“Monaca o Strega?”:

The Catholic Missionary as Outsider in Sister

Blandina Segale’s At the End of the Santa Fe Trail

 

Reading Sister Blandina Segale’s journal At the End of the Santa Fe Trail (written between 1872 and 1893, published as a book in 1932), one is more likely to be struck by the extraordinary, larger-than-life char­acter of some of the experiences narrated by the author, than by the book’s significance as an early example of Italian/American autobiog­raphy. Almost inevitably, the reader’s attention focuses on what this nun (she was a “Sister of Charity”) saw and went through during her twenty years of missionary work on the frontier of Colorado and New Mexico, rather than on her origins. Nonetheless, the opening of At the End, where we get a glimpse of the young Blandina (born Rosa Maria) interacting with her parents and some of their close friends, is quite important for our understanding of her personality.

In the first pages of the book one senses distinctly the elation Segale experiences at the news that she is to resign her teaching duties at Steubenville, Ohio, and leave alone for a mission in the mining town of Trinidad, Colorado. One also notices, in contrast, her trepidation at the prospect of spending a day with her family in Cincinnati prior to her departure. She confides to her journal that she anticipates “a scene” (15)[1], and her tone has a startlingly apprehensive quality (something one rarely detects in the rest of the book).

Segale’s recreation of her last day at home is effective. Her narra­tion enables us to visualize the comings and goings of family friends, to listen to their overlapping voices, and to sense the pressure that this close-knit community exercises upon those who want to affirm their independence. From the point of view of her father and, in general, of the small Italian colony of Cincinnati, Segale’s behavior represents an anomaly, a departure from established customs. They react with a mix­ture of incredulity and resentment to her firm resolve to comply with her superiors’ orders. Her mother, on the contrary, shows great respect for her convictions and does not try to deter her from her purpose.

The fact that, as a religious person, she has already renounced her family, does not appear to be considered by those who argue against her choice. To them she remains simply a young woman, a daughter who has inexplicably decided to violate the unity of the family. In the eyes of her father, her unwavering commitment to the Church assumes the painful significance of an extreme form of commitment to the self, a willful act of disobedience.

 

After mother had a short interview with me, father managed to see me alone. He took hold of me and asked, “Have I ever denied you anything?”

I signified no.

“You have never disobeyed me in your life?”

I assented.

“Now I command you—you must not go on this far away mission! Are you going?”

“Yes, father.” He let go the hold on my arm and walked toward the door. Not without my seeing his tears falling fast. He did not realize his hold on my arm gave me pain—not to speak of the heart-pain for him. (16)

 

To some of the people she meets while travelling through the West, the narrator of At the End is an enigma. They respond with perplexity, and even distrust, to her unusual appearance (her black garb), her behavior, or both. They grasp that she is not an “ordinary woman,” but cannot quite define or “classify” her. She does not fit the conventional categories of femininity.

 

In the railway station at St. Louis between train time, I got off to purchase a pair of arctics. I saw several Italian women selling fruit. One of them had a daughter standing near. I asked the mother if she would permit her daughter to accompany me to the shoe store, which was in sight. The mother looked at me earnestly than said to her neighbor peddler, “How do I know who she is, she looks like a monaca (sister) but she might be a strega (witch).” (16)

 

Later in the narrative it is Segale herself who, having displayed uncommon courage and fearlessness in a situation of danger, muses that the men around her must “think I’m either a saint or a witch” (149). And the choice of such alternative identities should not surprise us. As Marcello Craveri has suggested, saints and witches are by no means totally different types of women (7–62). Traditionally, they both stand for “extreme” forms of behavior; they are transgressors of the limits society has imposed upon women. On another occasion, it is a good-natured cowboy who, having met Segale on a train bound for Colorado, expresses his uncertainty about her identity by asking “what kind of a lady” (29) she is. One suspects that her self-assurance and resourceful­ness strike him as incongruous with her gender. And indeed, according to the standards of her society and time, Segale’s willingness to travel alone in the West is a most “unwomanly” display of imprudence. Not less significant is an episode in which the nuns of a Kansas City con­vent, after learning that Segale is travelling unaccompanied, suspect her of being an impostor (20–24).

In the times and places described in At the End, a nun’s habit could appear curious or even sinister to those who were not acquainted with its religious meaning. To be sure, Segale was well aware of the theatri­cal quality of her dress and often describes the impression it made on those who met her, were they Native/Americans, settlers, or outlaws. Its significance for her, however, went well beyond its simple appear­ance. One has almost the impression, at times, that Segale conceived of her black dress and her very identity as a single thing. It is not acciden­tal, I think, that At the End opens and closes with episodes in which someone attempts to divest Segale—both literally and symbolically—of her religious garb.

