The Takeover of New Mexico

The Takeover of New Mexico

Preparations for war were in full swing in Santa Fe that second week of August, 1846. Rumors of the approaching American army under Stephen Watts Kearny had been swirling all summer and became more concrete as time went on. New Mexico’s governor, Manuel Armijo, had fired letters off to the officials in Mexico City pleading for help and warning of the possibility that his paisanos would capitulate to the invaders without a fight.

Early in August, American trader Eugene Leitensdorfer arrived in Santa Fe with news. The U.S. Army was at Bent’s Fort. Armijo consulted with his council on Sunday, August 9, then sent out a call to New Mexico’s militia to assemble in Santa Fe. When they arrived, they headed for Apache Pass, east of the city, where they began digging trenches, throwing up barricades, and positioning cannon in. Things in Santa Fe were so tense that some of the American merchants there barricaded themselves in a store on the plaza, expecting to be arrested or even killed when the fighting began.

In the meantime, U.S. Army Capt. Philip St George Cooke and James Magoffin arrived in town on Wednesday, August 12. They carried a letter from Kearny and, rumor has it, a considerable amount of gold. They also brought news. Kearny’s army was not at Bent’s Fort any longer. It was already on New Mexican soil. In fact, Cooke was due to meet up with them at Las Vegas in the next couple days.

Philip St. George Cooke, circa 1860s. Courtesy of encyclopediavirginia.org

By the time that happened, on Saturday, August 15, it was clear to New Mexican officials that Governor Armijo was no longer anxious to defend the region from the invaders. He had gone from firing off letters, issuing bellicose proclamations, marshaling troops, and positioning cannon, to asking his officers whether he should really try to fight. When several of them said a vehement “yes!”, Armijo began complaining that the defenses he’d thrown up weren’t strong enough and that the men behind them were cowards who would run at the first shot.

Manuel Armijo, wearing the medal he’d received for his capture of the 1841 Texas Expedition to Santa Fe

Maybe word of Kearny’s takeover of Las Vegas and the number of U.S. troops had reached Armijo and he’d given up the idea of fighting. Or maybe he’d made his decision the night of August 12, during his conversation with Cooke and Magoffin. The only thing certain is that by the end of August 16th, the last Mexican governor of New Mexico had headed south toward Albuquerque and ultimately the interior of Mexico.

When Kearny and his men reached Apache Pass, they found it empty, although at least one of his officers thought the location could have been used effectively to at least slow them down.

But by then it was too late. The U.S. Army was in control of New Mexico and would quickly set up a new government to replace the old. All that excitement and fear had been for nothing. The New Mexicans had been completely cowed by America’s military might. Or so it seemed.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: William A. Kelleher, Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846-1868; Marc Simmons, New Mexico; Howard R. Lamar, The Far Southwest; Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Military Occupation of New Mexico.

Contested Space: The Military Chapel of Santa Fe

Contested Space: The Military Chapel of Santa Fe

In a recent post about the Santa Fe plaza, I included a set of maps. If you look closely, you’ll notice that even the oldest of them identifies a small building on the south side of the square as the “military chapel.”

More properly called the Military Chapel of Our Lady of Light, and commonly referred to as La Castrense, this building was centered in the buildings on the south side of the Plaza and faced the Governor’s Palace on the north. The word Castrense means “belonging to the military profession,” so its nickname was appropriate, because the little church was built specifically for use by the members of the Santa Fe garrison. 

The original chapel was completed in 1717 and then rebuilt and rededicated in 1761. The reconstruction was funded by Governor Francisco Antonio Marin del Valle and his wife, Dona Maria Ignacia Martinez de Ugarte. This power couple also donated a new altar piece, or reredo, which was carved from large pieces of limestone quarried north of Santa Fe near Pojoaque. Said to be the largest and most ambitious piece of artistic work ever attempted in New Mexico to that point, the piece filled the entire altar end of the building. 

La Castrense altar piece today, courtesy El Cristo Rey Catholic Church, Santa Fe

The chapel received further decorations around 1813, when Pedro Bautista Pino, New Mexico’s representative to the Spanish Cadiz, returned from Europe with two marble bas-reliefs which were mounted on the outside wall above the door from the plaza. Colonel Francisco Perea remembered years later that one of them represented “Santa Gertrudes wrapped in the coils of a large serpent, while the other, I believe, represented the mother of Jesus, Nuestra Senora de la Luz (Our Lady of Light), recuing a human being from Satan.”

