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An Education in the Validity of Pluralism: The Meeting between Presbyterian Mission Teachers and Hispanic Catholics in New Mexico, 1870–1912

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Susan M. Yohn
Susan M. Yohn*
Affiliation:
Hofstra University
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Extract

An examination of the Protestant women's home mission enterprise at the turn of this century offers an opportunity to chart the process by which women reformers came to redefine the responsibilities of civil government, a crucial first step in the fashioning of a welfare state. More importantly, it provides insight into the alteration of the existing social relations between different ethnic groups. The welfare state was not just the creation of one class, or one group, of social reformers. Like those who provided social services, those who received the services played a central role in their development. In her critique of the argument that welfare agencies were little more than instruments of social control, Linda Gordon has written that the “social control experience was not a simple two-sided tradeoff in which the client sacrificed autonomy and control in return for some material help. Rather, the clients helped shape the nature of the social control itself.” Gordon concludes that we err in thinking of the “welfare state” only as a “campaign spearheaded by elites,” and in so doing may overlook the “pressure” that clients or recipients exerted for these welfare reforms. The welfare state was not just a paternalistic agency of social control but was also a means by which oppressed groups could gain greater autonomy and empowerment.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , Fall 1991 , pp. 343 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1. Gordon, Linda, “Family Violence, Feminism, and Social Control,” Feminist Studies 12 (Fall 1986): 470.Google Scholar

2. While much attention has been paid to women active in foreign missions, women's home mission activities have not been studied in the same depth. For additional information on women's participation in the home mission movement, see McDowell, John, The Social Gospel in the South: The Woman's Home Mission Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1886–1939 (Baton Rouge, La., 1982); Pascoe, Peggy, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–1939 (New York, 1990); Coleman, Michael, “Not Race, But Grace: Presbyterian Missionaries and American Indians, 1857–1893,” Journal of American History 61 (June 1980): 41–60; Jones, Jacqueline, “Women Who Were More Than Men: Sex and Status in Freedman's Teaching,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (Spring 1979): 47–59; Jones, Jacqueline, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980). For a discussion of black women's participation in home missions, see Perkins, L. M., “The Black Female American Missionary Association Teacher in the South, 1861–1870,” in Black Americans in North Carolina and the South, ed. Crow, J. J. and Hatley, F. J. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 122–36.Google Scholar

3. Missionaries referred to their clients interchangeably as “Mexicans” and “Spanish.” I use the term “Hispanic” since it distinguishes mission students and clients from the growing wave of twentieth-century Mexican immigrants. In this particular case, many of the people of northern New Mexico with whom Anglo-Protestants worked traced their connections to New Mexico back to the Spanish settlement of the territory. Others had migrated to the area soon after Mexican independence from Spain. The vast majority of mission school students came from families whose presence in New Mexico predated United States annexation in 1848.Google Scholar

4. See Knowlton, Clark, “Changing Spanish-American Villages in Northern New Mexico,” Sociology and Social Research 53 (1969): 463 n. 14, 15, 16; and Burma, John, Spanish-Speaking Groups in the United States (Durham, N.C., 1954), 15.Google Scholar

5. For a description of the process by which subsistence farmers became wage laborers, see Dunbar, Roxanne, “Land Tenure in Northern New Mexico: An Historical Perspective” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1974), 10, 207–35.Google Scholar

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7. For information on how land claims courts operated, see Westphall, Victor, The Public Domain in New Mexico, 1854–1891 (Albuquerque, N.M., 1965); and idem, Mercedes Reales: Hispanic Land Grants of the Upper Rio Grande Region (Albuquerque, N.M., 1983). From 1891 to 1904 the Court of Private Land Claims rejected two-thirds of the claims presented. It confirmed grants of some two million acres and rejected claims to thirty-three million acres. See Zeleny, Carolyn, Relations between the Spanish-Americans and Anglo-Americans in New Mexico: A Study of Conflict and Accommodation in a Dual-Ethnic Situation (New York, 1974), 153.Google Scholar

8. Many of the missionaries commented on the desire of Hispanics to learn English, acknowledging that many Catholic parents enrolled their children in Presbyterian schools for this reason alone. See, for instance, Annie Granger's report in Home Mission Monthly 2 (Apr. 1888): 133. This was also a theme in statements made by Hispanics who converted to Protestantism. Gabino Rendón, who became a Presbyterian minister, sought out teacher Annie Speakman so that she could teach him English. See Rendón, Gabino, Hand on My Shoulder (New York, 1953), 45–46.Google Scholar