During Segale’s last visit to her household, to which we referred earlier, a friend threatens to remove her habit, thereby forcing her to remain at home. It is an attempt to remind her that she is a daughter before she is a nun. In the last pages of the journal we read of how the public school authorities of Colorado inform Segale that she could con­tinue to teach only if she consented to discard her habit. In both instances it is as if the black dress were seen as the source of her strength and independence, as a sort of magic object without which Segale would turn into an “ordinary” woman, an obedient daughter, a docile employee. But Segale clung to her “uniform,” even at the cost of inflicting pain on those she loved, or of resigning from a school she had helped to establish.

Segale’s emphasis on the importance and symbolic value of her habit, signals that she identified more deeply with her worship than with her background and origins, or with the country where she lived. Being Catholic came before being a native Italian (she was born in Cicagna, in the region of Liguria) or a U. S. citizen. This is not to sug­gest, of course, that one may ignore the fragments of “italianità” scat­tered throughout the text. Segale’s references to such authors as Dante, Tasso, and Manzoni, or her preference for the adjective “Italian” over regional qualifiers (the latter being so common in later Italian/ American writers[2]) bespeaks a surprising sense of national culture (especially if we consider that the journal was begun only two years after Italy’s unification). Yet it is also true that the world of her par­ents and the memories of her birthplace do not seem to play as great a role in her quotidian experience as her loyalty to the Catholic Church and her dedication to her work. She tells us, for example, that her mother’s native dialect strikes her as something which, though famil­iar, is removed in time and place (“it was like hearing sketches of a favorite opera” [16]). It is evoked as a sound, as a form of music, rather than as a form of communication.

Presenting At the End, Helen Barolini has justly pointed out that in Segale’s time “Italians [in the U. S.] were so few and far between that there was no developed prejudice against them” (5). Being Italian, or of Italian descent, did not mean (as it would in later years) inevitably being part of a minority whose image had to be defended against the distortions and stereotypes circulated by the dominant culture. Being Catholic, on the other hand, certainly meant belonging to a community traditionally regarded with suspicion and hostility by the Protestant majority. It was about her Catholicity, not about her “Italianness,” that Segale had to be defensive.

Despite the private character of At the End (it was originally meant to have only one reader, the author’s sister Justina), Segale comes across as a determined and, at times, even pugnacious champion of Catholicism and its role and presence in the West. Her words often convey the impression that she is moving in enemy territory and that the value of her efforts (and those of the other Catholic missionaries) has to be constantly upheld and vindicated. What makes the West “enemy territory” is not, as it might be supposed, its “wildness” or law­lessness, nor the “danger” supposedly posed by some Native/American tribes, but rather the attitude of the dominant culture, the culture of white, Anglo-Saxon, and—most importantly—Protestant America. It is an oppressive and destructive attitude which, as Segale realizes early enough, finds expression in the attempt to marginalize and silence all that is other. And it is as a Catholic that she identifies with the plight of minorities. As a Catholic, she writes in the name of marginal­ity. And when one recognizes in her writing that “necessity” to explain oneself to others that is an almost inescapable part of the Italian/American—or Mexican/American, Asian/American—experi­ence (Tamburri, Giordano, Gardaphé 5), what is explained is invari­ably her faith rather than her ethnicity.

Exemplary, in this sense, is a conversation Segale holds with a young Protestant missionary on a train, at the outset of her journey to Trinidad, Colorado. Asked about her salary and her motivations, Segale replies as follows:

 

“It is very simple to any Catholic. He or she makes application for admittance into a religious community and offers himself or herself to give service to God. The service rendered is according to the rules and constitutions of the Order for which he or she feels called. After we have tested ourselves and superiors have tested us, we, of our own will, bind ourselves by sacred promises—one of which, in our community, is not to use money for personal use—only for the good of others. Do you not think that a sure invest­ment?”

“Do you mean you work all your life and give the money to others?”

“You are clothing my meaning with new words, but it amounts to the same.” (19)

 

By explaining her worship and what her vocation implies, Segale explains and defines herself as well. The distinctive didactic quality that characterizes her tone here as in other passages is a direct response to anti-Catholic prejudice. At the End is, among other things, an attempt to counteract the dominant culture’s discrimination against and misrepresentation of Catholicism. Segale frequently insists, in the narrative, that Catholics in the West tell their own story. As she explains with lucidity, they cannot possibly count on the establishment for a complete and truthful account of their work and accomplishments. They have no choice but to become historians and chroniclers them­selves. And Segale, with her journal (which she did, eventually, agree to publish), sets a powerful example of how to find one’s voice, of how to break the silence. What is more, her voice is a voice for all the weak, all the oppressed. It is a voice that unhesitatingly denounces Anglo-Saxon racism toward the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Colorado and New Mexico, and the “extermination” (216) of the “rightful possessors of the [American] soil” (52), the Indians.