The military troops stationed in Santa Fe attended services in the chapel monthly as well as on special occasions. During Governor Manuel Armijo’s first two administrations, he and the full garrison attended regularly, with the officers in full uniform.  However, it seems unlikely that they continued to do so during his third term (July 1845 to August 1846) as the roof had fallen in. At least, that’s what Lt. James W. Abert reported in early October 1846. He also said the building contained “some handsome carved work behind the altar,” and that at least one of the bas-reliefs still remained over the door, the one that showed Our Lady of Light.  

Abert had entered Santa Fe in the Fall of 1846 with the occupying U.S. army. Five and a half years later, in Spring 1851, newly appointed Chief Justice Grafton Baker, needed a place to hold his court and decided to use La Castrense.

The building, apparently repaired by this time, was set up with the necessary furniture and the grand jury was called. Unfortunately for Judge Baker, the grand jury members included Santa Fe native and former Mexican soldier, Donaciano Vigil. Vigil and his wife had been married in the chapel, and his father and an infant son were buried there. As former provisional governor under the U.S. rule, he had enough political clout to risk protesting the use of the chapel for civil purposes and enough connections in the city to rally public opinion behind him.

Baker threatened to hold court anyway and to have Vigil arrested, but when a crowd began to assemble outside and the commanding officer of the American troops rallied behind Vigil, the Judge gave way. He ordered the court moved across the plaza to the Governor’s palace. The men responsible for shifting the furniture didn’t have to actually remove it from the building. The crowd had already dumped most of it in the plaza.

The building doesn’t seem to have been immediately converted back to being a chapel. According to the 1891 Silver City Enterprise, in the 1850s, it was instead used to store  captured cannons, including the Lone Star of Texas which had come into New Mexico in 1841 with the ill-fated Texas Santa Fe Expedition.

The guns must not have stayed there for long, because in 1859 Bishop Lamy exchanged the building for $2000 and  land in the vicinity of the Parish church. The money went to repairs for  church and the land became the site of St. Michael’s College and the Loreto Chapel.

La Castrense itself was demolished by its new owner, but not until the altar piece was preserved and carefully removed. It is now in El Cristo Rey, which offers a brochure about the reredos on its website. It’s nice to know that, even though the building itself had to give way to “progress,” at least some of its contents were preserved and still survive.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson July 2025

Sources: James W. Abert, Western America in 1846-47; https://www.cristoreyparish.org/; Roland F. Dickey, New Mexico Village Arts; Francois-Marie Patorni, The French in New Mexico; Colonel Francisco Perea in Allison, “Santa Fe in 1837-1838”, Old Santa Fe Magazine, Vol. II; Silver City Enterprise, Oct. 9, 1891; Marc Simmons, Spanish Government in New Mexico; Francis Stanley, Giant in Lilliput; Maurilio Vigil and Helene Boudreau, Donaciano Vigil.

Billy the Kid: The Life Behind the Legend

Billy the Kid: The Life Behind the Legend

I recently did a quick tally of currently available nonfiction books about Billy the Kid and gave up at twenty-five. I’m sure there are more. However, if you want a clear grip on who Billy the Kid was, where he came from, and the events in his life, George R. Matthews’ recently published book Billy the Kid: The Life Behind the Legend may be the only tome you need.

This book is well researched and superbly written and provides a comprehensive approach to the life and times of William Bonney, aka “The Kid.” Matthews has taken the time to gather information not only about the Kid’s career, but also about his background. I especially appreciated the material about Ireland in his mother’s day and her experiences when she reached the U.S.

Matthews also provides information about the various people Bonney interacted with during his short life, while not bogging down the narrative with endless side notes. He inserts enough background for these individuals to give us context and flesh out their personalities, but maintains his focus on the Kid and his various adventures and misadventures.

I was impressed with this book and recommend it as the one resource for people who are mildly interested in Billy the Kids’ life and as an important addition to the collections of those who are more passionate about learning all you can about him. In my opinion, Billy the Kid: The Life Behind the Legend is a valuable addition to either type of library.

A Pretty Little House

A Pretty Little House

When Stephen W. Kearny’s Army of the West marched from Missouri to New Mexico in Summer 1846, they were trailed by a number of non-military wagons, most of them driven by merchants. One of these men was Samuel Magoffin, who brought along his wife of seven months, Susan Shelby Magoffin.

