Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is a novel by American author Willa Cather. The story is loosely based on the experiences of Priests Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf as they sought to establish a Catholic diocese (an ecclesiastical district under the control of one particular bishop) in the newly acquired territory of New Mexico.

A major figure in American literature, Cather is best known for the novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), My Ántonia (1918), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours (1922). Like many of her novels and short fiction pieces, Death Comes for the Archbishop portrays life on the American frontier, and place and landscape play dynamic roles that are as important as plot, characterization, and theme. Cather was interested in how the frontier’s physical space shaped Indigenous communities and new settlers, and Death Comes for the Archbishop depicts life’s difficulties in remote territories and people’s struggles to develop and maintain a sense of community and belonging on the frontier.

The novel details the fraught history of the Catholic Church within Spain’s assimilationist projects in the Americas, delving deeply into the cultural differences that divide European and Indigenous communities in what became the American Southwest. Like many characters in Cather’s other works, the protagonists experience loneliness but also forge deep bonds. The novel illustrates the complexities of frontier life against the backdrop of New Mexico’s harsh beauty.

Note: Chapters in this novel are labeled “Books,” each containing small, named subsections. In the last one, Book 9, these subsections are labeled “Chapters.” For the purposes of this guide, these small subsections are labeled “Parts.”

This guide refers to the 2023 paperback edition by Hawthorne Classics.

Content Warning: The source text contains dated and at times offensive terms for Indigenous people. When not directly quoting the source text, this guide replaces the term “Indian” with Indigenous.

Plot Summary

The novel’s Prologue details the plans to form a new Catholic diocese in the newly acquired US territory of New Mexico. Four influential members of the French clergy meet to discuss the new diocese and decide to install Priest Jean-Marie Latour as its bishop, supplanting the priest that the Bishop of Durango (the seat of the new territory’s closest diocese) intended for the position. Bishop Latour makes a long and arduous journey from Ohio to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his friend and fellow priest, Vicar Joseph Vaillant. Their journey begins by rail and then continues by riverboat and overland from Galveston to New Mexico.

When Fathers Latour and Vaillant arrive in Santa Fe, the local clergy refuses to recognize Latour’s authority, and he must make a 3,000-mile journey to clarify his position with the Bishop of Durango. On the way home, he begins to familiarize himself with the people of his diocese, performing marriages and baptisms in small communities that in some cases have never before seen a priest.

Upon returning to Santa Fe, Latour continues making small journeys into neighboring areas to say mass and to bless, marry, and baptize the Catholics in his diocese. On one such trip, Latour and Vaillant shelter from a storm in the home of a man and his young Mexican wife. As the man takes their horses to his stable, his wife warns the priests that he’s a violent criminal and likely intends to kill them. A confrontation ensues, but Latour and Vaillant escape. The man’s wife, Magdalena, follows, begging to be saved from her brutal husband. She explains that he recently killed four travelers who, like the priests, took refuge in his home. The priests arrange for his arrest and trial. He’s hanged, and famed local scout Kit Carson takes Magdalena home to live and work with him and his wife near Taos.

Latour enlists Jacinto, a local Indigenous man, to guide him through the mountainous region around Santa Fe, and together the two visit many local Pueblos, meeting their people and their clergy. Latour encounters both devout priests and those who have lost their way, and part of his early work in New Mexico involves rooting out problematic clergy and replacing them with honest priests. Over the years, Latour and Jacinto become friends, and Latour’s respect and admiration for the region’s Indigenous communities grows. He sees distinct differences between white and Indigenous cultures and thinks that converting Indigenous peoples is often impossible. However, he’s struck by their wisdom and their respect for tradition and history—and by the role that colonization has played in the deterioration of their communities. He reflects that the church’s history in the area is fraught and complex.

Latour continues to expand the role of the church in the diocese, and he enjoys working alongside his friend Vaillant. Vaillant is social and gregarious, whereas Latour is reserved and solitary, but the two nonetheless share a deep bond. Latour ultimately must send Vaillant to live and work in Colorado. Although he understands that Vaillant is uniquely qualified to bring religion to the rough-and-tumble communities of prospectors forming during the Gold Rush years, he misses his friend. Vaillant visits Latour over the years but never returns to live in New Mexico.

In addition to his other work, Latour plans the construction of a great cathedral in Santa Fe. It takes him many years to raise the funds and oversee the building process. He finances the cathedral with the help of several influential friends and parishioners in Santa Fe, and as the decades pass, Latour establishes himself as an integral part of the town. In the waning days of his career, he arranges for several new priests to travel from Europe to New Mexico and devotes himself to training them for the harsh life they’ll encounter in the diocese. He reflects on the many changes in the region since his first days as a new bishop in Santa Fe, and upon his retirement, he moves out of the now-bustling city.

After Vaillant dies, Latour’s own health begins to fade, and he moves back into his old quarters in Santa Fe. He dies in the rooms that were his first home in his new diocese, and he’s buried in the cathedral he helped build. By this time, he’s well respected in Santa Fe, and his death is a somber community event.