The strategy of Segale’s passionate defense of the Hispanics consists in subverting the “us vs. them” discourse generated by the dominant cul­ture. In the pages of her journal it is the settlers and their government that become “other.” Presented from the point of view of the Hispanics, the “men from the States” (194) are thus labelled as “strangers,” “invading fortune hunters,” “land-sharpers,” “land-grabbers,” “sharks,” “despoilers,” “violators of ‘Thou shalt not steal’,” and “corrupters of the Spanish language” (46). Of all these terms, “land-grabbers” is the one that appears most frequently in the text. And although Segale explains at some point that those she designates by that word are not “representative Americans” (135), the impact of its continuous repetition is overwhelming: it places the Hispanics in the role of victims and North Americans in that of perpetrators.

In Segale’s representation, the culture of the Spanish-speaking pop­ulation of the West is a rich and sophisticated one, whose value the settlers fail—or choose not—to recognize and respect. They show no appreciation for the Hispanics’ “innate refinement” (40, 190), elegant manners, and “natural culture” (190), displaying only aggressiveness and contempt in their attitude toward them (an attitude exemplified by the racial slurs Segale mentions in the text: “greasers,” “coyotes,” or “kangaroos”).

But even more destructive, as we are often reminded, is the settlers’ behavior toward the original inhabitants of the continent. Dealing with them on the basis of a sort of brutal Darwinism (“that English phrase, ‘the survival of the fittest,’ is being applied to the rightful owners of this country” 216), they have activated an irreversible pro­cess that, in Segale’s view, can only lead to the annihilation of all Native Americans: “Poor, poor Indians! they are doomed to lose. Then will come strict adherence to reservation rules—then diminution of numbers, and then extinction” (247).

The narrator’s treatment of the “Indian question” in At the End may be described as part of that philanthropic and humanitarian tradition of the second half of the nineteenth century which Roy Harvey Pearce has discussed in Savagism and Civilization. Like the authors Pearce refers to (Henry Schoolcraft and Helen Hunt Jackson, 241), Segale insis­tently and fervently promotes the idea that Native Americans need to be safeguarded (“contacts made by me with any Indian tribe were, and are, of a protective type” [270]). As portrayed in At the End, Native Americans lack not only the strength but also—and crucially—a real awareness of their enemies’ determination and ruthlessness. They are astonished and outraged at the duplicity of the government agents who use every possible means to deprive them of their territories. They fail to realize that what is happening is simply that, as Segale puts it, “the conquerors claim the land” (43). What, in my view, partially redeems Segale’s paternalism, is the utter conviction with which she denounces the terrible consequences of white expansionism. If, on the one hand, she presents Native Americans as helpless victims, “unevolved minds” (52) that need to be educated and civilized, on the other we are also told that

 

Generations to come will blush for the deeds of this, toward the rightful possessors of the soil. Our government, which opposes with upraised finger of scorn any act which savors of tyranny, lowers that finger to crush out of existence a race whose right to the land we call America is unquestioned. (52)

 

To be sure, Segale’s view that Native Americans can “advance” as human beings with the aid of education and religion is far from revolu­tionary. Rather surprising, instead, is what she envisions as the result of such progress. For what her “educated and civilized” Native American can aspire to become is not, as one might expect, a “model cit­izen,” someone who may be painlessly assimilated into white culture, but rather nothing less than “the ideal man” (195). He or she may reach, in other words, a state of excellence Segale imagines as far supe­rior to that of Anglo-American society. While Segale unhesitatingly maintains that Native Americans have “the vices of barbarism” (195), she at the same time gives us a portrayal of their enemies which is hardly a tribute to white civilization. She shows us repeatedly how violence can be found on both sides, so that, in a sense, the very separa­tion between the traditional categories of “barbarism” and “civilization” becomes blurred.

Segale is also able, occasionally, to abandon her generalizations about “the Indian” in favor of precise observations on specific tribes—such as the Utes, the Apaches, the Comanches, and the Kiowas—and their various cultures. The philanthropist gives way to the keen observer and annotator of foreign customs and the “rightful possessors of the soil” cease, however temporarily, to be simply an abstract image. This is particularly true of the story of the Ute chief Rafael, possibly the Journal’s most eloquent entry on the relationship between different cultures and worldviews.