Once they reached Santa Fe, the Magoffins rented an adobe house that Susan called “quite a nice little place” with four rooms that included the kitchen, “our own chamber, [a] storage room, and the reception room,” or sala,  which Susan described as a combination parlor, dining room, and “room of all work.”

She also said the house entrance opened into a courtyard with portals all around, so apparently this was the typical four-sided square with doors opening into a plazuela. The portals around this space provided shaded workspaces as well as areas for resting and relaxing.

The Magoffins’ reception room was long and narrow, typical of a sala, and had a dirt floor, plank ceiling, and white-washed walls. The lower part of the walls was covered with calico cloth, which protected the occupants from getting whitewash on their clothes. The parlor end of the room contained cushioned benches and woven black-and-white“Mexican carpeting,” probably jerga. The “naked floor” at the end of the room held a dining table and chairs.

Susan described the bedroom as “a nice cool little room, with two windows, which we can darken, or make light at pleasure.” I take this to mean the windows had shutters which could be opened and shut from inside. She doesn’t say whether the windows had glass in them. Glazed windows were pretty rare in New Mexico at the time, though it seems likely that a Kentucky-bred young woman would have been startled by the lack of them and mentioned her surprise. The fact that the house ceilings were plank, not perpendicular or herring-bone pattern latillas, indicates the building may have been constructed with American sensibilities in mind. If that’s the case, there very well might have been glass in the window openings.

A latilla ceiling, still seen in New Mexico homes. Photo courtesy of OlquinsSawmill.com

The flat roof did leak at one point. On Tuesday, September 22, Kearney and a couple officers had come for a visit and were about to leave when a thunderstorm hit. Rather than brave the storm, the visitors remained in their seats and “we continued in pleasant and merry chat,” Susan reports, “when suddenly the rain came pating onto the General, from the ceiling … Soon we were leaking all around, the mud roof coming with the water.” The damage must have not been too terrible. Young Mrs. Magoffin was out and about with the General the next day, taking a tour of Fort Marcy.

The little house would be Susan’s home for another couple weeks, until the Magoffins headed south on October 7, leaving the “nice little place” behind. Susan would not live anywhere for long, until 1852, when she and Samuel settled in Kirkwood, Missouri, where she died after giving birth to her third child.  

            © Loretta Miles Tollefson, June 2025

Sources: Audra Bellmore, Old Santa Fe Today; Bainbridge Bunting, Early Architecture in New Mexico; Sheila Drumm, editor, Down the Santa Fe Trail and Into Mexico, Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847; John E. Sunder, ed., Matt Field on the Santa Fe Trail; El Rancho de los Golondrinas Guidebook; Chimayo Museum, Chimayo, New Mexico.

The Evolution of the Santa Fe Plaza

The Evolution of the Santa Fe Plaza

When the Spanish settlers created the Santa Fe, New Mexico plaza in 1610, it was roughly twice the size it is today, even though they didn’t have sufficient buildings to surround it. That would come later. Certainly the newcomers had high ambitions for their new town “square.” We can see from the map created by José de Urrutia about 150 years later that it extended from the church (la parroquia) to about where the western boundary is today.

The plaza was laid out in an approximate ratio of 2 to 3, width to length, as prescribed in Spanish law. It had a number of uses—military drills, mustering livestock, small-scale trading, and general commerce, as well as social and public events. Although there’s no sign of it on the 1776 map, in the early 1600’s an acequia ran along the north side.

The acequia may have been used to water trees in the plaza. We have written documentation of at least two plantings, one prior to 1837, when Jose Francisco Perea tells us there were three cottonwoods “of the mountain variety” in what was then the northeast corner. In the mid-1840s, Governor Mariano Martinez had more cottonwoods put in, although we don’t know what type. By the time he was done, trees circled the square and additional ones had been placed along the Santa Fe river.

The square had shrunk considerably by then, to the size it is today. The 1846 map created by U.S. Corps of Engineers Lts. W.H. Emory and J.F. Gilmer reveals that the eastern half of the plaza had been filled in with buildings by that point. It had apparently been this shape for at least the last ten years. Jose Francisco Perea tells us it hadn’t changed much during that period, except for the new trees. And the fact that the square was now seldom used as a camping place and stock corral.

According to James Josiah Webb, in the 1840s the northeast corner of the plaza contained the old Mexican customs warehouse. The eastern side of the square was lined with government buildings and anchored at the southern end by a store run by Don Juan Sena.