9. My conclusions arc based on biographical data collected on some 250 mission women assigned to work with Hispanic Catholics in the American Southwest, principally New Mexico and Colorado, in the years 1880–1930. The vast majority of women were single, were over twenty-five years old, had some postsecondary education (usually a number of years in a normal school), and had worked previously as teachers. The information was collected from a variety of sources—the mission periodicals, official correspondence, personal letters, and job applications filed with the Woman's Board. See Yohn, Susan M., “Religion, Pluralism, and the Limits of Progressive Reform: Presbyterian Women Home Missionaries in New Mexico, 1870–1930” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1987). My general observations match those of Ronald Butchart who has compiled a data base on more than 5,000 missionaries who worked with freedmen following the Civil War. See Butchart, Ronald, “Recruits to the ‘Army of Civilization’: Gender, Race, Class, and the Freedman's Teachers, 1861–1875” (Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Washington, D.C., 1990). In her work on mission women assigned to China, Hunter, Jane also finds the desire for “useful” work to be a motivating factor. See Hunter, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, Conn., 1984), 27–51.Google Scholar

10. Meyerowitz, Joanne uses the term “adrift” to describe women who migrated to urban areas at the turn of the century, but it can also be used to apply to a number of the women who joined the mission movement. They were among the growing ranks of women who challenged traditional conceptions of domesticity by moving away from their homes and families, and entering the public sphere as wage laborers. Meyerowitz, Joanne, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Chicago, 1988).Google Scholar

11. Hill, Patricia, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870–1920 (Ann Arbor, 1985), 1 and 195 n. 1.Google Scholar

12. “Board Facts and Figures,” Women and Missions 1 (Sep. 1924): 253.Google Scholar

13. Rev. Bain, S. W., “Woman's Power in Saving the West,” Home Mission Monthly 1 (Sep. 1887): 126; ibid. 1 (Apr. 1887): 126.Google Scholar

14. “A Missionary Tour through New Mexico,” Rocky Mountain Presbyterian 4 (Nov. 1875): 2. For a discussion of Jackson's activism on behalf of women's mission organizations, see Bailey, Alvin, “The Strategy of Sheldon Jackson in Opening the West for National Missions, 1860–1880” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1948).Google Scholar

15. Presbyterians were not the only denomination to open schools in New Mexico; the Methodists and Congregationalists were also active among Hispanics. Szasz, Margaret, “Albuquerque Congregationalists and Southwestern Reform, 1900–1917,” New Mexico Historical Review 55 (July 1980): 231–52; Biebel, Charles, “Cultural Change on the Southwest Frontier: Albuquerque Schooling, 1870–1895,” New Mexico Historical Review 55 (July 1980): 209–30; Walker, Randi Jones, “Protestantism in the Sangre De Cristos: Factors in the Growth and Decline of the Hispanic Protestant Churches in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado, 1850–1920” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1983).Google Scholar

16. Gordon, Henry E., “Monthly Topic—The Roman Catholics,” Home Mission Monthly 5 (Apr. 1891): 129.Google Scholar

17. This did not necessarily hold true. Women were the subject of much gossip and were maligned by priests. After being threatened, some women feared for their safety. Most found that, at the very least, their “respectability” was impugned. In an effort to thwart such rumors, mission teachers opened their private lives to public scrutiny. Missionaries were also well aware of how their “femaleness” often served to protect them from the worst of dangers. One, a Miss Dox, reported how a priest misrepresented her work, turning the townspeople against her. They demanded that she leave town. She wrote that “there is something after all in sending a woman all alone; if I had been a man they would have shot me down like a dog and thought they were doing God's service, but because I was a woman and all alone their sympathies for me were finally aroused in my helpless condition; not able to understand their language, not able to help myself in any way, they decided to leave me until morning.” In this case, a Hispanic convert intervened, and explained that Dox had been misrepresented. She remained in the community and said that “that very action of the priest was the means of filling my little school to overflowing.” See “Words from Workers,” Home Mission Monthly 8 (July 1893): 200.Google Scholar

18. Wiley, Tom, Politics and Purse Strings in New Mexico's Public Schools (Albuquerque, N.M., 1968), 30.Google Scholar

19. For a discussion of the development of a public school system in New Mexico, see ibid.; and Atkins, Jane, “Who Will Educate?: The Schooling Question in Territorial New Mexico, 1846–1911” (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1982).Google Scholar

20. In 1870, there were forty-four primary schools in New Mexico, only five of which were public. The majority of these schools were conducted by the Catholic church. Of the 29,312 school-age children in the territory, only 5,114 attended any school at all. See Everett, Dianna, “The Public School Debate in New Mexico, 1850–1891,” Arizona and the West 26 (Summer 1984): 110.Google Scholar

