," a beam with one end set into the wall or resting on the lintel, and the other end unsupported. The viga rested on the upper surface, while the lower surface of the corbel was usually carved into a series of curves with intricate patterns cut into its surface and sides. Corbels could be either structural elements or decorative elements, depending on where they are used. A "bolster" was a short length of wood (usually with both ends carved in the same shape as the corbels) forming a platform at the top of the post to support the beam.

Wall Openings

The masons built the doorways so that they were wider on one side than on the other. This characteristic is called splay. It made the doorways through thick walls easier to pass through and allowed more light from the hall into the room. Splay also provided space for the door when it was standing open, keeping it from blocking part of the doorway. Each doorway was usually wider on the inside of a room. Most doors opened toward the interior of the room. A door pivoted on one edge, usually on a wooden peg called a "pintle" set into a hole in the sill beam, and opened by a latch or latchkey on the opposite edge. When open, each door stood back against the splayed face of the doorway.

THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSTRUCTION CREWS

According to Fray Alonso de Benavides, construction crews were made up of women, with children doing much of the lighter fetch-and-carry work. "Sumptuous and beautiful as they are, [the churches and conventos] were built solely by the women and by the boys and girls of the curacy. For among these nations it is the custom for the women to build the walls." [32] The men of the pueblo collected the materials needed. The organization of the work crews was probably hierarchical. The friar would have appointed the more experienced Indians or faster learners as crew leaders. Leaders directed workers in particular tasks according to detailed instructions from the friar. When possible, experienced colonists acted as crew leaders. It is likely that the friar had one man who acted as mayordomo, or foreman, overseeing the entire construction operation. This may have been a lay brother, a colonist or an experienced Indian. Such an arrangement allowed the construction work to continue while the friar attended to all the other myriad details of the daily life of a mission. [33]

Construction Crews and Collection Crews

For a building project as complex as the construction of a mission church and convento, the work had to be divided into several major tasks. Mayordomos directed all of these task groups under the supervision of the friar. One task group quarried stone and hauled it to the construction site, probably using a mule-drawn wagon to facilitate collection. Another mixed adobe mortar used to set the stones and cover the walls. A third group, under the close supervision of the friar, collected limestone or gypsum, built kilns, burned the stone, and slaked the lime for use in the final plaster coating of the walls.

Other groups performed the many other tasks necessary to construct a large building. One cut brush and small trees to cover those buildings that were not to receive roofs of carved beams and corbels, or shingles. [34] Another group wove matting to be used between the stick or board layer of the roof and its final earth covering. Still others worked on the layout crew, shovelled dirt from foundation trenches, or hauled earth, stone, and sand to fill the foundation platform.

The Carpenters

The carpenters formed a separate group whose job included seeking out and cutting the appropriate trees for large roofing beams. They probably had to go only five or six miles away into the Manzano Mountains for Quarai and Abó. At Las Humanas, good forests were almost twenty miles distant in the Gallinas Mountains to the east. Supplying timbers for the construction of the churches of Las Humanas would have been more labor-intensive than for the other two pueblos.

In the Salinas missions, the principal material for the large roofing beams was probably Ponderosa pine. In other areas where it was available, spruce would have been used, because the wood was lighter for a given volume and stronger than Ponderosa. More important, the grain of Ponderosa usually twisted as it cured, while the grain of spruce stayed straight. This meant that Ponderosa had to be well-cured before it could be used, or a large beam could twist somewhat and shift and crack even thick walls. [35]

The woodcutters probably allowed the trees to season for perhaps a year where they were felled, perhaps stacked in ricks to prevent rot. After the seasoning period, before the trees were moved to the mission, carpenters probably trimmed the trees into beams, planks, and other members. To shape the larger beams, they used axes, adzes, and saws of various types including two-man pitsaws. This initial shaping reduced the weight having to be carried by the wagons when the crew hauled the wood back to the mission. An average finished roofing beam for the church was about 35 feet long, 10 1/2 inches across, and 12 inches high. When prepared for transportation, it was probably somewhat thicker, say 12 inches square. Such a beam weighed about 1,750 pounds and must have been a challenge to bring down the rough slopes of the Manzano Mountains or haul the twenty miles from the Gallinas forests to Las Humanas. Rather than having the beams dragged or carried by hand, the friar may have dismantled the wheels and suspension from wagons and attached them directly to each beam. This would have allowed the beams to be hauled by mule-team. Similar adaptations were common in Europe as part of fortification construction and the hauling of military equipment. [36]