The Pino family lived across the street, on the south side of the plaza, alongside a couple more stores, including the one rented by Leitensdorfer and Company. The crumbling adobe military chapel lay in the center of this row of buildings.

The west side of the plaza was nearly all residences, except for the old Mexican post office, and the north side was defined, as it is today, by the long low adobe structure that had been there since the beginning. The compound it fronted had served over the years as a fort, barracks for the Presidio troops, local jail, housing for the civil governor, treasury, and other functions.

Known as “el palacio” by the locals, the Americans retained the building’s basic functions after they invaded in 1846. By 1857, it included the chamber for the territorial legislature, offices for the Secretary of the Treasury and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, the post office, and (still!) the calabozo, or jail.

The building, which is still called “el palacio,” has been renovated a number of times, most recently a few years ago, and now anchors the New Mexico History Museum. It’s well worth a visit if you happen to be in town. As is the plaza. It changed once again in the 1860s, when a bandstand was added, along with walkways that crisscrossed the space. This layout has been retained ever since then. You can see it in the birds-eye view map from 1882 as well as the current map.

As you can see from the map, the plaza in Santa Fe is still walkable. Trees still shade the paths, and there are still small-scale traders, most often now only under the palacio house portal. It’s the perfect place to spend a few hours on Sunday afternoon or any other time.

Sources: W.H.H. Allison, “Santa Fe During the Winter of 1837-38,” Old Santa Fe Magazine, Vol.3;Josh Gonza, The Streets of Santa Fe, A Walking Tour; Deena J. Gonzales, Refusing the Favor; David Grant Noble, ed., Santa Fe, history of an ancient city; Maurilio E. Vigil and Helen Boudreau, Donaciano Vigil; Paul W. Walter, “The First Civil Governor of New Mexico Under the Stars and Stripes,” New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. 8:2; James Josiah Webb, Adventures in the Santa Fe Trade.

©Loretta Miles Tollefson

The Lone Star of Texas in Mexico

The Lone Star of Texas in Mexico

Shortly after American troops invaded New Mexico in Autumn 1846, they discovered four pieces of Mexican artillery in a village south of Santa Fe. Apparently, Governor Manuel Armijo had taken the guns with him when he fled, but abandoned them at Galisteo. One of these pieces was of special interest to the Americans because it had arrived in New Mexico by way of Texas.

The cannon, made in Springfield, MA, had accompanied the ill-fated 1841 Texan expedition to New Mexico. A brass six pounder, it had been cast with a Texas star on its breach and paid for by “patriotic ladies” of the newly formed republic. When the Texans straggled into eastern New Mexico in Fall 1841, they still had the gun with them, despite its weight and their exhaustion.

New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo confiscated the cannon, of course, and reportedly displayed it in the Santa Fe plaza after he sent the captured Texans on to Mexico City. It was still there in 1846, when it and other artillery pieces were transferred to Apache Pass during the runup to the impeding American invasion.

When Armijo decided to flee instead of fight, he took the Texan gun and other artillery with him. Three of the gun carriages apparently broke down at Galisteo, and the governor was forced to abandon them as well as the weapons they carried. This included the Texan six-pounder, which the American troops dubbed the “Lone Star of Texas.”

Six pound cannon from the 1840-1860s period. Courtesy: U.S. Library of Congress

They transported the gun back to Santa Fe, where it was apparently once again placed on the plaza. Lt. Richard Smith Elliott says it was used in early November to assemble the officers for training drill.

We have no official record of the Texas cannon again until Brigadier General Sterling Price took it with him to Chihuahua.  There, it saw action at Santa Cruz de Rosales, the last battle of the Mexican war, on March 16, 1848.

However, there is a possibility that this was not the first battle in which the Texan cannon was fired. A six-pound cannon played a conclusive role in the February 1847 battle at Taos Pueblo, when it was used to breach the walls of the church where the insurrectos were holed up. This gun may well have been the Lone Star.

After the battle at Santa Cruz de Rosales, the Texan cannon was returned to Santa Fe, where it was stored alongside other Mexican artillery pieces in La Castrense, the old military church on the south side of the plaza. It and the other guns were presumably cleared out when the Americans decided to use the building as a courtroom. What happened to it after that remains a mystery.