21. Rev. Defouri, James H., Historical Sketch of the Catholic Church in New Mexico (San Francisco, Calif., 1887), 142. For more information on the role of the Catholic church in this period, see Avant, Louis, “The History of Catholic Education in New Mexico since the American Occupation” (M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico, 1940); Horgan, Paul, Lamy of Santa Fe, His Life and Times (New York, 1975); Salpointe, J. B., Soldiers of the Cross: Notes on the Ecclesiastical History of New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado (Albuquerque, N.M., 1967); Warner, Louis, Archbishop. Lamy: An Epochmaker (Santa Fe, N.M., 1936); Lamar, Howard, The Ear Southwest, 1846–1912: A Territorial History (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

22. For a history of the Penitentes, see Weigle, Marta, Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood: The Penitentes of the Southwest (Albuquerque, N.M., 1976). She argues that Penitentes, for example, made distinctions between what they believed to be “true” Catholicism, that which Hispanics had traditionally practiced, and that which was introduced by the new Catholic hierarchy after U.S. annexation (p. 76).Google Scholar

23. Quoted in Walker, , “Protestantism in the Sangre de Christos,” 64.Google Scholar

24. For a general overview of these schools, see Barber, Ruth and Agnew, Edith, Sowers Went Forth: The Story of Presbyterian Missions in New Mexico and Southern Colorado (Albuquerque, N.M., 1981); and Atkins, Carolyn, “Menaul School: 1881–1930… Not Leaders, Merely, but Christian Leaders,” Journal of Presbyterian History 58 (Winter 1980): 279–97.Google Scholar

25. “Mission Work in New Mexico,” Home Mission Monthly 1 (Sep. 1887): 249.Google Scholar

26. The breakdown among religious denominations in New Mexico was: 1890—Roman Catholic 95.8 percent, Protestant 2.9 percent, other 1.2 percent; 1906—Roman Catholic 90.2 percent, Protestant 6.4 percent, other 3.3 percent; 1916—Roman Catholic 84.7 percent, Protestant 11.7 percent, other 3.7 percent. Figures reported in United States Bureau of Census, Religious Bodies, 1916, Part 1, Summary and General Tables (Washington, D.C., 1916), 113. It is difficult to ascertain from these figures how many of the Protestants were Hispanic, because the census listed Hispanics as white. The increasing percentage of Protestants also reflects the growing number of Anglo-Europeans moving into New Mexico in this period. Prior to 1900 the two largest Protestant denominations were Methodist (stronger in the South) and Presbyterian (stronger in the North). See Banker, Mark, “Jose Ynes Perea and Hispanic Presbyterianism in New Mexico,” Religion and Society in the American West: Historical Essays, ed. Guarneri, Carl and Alvarez, David (Lanham, Md., 1987), 99 n. 2. Szasz, Ferenc M. estimates that no more than 5 percent of all southwestern Protestants were Hispanic. (The Protestant Clergy in the Great Plains and Mountain West, 1865–1915 [Albuquerque, N.M., 1988], 1949.) Walker cites figures from the Census Bureau's Religious Bodies for the five New Mexico counties most heavily populated by Hispanics in 1910 and 1920 and finds that the percentage of Protestants averaged 3.5 percent in 1910 and 3.6 percent in 1920 (“Protestantism in Sangre de Christos,” 197).Google Scholar

27. Garcia, Enos E., “History of Education in Taos County” (M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico, 1950), 65. In 1891 the superintendent of schools in New Mexico reported that there were 29 schools run by the Presbyterian church averaging 35 students each. In 1893, 17 schools reported an average of 60 students. The schools reporting the highest enrollments in 1891 were Santa Fe (70 students), Raton (50), Prado de Taos (60), Fernandez de Taos (66), and Ranchos de Taos (60). In 1894 those with highest enrollments were Las Cruces (91 students), Raton (170), Prado de Taos (82), and Ranchos de Taos (115). See Territory of New Mexico, Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Santa Fe, N.M., 1892 and 1894), 18.Google Scholar

28. Following is the breakdown of students enrolled in school in New Mexico—1870–71: 1,320; 1879–80: 4,755; 1889–90: 18,215; 1899–1900: 36,735; 1909–10: 56,304; 1917–18: 85,677. The steady increase can be attributed to the influx of new residents and the expansion of the public school system. Of the 85,677 students enrolled in 1918, 3,760 attended secondary school, and 734 were enrolled in private and parochial schools. See Department of Interior, Bureau of Education, “Status of School Systems, 1917–1918,” Bulletin, no. 11 (Washington, DC, 1920), 95–99 (tables 23–25). In 1912, 1,472 students were enrolled in public high schools and 237 in private high schools (one Presbyterian high school, one Baptist, and five Catholic). Of the twenty-five public high schools, only five were in towns located in traditionally Hispanic areas or the northern part of the state, and these were in towns with a significant Anglo population. See Department of Interior, Bureau of Education, “Public and Private High Schools,” Bulletin, no. 22 (Washington, D.C., 1912), 14, 27, 36, 192. In the Raton high school, which graduated its first students in 1887, no student with a Spanish surname graduated until 1908. Another was graduated in 1911, and one in 1918, with a gradual increase thereafter. See Crecey, Carson, “A History of Public Schools of Raton, New Mexico” (M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico, 1941), appendix. The private secondary schools graduated twenty-five students in 1912, nineteen from Catholic schools, and six from the Presbyterian school. Three students graduating from private schools were listed as having prepared for college. They were all graduates of the Presbyterian Menaul School. See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 192 (Table 35).Google Scholar