The carpenters finished the trimmed beams and other members in a workshop at the mission, probably a ramada-covered area in the second courtyard or near the church. Here they had a wider variety of tools, including draw knives, chisels of many sizes and shapes, augers, planes, and lathes to turn stair and bannister posts and other such pieces. [37]

Judging from the scant information available in the structures of the Salinas missions, the carpenters followed a clear routine for preparing the woodwork of a mission. Large beams for the major door and window lintels, choir loft beams and roofing vigas would be cut and allowed to cure until the carpenters were certain that they had stabilized. Then they would be trimmed to the right length and squared. The surviving ponderosa pine lintel beam at San Buenaventura, Las Humanas, for example, was adzed square after it had cured and twisted.

At this point the carpenters would begin decorative carving. The large beams seem to have been cut and carved when the church was begun, perhaps five years before they would be needed. Smaller logs for the window and door lintels and roofing of the convento, needing less curing time because of their smaller volume, were probably cut just before being needed. This implies that the cutting dates of the smaller, unsquared logs used high in a building are about one year before they were actually placed in a building, while the cutting dates of large, squared beams are approximately the year the building was begun. For example, the logs used as the floor of the bell tower in San Gregorio II at Abó were cut in 1649, and probably placed in the walls in 1650, indicating that the main construction of the building was probably finished in about 1651. The small lintel beam of the second story window of the choir loft entrance room, the antecoro, at Quarai, is probably the beam used to produce the only tree-ring date from the mission. If so, it was cut in 1631, indicating that it was placed in the walls in about the same year, giving a completion date for the building of about 1632 or 1633. Finally, the choir loft and doorway vigas visible in drawings and photographs in the unfinished church of San Buenaventura at Las Humanas were probably cut in 1660, carved in 1661, and kept in storage until they were needed in the later 1660s. The cutting date of squared beams usually cannot be determined, because of the loss of the outer rings of the log. The one surviving beam from San Buenaventura, back in place over the main entrance to the church, is an example. Tree-ring dating indicates only that it was cut sometime after 1583. [38]

CONSTRUCTION METHODS

The crews built the mission church and convento using simple equipment. In most cases, the use of these tools could be taught quickly, and the results of their use could be consistent and dependable.

Tools

The most important tools used during wall construction were the plumb bob and the stretched string. These permitted straight, square corners and flat wall surfaces that could not be obtained in any other simple way. The stretched string served as a guide for the construction crew, insuring that the above-grade walls began with straight lines and faces. The plumb bob, held above the corner locations, kept the edge of intersection straight.

Almost as important as the plumb bob and string was the nivel de albañil, or mason's level. The simplest version of the level was an A-shaped frame with a small plumb bob hanging from the crotch of the A. On the crossbar was a mark indicating vertical. When the frame was held so that the plumb cord ran across the vertical mark, the crossbar was precisely horizontal. Sights on the crossbar allowed a skilled workman to determine, for example, when wall tops were level. The use of the level also allowed the friar to accurately set up such exacting details as the slope of the roof beams to insure the proper drainage of the roof. [39]

Masonry

The work crews laid up the stone walls using a rubble core and veneer construction. They kept the veneered surfaces as flat as possible to reduce the work necessary to make the final plastered surface smooth. Larger and more irregular stones went into the wall interiors. These cores were also carefully laid in order to prevent voids or large masses of adobe mortar that could wash out later. Great care usually went into the construction and the flat surfaces, sharp edges, and long, straight vertical lines to be seen at Concepción de Quarai and Abó demonstrate this precision. Sometimes the friar was not so skillful, as at San Buenaventura. Here irregularities in plan, vertical edges that are not vertical and straight walls that are not straight indicate that young Fray Diego de Santandér and his successors were not accomplished builders, did not effectively use a levelling device and may not have used plumb bobs or stretched strings in the construction.