Sources: Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons, Eds., The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott; Silver City New Mexico Enterprise, October 9th 1891, courtesy Silver City Library.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

BOOK REVIEW: The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott

BOOK REVIEW: The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott

In a recent post, I mentioned Lt. Richard Smith Elliott, who was with General Stephen Watts Kearny’s Army of the West during the August 1846 invasion of New Mexico. Elliott was also a reporter. He started writing for the St. Louis Reveille before he left Missouri in June 1846 and continued sending articles to them until June 1847, when his enlistment ended.

In 1997, 150 years later, historians Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons compiled Elliott’s reports from Santa Fe and the sketches he wrote afterward and published them in The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott. The result is an intriguing account of events in New Mexico during this period.

The pieces the lieutenant sent East were often written and published as letters. Reading them can feel like you’ve been given access to someone’s diary. Much of his reportage sounds like that of any soldier anywhere. He includes lists of men who’ve died from measles and other diseases as well as bullets, reports on the weather, complaints about quartermaster supplies, and grumbling about the attitude, expertise, and morals of both his fellow and superior officers.

When Elliott turns to New Mexico specifically, his letters reflect the prejudices of his time. There are the usual disapproving descriptions of the local priest and of businesswoman and monte dealer Gertrudes Barceló, as well as commentary on the adobe housing and lack of glass windows.

However, I find the lieutenant most engaging when he describes his interactions with the locals. Among other vignettes, there’s a delightful description of a stroll with a couple señoritas. The women turn what the lieutenant thought was to be a social outing into a shopping trip, loading him and his male companions with chickens, onions, and other goods to haul back home for them.  

So the book is an interesting view of Santa Fe from the perspective of an American Army officer in 1846/47. Elliott was unwell a good part of the time and often displays an invalid’s irritableness. His illness kept him from participating in campaigns against the Navajo, expeditions to California and Mexico, as well as the suppression of the Taos Revolt in early 1847. By the time his enlistment was up, he was in a hurry to get home. The written record  he left behind reminds us that not every Anglo who arrived in New Mexico in the 1800s fell in love with the place or found it profitable to stay.

I recommend The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott to any student of New Mexico history, especially of the early portion of the American occupation. It’s a useful and fascinating look at the attitudes that I suspect the majority of Anglos brought with them to the land of enchantment.

What to Believe?

What to Believe?

If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you’ve probably noticed that I sometimes quote Lewis Garrard, the seventeen-year-old American who visited New Mexico in 1847.  His book about his adventures there, Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail, was published in 1850. It doesn’t seem to have made much of a hit at the time, but it’s now often used as a primary source for everything from how to make coffee on the trail to the April 1847 trials after the Taos insurrection was suppressed. In fact, Garrard’s report of the trials and subsequent hangings is the only firsthand account of them that we have.

Title page of Lewis H. Garrard’s 1850 edition, courtesy of archive.org

But Wah-to-yah also contains secondhand accounts. Of the insurrection itself and the battle at Taos Pueblo, as well as of the death of Taos leader Tomás Romero afterward. And this is where things get complicated.

The circumstances around Romero’s assassination are of particular interest to me because his death plays a role in my novel An Unhappy Country. Based on U.S. military records this is what we know about what happened:

  1. People from Taos pueblo sued for an end to hostilities the morning of Friday, February 5, 1847. Colonel Price agreed on condition that the remaining insurrection leaders be turned over to him.
  2. The only uncaptured leader alive and in the Taos area was Tomás Romero, who turned himself in later that day.
  3. Romero was taken to the jail in the village of Taos, where he was shot and killed by a U.S. Army dragoon private named Fitzgerald.
  4. Fitzgerald was arrested and jailed.
  5. About six weeks later, on March 18, 1847, Fitzgerald was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. This was well before the expiration of his term of enlistment.

And that’s all we know from the official accounts.

According to Lewis Garrard, he met Fitzgerald in the second half of March, while Garrard and his party were camped roughly 55 miles east of Taos in the vicinity of today’s village of Cimarron, New Mexico. He says Fitzgerald told him that he’d come to New Mexico specifically to wreak vengeance on “the Mexicans” for the death of his older brother, who’d been a member of the 1841 Texas Expedition to Santa Fe.

According to Garrard, the older Fitzgerald had been killed by Damasio Salazar, the militia captain who supervised the Texans’ removal from New Mexico. The younger Fitzgerald boasted that he accomplished his mission when “in the fight at the Pueblo, three Mexicans fell by his hand; and, the day following, he walked up to [Romero] and deliberately shot him down.”  