 

Rafael continued: “Nana, tu hijo está muerto” (Mother, your son is dead), Rafael made the motion of pouring water on the head, wanting me to understand that his son had been baptized. He con­tinued: “When one of us dies, we move camp. Will you bury him?” The missionaries called the members of a tribe “children,” hence, Rafael said: “Tu hijo” (your son) is dead . . .

Ahead of this funeral cortege came William Anderson, one of the three who went for the dead Indian. He left the procession and hastily came into the temporary mortuary chapel and said:

“Sister, you have been imposed upon. The young Eagle lives.”

I responded: “Surely, William, there is a misinterpretation of words somewhere.”

He continued: “No, Sister, he is sick, but not dead . . .

I questioned Chief Rafael.

“Did you not say to me, ‘Tu hijo está muerto’?” (Your son is dead.)

“Si, Nana.” (Yes, mother.)

“But this gentleman says he is ill, not dead.”

“Oh, Nana, he is dead. I tell you he is dead. I will carry him in to let you see he is dead.”

Rafael carried the young man into the room and stood him before me. The agonizing patient could not stand, and the father caught him before he fell . . .

The young man died in the afternoon and was buried as became one who had been regenerated by the waters of holy baptism.

Still, I was anxious to know why Rafael called his son’s condition death, so I asked him, “When do you say an Indian is dead?” “When he has no heart. You saw, Nana, he had no heart when I carried him to let you see him.” Meaning, his son had given up hopes of living and had no pulse, which he called heart. He knew no other way of expressing his meaning, “no heart,” means death. (52–53)

 

Segale’s sympathetic portrayal of Billy the Kid, whom she met while stationed in New Mexico, is further evidence of her tendency to identify with the outsider’s perspective. As presented in At the End, he is more a victim than a villain, being but the natural offspring of a land where the notion of legality is largely unknown. While not downplay­ing in the least his reputation as “the greatest murderer of the Southwest” (173), Segale at the same time distances herself from his antagonists, namely the representatives of “law and order.” In the America she describes the authorities not only tolerate, but contribute to, the general predominance of brutality and violence. Inevitably then, they lack the moral stature to be believable guarantors of justice and truth.

As narrated by Segale, the story of Billy and his gang becomes a story of wasted lives, of a tragic loss of youth, intelligence, and ardor (“Think, dear Sister Justina, how many crimes might have been pre­vented, had someone had influence over ‘Billy’ after his first murder” [173]). It is the indictment of a culture that places little value upon human life, a culture the narrator of At the End plainly does not feel to be her own.

 

Poor, poor “Billy the Kid,” was shot by Sheriff Patrick F. Garrett of Lincoln County. That ends the career of one who began his downward course at the age of twelve years by taking revenge for the insult that had been offered to his mother.

Only now have I learned his proper name—William H. Bonney. (186)

 

Whether dealing with minorities or, as in this case, with its dissi­dent sons, the establishment seems only able to express itself through the language of might and violence. To this Segale opposes her firm commitment to dialogue as a means to bridge the distance between dif­ferent cultures, mentalities and ethics. The numerous conversations “recreated” in the journal give ample proof of her ability to tailor her discourse to the character and social level of her interlocutors. At the same time, through the example of her activities in Colorado and New Mexico, she suggests a possible role for Catholic missionaries in the West as cultural mediators and defenders of the subaltern. Written by a nun, by a woman with a foreign-sounding name, At the End of the Santa Fe Trail may be described, then, as a call for solidarity and resistance. Rather than the journal of an American Catholic, it should be called the journal of a Catholic in America.

 

Leonardo Buonomo

University of Trieste

 

WORKS CITED

 

Barolini, Helen, ed. The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women. New York: Schocken Books, 1987.

Craveri, Marcello. Sante e streghe. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980.

Ets, Marie Hall. Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1970.

Pearce, Roy Harvey. Savagism and Civilization. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.

Tamburri, Anthony Julian; Paolo A. Giordano; and Fred L. Gardaphé, eds. From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 1991.

 

 

 

 


[1]All quotations are from the 1948 Bruce Publishing Company edition (Milwaukee) of At the End of the Santa Fe Trail.

[2]Consider, for example, the distinction between “Italians” and “Sicilians” in Rosa Cassettari’s memoir Rosa: The Life of An Italian Immigrant (transcribed and published by Marie Hall Ets).