Scaffolding

Once the walls passed the height of about four feet, the construction crew built scaffolding along the wall faces. The scaffolds gave the workers a place to stand as they built the walls higher and to stockpile small heaps of building stone and tubs of clay mortar waiting to be used. The scaffolding was made of vertical poles set into the ground with horizontal poles lashed to them by rope or rawhide thongs. Planks were laid from horizontal pole to horizontal pole, to form walkways and platforms. The scaffolding was braced by horizontal poles set into the face of the masonry at intervals. These poles were called "put-logs," and the holes into which they were placed, "put-holes." Although no clearly identified examples of put-holes have been identified in the walls of the Salinas missions, this was such a common construction method for walls higher than perhaps four feet that it can be assumed to have been used. [40] Eventually the scaffolding would have reached the height of the finished walls and towers, about 45 feet at the churches of Concepción de Quarai or San Gregorio II at Abó. [41]

Lifting Systems

The crews working on the ground raised construction materials, water, and tools to the platforms in buckets or tubs by rope and pulley. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these containers were frequently made of wood, but could also be of basketry, fabric or leather. Larger and heavier materials, such as roofing vigas, were lifted by block and tackle, probably using shear legs. This was a simple lifting device made by two spars fastened together at the top, from which a pulley system was hung. The angle of tilt of the spars was controlled by guy ropes pulled by ground crews. [42] The shear legs were used much as a crane would be today. A seventy-foot pair of shear legs with its ends resting on the ground could have easily lifted roof vigas into place from inside the nave of a church. [43]

It is frequently forgotten that such equipment was known to virtually every Spaniard in the New World, since all had arrived there on board ships with innumerable pulleys, winches, and other lifting devices in constant use. Somewhat smaller, tripod-like lifting systems called cabrias were in common use both on shipboard and on land by artillery engineers, for example, to lift massive cannon into position. [44] The average European resident of New Spain, therefore, knew some basics of the construction and use of lifting gear. Friars responsible for building probably knew a good deal more.

Shear legs or some similar system of lifting had to have been used in the construction of the Salinas missions, contrary to the statements of George Kubler. [45] The surviving sockets and casts of roofing vigas and corbels in the churches and sacristies of Abó and Quarai, a surviving beam at San Buenaventura, and drawings and photographs of other San Buenaventura beams demonstrate beyond doubt that they were square and most had intricate decorative carving and painting. [46] The beams were finished before being put into place on the walls, as was shown by the cast of the end of a beam in a surviving socket over the sacristy at Abó. The cast preserved the imprint of decorative carving on a portion of the beam inside the socket. [47] If finished beams had been rolled to a wall top and then dragged into position, as depicted by Kubler, they would have been extensively damaged on the finished surfaces and edges. Instead, they had to be lifted clear of the walls and lowered into position.

Rate of Construction

Using a period of six years as the standard for the construction of a mission, it is possible to estimate the typical rate of construction by the work crews. [48] Allowing about three months for site layout and foundation trenching, and nine months for roof construction, plastering, woodwork, painting and other finishing, the masons spent five years of the total laying stone. A church and convento typically contain about 92,000 cubic feet of masonry. The masons were able to lay about 18,400 cubic feet of stone per year during the five-year period dominated by masonry work. Such a rate could easily be managed by a masonry crew of about forty people, including eight masons on the scaffolds, eight tenders who supplied them with raw stone and mortar, and twenty-four collection and preparation workers, working twenty days a month, nine months a year. [49] The remainder of the time would be lost to below-freezing weather, when good mortar work was impossible, or to other high-priority work such as the harvest of the fields and the daily affairs of the Indians. Religious holidays must have affected the work schedule, too, but when and how much is unknown.

The friar and his Indian crews spent about six years constructing the church and convento, from the planning of the buildings through the final dedication of the completed structures. The entire process of construction--with its prior planning, careful measurement, and concern for detail--would have served as an excellent opportunity for the friar to teach lessons about authority, the "superiority" of Spanish culture, and what was to be gained by becoming Hispanicized and Christianized. Construction was, in all probability, an integral part of the acculturization process conducted by the mission.