Whether Fitzgerald did kill three men in addition to Tomás Romero is anyone’s guess. But Garrard’s report of Fitzgerald’s motivation raises a number of issues. Either he was confused, or Fitzgerald was.

You see, the only Fitzgerald with the 1841 Texas Santa Fe Expedition was an Irish/Anglo man whose first name was Archibald. And Archibald Fitzgerald didn’t die in New Mexico. He survived the trek under Captain Salazar as well as imprisonment in Mexico and was released in late February 1842.

Instead of returning home to Ireland, Archibald Fitzgerald went back to Texas. There, he joined the young republic’s forces and fought with them at the December 1842 battle of Mier. According to historian Noel Loomis, Fitzgerald was captured there and thrown into prison at Salado. He and his fellow Texans staged a successful breakout, but Fitzgerald was killed in the aftermath.

So, either Archibald’s younger brother didn’t know what happened to him, Private Fitzgerald told Lewis Garrard a tall tale in order to justify what he’d done, or Garrard misremembered/embroidered the story when he retold it in 1850. In any case, this is one portion of Wah-to-yah which does not hold up to verification by other sources.

The younger Fitzgerald apparently also told Lewis he’d escaped from his Taos prison one night by breaking through the roof of his cell, noiselessly creeping to the edge of the roof, and waiting until the guard pacing below turned his back. Then Fitzgerald swung to the ground and “with as much ease as possible” walked to a mess fire where his waiting friends provided him with a pistol and clothing. Fitzgerald headed into the mountains east of Taos and “when day broke,” Garrard says, “The town lay far beneath him.”

Whether this is what actually happened is open to question. I have to admit I’m skeptical. It sounds a little too much like something out of an Alexander Dumas novel.

But then, Garrard also says Fitzgerald told him he was one of five men who breached the wall of the Taos Pueblo church and that during this event the man ahead of him was killed. Somebody is conflating two events here: the first being the attempt to enter the church that resulted in the death of Captain John H.K. Burgwin, and the second successful assault later that day, when no one was killed.

I have incorporated a variation on Garrard’s report of Fitzgerald’s version of events into An Unhappy Country, but whether it reflects what actually happened is anyone’s guess.  But then, that’s why my novels are labeled “historical fiction.” Because no one knows for sure.

Sources: James A. Crutchfield, Revolt at Taos; John Durand, The Taos Massacres; Lewis H. Garrard, A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Ed., Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail; Noel Loomis, The Texan-Santa Fe Pioneers; Michael McNierney, Ed., Taos 1847, The Revolt in Contemporary Accounts.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Not As Simple As They Look

Not As Simple As They Look

If you’ve been fortunate enough to tour an adobe home here in New Mexico, you may have noticed the corner fireplaces which are a signature element in these houses.

Often built in a corner, the traditional fireplace, or fogón, had a low hearth, between six and eight inches high. The structure was usually roughly a quarter round with a narrow opening of about twenty inches. The firebox was relatively shallow. In fact, the wood was usually placed upright and leaned against the back of the space, instead of flat on the hearth.

Corner fireplace. Source: Bainbridge Bunting, Early Architecture in New Mexico

If one fireplace couldn’t warm the room sufficiently or wasn’t large enough to cook a meal for the entire family, there were several options. One was to build another cooking area in the opposite corner. Another was to build a larger bell-shaped one, up to four feet, four inches wide, that could accommodate more wood. A third alternative, especially useful when there was more than one cook, was to construct a double-arched bell-shaped structure.

Double arched fireplace. Source: Bainbridge Bunting, Of Earth and Timber Made

In every case, the arched opening was constructed using two large specially shaped adobe bricks. The chimney was usually a rectangular cuboid roughly 10 x 10 inches in diameter and made of thin adobe bricks set on edge with their ends fit into channels cut into the supporting walls

Not all adobe fireplaces were placed in the corner of a room. If a heat source was needed elsewhere, a “spur” of adobe would be extended out from the wall in the desired location and then a fireplace was constructed in the resulting corner.

As the Americans began to pour into New Mexico after 1846, they began remaking the traditional adobe houses to meet their Eastern expectations. This included encasing the adobe fireplaces with wooden chimney breasts and mantel shelves.