29. Deutsch, , No Separate Refuge, 83.Google Scholar

30. She also argues that it was left to Hispanic women villagers to “adopt” the roles of “social integrator and cultural and community maintainer.” Deutsch, , No Separate Refuge, 85.Google Scholar

31. Rodgers, Daniel, “In Search of Progressivism,” 10 Reviews in American History (Dec. 1982), 1 13–32. Lissak, Rivka Shpak, Pluralism and Progressives: Hull House and the New Immigrants, 1890–1919 (Chicago, 1989), 4, 145–49, 8–9.Google Scholar

32. Hills, Delia, “Signs of Promise in the Mexican Field,” Home Mission Monthly 10 (Nov. 1985): 18; idem, “A Package of Letters,” Home Mission Monthly 8 (Nov. 1893): 6.Google Scholar

33. Hills, , “Words from Workers,” Home Mission Monthly 8 (Nov. 1893): 137; ibid., “Synodical and Presbyterial Items,” 9 (May 1894): 166.Google Scholar

34. Hills, , “Words from Workers,” 7.Google Scholar

35. Clements, Mollie, “A Package of Letters,” Home Mission Monthly 8 (July 1893): 8.Google Scholar

36. Clements, Mollie, “La Maestra,” Home Mission Monthly 10 (Nov. 1895): 6; idem, “A Package of Letters,” Home Mission Monthly 8 (Nov. 1893): 8.Google Scholar

37. See “Editorial Notes,” Home Mission Monthly 37 (Jan. 1922): 65, for the announcement that Blake had completed a course in public health at New York University. She continued to aid the half-time county health officer by vaccinating the people in the Trementina area. For a discussion of her medical work, see Blake, , “Visits and Visitations,” Women and Missions 4 (July 1927): 147.Google Scholar

38. For biographical information on Blake, see Foote, Cheryl J., “Alice Blake of Trementina: Mission Teacher of the Southwest,” journal of Presbyterian History 60 (Fall 1982): 228–42; and Alice Blake biographical file (H5), Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (PHS).Google Scholar

39. Blake, Alice, “Memoirs of Alice Blake: Interviews with Missionaries, Teachers, and Others in Northern New Mexico” (unpublished manuscript, Menaul Historical Library of the Southwest, Albuquerque, N.M.), 216, 2.Google Scholar

40. Blake, , “Memoirs,” epilogue, unpaged. While her memoirs were never published, Blake wrote them with the idea that they would be. She was disappointed when the mission administration did not feel them worthy of being published. See letter from Robert McLean to Paul Warnshuis, 14 Oct. 1935, Blake biographical file (H5).Google Scholar

41. Mrs.Dilley, S. V., “Words from Workers,” Home Mission Monthly 3 (Apr. 1889): 131; Dissette, Mary, “Untitled,” Home Mission Monthly 9 (June 1895): 175–76.Google Scholar

42. “Mexican Cookery,” Home Mission Monthly 16 (Nov. 1901): 6; “Mexican Marriages,” ibid. 16 (Nov. 1901): 10; “Blanket Weaving,” ibid. 18 (Nov. 1903): 10.Google Scholar

43. “New Mexico Location, Climate, and Products,” Home Mission Monthly 24 (Nov. 1909): 4; “Mexicans in the United States—Bibliography,” ibid. 21 (Nov. 1906): 18; “Stations among Mexicans in the United States,” ibid. 23 (Nov. 1908): 17; “Pronunciation of Names of Stations,” ibid. 16 (Nov. 1901): 10.Google Scholar

44. “Editorial Notes,” Home Mission Monthly 26 (Mar. 1912): 110.Google Scholar

45. Bennett, Katherine, “Conservation of National Ideals,” Home Mission Monthly 26 (Sep. 1912): 274; Pascoe, , Relations of Rescue, 143.Google Scholar

46. Quoted in Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, “Gender and the Origins of the Welfare State,” Radical History Review 43 (Winter 1989): 114.Google Scholar

47. For a report on the work being done in this area and a general overview, see ibid., 112–19.Google Scholar