Source: Bainbridge Bunting, Early Architecture in New Mexico

Personally, I prefer the older style. All the little indentations in those fake pillars would have just collected dust. And probably soot. Give me the clean lines of traditional adobe anytime!

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: Bainbridge Bunting, Early Architecture in New Mexico and Of Earth and Timbers Made, New Mexico Architecture.

Aftermath of a Rebellion

Aftermath of a Rebellion

In mid April 1847, the Taos Valley was still experiencing the aftermath of the January 20 rebellion.

The U.S. Army had captured a total of 45 rebels. They released 24 for lack of evidence and tried 21. The trials were over, but the executions weren’t. Seventeen men would hang, one of them for high treason.

The high treason charge was questionable. An argument could be made that a person couldn’t rebel against a country to which they had not pledged allegiance. The war with Mexico wasn’t over. New Mexico was still officially part of occupied Mexico, and its people were still citizens of that country. There’d been a trial in early January which had found the high treason charge suspect. But that didn’t stop 26-year-old prosecuting attorney Francis P. Blaire, Jr. from continuing to use it.

In early March, Blaire filed the charge against three men: Antonio Maria Trujillo, Pantaleon Archuleta, Trinidad Barceló, and Pedro Vigil. Apparently the only rebel trials held in Santa Fe, the charges against Archuleta, Barceló, and Pedro Vigil were eventually dropped after the proceedings ended in a mistrial.

Trujillo was found guilty, but because he was elderly and unwell, the jury and judge requested that the sentence be commuted. Military Governor Sterling Price granted the pardon, and Santa Fe was spared a demonstration of the effectiveness of the gallows.

Taos wasn’t. Of the eighteen prisoners tried there, all were convicted and hung.

There had been a single execution on February 7 of Pablo Montoya, one of the rebellion leaders, but the remainder waited until April, when the formal trials began.

These hangings started on Friday, April 9, when Hipolito (Polo) Salazar, Jose Manuel Garcia, Pedro Lucero, Juan Ramon Trujillo, and the Romero brothers Ysidro and Manuel, age sixteen, were executed two days after their trials. Salazar had been convicted of high treason, but the rest of these men were found guilty of killing American-appointed Governor Charles Bent.

The eleven remaining convicted rebels had to wait to meet their end. Most of them would die three weeks later, on Friday, April 30. These executions seem to have occurred in two batches. The six men from Taos Pueblo—Francisco Naranjo, Jose Gabriel Romero (or Samora), Juan Domingo Martin, Juan Antonio Lucero, and a man called El Cuervo—were apparently hanged at the same time. They were buried at the Pueblo at the church which had been destroyed by the Americans in early February.

Ruins of the Taos Pueblo church. Source: Palace of the Governors Archives

Four other men—Manuel Miera, Juan Pacheco, Manuel Sandoval, and Rafael Tafoya—were also executed that day. Then, on the following Friday, Juan Antonio Avila was hanged for his role in the insurrection.

Why the week-long delay? There’s no information in the records. I’d love to know the answer to this question, just as I’d like to know why the trials of Trujillo, Barceló, Archuleta, and Vigil were held in Santa Fe and the reasons for the mistrials for latter three men. Was this a procedural issue? Was family pressure brought to bear?

I’m especially curious about the case of Trinidad Barceló. He was the older brother of businesswoman Gertrudes Barceló, who had assisted the U.S. occupiers in suppressing a revolt the previous December. Did her support of the regime play a part in her brother’s release?

What about the other two: Archuleta and Vigil? Were they related to Acting Governor Donaciano Vigil or some other prominent New Mexican who the Americans wanted on their side?

And then there are the stories of the men who died: their reasons for resistance, the impact on their families, the pain or joy they left behind.

So many stories, so little time.

© Loretta Miles Tollefson

Sources: David C. Beyreis, Blood in the Borderlands; Mary J. Straw Cook, Doña Tules; James A. Crutchfield, Revolt at Taos; Mark L. Gardner and Marc Simmons, eds., The Mexican War Correspondence of Richard Smith Elliott; Lewis H. Garrard, Wah-to-ya and the Taos Trail; Lucy Lippard, Pueblo Chico, Land and Lives in Galisteo since 1814; Michael McNierney, ed. Taos 1847, The Revolt in Contemporary Accounts; Alberto Vidaurre in Corina A. Santistevan and JuliaMoore, Taos, A Topical History.